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Poker at the Penalty Spot | Games are microcosms of life. They involve struggle, camaraderie, disappointment, and ecstasy. As such, games offer the inquisitive spectator a chance to reflect on social behaviour from afar. As both an aficionado of poker — a deeply strategic game — and a soccer fanatic, I’ve noticed a way in which wisdom from the former game can benefit the latter.
Soccer’s World Cup, the paramount event of Earth’s most popular sport, is the biggest game of all. The knockout stage of the tournament introduces the penalty shootout, a tie-breaking procedure in which players are given a free shot on goal from twelve yards, with only the goalkeeper to beat.
Penalties, as they’re known colloquially, are supposed to be advantageous for the shooter, who has a large goal to aim at. A well-taken penalty is nearly impossible to save — a keeper who does so becomes an instant hero — and around 3 in 4 penalties are scored, on average. The price of that advantage, however, is added pressure. The shooter is expected to score.
Reach for the sky (unless there’s a snake in your soccer boot)
The Economist magazine analyzed World Cup penalties spanning a forty-year period in search of patterns that might suggest an optimal strategy.
Figure 1. Photo credit: economist.com
Based on those data, it turns out that
Goalkeepers find high balls the hardest to deal with — just 3% of penalties aimed halfway up the goal or more are saved. Yet there is a tendency for these shots to miss the target: 18% of high shots do so, as opposed to 5% of low shots. Overall, though, allowing for misses and saves, high shots are successful 79% of the time compared with 72% for low shots.
High shots are more likely to score, yet Figure 1 shows that most penalties were aimed at the lower half of the goal. What explains the paradox?
One answer is that unlike rebounds from penalties taken during shootouts, which are immediately dead, rebounds from penalties attempted during regulation play are live balls. This means that someone taking a penalty kick during regulation play might shoot low to increase the chance of tapping in the rebound if the keeper saves the original attempt.
That explanation doesn’t apply to penalty shootouts, though, which account for the bulk of penalties taken over the years. There’s another reason for the discrepancy, and it gives insight into how people make decisions when the stakes are high. It concerns the fact that we human beings are emotional creatures who, for the most part, care about others’ opinions of us. ‘Ego bias’ affects our decision-making.
To spare your blushes
If scoring from the penalty spot is ostensibly simple, merely hitting the target should be even easier. Knowing this, nothing is more humbling for a penalty-taker than shooting high or wide. Even having your penalty saved is a better outcome, psychologically, than missing altogether. Shooters thus have some incentive to be more conservative in where they aim, because low shots are less likely to miss their mark.
Of course, that line of reasoning makes for a poor strategy. A penalty-taking robot would pay no mind to emotional considerations of potential humiliation. Focused purely on maximizing the probability of scoring, it would aim for the top corner every time. The benefit gained by straining the goalkeeper easily compensates for the increased chance of blasting the ball over the bar — the data show this strategy is nearly 10 percent more successful. A missed shot and a saved shot count the same on the scoreboard, after all. The only difference is in the shooter’s head.
Yet that difference makes all the difference, because soccer is played by humans whose emotions affect their physiology. Pressure weighs even on the best players, who miss the odd penalty despite scoring goals ruthlessly, in far more difficult situations, during open play. (Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have each missed a penalty kick in this World Cup.)
You can often tell if a player is going to miss a penalty by watching their approach to the ball. A fast run-up immediately after the referee’s whistle — see Asamoah Gyan’s penalty in the 2010 World Cup quarterfinals (with the weight of a billion Africans’ hopes squarely on his shoulders) — suggests a subconscious desire to get the stressful situation over with. That player lacks composure.
A good penalty-taker decides where to aim first, takes a moment to visualize where the ball is going to go, then focuses all the way through the shooting motion to make sure the foot strikes the ball properly. As with any activity performed at a high level, even aspects as straightforward as an unencumbered shot at goal demand serious forethought and practice. The higher the stakes, the more nerves become a factor.
It’s all in your head
The laws of nature forbid us from living through any single moment more than once. We’re not allowed to rewind and see what could have been. This reality predisposes us to hindsight bias, where we overvalue outcomes and undervalue the actions that preceded the result.
Counterfactuals are instructive for allowing us to contemplate superior alternatives. It’s a common exercise among skilled poker players, who understand that the decision-making process is more important than any one outcome, which is subject to factors out of one’s control such as statistical variance.
Most people have a natural aversion to risk because risk sometimes leads to loss, which can be embarrassing. But losing doesn’t necessarily mean you made the wrong decision. You might have just gotten unlucky. Moreover, shame is a function of pride; it’s nothing more than a state of mind. A fear of shame discourages you from taking worthwhile risks, and it’s a bias that leads to poor decision-making. Conquering that inhibition removes a major obstacle from the road to victory.
Instead, think like a poker player. Remember that over the long run, if you factor in what you could have gained, a missed opportunity to win is the same as an equivalent loss. Discard your pride, and make the best decision. You’ll thank yourself later.
Most penalty-takers in soccer focus too much on their dread of missing the net, and think too little of the reward that awaits them, more often than not, by aiming at the top corner anyway. Taking intelligent risks in other parts of life is the same. We are always forced to live out our actual misfortunes, but we’re never confronted by the successes we forsook. If we were, we wouldn’t overlook them as often as we do, and we’d be bolder and better off for it. Those missed successes exist only in some parallel universe where a more logical and courageous version of us lives. Luckily, we each have the opportunity to make choices anew every single day. All it takes is determination. As the Tottenham Hotspurs’ motto goes, “To dare is to do.” | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/poker-at-the-penalty-spot-af3a2a2f9359 | ['Brad Stollery'] | 2018-07-06 16:07:55.766000+00:00 | ['Motivation', 'Poker', 'World Cup', 'Economics', 'Soccer'] |
Naive Bayes Classifier | In a world full of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, surrounding almost everything around us, Classification and Prediction is one the most important aspects of Machine Learning, and Naive Bayes is a simple but surprisingly powerful algorithm for predictive modeling according to Machine Learning Industry Experts. So Guys, in this Naive Bayes Tutorial, I’ll be covering the following topics:
What is Naive Bayes?
What is Bayes Theorem?
Game Prediction using Bayes’ Theorem
Naive Bayes in the Industry
Step By Step Implementation of Naive Bayes
Naive Bayes with SKLEARN
What is Naive Bayes?
Naive Bayes is among one of the most simple and powerful algorithms for classification based on Bayes’ Theorem with an assumption of independence among predictors. Naive Bayes model is easy to build and particularly useful for very large data sets. There are two parts to this algorithm:
Naive
Bayes
The Naive Bayes classifier assumes that the presence of a feature in a class is unrelated to any other feature. Even if these features depend on each other or upon the existence of the other features, all of these properties independently contribute to the probability that particular fruit is an apple or an orange or a banana and that is why it is known as “Naive”.
Let’s move forward with our Naive Bayes Tutorial Blog and understand Bayes Theorem.
What is Bayes Theorem?
In Statistics and probability theory, Bayes’ theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event. It serves as a way to figure out the conditional probability.
Given a Hypothesis H and evidence E, Bayes’ Theorem states that the relationship between the probability of Hypothesis before getting the evidence P(H) and the probability of the hypothesis after getting the evidence P(H|E) is :
This relates the probability of the hypothesis before getting the evidence P(H), to the probability of the hypothesis after getting the evidence, P(H|E). For this reason, is called the prior probability, while P(H|E) is called the posterior probability. The factor that relates the two, P(H|E) / P(E), is called the likelihood ratio. Using these terms, Bayes’ theorem can be rephrased as:
“The posterior probability equals the prior probability times the likelihood ratio.”
Go a little confused? Don’t worry.
Let’s continue our Naive Bayes Tutorial blog and understand this concept with a simple concept.
Bayes’ Theorem Example
Let’s suppose we have a Deck of Cards, we wish to find out the “ Probability of the Card we picked at random to be a King given that it is a Face Card “. So, according to Bayes Theorem, we can solve this problem. First, we need to find out the probability
P(King) which is 4/52 as there are 4 Kings in a Deck of Cards.
which is as there are 4 Kings in a Deck of Cards. P(Face|King) is equal to 1 as all the Kings are face Cards.
is equal to as all the Kings are face Cards. P(Face) is equal to 12/52 as there are 3 Face Cards in a Suit of 13 cards and there are 4 Suits in total.
Now, putting all the values in the Bayes’ Equation we get the result as 1/3
Game Prediction using Bayes’ Theorem
Let’s continue our Naive Bayes Tutorial blog and Predict the Future of Playing with the weather data we have.
So here we have our Data, which comprises of the Day, Outlook, Humidity, Wind Conditions and the final column being Play, which we have to predict.
First, we will create a frequency table using each attribute of the dataset.
For each frequency table, we will generate a likelihood table.
Likelihood of ‘Yes’ given ‘Sunny‘ is:
P(c|x) = P(Yes|Sunny) = P(Sunny|Yes)* P(Yes) / P(Sunny) = (0.3 x 0.71) /0.36 = 0.591
Similarly Likelihood of ‘No’ given ‘Sunny‘ is:
P(c|x) = P(No|Sunny) = P(Sunny|No)* P(No) / P(Sunny) = (0.4 x 0.36) /0.36 = 0.40
Now, in the same way, we need to create the Likelihood Table for other attributes as well.
Suppose we have a Day with the following values :
Outlook = Rain
Humidity = High
Wind = Weak
Play =?
So, with the data, we have to predict whether “we can play on that day or not”.
Likelihood of ‘Yes’ on that Day = P(Outlook = Rain|Yes)*P(Humidity= High|Yes)* P(Wind= Weak|Yes)*P(Yes)
Likelihood of ‘No’ on that Day = P(Outlook = Rain|No)*P(Humidity= High|No)* P(Wind= Weak|No)*P(No)
Now we normalize the values, then
P(Yes) = 0.0199 / (0.0199+ 0.0166) = 0.55
P(No) = 0.0166 / (0.0199+ 0.0166) = 0.45
Our model predicts that there is a 55% chance there will be a Game tomorrow.
Naive Bayes in the Industry
Now that you have an idea of What exactly is Naïve Bayes, how it works, let’s see where is it used in the Industry?
News Categorization:
Starting with our first industrial use, it is News Categorization, or we can use the term text classification to broaden the spectrum of this algorithm. News on the web is rapidly growing where each news site has its own different layout and categorization for grouping news. Companies use a web crawler to extract useful text from HTML pages of news article contents to construct a Full-Text-RSS. Each news article content is tokenized(categorized). In order to achieve better classification results, we remove the less significant words i.e. stop — the word from the document. We apply the naive Bayes classifier for the classification of news contents based on news code.
Spam Filtering:
Naive Bayes classifiers are a popular statistical technique of e-mail filtering. They typically use a bag of words features to identify spam e-mail, an approach commonly used in text classification. Naive Bayes classifiers work by correlating the use of tokens (typically words, or sometimes other things), with a spam and non-spam e-mails and then using Bayes’ theorem to calculate a probability that an email is or is not spam.
Particular words have particular probabilities of occurring in spam email and in legitimate email. For instance, most email users will frequently encounter the word “Lottery” and “Luck Draw” in spam email, but will seldom see it in other emails. Each word in the email contributes to the email’s spam probability or only the most interesting words. This contribution is called the posterior probability and is computed using Bayes’ theorem. Then, the email’s spam probability is computed over all words in the email, and if the total exceeds a certain threshold (say 95%), the filter will mark the email as a spam.
Medical Diagnosis:
Nowadays modern hospitals are well equipped with monitoring and other data collection devices resulting in enormous data that are collected continuously through health examination and medical treatment. One of the main advantages of the Naive Bayes approach which is appealing to physicians is that “all the available information is used to explain the decision”. This explanation seems to be “natural” for medical diagnosis and prognosis i.e. is close to the way how physicians diagnose patients.
When dealing with medical data, the Naïve Bayes classifier takes into account evidence from many attributes to make the final prediction and provides transparent explanations of its decisions and therefore it is considered as one of the most useful classifiers to support physicians’ decisions.
Weather Prediction:
Weather is one of the most influential factors in our daily life, to an extent that it may affect the economy of a country that depends on occupation like agriculture. Weather prediction has been a challenging problem in the meteorological department for years. Even after the technological and scientific advancement, the accuracy in the prediction of weather has never been sufficient.
A Bayesian approach based model for weather prediction is used, where posterior probabilities are used to calculate the likelihood of each class label for input data instance, and the one with maximum likelihood is considered resulting output.
Step By Step Implementation of Naive Bayes
Here we have a dataset comprising of 768 Observations of women aged 21 and older. The dataset describes instantaneous measurement taken from patients, like age, blood workup, the number of times pregnant. Each record has a class value that indicates whether the patient suffered an onset of diabetes within 5 years. The values are 1 for Diabetic and 0 for Non-Diabetic.
Now, Let’s continue our Naive Bayes Blog and understand all the steps one by one. I,ve broken the whole process down into the following steps:
Handle Data
Summarize Data
Make Predictions
Evaluate Accuracy
Step 1: Handle Data
The first thing we need to do is load our data file. The data is in CSV format without a header line or any quotes. We can open the file with the open function and read the data lines using the reader function in the CSV module.
import csv
import math
import random def loadCsv(filename):
lines = csv.reader(open(r'C:UsersKislayDesktoppima-indians-diabetes.data.csv'))
dataset = list(lines)
for i in range(len(dataset)):
dataset[i] = [float(x) for x in dataset[i]]
return dataset
Now we need to split the data into training and testing dataset.
def splitDataset(dataset, splitRatio):
trainSize = int(len(dataset) * splitRatio)
trainSet = []
copy = list(dataset)
while len(trainSet) < trainSize:
index = random.randrange(len(copy))
trainSet.append(copy.pop(index))
return [trainSet, copy]
Step 2: Summarize the Data
The summary of the training data collected involves the mean and the standard deviation for each attribute, by class value. These are required when making predictions to calculate the probability of specific attribute values belonging to each class value.
We can break the preparation of this summary data down into the following sub-tasks:
Separate Data By Class
def separateByClass(dataset): separated = {}
for i in range(len(dataset)):
vector = dataset[i]
if (vector[-1] not in separated):
separated[vector[-1]] = [] separated[vector[-1]].append(vector) return separated
Calculate Mean
def mean(numbers):
return sum(numbers)/float(len(numbers))
Calculate Standard Deviation
def stdev(numbers):
avg = mean(numbers)
variance = sum([pow(x-avg,2) for x in numbers])/float(len(numbers)-1)
return math.sqrt(variance)
Summarize Dataset
def summarize(dataset):
summaries = [(mean(attribute), stdev(attribute)) for attribute in zip(*dataset)]
del summaries[-1]
return summaries
Summarize Attributes By Class
def summarizeByClass(dataset):
separated = separateByClass(dataset)
summaries = {}
for classValue, instances in separated.items():
summaries[classValue] = summarize(instances)
return summaries
Step 3: Making Predictions
We are now ready to make predictions using the summaries prepared from our training data. Making predictions involves calculating the probability that a given data instance belongs to each class, then selecting the class with the largest probability as the prediction. We need to perform the following tasks
Calculate Gaussian Probability Density Function
def calculateProbability(x, mean, stdev):
exponent = math.exp(-(math.pow(x-mean,2)/(2*math.pow(stdev,2))))
return (1/(math.sqrt(2*math.pi)*stdev))*exponent
Calculate Class Probabilities
def calculateClassProbabilities(summaries, inputVector):
probabilities = {}
for classValue, classSummaries in summaries.items():
probabilities[classValue] = 1
for i in range(len(classSummaries)):
mean, stdev = classSummaries[i]
x = inputVector[i]
probabilities[classValue] *= calculateProbability(x, mean, stdev)
return probabilities
Make a Prediction
def predict(summaries, inputVector):
probabilities = calculateClassProbabilities(summaries, inputVector)
bestLabel, bestProb = None, -1
for classValue, probability in probabilities.items():
if bestLabel is None or probability > bestProb:
bestProb = probability
bestLabel = classValue
return bestLabel
Get Accuracy
def getAccuracy(testSet, predictions):
correct = 0
for x in range(len(testSet)):
if testSet[x][-1] == predictions[x]:
correct += 1
return (correct/float(len(testSet)))*100.0
Finally, we define our main function where we call all these methods we have defined, one by one to get the accuracy of the model we have created.
def main():
filename = 'pima-indians-diabetes.data.csv'
splitRatio = 0.67
dataset = loadCsv(filename)
trainingSet, testSet = splitDataset(dataset, splitRatio)
print('Split {0} rows into train = {1} and test = {2} rows'.format(len(dataset),len(trainingSet),len(testSet))) #prepare model
summaries = summarizeByClass(trainingSet) #test model
predictions = getPredictions(summaries, testSet)
accuracy = getAccuracy(testSet, predictions)
print('Accuracy: {0}%'.format(accuracy)) main()
Output:
So here as you can see the accuracy of our Model is 66 %. Now, This value differs from model to model and also the split ratio.
So here as you can see the accuracy of our Model is 66 %. Now, This value differs from model to model and also the split ratio.
Now that we have seen the steps involved in the Naive Bayes Classifier, Python comes with a library SKLEARN which makes all the above-mentioned steps easy to implement and use. Let’s continue our Naive Bayes Tutorial and see how this can be implemented.
Naive Bayes with SKLEARN
Importing Libraries and Loading Datasets
from sklearn import datasets
from sklearn import metrics
from sklearn.naive_bayes import GaussianNB
dataset = datasets.load_iris()
Creating our Naive Bayes Model using Sklearn
Here we have a GaussianNB() method that performs exactly the same functions as the code explained above
model = GaussianNB() model.fit(dataset.data, dataset.target)
expected = dataset.target predicted = model.predict(dataset.data)
Getting Accuracy and Statistics
Here we will create a classification report that contains the various statistics required to judge a model. After that, we will create a confusion matrix which will give us a clear idea of the Accuracy and the fitting of the model.
print(metrics.classification_report(expected, predicted)) print(metrics.confusion_matrix(expected, predicted))
Classification Report:
Confusion Matrix:
As you can see all the hundreds of lines of code can be summarized into just a few lines of code with this powerful library.
As you can see all the hundreds of lines of code can be summarized into just a few lines of code with this powerful library.
So, with this, we come to the end of this Naive Bayes Tutorial Blog. I hope you enjoyed this blog. If you are reading this, Congratulations! You are no longer a newbie to Naive Bayes. Try out this simple example on your systems now.
If you wish to check out more articles on the market’s most trending technologies like Python, DevOps, Ethical Hacking, then you can refer to Edureka’s official site.
Do look out for other articles in this series which will explain the various other aspects of Data Science. | https://medium.com/edureka/naive-bayes-tutorial-80939835d5cb | ['Sahiti Kappagantula'] | 2020-09-28 13:16:22.362000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Deep Learning', 'Naive Bayes', 'Classification Models'] |
Why Bad Telemarketing is the Real Problem | Telemarketing, especially in the B2B industry, has gotten a bad rap nowadays. For one, many people have mentioned having a bad experience or two with a telemarketer. Indeed, people have their own opinions about the practice of cold-calling, but generally, everyone seems to have this idea that telemarketing is something to be avoided like the plague, or worn out literary clichés.
Anyway, it is still important to note that telemarketing is a staple in every B2B enterprise’s attempts to generate high-quality leads. It is just that not a lot of people have a favorable view towards telemarketing, and for reasons that are too obvious right from the get-go. One reason is that telemarketers have become too persistent that they would often engage a lead during the most unlikely hours.
What most people, particularly executives, know is that telemarketing remains to be a force to reckon with. Knowing that cold-calling is still a practice that ensures quality leads, more and more companies are putting more emphasis on keeping their B2B telemarketing operations up and running. For sure, outbound telemarketing continues to be a top tactic for lead generation among various industries across the B2B spectrum.
So, now, why all the bad rap?
Basically, we should begin by asking ourselves “What is telemarketing for?” The simplest answer is that it allows companies to generate quality leads and convert as many cold prospects as possible. Companies will need to provide effective talking points aimed at pulling the heartstrings of even the hardest prospects.
And of course, there are no shortcuts. However, there are companies out there that tend to get away with practices that are not only ineffective but also unethical. Here are a few of them:
Doing away with call scripts
There is a reason why Hollywood actors need to read scripts. It’s obvious enough to know that in order to perfect the character one plays, he or she should look at the script first. With B2B companies, it entails preparing a call script that will address possible caveats during an engagement over the phone. At least, with call scripts, you will be able to perform effectively.
Related: Don’t Waste a Moment! See Sample Cold Calling Scripts
Making guesses
Never assume what a prospect wants to hear. As much as you want to apply college-level psychology, it does not work well with B2B decision-makers who are on tight schedules. Rather than making conclusions, be honest and tell the prospect what you think.
Become needy
The least that B2B prospects want is someone trying to sell them using an “in your face” approach. In fact, decision-makers don’t like it when they are approached from nowhere with a sales pitch. Instead, be more of an expert rather than a marketer or salesman. Prospects, after all, want someone to enlighten them, and not someone to offer up products and services like at a weekend market.
Related: How NOT to Market your Product: 9 of the Worst Branding Failures
Set up intangible targets
Companies rely mostly on tangible data to better approach the most complex aspects of the business. The same should go for telemarketing. Rather than setting up unrealistic objectives for yourself, you should focus more on how to craft resonant messages as you go along with the call. As long as you have a target in mind, it will become a lot easier for you to reach it and put the contact right through the sales pipeline.
Be unprepared for questions
It’s a correspondence over the phone, which means that the channel relies mostly on clarity in order for the message to be delivered. While this is a no-brainer, you still need to prepare for possible inquiries. What exactly does the prospect want? He or she will tell you and ask if it’s available. You should know about it on your part.
Related: Your Roadmap to Buying the Best Leads
Showing less enthusiasm
You’re calling a B2B decision maker. You should be happy about it since it means getting more profits. If you so much as show the prospect that you’re bored, then all will be lost. But not really. You’ll just give the prospect a reason to turn you down.
Not making any follow up calls
Before a prospect hangs up, you need to know if he or she would like to know a lot more about your company. A follow-up call may be on the ropes, so when you say you’ll make a scheduled, stick to it. Your prospects want to make informed decisions. By allowing a much wider opportunity to explore other propositions, you might just win over a customer or two.
Sources: gsa-marketing.co.uk, impacttargetmarketing.com, bizjournals.com
Read more sales and marketing tips | https://medium.com/@SandraCrowe9/why-bad-telemarketing-is-the-real-problem-7bd9a7661979 | ['Sandra Crowe'] | 2019-10-09 14:12:17.819000+00:00 | ['Best Practices', 'Sales', 'Telemarketing Tips', 'Telemarketing'] |
My Amazon Sister, My Friend | The watercolored memories
Echo in my mind.
Pictures of her, my sister,
Childhood enemy and friend.
She was younger,
yet older.
Fierce and loyal,
My Amazon sister, my friend.
I looked up to her, my hero,
For strength, for love.
Quietly she stood beside me,
My younger sister, a loyal friend.
Through the passing of years
Our roles change again.
She turns to me
Life-battered, in need of a friend.
I see her, my sister,
Present and past.
Like two girls, overlapping,
Both then and now.
I love her now to touch her then.
To protect the girl
Whose big-hearted love
0nce rescued me, her sister and friend. | https://medium.com/ipoetry/my-amazon-sister-my-friend-c7a3de42f0df | ['Kerry Mcavoy'] | 2020-09-15 16:27:07.738000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Relationships', 'Family', 'Kerry Mcavoy', 'Women'] |
How fast can a Mercedes Benz car be tested and released? — A Kaggle Competition | Each row has a unique ID, a collection of categorical variables(X0 — X8) and binary/identity variables(X10 — X378) as well as the output ‘y’.
Upon analysis, we came across some columns:
that showed non-variance (same values throughout the column) that were highly skewed (few values occurring most of the time (> 95%)) that were exact duplicates that were linearly related to certain other columns (positively or negatively)
We did not come across any columns with missing values. Hence there was no need for imputation.
Data Preprocessing
The main idea behind preprocessing is to counter the aspects we came across in the data exploration phase. So what did we do? Before asking that let us ask ‘Why do we do it?’
Reduces dimensionality of the problem in hand. Reduces the possibility of over-fitting (the model tends to learn all available features that are redundant, duplicate or unnecessary ). Lesser number of features mean simpler models, lesser memory, reduced training time and faster results.
Now we get back to the question ‘What did we do?’
We removed columns showing no variability, meaning columns that contained only one value throughout. We also removed columns whose values occurred in more than 95% in the entire column. We scanned the data set for duplicate occurrences and retained only one column in each case. Columns that showed high correlation were also removed to reduce over-fitting.
Feature Engineering
A feature is a useful piece of information for prediction. Hence, better features lead to better results.
Actually, features(numerical ones) available in the raw dataset can be used for prediction right away. You however, won’t achieve the desired level of accuracy needed. What if we could create more features and transform them into something the algorithm can understand? By doing so, we are making things simpler for the model to learn by highlighting the underlying problem.
Impact Encoding
Since the data contained categorical variables, our first job was to transform them into a form understandable by the algorithm. We performed impact encoding, where each categorical variable is replaced by the ‘mean’ of the occurrence of that variable in that column. Hence a variable with more ‘mean’ value will have a higher numerical value.
There are many ways of converting categorical variables to numerical ones. This article provides more insights to do so.
Creating new features in categorical variables
We were able to create new features having categorical variables. Here are the first five rows of the train set:
First five rows of the dataframe
Columns X0, X1 and X2 had something in common. They had some variables having two letters (ex: az, ab, bc, etc.) So we thought of creating a new column called X0_club, X1_club and X2_club. Each of these columns would have variables after clubbing those staring with the same letter. For instance: [aa, ab, ac, ……, az] would be clubbed as [a] and [ba, bb, bc, ……, bz] would be clubbed as [b] and so on. The following image shows the dataframe containing the newly created columns:
Notice the three additional columns in the end
New features can be created for numerical variables as well. But since there were plenty of columns already we didn’t create more (big mistake).
Note: A keypoint to remember is that the steps performed on the training dataset MUST be performed on the test dataset as well. So while doing data preprocessing and feature engineering make sure these steps are done for the test data simultaneously.
Building and training the model
Since our problem is one involving regression, we decided to use Random Forest , which is one among the many ensemble methods available. There are many other algorithms to choose from as well.
We used the RandomForestRegressor function available in the sklearn library to perform regression. The different parameters of this function (number of trees, depth of trees, minimum sample to split and number of features) were decided by running a for loop and was validated using cross validation.
Another approach
On visualizing the output variable against the number of observations, we saw that it was highly skewed having a number of outliers as well. We decided to transform this using Box Cox transformation. It transforms a skewed distribution to a normal distribution. We made use of the corresponding function available in scipy for this purpose. However, training the model on the transformed result did not yield an improvement in the validation accuracy
What we could have done?
Here are some techniques/approaches we could have used but did not:
Create new features using those variables that are of high importance from the existing data. The importance of a variable can be found out by observing which variable is most dependent on in determining the outcome. Cross validation can help you out in this case. We thought of performing basic logical operations (AND, XOR and OR), among the binary variables in order to increase the number of features. But since we had a system with 8GB RAM and given the large number of binary variables (~300), it hanged several times :(. In case this step works for you, care must be taken to ensure duplicate and correlated columns are removed. Use AdaBoost algorithm. Though it is sometimes sensitive to noise and outliers, in most cases it outperforms the other ensemble methods. Care must be taken though, as there is a high tendency to overfit. We could have also used the method of regularization in cohesion with regression. The Lasso function in the sklearn library can help you with that.
Ending Note
So now you want the code huh? Well all the relevant code is available on THIS GitHub repository.
Do you have a better way to solve this problem? Or do you any other comments that you would like to share? Please feel free to comment. By the way, this is my first post on Medium.
I am currently participating in another Kaggle competition — Instacart Market Basket Analysis. I will surely write about my experience once I am done. | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-fast-can-a-mercedes-benz-car-be-tested-and-released-a-kaggle-competition-6a1d56ea17a7 | ['Jeru Luke'] | 2017-07-25 03:52:46.513000+00:00 | ['Random Forest', 'Kaggle', 'Competition', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning'] |
Introducing the 5 Pillars of Data Observability | A better way to monitor the health of your data.
Image courtesy of Magnus Engo on Unsplash.
As companies increasingly depend on rich, unstructured data to inform decision making, it’s mission critical that this data is accurate and reliable. Unfortunately, the reality is that data can go be missing, be improperly added, erroneously changed, or otherwise go “down.” By applying similar principles of DevOps Observability (think: traces, logs, and metrics), data teams can achieve similar levels of visibility into the health and reliability of their data. Here’s how.
Bad data spares no one, least of all the data engineers and analysts working directly with the workflows, pipelines, and dashboards responsible for aggregating, transforming, and visualizing it. Industry leaders call this problem “data downtime,” and it refers to periods of time where data is missing, erroneous, or otherwise inaccurate.
Image courtesy of Barr Moses
To prevent data downtime, data teams need to keep a pulse on the health of their data, which is often easier said than done. When I was at Gainsight as VP of Operations, a day would rarely go by when one of these questions weren’t asked by one of my stakeholders:
Is the data up-to-date?
Is the data complete?
Are fields within expected ranges?
Is the null rate higher or lower than it should be?
Has the schema changed?
Not having the answers would lead to confusion, frustration, and not to mention embarrassment when an exec or customer would ping me to ask “what happened to my data?”
Perhaps you can relate?
After speaking to over 200 data teams over the past few years, the desire for answers to these questions came up time and again. Across companies and industries, the results of not having reliable, accurate data were often the same: (1) tedious, time-consuming data fire drills (5 a.m. wakeup calls, anyone?) (2) loss of revenue to the tune of millions of dollars per year and (3) erosion of customer trust. Data reliability was fundamentally important to the success of any business, and yet there wasn’t a holistic, dynamic approach to achieve accurate data.
Fortunately, there’s a better way: Data Observability.
Data Observability refers to an organization’s ability to fully understand the health of the data in their system, eliminating periods of data downtime by applying best practices of DevOps Observability to data pipelines. Like its DevOps counterpart, Data Observability uses automated monitoring, alerting, and triaging to identify and evaluate data quality and discoverability issues, leading to healthier pipelines, more productive teams, and happier customers.
Similar to the three pillars of DevOps Observability, I discovered that Data Observability can be split into five key pillars representing the health of your data, including freshness, distribution, volume, schema, and lineage.
Freshness
In this data downtime incident, we have a view of a table that gets updated periodically and then a large gap of time when it’s not being updated.
Data pipelines can break for a million different reasons, but one of the primary culprits is a freshness issue. Freshness is the notion of “is my data up-to-date? What is its recency? Are there gaps in time when the data has not been updated and do I need to know about that?” among many other questions.
Distribution
In this incident, a distribution error occurs when the percentage of null values reaches above .60 %.
The second pillar focuses on distribution, which relates to your data assets’ field-level health. Null values are one metric that helps us understand distribution at the field-level. For example, for a particular field, if you typically expect a specific percent null rate, and then suddenly that spikes up in a very significant way, you may have a distribution issue on your hands. In addition to null values, other measurements of a distribution change include abnormal representation of expected values in a data asset.
Volume
In this incident, we see volume drop significantly between November 13, and November 15, indicating an anomaly in this particular data set.
Volume quite literally refers to the amount of data in a file or database, and is one of the most critical measurements for whether or not your data intake is meeting expected thresholds. Volume also refers to the completeness of your data tables and offers insights on the health of your data sources. If 200 million rows suddenly turns into 5 million, you should know.
Schema
In this incident, we see that a particular field is changed, resulting in errors surfacing in downstream reports.
The fourth pillar is schema, in other words, a structure described in a formal language as supported by a database management system. Oftentimes we find that schema changes are the culprits of data downtime incidents. Fields are added or removed, changed, etc. tables are removed or not loaded properly, etc. So auditing or having a strong audit of your schema is a good way to think about the health of your data as part of this Data Observability framework.
Lineage
In this incident, table-level lineage is depicted, but lineage can be displayed at even the field or job level.
The last, and perhaps most holistic pillar, is lineage. Lineage helps us put all four of the preceding pillars together in one so we can paint the map of what your data ecosystem looks like. In fact, when data breaks, the first question is always “where?” Data lineage provides the answer by telling you which upstream sources and downstream ingestors were impacted, as well as which teams are generating the data and who is accessing it. Good lineage also collects information about the data (referred to as metadata) that speaks to governance, business, and technical guidelines associated with specific data tables, serving as a single source of truth for all consumers.
Lineage helps us tell a story about the health of your data, for instance, “upstream there was a schema change that resulted in a table downstream that had a freshness problem that results in another table downstream that had a distribution problem that resulted in a wonky report the marketing team is using to make data-driven decisions about their product.”
The future of Data Observability
Thanks to our friends in DevOps, we have an easy lens with which to view the importance of observability as applied to data. By surfacing data downtime incidents as soon as they arise, the five pillars of Data Observability provide the holistic framework necessary for true end-to-end reliability that some of the best data teams are already applying as a standalone layer of their data stacks.
A Data Observability layer literally “observes” data assets from end to end, alerting data engineers and analysts when issues arise so they can be addressed before they affect the business.
In future articles, we’ll discuss what Data Observability looks like under the hood, but until then: here’s wishing you no data downtime!
Interested in learning more about Data Observability? Reach out to Barr Moses and the Monte Carlo team. | https://towardsdatascience.com/introducing-the-five-pillars-of-data-observability-e73734b263d5 | ['Barr Moses'] | 2020-12-04 19:35:23.604000+00:00 | ['Data Observability', 'Data Engineering', 'Data', 'Data Science', 'DevOps'] |
Forevermore | Your soul was truly soaking in greed
The moment you decided I could fill your need
How could I have known you drugged my drink
When I was so drunk I could hardly think
You dragged me out to the back of my Jeep
Because you wanted no witnesses, you fucking creep
My legs, like a newborn fawns, couldn’t keep me from the concrete
You were annoyed when you shoved me into the backseat
I lied there half-conscious, you told me to strip
When I said I didn’t want to, you struck me like a whip
There was nothing I could do to stop your hands from prying
You yelled and hurt me when I couldn’t stop crying
Constantly smashing your mouth against my lips
Grabbing and squeezing at my bare hips
I flashed in and out of consciousness like a strobe light
Making it harder and harder and harder to fight
You shoved yourself inside me, like I needed force-feeding
Completely blind and deaf to my constant pleading
You used my body for your own ecstasy
You filthy, sadistic, hedonistic, raping debauchee
You left me bruised, bleeding, naked, dirty, broken and sore
I hated you then, I hate you now, and I will hate you forevermore. | https://medium.com/@bonekrusher4/forevermore-655145c78f79 | [] | 2020-11-20 01:10:11.884000+00:00 | ['Hate', 'Rape', 'Poetry', 'Storyofmylife'] |
How To Request Command-Line Input in Python | If you are writing command-line Python scripts, then you will need to request input from the user at some point. In Python, the mechanism for requesting command-line values is the input() function.
Let’s go over how to use input() and make sure you’re prepared to avoid three common pitfalls.
The input() Function
Fortunately for new Python enthusiasts, the input() function is straightforward, accepting only one optional argument. The single argument is the text that will be shown on the command-line as the terminal waits for the user’s input. As the user, you can type in your value and submit by pressing ENTER.
input("Enter your name: ")
Now, the code we have above is incomplete because we aren’t storing the user’s value. We can fix that by assigning the return of input() to a variable.
name = input("What is your name: ")
print(name)
That’s really all there is to using the input() function. While the function itself is very simple, there is nuance in implementing input() in a script so that it does not become a liability.
Below are three common pitfalls that new coders fall into. Fortunately for you, we’ll avoid them by reading ahead.
1. Requesting Numeric Input
We asked the user for a text value in our earlier example, but what happens when we need a numeric value?
price = input("Enter the price: ")
total = price * 1.06 print("The total price is", total)
The problem here is that input() always returns a string value, even if the value is numeric, even if the value is empty by pressing ENTER without typing anything.
To request numeric user input we can wrap the input() function with int() or float() depending on the type of value we want.
price = float(input("Enter the price: "))
total = price * 1.06 print("The total price is", total)
2. User Input Causing Value Errors
Setting a proper data type is only one step to properly implementing user input. Let’s say we want user input but the value that is actually entered causes an error. What do we do?
total = float(input("How much did you pay? "))
units = int(input("How many did you purchase? ")) print("The unit price is", total/units)
Before dismissing the sequence in the screenshot, always remember how easy it is to make a typing mistake. We strive to code in a way that is error-proof.
Use try/except statements to solve for erroneous values.
try:
total = float(input("How much did you pay? "))
units = int(input("How many did you purchase? "))
print("The unit price is", total/units)
except Exception as e:
print("Error:", e)
A try/except statement will attempt to execute all commands in the try block. If an exception is encountered, then the except block will be executed. Aside from being able to report on the exception, the biggest advantage here is that your script will not stop executing from the error.
3. Continually Requesting User Input
We’ve learned how to convert our user input as well as account for erroneous values. But when we receive a bad input, most likely you’ll want to re-prompt the user.
The input() function does not have a built-in “retry” mechanism, so we will use a while loop to continually request user input until it is valid. There are many different ways to implement a while loop for continuous user input. We’ll use an infinite while loop with a break statement as a generic solution.
total = float(input("How much did you pay? ")) while True:
try:
units = int(input("How many did you purchase? "))
if(units > 0):
break
else:
print("Invalid input")
except Exception as e:
print("Error:",e) print("The unit price is", total/units)
In the code example above, we‘ve put all our strategies together. We convert our input to an integer, which is wrapped by a try/except which is wrapped by an infinite while loop. | https://medium.com/code-85/how-to-request-command-line-input-in-python-80f45e9032fe | ['Jonathan Hsu'] | 2020-04-16 13:06:00.983000+00:00 | ['Coding', 'Technology', 'Programming', 'Python', 'Data Science'] |
PregnancyJournal.com, the Online, Interactive Journal for Moms-to-Be is now LIVE! | PregnancyJournal.com, the Online, Interactive Journal for Moms-to-Be is now LIVE!
Moms-to-Be can now journal throughout their pregnancy and capture the exciting moments right from their computers, phones, while on-the-go or from home!
PregnancyJournal.com is brought to you by the award-winning Butterflies & Hiccups Pregnancy Journal. To keep up with the technology, the next natural milestone was to convert the book version into an online pregnancy journaling experience.
When you are pregnant it’s not always easy to come up with something to write,” says Laurie Wing, Author of Butterflies & Hiccups and www.PregnancyJournal.com. “This is where PregnancyJournal.com comes in and offers a comprehensive journal with writing prompts beginning from the moment you find out you are pregnant right up until your baby is born. PregnancyJournal.com will become one of your most cherished, lifelong mementos for you and your children to look back on!”
PregnancyJournal.com’s new website has a fresh updated look. Each month contains thought-provoking questions that prompts the new mother-to-be to capture the most important moments during her pregnancy. There is plenty of room to record practitioner visits, baby’s development, the physical changes and symptoms, special circumstances during pregnancy and room for baby bump pictures and ultrasound photos. The cost of the journal membership plan is a one-time fee of $24.95. The same cost of purchasing a book.
For more information, please visit www.pregnancyjournal.com | https://medium.com/@Pregnancyjournal/pregnancyjournal-com-the-online-interactive-journal-for-moms-to-be-is-now-live-cd4c12810310 | [] | 2020-10-16 13:25:20.473000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Maternity', 'Baby', 'Moms', 'Pregnancy'] |
Streamlit: Build Your First STREAMLIT Machine Learning Web App for your Data Science Projects | Moving your machine learning code from your Jupyter Notebook to deploy for stakeholders to access is a crucial task of every machine learning engineer. In today’s tutorial, we will start to learn how we will deploy our machine learning code from our Jupiter notebook by building an interactive web app that can be accessible by our team managers and every stakeholder.
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Before we start, please note that this tutorial is part of the Data Science Project Mastery Program, which is a practical hands-on data science tutorial for anyone to learn data science right from the basics to advance by building projects and great Data Science Portfolio. Feel free to check it out.
In order for you to make the best out of this tutorial, I have put this tutorial in the form of a video for a better understanding
Watch and work along
ALL PLAYLIST
PLEASE WAIT A SECOND FOR THE VIDEOS BELOW TO LOAD | https://medium.com/total-data-science/streamlit-build-your-first-streamlit-machine-learning-web-app-for-your-data-science-projects-e2a6fec99702 | [] | 2020-11-14 01:38:11.916000+00:00 | ['Streamlit', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Data Scientist'] |
One Nation Under Who? | “One Nation Under God.” Are we? Our Constitution was written by men of God, bound together by the sufferings of their forefathers in Europe over the abuse of authority by so-called “men and women of God,” who ruled with self-righteousness, just like the Pharisees did during the times of Jesus — remembering that it was the so-called men of God (the Pharisees) who actually put Jesus on the cross.
The Civil War that occurred from 1861 through 1865 was fought with brother against brother, friend against friend, and, in some cases, fathers against sons — a horrible war that only happened because men of God on both sides forgot to live up to one of the Commandments of “Thou shalt not kill.”
Civil wars are the worst kind of wars. It’s not like you are fighting an enemy that is trying to take over your country from the outside, but in a civil war it’s trying to take over one’s country from the inside — a battle of, first, consciousness against consciousness. The Constitution was written so this kind of thing would not happen. The writers were aware of the many revolutions in Europe and knew full well how terrible civil wars are.
When it boils down to it, can a person — who thinks they know God at any level — kill another brother in the name of God or in the name of “right”? The answer is always no within divine law, and those who do such things will be judged by the very God they think they know.
The American Revolution was not a civil war. It was a war against England’s over-taxation and oppression of the American colonists. However, the Civil War in America was a war that involved fighting against those in one’s own family who had different political and spiritual ideas.
How anyone can think that slavery is right before God’s eyes is the same reason today of how anyone could think a black man could not be President or a black woman President, for in God’s eyes, He does not see colors; He sees the soul. And we who follow that same God should see only the soul too.
If individuals truly know the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” and “the Son of God” who came to this earth as Jesus Christ (as they claim they do), they would not be thinking about killing their brother, and they would accept the will of the people, even if it was one vote that would make the majority — let alone 7 million votes more for the victor — because that is the way the founders of our country wrote the Constitution. This is democracy.
My prayer is that those individuals who voted for the loser of this election and who know God, at their level of understanding, come to their spiritual senses and realize that they should never shoot another American, nor anybody else who thought differently than them in any way, for “America is the land of the free and the home of the brave” — ideally brave in righteousness and godliness.
We Americans, who become true spiritual adults, try to obey the Commandments of God — despite the immorality of the values reflected in our films, television, radio, and magazines. If we who claim to be “spiritual” don’t do that, we must seriously question our relationship with God, whether we even really have one. We must realize that there can be no order in our civilization without laws of morality and ethics, like the Commandments, which are part of three major world religions.
I have greater hope in Americans, that we truly are “one union, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” That is what our soldiers died for in the First and Second World Wars, to uphold the Constitution of the United States against its enemies (foreign and domestic) who go against those Commandments, as well as protect the threatened democracy of other countries.
Like the ancient Israelites of old — who believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — those who know that Jesus came for all humanity to teach us the Fatherhood of God and the brother- and sisterhood of humankind, for 2,000 years they have set the standard of right and wrong, not only in America but on the whole planet.
We Americans can still set that standard as we bind together, through our differences, to uphold the Constitution of the United States and truth, as taught and understood by all who follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, despite our differences, knowing that He is the Prince of Peace, not the prince of war. | https://medium.com/@gabrielofurantia/one-nation-under-who-13752f5cb2c5 | ['Gabriel Of Urantia'] | 2020-12-17 17:08:16.571000+00:00 | ['Us Constitution', 'One Nation Under God', 'Civil War', 'Unity', 'Commandments'] |
BISNIS KONSULTAN DALAM PERSPEKTIF BISNIS KONSULTAN ASING DI INDONESIA | I have skills in the field of work related to writing. Together with Medium.com I want to develop my skills | https://medium.com/@shoheh2019/bisnis-konsultan-dalam-perspektif-bisnis-konsultan-asing-di-indonesia-a51e1c169239 | ['Achmad Soheh'] | 2020-12-03 07:39:07.802000+00:00 | ['Consulting', 'Marketing', 'CRM', 'Corporate Culture', 'Business'] |
Safe Workplaces: A Computer Vision Model | In short:
When we move to work each morning the protection and health measures are some concerns which don’t even cross our minds but if we glance around and think for a second, we do realize that although health and safety within the workplace has improved over the years, there are still an outsized number of labor place accidents happening irrespective of which field you’re employed in or as a matter of fact regardless of how near misses have occurred with you.
Unlike earlier times, we now have something called as computer vision, unlike a manual supervisor who manages by wandering around, is 24×7, not in only one spot at a time, but all told critical areas of interest. it’s the unique ability to observe how people interact with the equipment they’re operating, and materials or products they’re performing on.
No technology is completely safe and reliable, and to be effective the alerts will should occur in near real time — almost at the identical time. But given what’s at stake, computer vision may be an additive and cost-effective tool to enhance overall any protection as well as safety management system.
Diving Deeper:
For a better understanding it is important to see a few examples on how computer vision can be used in workplaces.
For an improved understanding it’s important to determine some examples on how computer vision may be employed in workplaces.
Forklift and pedestrian-related risks are identified joined of the foremost concerns for manufacturing premises, warehouses, yards, depots, etc. Using computer vision, AI algorithm helps observe forklift movement within the defined area. Alarms are raised for incidents and accidents like speeding, movements within the wrong direction, parking within the movement area, pedestrians not using sidewalks, and the other instances of non-compliance that may cause accidents.
AI and computer vision systems can monitor loads on an elevated platform. they’ll detect PPE and proper equipment usage, over-crowding on scaffolding, and even falling objects. These systems may monitor entry into exclusion zones. With relation to the growing concerns within the healthcare unit, AI and computer vision systems can measure compliance and make sure the right PPE equipment is employed to safeguard the user against health or safety risks at work doctors and healthcare workers have duties concerning the availability and use of private protective equipment (PPE) at work. this might include gloves, eye protection and safety footwear. the identical systems can monitor the employment of respiratory protective equipment, like masks.
Computer vision systems can detect the kind of lifting equipment used, and identify differing kinds of loads which are mostly utilized in automobile industries. they’ll monitor the work the lifting equipment is employed for, and supply real time warnings for workers walking/standing under suspended load.
Computer vision fire detection models are trained to detect fire at an early stage, within 10–15 seconds. Real-time alarms may be integrated with local buzzers, PA systems, display systems, email, SMS, and push notifications. These systems may detect people stuck in numerous areas of the location during a fireplace.
Computer vision and AI systems can detect employees within the hazardous zone and supply real-time warnings. The warnings could even be provided to machine operators just in case an employee is detected near the machine. AI systems can monitor the extent of maintenance, reducing the possibility of breakdowns and accidents. The system could also provide real time alerts just in case of accidents, reducing the time to produce medical help.
There are dozens of solutions that read machine and vehicle data, but only with computer vision are you able to be assured safety regulations are being followed. No technology is fool proof, and to be effective the alerts will must occur in near real time — within a second or two. But given what’s at stake, computer vision may be an additive and cost-effective tool to boost overall any safety management system. | https://medium.com/@anurag-aher18/safe-workplaces-a-computer-vision-model-11915190d20 | ['Anurag Aher'] | 2021-01-13 16:09:48.219000+00:00 | ['Technical Blog', 'AI', 'Workplace', 'Computer Vision', 'Accident'] |
The Wrong Kind of Living World | I have seen new RPGs marketed as having a “living, breathing world that reacts to you!” That’s all well and good, but I think the life being given to these games is done with the wrong thing in mind.
Whole Environments
Most of the examples I come across involve making game environments change in response to player choices. Lionhead studios’ Fable 2 comes to mind first. Depending on the choices you make (mostly either polar good or evil, why that’s a problem is another post entirely) a given subarea of the game can change its environment.
If you make the good decisions the environment will give off a warm fuzzy feeling. Plants will flower, light rays will be turned up to 11, and everywhere it’s a warm sunny afternoon. The grass is green, the water is blue, and … well you get the point. Making the bad decisions is as much an opposite as you can imagine, as the land is corrupted, corroded, and scarred with decay. The land is meant to reflect you and your choices. There’s really only three versions of a subarea of the game, though. Neutral, good, and evil are all the variety we get. We can do better.
Destruction
Another alternative is a destructible environment, ala the red faction series. I’d never dare criticise the red faction games explosive fun. They did destructible environments right. This doesn’t necessarily make a world feel like it’s alive, though.
If you give the player the ability to destroy the earth, rock, trees, and plant life that could make it feel a bit more real. However, ‘real’ is very much different from ‘alive’. It may react in the same way that setting gas on fire is a reaction, but that’s no different from giving a child a bunch of sandcastles to knock down. They may have fun at first, but eventually you’re just left with a pile of sand.
The World Around Us
It seems that game designers think of the “world” around us as being very tangible. The trees and rocks, the buildings and bridges; these things are the stage for this play. Entertainment largely comes from the actors.
The most in depth play thing available to us, is the human mind. Our interactions with other people, that is what makes up a large part of our lives. Our humanity lies in our society, we are social creatures after all. The relationships we make, build, and spend time maintaining is what creates our world so much more than the wood and stone of the buildings we live in.
If RPG game developers want to make a world feel “alive” it should do for NPC AI what red faction did for destructible environments. The focus needs to be on how we can interact with NPCs, how we’re regarded, respected, or even feared. Blowing up a bridge is fun. Manipulating NPCs to do your bidding is fun. Unlike the former, the latter doesn’t get old after doing it a dozen different ways.
The Way Forward
Instead of consulting an architectural engineer for your next game, maybe consider instead a sociologist or psychologist. Give NPCs a motivation that needs to be discovered and manipulated. Give NPCs the ability to remember things, but also give them the ability to forget after enough in-game time has past. Red Dead Redemption 2 and other games have done a good job of the remembering, but to my knowledge nobody saw fit to make them forget.
Some RPG NPCs remind me of actors in TV or other media. They’re too perfect. How often do you see an ugly person playing a role on your favorite TV series? Probably not a lot, and for good reason. This isn’t very realistic, though. News flash, people are flawed. Put that in video games, could we?
Make some characters awkward. Make some characters ugly. Make some characters a bit weird or unpredictable. Make some interesting, but also make some boring. Something that is also very important, is the variety. Make a lot of characters to be just normal people. I know when you’re creating something from scratch it has meaning to you, and by extent you’d like it to be special. Unfortunately not everyone is a special snowflake, and an accurate world of NPCs should reflect that. Ensure that there is a bell curve, a normal distribution of personalities all throughout. Otherwise a player will go up to a new NPC thinking “alright, spill it, what’s your special thing?”
I think I see a trend.
Building Blocks
Build characters ground up with AI building blocks the same way you would a physics engine.
Start with an origin, how did they get where they are. A tragic backstory affects a character different than a privileged one. These aren’t concrete personalities, though. After an origin, or modified by the origin, give them a motivation. After 5 or 6 different categories of these fractions of a personality the combinations that can be created will explode.
The building blocks are all just that, fractions of a whole. NPCs should be a sum of their parts, and if you want to make characters procedurally generated you’ll have to randomize their building blocks.
We have the technology to choose words with variety to fit a sentence, text encoding has been done and can be used to this effect. For any given noun in a sentence randomly swap out with another word that means about the same thing. The time you’d save on writing would be staggering. | https://kionay.medium.com/the-wrong-kind-of-living-world-c783a4e7d9ac | [] | 2019-02-24 01:41:41.910000+00:00 | ['Gaming', 'Immersion', 'Rpg', 'Video Game Development', 'Roleplaying Game'] |
The Week My Kittens Almost Died and I Didn’t Have to do it All | Sunday evening my partner burritoed Lil Fluff in his towel and I loaded the syringe. We had let them nap for a couple of hours but because they also needed more medicine, we wanted to get more food into them. They were only getting about 5 ml of food at a time, they couldn’t seem to take much more.
As we began the process of slowly pushing the food into Fluff's mouth and coaxing his throat to swallow it, something wonderful happened. Zeppeli came into the kitchen and crouched in front of the dry food bowl (this was the special digestively easy dry food from the vet). He stayed there for about 10 seconds and my partner and I held our breath. He leaned forward and took one small piece of food and we both nearly collapsed in joy.
Tears filled our eyes and we immediately agreed to stop our intervention for a bit and see what happened. We put Lil Fluff down and watched as he, too, sniffed at the dry food. Though it would be several more hours before all three had eaten some of the food, they all did before the night was over.
While Zeppeli nibbled a few more pieces, my partner and I sat on the kitchen floor and cried tears of joy. After Tipsy ate some on his own and began cleaning his face and paws, we were again overcome with happiness.
That night I went to bed feeling better than I had in days, I slept. My partner spent a few more hours in the living room keeping an eye on the kittens, but when he came to bed, he too slept better than he had all week.
The next morning I bounded into the bedroom to tell him, “The kittens ALL ate their breakfast!”
We’ve no idea what caused them all to stop eating, neither of the vets nor our tech friend can give us any really conclusive answer. All I know is that they were very, very sick and that it might have been the medicine, but I believe it was also our love, that brought them back to health.
Today, they are starting to fill out again after losing too much weight that week and they act as though nothing ever happened. They are wild and crazy and wonderful and I am so grateful that I know what it’s like to be a “cat person”.
What I learned
Our kittens had come pretty close to death, having not eaten from Monday evening until sometime late Saturday. It was an ugly, scary week and I can truly say, I am grateful for the time spent healing them and the lessons I learned doing it.
As I reflected on the week something occurred to me. I couldn’t remember who had done what. I remember my partner noticing they were trying to nurse on their mom, something they hadn’t done in quite a while. Or, maybe I noticed that and he put together that maybe they’d take a bottle or syringe.
I was unclear on who suggested calling the vet first. I didn’t know which of us had cleaned up all the messes, the vomit, the foam when there was nothing left for them to vomit, or watery diarrhea that they tried so hard to get into the litter boxes.
What about the rest of the stuff that had still needed doing? Who walked the dog? When did we eat dinner and how did the dishes get done? Did my kids finish their school work?
I suddenly realized that I didn’t know the answer to all those questions because it hadn’t been just me doing handling things. I wasn’t the only one worried or concerned or researching options or trying to figure it out. I didn’t have to put together a feeding or medication schedule and post it on the fridge because we talked it out together and kept track on the paper bag the meds came in. We took turns walking the dog, the kids and I did do school work and just like always, I cooked and he did dishes. Things got done and I hadn’t had to worry about any of it.
It wasn’t just the physical work, it was the mental load that I had not had to carry alone that made the biggest in my world that week. I was scared and I felt helpless, but I wasn’t overwhelmed and in the one moment I remember starting to feel that way, he put his arms around me and told me we’d get through it together.
And we did.
Thank you. | https://medium.com/an-empowered-life/the-week-my-kittens-almost-died-and-i-didnt-have-to-do-it-all-b881b4e1414 | ['Jen Payne'] | 2020-12-22 18:11:54.810000+00:00 | ['Gender Equality', 'Cats', 'Partnerships', 'Family', 'Feminism'] |
Apart from our perception of reality there is nothing else to fix in the world | Apart from our perception of reality there is nothing else to fix in the world Zsolt Hermann ·Dec 22, 2020
Question from the Internet:
“What cannot be fixed in this world?”
Expressing in a very radical way, there is nothing that needs fixing in this world, as everything is perfect.
We exist in an utterly perfect Natural system.
What needs fixing is our own perception of reality, which shows us an imperfect, crisis-ridden world, where everybody is exclusively, ruthlessly fighting one another for survival and we are all sinking desperately helplessly.
We are all born with an inherently egocentric, subjective, self-serving consciousness, perception which paints this dark, destructive, horror movie for us we consider our life.
By purposefully, methodically changing our perception, liberating ourselves from the inherently egocentric, subjective prisons we are locked in, we can come to sense reality objectively, as it is: in its total perfection.
https://youtu.be/eupOTNAVg88 | https://medium.com/@samechphoto/apart-from-our-perception-of-reality-there-is-nothing-else-to-fix-in-the-world-22c0724b2bd | ['Zsolt Hermann'] | 2020-12-22 19:38:06.181000+00:00 | ['Human', 'Perfection', 'Reality', 'Perception', 'Nature'] |
Introduction to let you guys know a little about me. | Introduction to let you guys know a little about me.
My name is Heather and this is the first blog I have ever posted and felt it was important to not be afraid or ashamed of such things I have struggled with and I will be talking more about it in future blogs. I felt that if other people read these blogs who are going through similar situations they won’t be ashamed or scared to get help and to know they are not alone. I have overcome a lot in my life, sometimes their where times were I felt to ashamed to talk about certain things that I have overcome like addiction and suicide . Not only did I feel ashamed but their were a lot of negative people in my life who made me feel even worse about the situation. Over the years I have had the strength to talk more about the things that I struggled with like addiction, mental health, suicide, abuse and rape. Before I go on more I want to tell the readers that I am adopted and have been for almost 7 years to an amazing family who loves me. I am a suicide survivor. I am also a recovered addict who has been clean for almost 8 years and was on drugs for about 5 years. I was abused mentally, physically, sexually, emotionally by my biological father and grandfather until I met my new family when I was 12 or 13. I suffered from bullying in school which needed up getting pretty ugly. When I brought up being abused I felt ashamed for the longest time and tried hiding it and hid my emotions. Over the course of a few years I have learned that the reason I felt ashamed was because I thought I was my fault that it was happening. After spending years in and out of the hospital and going to therapy I realized it was not my fault that the abuse was happening, it was my biological dad father and grandfathers fault. They were old enough to know that this is not right and that this was not okay but yet they still did it. I should also mention they were all pretty bad alcoholics and were on drugs but still that is no excuse. Due to all the abuse I tried committing suicide and was hospitalized about 8 times for attempted suicide. I was self harming pretty bad and was cutting my arms, legs anywhere I could just to help cope with the trauma. Now that I have done therapy I know self harming was not a great coping skill and have been taught new ones like distracting ,myself when I felt like it, but In the moment and at that time I thought that was best. Due from all the abuse I suffer from CPTSD, depression, anxiety and will be talking about those as well in future blogs but have since learned coping skills to help. I no longer have any evolvement with them any more but still coping and dealing with everything that came with it. My future blogs will be discussing more about CPTSD, anxiety, depression, my addiction, self harming etc. | https://medium.com/@harpillman2001/introduction-to-let-you-guys-know-a-little-about-me-95460875e3cd | [] | 2020-12-23 03:52:38.933000+00:00 | ['Addiction', 'Motivation', 'Abuse', 'Inspiration', 'Self Harm'] |
Building a Deduper, a systematic approach in our system context | If you are a software engineer, you would have heard about deduplication hundreds of times. Every system that wants to scale or focus on scaling should be interested in filtering out duplicate processing as early as and in the shortest possible time in the event processing pipeline. At Walmart Global Tech, we are no different for our enterprise rule engine platform that was built to optimize a specific event (we call it as override on rules) where we needed processing that was created and updated in many different ways by the user (e.g., UI/API/spread-sheets via REST or Kafka).
Assumptions:
If a duplicate is found, the processing will be considered as a success.
If the duplicate check fails, we will continue with processing.
Approach #1: (Sprouting)
My first system design approach was to rely on two main components such as:
Bloom Filter (that determines either MAY BE present or NOT present) A key value store (MemCached or Cassandra(C*) (as shown in figure 1 below)
We would first check if an override’s key (hash of it) may be present in the bloom filter, then call the second key/value store (cache) to find a duplicate. If a duplicate is not found in cache or a key was not present in the bloom filter, then processing would follow the normal flow. If a duplicate is found, the system will mark the event as “duplicate” and respond to the caller marking it successful processing. Here is a high-level system diagram of our override processing system (shown in figure 1).
Figure 1 : System Diagram for ‘Override Deduper’
Advantage:
It’s an easy design and simple to understand. As the data volume is not so large yet (although it’s growing), we did not focus much on a cache invalidation strategy. We preferred to use Write Through Cache (latency is around ~1ms for the same data center(DC) and <10ms for cross DC for cache write and there is no additional cost to write to DB as earlier we were writing to C* anyway) over Write-Around or Write-Back Cache.
Challenges: | https://medium.com/walmartglobaltech/building-a-dedupper-a-systematic-approach-in-our-system-context-41e8168d2f76 | ['Trinath Patri'] | 2021-02-27 20:21:38.732000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Distributed Systems'] |
Electric cars: the road to a greener future? | The Prime Minister has confirmed plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.
Boris Johnson’s scheme is part of the Government’s “green industrial revolution” to tackle climate change — but figures show that only 30% of drivers will be ready by then.
With the ban on petrol and diesel cars impending, it is clear drivers will need to make the switch to an electric vehicle in the future.
Demand for electric vehicles has increased in the last four years; in 2020 they account for over 10% of new registrations — an increase of 7% since 2016, according to Statista.
Data from Statista.com
However, these figures illustrate that demand for electric cars is not high enough if new petrol and diesel engines are set to be banned in just 10 years.
An increase of 7% over four years shows that if demand continues to grow in the same pattern, by 2030 approximately only 30% of passenger car registrations in the UK will be electric.
BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles) only account for 1.6% of the market, but hybrid electric vehicles are currently more popular, making up 4.2% of the market share.
A hybrid vehicle combines an electric motor with a petrol or diesel engine, but they too are set to be phased out by 2035.
The plan to ban petrol and diesel engines comes after transport accounted for a third of all UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2018.
With no emissions out of an exhaust, electric cars greatly reduce pollution in cities and over their lifecycle will produce 20% less emissions than the average petrol car. | https://medium.com/the-view-from-pompey/electric-cars-the-road-to-a-greener-future-96fc4b98dd26 | [] | 2020-11-25 21:54:44.739000+00:00 | ['Electric Cars', 'Transport', 'Viewnews'] |
Indonesia’s Face of Bioconversion and Waste Reduction | The fact is, the amount of household and organic trash, as well as industrial waste, are increasing tenfold daily. We are still experiencing limitations on participation in reducing environmental impacts on Earth through proper production and consumption patterns. This trend undoubtedly contributes to the overall community knowledge ignorance on how to overcome the problem and exacerbates existing issues.
Credit: Mitra Desa Indonesia
Bioconversion /ˈbʌɪəʊk(ə)nˌvəːʃ(ə)n/ noun the conversion of one chemical compound, or one form of energy, into another by living organisms.
Hari Agustinus comes from Indonesia and is the CEO and Founder of Mitra Desa Indonesia — Mitra Desa Indonesia is a co-organization under the umbrella of the Cendekia Mitra Indonesia Foundation which aims at mutual progress through the promotion of Community Sustainable Integrated Farming. By facilitating actions through a community-building level chain of business, Mitra Desa believes that they can contribute to much more than just bioconversion.
Credit: Mitra Desa Indonesia
How is Bioconversion promoted?
1. Building community-scale chicken farms, fish farms, and Hydroponics Farming along with building black Soldier Fly Farms.
2. Providing garbage bins (containers) for households to put Maggot larva in as a means of bioconversion.
3. Encouraging the community to collect and process household trash and organics garbage.
4. Connecting industry (in this case it is the leather processing export industry) to the community for processing industrial waste with maggot larva.
5. Facilitating the community to create cooperative sustainable integrated farming management to handle the business.
6. Connecting the community to emerging and existing markets.
Speaking to Hari, he pointed out to Global Impact Network how seeing the behavioral change in the community’s mindset is inspiring, helping them to generate income and provide them with problem-solving ideas for the leather industrial waste, as this had been a problem for the industry for years.
“The community started to get familiar with reduce, reuse and recycle. For example, they modified plastic bottles which became plantation pots and started using them to plant vegetables.’
By simply showing up, we are the facilitators of bringing powerful change to existing behaviors. Because people watch, act, and learn accordingly.
In Indonesia there are at least 12 leather processing industries, not to mention hundreds of small scale processing industries. Each big industry produces up to 3000 kg of waste daily.
We are fascinated by Hari’s efforts to combat existing issues with waste production and his willingness to contribute to bioconversion with his organization and we are proud to announce Hari Agustinus as one of our First 100 Global Impact Ambassadors. | https://medium.com/global-impact/indonesias-face-of-bioconversion-and-waste-reduction-74993fefc097 | ['Yoanna Koleva'] | 2020-10-27 15:53:45.414000+00:00 | ['Bio', 'Ecology', 'Sustainability', 'Biodiversity', 'Impact'] |
Aceh Tsunami 2004, a Major Disaster that Changed Aceh and Indonesia | Recalling from sixteen years ago, in the middle of internal conflict a blast approaching Aceh. The biggest tsunami ever, served as turning point for Indonesia and Aceh. Huge loss and chaos, but built new compromises and joint efforts.
Post-tsunami sight of Aceh. (tekno.tempo.co)
From a historical perspective, since the first recorded tsunami along the Syrian coast around 2000 B.C., several thousand tsunamis have killed more than 500,000 people. Nearly half of this number occurred in a disaster in the Indian Ocean in 2004. Meanwhile, from a geographical point of view, the tsunami refers to a natural phenomenon in the form of large sea waves hitting the land as the effect of both seismic and volcanic underwater activities.
In Indonesia itself, the tsunami has hit several areas several times. One that can be identified is the tsunami on August 27, 1883, as a continuation of the eruption of Mount Krakatau which destroyed approximately 165 settlements and more than 32,000 people were declared dead. Towards the end of the 20th century, tsunamis have hit several areas such as: Flores, 1992; East Java, 1994; and Irian Jaya, 1996. Meanwhile, the largest was the tsunami of 26 December 2006 in Aceh, after being shaken by an earthquake ± 8.7 on the Richter scale, large waves devastated Banda Aceh, Meulaboh, Lhokseumawe and other coastal cities. Approximately 127,720 people were declared dead and 93,285 people missing.
Tsunamis generally occur because of large waves. This big wave is caused by the collision of the plates on the ocean floor which are always moving all the time. The collision that occurs between the plates causes an earthquake which then triggers a large wave or tsunami. Before the tsunami, in the subduction zone, solid oceanic plates pushed under the continental plates. At the same time, the continental plates will be pulled down and become flexible. If the continental plate at the top is pulled down by the oceanic plate that has maximum pressure, the continental plate will bounce (bounce) upward. At the same time, the sea level changes up and down. This change in sea level follows changes in vertical deformation on the seabed, causing a wave called a tsunami.
The Aceh Disaster Chronology
On the morning of Sunday, December 26, 2004, an earthquake measuring 9.1 on the Richter scale was followed by a devastating tsunami that devastated the region of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam. The Aceh Tsunami disaster was touted as one of the strongest and deadliest natural disasters in modern history. Prior to the tsunami disaster, Aceh’s population was 4,297,485 people. Then after the tsunami disaster, based on the 2005 census, the population of Aceh decreased by around 265,896 people to 4,031,589 people. This shows how devastating and deadly the Tsunami disaster in Aceh was.
The Aceh Tsunami was caused by the collision of two tectonic plates on the ocean floor. The two plates that collided violently struck 1,600 kilometers of fault. The two plates are slowly increasing the pressure of 50 millimeters per year. The epicenter of the earthquake was 250 kilometers southwest of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam Province, which caused a crack. The crack, which was in the form of a 10 meter long landslide, had protruded the seabed and then crashed it. The violent collision shook and pushed the water column up and down, resulting in a very large wave which then triggered a tsunami event. Less than 30 minutes after the earthquake occurred, the tsunami immediately devastated and wiped out the mainland of Aceh and surrounding islands. The tsunami waves spread in like a jet plane inland for as far as 6 kilometers. The speed of the big waves reaches 600–800 kilometers per hour from offshore.
At the time of the tsunami, people ran for safety and screamed in panic when they saw the sea water penetrate the land. When the first wave occurred, in the center of Banda Aceh the sea water was as high as ankle-deep. But a few minutes later, the second wave took place and swept away the whole city. The enormity of the tsunami waves at that time can be seen from how the ships that were originally at the port on the coast were thrown onto the roofs of shops, thousands of human bodies were torn apart, and almost all buildings and bridges were leveled to the ground.
The Government’s Response
The tsunami that flattened almost the entire coast in the province of Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, isolated Aceh from the outside world. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who at that time was at Nabire Airport, Papua, received a short message about the events in Aceh via a short message received by the Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare, Alwi Shihab. Meanwhile, Vice President Jusuf Kalla, who attended the Acehnese halalbihalal event at Istora Senayan, immediately held a sudden meeting. The President and Vice President agreed to open the isolation of Aceh. The President stated that the Republic of Indonesia space was open to foreign parties wishing to distribute aid to Aceh and Nias, while the Vice President contacted the UN to coordinate international assistance, while the Indonesian National Armed Forces Commander, General Endriartono Sutarto immediately accepted offers of military assistance from friendly countries such as Australia , Malaysia, Singapore and the United States.
The President immediately flew to Aceh on 27 December 2004. While transiting in Makassar on the Jayapura-Lhokseumawe trip, the President declared a day of national mourning on 27–29 December 2004. Meanwhile from Jakarta, the Vice President sent the first team of Bakornas PBP and the TNI Commander instructed the Commander of the Iskandar Young to carry out humanitarian operations. After arriving in Banda Aceh on December 28, the President announced four priorities for disaster management: improving communication, distribution of logistics materials, relocating refugees, and searching for missing people and bodies. On 30 December 2005 the President decreed that all incoming assistance was coordinated by the Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare Alwi Shihab. The party concerned was also asked to have an office in Aceh.
On January 6, 2005, the President attended a Special Conference for ASEAN Post-Earthquake and Post-Tsunami Leaders in Jakarta which subsequently produced a declaration to strengthen emergency response and rehabilitation and reconstruction after the earthquake and tsunami. In addition, the President emphasized that Aceh remains in a state of civil emergency (the status of civil emergency was lifted on 18 May 2005).
Aceh Post Disaster
The tsunami, a sea wave reaching the mainland of Aceh for up to 6 kilometers, has caused many casualties. It is recorded that the number of victims resulting from the Tsunami disaster in Aceh reached 127,000 people plus 93,285 people who were missing. Not only casualties, this devastating Tsunami has caused a lot of damage to infrastructure in Aceh Province. Including important facilities like airports and health centers were destroyed. Small and medium businesses were paralyzed and many teachers died.
But on the other hand, the Tsunami in Aceh not only had a bad impact, but also had a positive impact. In the field of infrastructure and urban planning, many improvements have been made, such as repairing roads in Aceh that are getting wider, traffic signs are increasingly clear, gas station stations that were previously damaged have been repaired. Docks, airports, cultural places, schools and houses also permanently rebuilt. Restaurants, hotels and convenience stores have sprung up which indicates a good economic turnaround in Aceh. In the political field, there has been peace between the separatist forces of GAM (Free Aceh Movement) and the Indonesian government. The Tsunami disaster in Aceh turned out to alert GAM to stop the war. They thought again about fighting and taking up arms, when they saw the condition of many Acehnese people who died. Until finally they decided to stop fighting and signed a peace agreement with the Indonesian government in Helsinki, Finland on August 15, 2005 with the Henry Dunant Center and former President of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari as third parties. | https://medium.com/@bonclay/aceh-tsunami-2004-a-major-disaster-that-changed-aceh-and-indonesia-346e984b061a | ['Noval Aditya'] | 2020-12-23 12:03:08.653000+00:00 | ['History', 'Politics', 'Social', 'Disaster', 'Indonesia'] |
So Disciplined, yet so Naughty !! | Have you ever wondered that your mind is like a very disciplined child who behaves in the same (exact) way in a particular situation?
Spend few seconds to think about some words like global warming, Mount Everest, beaches, holidays, office, family, etc. Your mind will give you a chain of thoughts and pictures about what that particular word means to you. You will realize that every time you face such instances, the disciplined mind presents you with the same sequential thoughts and pictures.
You might say, “That is a good thing if we have a disciplined mind.” Yes, if thoughts are structured or disciplined, but what if over-discipline becomes over-thinking.
Have you realized that sometimes you can’t make your mind stop thinking about a particular thing or thought again and again? In other words, your mind starts behaving naughty !!
Let us look at some more scenarios. Have you also wondered why most of the people around you that you interact with are like a tape recorder, saying the same things in the same sequence? Initially, you will listen but then you wonder why he/she keeps on repeating the same thing repeatedly.
Let me throw some examples. Obviously, married couples are first on the list !!
1. Couples in case of fight or argument — repeating same bad habits — You don’t clean, you are too busy, you don’t find time for me, you missed our anniversary, you missed school meet and the same sequence goes every time…! Conclusion is always spoiling the mood and mind saying that I won’t talk to you now.
2. Parents — advising children — Eat healthy food, when we are your age we used to do in this way, then life advise, then career advice and some emotional sentiments. The conclusion is always spoiling the mood with the mind saying that you don’t understand me, I won’t talk to you now. Finally, you close the discussion.
3. Let us diverge a bit in this example. Whenever you see your neighbor every time, you start thinking about him/her. Then your same chain of thoughts start coming with when you first met, what did you talk and then you start thinking what will I say next time, mostly appreciating him/her. I know most of you have already started thinking but come back 😊
4. Whenever you are bathing you start singing the same song, then think (mostly criticizing) about your boss, then start planning your next two hours, and the same sequence goes on every day. You start draining your energy unnecessarily.
5. The list is endless — Whenever you are washing dishes, driving, sleeping, jogging, and whenever you do social interaction with anybody. Your mind will throw the same set of thoughts depending upon what and to whom you are interacting.
In all the above examples there is an “obvious disciplined” pattern — Repetition and Sequence of thoughts. Let’s acronym it — RnS (Repetition and Sequence). Our RnS might not be applicable for productive or creative activities like creating a sales report, teaching kids, or any interaction resulting in some form of positive discussion.
Now, all the readers will say what is the big deal in this as this is how a mind works! It’s quite obvious, it’s done by our subconscious mind powered by those zillions of cells and billions of connections. You can’t control it as this is human behavior.
Well, I agree with my respected readers and this is how we have accepted our habits and behavior. But do you ever wonder that in all the above instances, you want to change something every time that happens? When Global warming or beach word appears, when your spouse is repeating tape recorder (although you know that its human behavior) but you still ask him/her to calm down and ask your spouse not to repeat the past. What is more interesting is that even the RnS spouse knows that something is wrong — “why he/she keeps on saying the same thing and hurt him/her”.
When your parents are advising you, every time you tell them — “yes Mom/Dad I know, you don’t have to repeat it every time”. Even parents realize that they have to stop repeating next time and not spoil a child’s mood.
Sometimes you want your mind to stop over-thinking about the same subconscious thoughts. But in the end, you end up losing to your supercomputer powered by those “naughty” neurons.
You start browsing the internet on “how to calm down overthinking”. You find words like depression, anxiety, chemical imbalance, hormones and you stop.
So, is our mind the problem? Why does it overthink or keeps on wasting energy on things that it already knows?
As I am a big overthinker too — a typical “RnS” family member — I decided to experiment on myself to see if we can conquer or reprogram our supercomputer. I need the following things to experiment.
1). Few over-thinking (RnS) scenarios
·2). Pen and paper to note down the sequence of thoughts whenever each scenario is triggered
I have filled one scenario as an example below.
In all the above scenarios, the important portion is the last thought that will come to your mind every time that particular scenario is triggered.
For every scenario/interaction, your mind stacks all the information in a particular way — that is what I felt, but please note that I don’t have any degree in “brain science”. I tried to draw those mind stacks below.
As you can see above, every scenario is a different stack of thoughts with varying lengths, and it always runs from top to bottom culminating in the last thought. The last thought is the place where our mind gets the most pleasure. But the only way is to run from top to bottom because this is how we have trained our minds from childhood.
So, my experiment does have clear-cut observations but now I need the solution to stop my mind in case of negative/deconstructive RnS scenarios. How do I give my mind that pleasure of last thought and at the same time not spoil anyone’s mood, not frustrate myself or the others? In other words, how do I teach my mind to behave in a truly spiritual manner naturally? i.e. Natural satisfaction and pleasure?
I decided to take my experiment to next level by creating more memory stacks with Scenarios (1a, 2a, and so on), First thought, and only the Last thought.
Now, my spiritual memory blocks are ready. It’s time to test them and see if I can cut short unnecessary negative thoughts and calm down my mind and body naturally. So, I waited for an argument with my spouse and then my first thought came which I spoke.
I started using scenario #1a instead of #1. My mind already knows which is the last thought (I won’t talk to you now) and it can cross-reference the long thoughts with Scenario#1. Since my supercomputer already knows the answer (last thought — ultimate pleasure) so it starts bypassing other thoughts thinking they are already traversed.
Now, I observed something different. My spiritual mind takes control and it is smiling, relaxed, and knows what is happening. I can spend my energy in trying to do something positive rather than getting frustrated or draining my energy. With some more practice, I finally know what will happen in each scenario and don’t need my naughty supercomputer to go through RnS every time. Instead, my mind goes to the last thought. My spiritual mind is smiling knowing that it’s naturally under control. I spend my energy more on positive thoughts , I am much calmer now and can avoid negative thoughts at will.
My concluding lines: I don’t know how many of you will be able to control the naughty mind with this technique. Even if it benefits a single person anywhere on this Earth, I achieved my pleasure !!
Do share your thoughts and improvements for the naughty mind 😊 | https://medium.com/@varuag/so-disciplined-yet-so-naughty-ff995ff1441a | [] | 2021-07-06 10:54:51.398000+00:00 | ['Spiritual Mindset', 'Mind Experiments', 'Discipline', 'Calmness'] |
Confessions of a Feminist Hooters Waitress | Confessions of a Feminist Hooters Waitress
I recognized the injustice of Hooters, but I filled out the application, put on the uniform and worked hard to become a good Hooters Girl
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
I’ve always had an acute awareness of justice, a hypersensitive internal fairness meter. When things are out of balance, it leaves me with an irritating sense of discomfort, kinetic energy that burns until I attempt to right the wrongs I encounter.
Often those wrongs are small, an everyday social accounting of who owes what or who is doing more than their fair share, and my actions serve to merely re-balance social ledgers. I had this roommate after college: Emily. She was always doing thoughtful acts like folding laundry I left it in the dryer, or removing all the grapes from their stems and putting them in convenient, Tupperware containers.
While living with her, I felt this constant, nagging desire to make our relationship equitable. I’d set my alarm a few minutes early to make us coffee in the morning, or I’d rush through dinner so I could start the dishes before she had a chance. I kept meticulous track of who bought drinks, just to make sure I didn’t accidentally miss my turn.
Sometimes the wrongs are bigger and result in public, performative acts of resistance to authority. In seventh grade, my geography teacher — an obnoxious, bulbous-nosed, former NFL football player with a long, curly mullet that he often fluffed during class — enlightened his audience of twelve-year-olds with the claim that women were “the weaker species.” Red-faced and shivering with anger, I stood up, pointed not just my finger but my entire ropey, pre-pubescent arm at him and loudly proclaimed him a sexist.
He promptly sent me to detention, but the collective gasp from my classmates and the look of shock on his face were worth the punishment. In tenth grade, when a teacher called my best friend “dumb” for asking a question in class, I again stood up. “Maybe if you were a better teacher, your students wouldn’t have so many dumb questions,” I sneered. My effort, again, landed me in detention.
It’s difficult for me to rectify this personal history, this idea of myself as someone who fights for fair treatment, with the fact that I worked at Hooters, a cultural institution that denigrates women. But for nearly two years in college, I paraded around a wood-paneled room in a uniform so tight it might as well have been a second skin. I flirted with men three times my age for better tips and willfully subjected myself to objectification and even danger.
How did I transform from a girl who fought injustice to a young woman who labored for a mainstay of American patriarchy, who offered herself as embodied evidence that all the interesting things about women — their personalities and passions and values and ideas and intelligence — were less important than their physical appearance, their meat, and what could be done to it?
Perhaps because I could never find a satisfactory answer to that question, I kept my employment at Hooters hidden for years. I was ashamed. On a few occasions, I did reveal my salacious former employer to trusted individuals, their reactions reinforced that shame. Men I told would look at my breasts. They’d try not to, but they couldn’t help it. They had to size me up, see what I was hiding under my clothes, see if I was worthy of the title: Hooters Girl. Women would retreat, take a step back, say WOW or REALLY!? while actively trying to rid their face of judgment. I could feel their opinion of me shift, feel them situating themselves on a higher wrung. I could never have worked there, they’d think.
It has been sixteen years since I worked there. I’m older now. Wiser. Many of the illusions of my youth have disintegrated in the wake of personal tragedy and a deeper understanding of how social forces limit and shape individual behavior. I know shame hides in the dark corners of our minds and bodies, infecting our thoughts, feelings, and actions. I know that to truly answer the question Why did I work at Hooters? I must release the shame festering inside me, expose my experiences to the world, give them air. So, here I go. | https://medium.com/an-injustice/confessions-of-a-feminist-hooters-waitress-12485bb20190 | ['Erin Benson'] | 2020-05-02 20:07:23.427000+00:00 | ['Patriarchy', 'Personal Development', 'Personal Growth', 'Metoo', 'Shame'] |
Islam in prison: menace or savior? | In a January Foreign Policy essay, Robert Simcox, a Heritage Foundation fellow, issued an alarmist warning of pockets of extremist Muslims converting others to “jihadism” in prison.
“The risk posed by radical Islamist prisoners does not come to an end just because they are behind bars,” he wrote.
While I am sure there are indeed extremist Muslims (and Christians) in prison, I know from the growing number of incarcerated persons to whom I write that for many (I bet most), Islam is a positive influence that not only helps preserve their humanity in a harsh, abusive environment, but also paves the way for a healthy re-entry. But meanwhile, the stereotypes of Muslims held by many who read Simcox’s essay wil have their prejudices reinforced.
I asked two of the men to whom I write, both currently incarcerated in North Carolina, to respond:
Antonio:
I have heard how people can become extreme in their religion. However, this is not what Islam teaches. As Muslims, we should not hurt innocent people. The Quran says, “Killing one man is like killing all of mankind.” Muslims who commit heinous acts are misinterpreting the Quran or blindly following others who are doing the same.
DC’s Islamic Center
I am a Muslim who follows the Quran and the example of the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as my guide to how to live my life. I took my shahada (converted to Islam) in 2011 in southeast DC. What caught my attention was the unity and brotherhood I witnessed as it grew in DC. At the time, it was like a “shahada wave,” as I call it, in the streets of the district. Also, the more I read, the more I felt that Christianity had been forced on my ancestors during slavery. I wanted something I discovered on my own.
At first, I didn’t quite understand all the tenets of Islam. It wasn’t until late 2012, when I was incarcerated in the DC jail for the first time on misdemeanor charges that I began to study it seriously. When I returned home in early 2013, I was practicing the faith, but I still struggled with my desires. I still felt drawn to “the old ways,” which led to my re-incarceration in late 2014 (where I am today). There are many bad things about the prison environment, but it has separated me from alcohol, illicit sex, etc. I have used this time to grow stronger in my faith and values, so that I will be a better Muslim — and a better person — when I am released. Now that I am more mature and have grown in my religion, I plan to live the rest of my days worshipping Allah and raising my children to do the same. (I hope to find a devout wife!)
You could say that for me, prison has been like an Islamic University. I have met so many men well educated in Islam from all over the world, and we have become like a family, a brotherhood. When a new Muslim arrives off the bus here, we treat him like family too. We give him food, tennis shoes, hygiene products, etc.
For me, learning to truly understand Islam in prison has been an unexpected blessing that has helped me survive this place and become a better person. If others who claim to be Muslim have committed or condoned harm to others in the name of religion, it is a deliberate distortion of the faith. I would say it is more of a reflection of the barbarism that prison can so often be, or perhaps the individuals’ own inner torments.
Frank:
I converted to Islam in 2003 while in the Maryland prison system. I was raised in the Christian faith, specifically the Episcopalian church. I was one of those youths who was very active in the church, because my father was very active there — you could say he was considered one of its “pillars.”
However, as I became a pre-teen and attended Sunday school, I never really grasped the whole trinity doctrine — creating a gap in my faith. As I grew older (and more rebellious), my neighborhood and peer pressure became the over-riding forces in my life, leading to many run-ins with law enforcement. In 2002, I was sentence to five years for a gun charge, and I realized I needed to make changes in my life. I thought getting closer to God was the key, so I started going back to church and reading the Bible. But my thoughts and actions did not evolve along with that.
In prison, though, I was in a cell with a Muslim guy. I was vaguely familiar with the name “Islam,” but nothing else. What I noticed about this man was his serene detachment from the chaos that engulfed us. I wanted the same serenity and peace in my life. One day, I watched this man make several movements and utterances. I asked what he was doing, and he answered “offering salah (prayer).” I asked him for literature explaining his belief system and he gave me a book, which I think was called “Why Islam?” I read it and realized that my own values, the ones by which I wished to live (but had not), matched Islam. I asked him to help me learn more, and after about six months of studying with the brother and attending discussions with other, I felt guided to convert.
The positive effects that Islam has brought into my life are almost too many to put into words. But I will share a few: Islam has helped me find my true purpose and why I was created. Everything I do, say or think should be centered around pleasing Allah. It offers a complete guide for life because Allah, the Almighty, sent us a messenger to be our role model/leader on how to properly live our lives according to our true purpose.
Studying the example of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) has equipped me with a set of morals and principles, igniting a total transformation from the negative ideology I once held as a “captive” of my environment. Islam has taught me to revere and fear Allah, the Almighty, the most, not the person who can obtain the most money, sleeps with the most women or has the most power on the streets. That was my old “ideology” and it caused so much pain and hurt to myself, my family and my community. May Allah forgive me! Islam has taught me to be courageous enough to stand for what is right even if I am in the minority (very hard both on the streets and in a prison environment).
Islam has taught me excellent study habits and the importance of investigation and research, rather than accepting what others say at face value. It has taught me to be a better father, son, brother, nephew and grandson. It has taught me how to treat people justly and how to demonstrate compassion, patience and understanding — even those who approach me with hate and disrespect. Islam has taught me to be selfless and to understand true community and brotherhood/sisterhood. Islam has taught me how to deal with mental and emotional health challenges. And Islam has taught me how to be grateful and appreciative in whatever situation I face. After 15+ years of incarceration, Islam is what keeps me sane and whole.
As for the charges in that article: Yes, there are some unfortunate cases behind these walls in which individuals’ understanding and interpretation of Islam have become distorted. And, of course, you then have these people calling on others to join them. But we combat it with the examples of the Prophet (peace be upon him). I am the imam (leader) of the Sunni community here at Butner 2 (correctional facility) and I’ve personally dealt with brothers who the government regards as extremist. I sit them down and we talk about it. What seems to be a common problem with these brothers is that they didn’t use the proper tools of investigation and research; otherwise, they would have seen the inconsistencies and contradictions in their interpretations. You see: We have communities within the Bureau of Prisons confines that are actively countering any tendencies toward terrorism to deal with their issues.
Among the Muslim brothers, we have ways of dealing with drug use, compulsive gambling, violence, etc. We support one another through a buddy system similar to the approach of the AA/NA. We have developed conflict-resolution systems to help foster reconciliation between warring parties. We pool our resources (such as they are in prison) to help those who are less fortunate. We have brothers who tutor other brothers who are studying for their GED or trying to learn a trade. We create pipelines of re-entry resources, so there will be less recidivism when brothers are released.
I pray that this brief glimpse into my own conversion story and the practice of Islam inside prison paints a more realistic picture of Muslim converts behind bars. | https://medium.com/@PamInProgress/islam-in-prison-menace-or-savior-bc4263ab82e3 | ['Pam Bailey'] | 2020-02-15 21:04:09.877000+00:00 | ['Prison Reform', 'Religion', 'Prison', 'Islam'] |
User Interface Design | User Interface Design
The Importance of Beautifully Designed UI/UX and its Influence on Customer Experience.
User Interface and User Experience Design
User Interface Design: User interface design is considered a visual connection between a user and a companies digital product such as a website, app or platform. UI/UX design incorporates how the user interacts with the device, the layout and style of the interface, and how content and information are displayed.
User Experience Design: User experience design incorporates how the user interacts with the UI design, including the functionality, usability and the satisfaction which the user receives from interacting with the device.
UI and UX are both crucial to a digital product and work closely together, but despite their close relationship, they are both separate parts of the design process. You can have a beautifully designed user interface with a poorly functioning user experience. Therefore, it is essential to give both UI and UX individual and careful attention to ensure they both work together seamlessly.
UI/UX Design and Consumer Relationships
For organizations, UI/UX design has become a crucial part to developing strong relationships with their customers. Customer relationships are the connection between a company and the customer and how they communicate and interact with their customers. As consumers are the centre of any business, it’s crucial to maintain a good and healthy relationship with them. Therefore, anything your company does should be focused on the needs and wants of your consumers.
Changing Consumer Trends
Consumers are now demanding more than ever before from organizations, they no longer base their loyalty on price or the quality of the product but place a significant emphasis on the customer experience they receive during the entire buying process. Developing a good experience for your consumers evokes positive emotions and memories towards your brand and helps drives customer loyalty. A recent Walker study found that 86% of buyers will pay more if they receive an excellent customer experience and it is considered that the customer experience will overtake product quality and price as the key differentiator by 2020.
Digital transformation has wholly transformed consumer habits, causing companies to transform the way they interact with their customers. Creating an excellent online experience for your users can help brands develop a positive relationship with their customers. The customer experience includes the environment in which the consumer interacts with, including the digital environment. While an exceptionally designed user interface and user experience for your company’s website/app is only part of the consumer journey — it is arguably the most important.
Mobile devices, apps, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and machine learning have created a new type of modern-day buyer, who’s digitally adaptive, multi-channel, and social. Because of the opportunities that arise from using modern technology, customers often rate organizations on their digital customer experience first. As consumer trends shift towards digital, it’s imperative that companies develop a seamless online experience for their customers, curating positive relationships through UI/UX design.
The benefits of a positive customer experience
Creating a positive experience for your customers is likely to:
Increased customer loyalty to your brand
Increased customer satisfaction
Increased user-generated content through word-of-mouth, reviews, recommendations and social media marketing.
User Interface Design and User Experience
One of the main ways companies look to develop strong relationships with their consumers, is by providing a good experience for them when they interact with their brand. Customer experience is considered the holistic perception a consumer has of their experience with your brand. The customer experience includes every part of the way a customer interacts with your brand, from talking to customer service, navigating through your companies website to receiving their product or service — It covers the whole of the consumer buying process. It’s important to understand that while UI and UX go hand-in-hand, you can have a good UI and a poor UX and vice versa. Therefore, designers need to strike a good balance between a beautiful user interface design and a seamless user experience. | https://medium.com/universlabs/user-interface-design-70a5c3a2ca82 | ['Univers Labs'] | 2019-11-07 12:33:32.636000+00:00 | ['UI', 'UX Design', 'UI Design', 'Customer Experience', 'UX'] |
A Callout of Modern Christianity’s View of the LGBTQ+ Community | A Callout of Modern Christianity’s View of the LGBTQ+ Community
So, I have been taking time to seek God's face and I recently found this verse that really impacted me a while ago. It's Romans 2:1.
For those who may be contesting the wording because of translation, below are comparisons. As you can see, the translators all agree on the main concept.
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. - NIV
Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. - NKJV
You may think you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you who judge others do these very same things. - NLT
Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. - ESV
I think the reason it keeps coming back and occupying my thoughts is because it directly follows the famous Romans 1 passage that Christians have used to justify their hatred of the LGBTQ+ community.
For those who aren’t familiar with this passage, I will put it below.
Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles.
So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.
Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too. Romans 1:21-32 NLT
And I kind of love the juxtaposition of these groups of verses. One saying which sins that people commit that will not allow them to enter heaven and then the very next verse saying "Don’t you dare use this information against them though. Even if you haven’t committed these sins yourself, you own sins are just as bad and will keep you out too." And that is where Christians miss the heart of the matter. Is it a sin? By Biblical standards, maybe (lot of debate that I’m still educating myself on). Should we be judging and condemning them for it? By God’s own words, through Paul, absolutely not! And it makes sense too. I’m not the judge of my neighbor, God is. Only He has the power to pass judgment on who will come into His kingdom, and ultimately, based off this verse, no one would. Therefore, it’s only God’s grace that allows us entry and it is only God’s place to pass judgment on who goes to hell and who goes to heaven.
Besides, if you really want to debate about where an LGBTQ+ person will end up in the afterlife, good luck. Just look into the current theological questions surrounding King David and his sexuality. A man described as a man after God’s own heart may have been gay or bisexual. So, answer me if you dare, did King David go to hell for loving Jonathan? | https://medium.com/@lidiaannedwards/a-callout-of-modern-christianitys-view-of-the-lgbtq-community-3ad2c27f2d86 | ['Lidiaann Edwards'] | 2021-05-17 00:30:52.038000+00:00 | ['Bible', 'LGBTQ', 'Homophobia', 'Christianity', 'Christian Living'] |
AWS re:invent 2020 — Point sur les annonces et nouveaux services | New - Use Amazon EC2 Mac Instances to Build & Test macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS Apps |…
Throughout the course of my career I have done my best to stay on top of new hardware and software. As a teenager I… | https://medium.com/@premaccess/aws-re-invent-2020-point-sur-les-annonces-et-nouveaux-services-9b64da48bff5 | [] | 2020-12-17 11:50:47.973000+00:00 | ['AWS', 'Awsreinvent', 'AWS Lambda', 'Aws Ec2', 'Reinvent'] |
Planned Obsolescence, or “why I stopped buying Philips products” | About two years ago I bought a rechargeable beard trimmer/clipper from Philips. It was working reasonably well in the beginning — the battery was holding up for about 2–3 trimming sessions without recharge. Fast forward to today — the rechargeable batteries are basically dead. After charging, the device works for about 30s before it turns itself off. “Well, what do you expect?”, I thought to myself , “batteries lose their capacity over time — just plug it to the power outlet and use it while it’s plugged in!”
Well… here’s the first surprise — the clipper doesn’t work while it is charging!
What does this mean? It means that the device is basically useless at this point. Even though the clipper motor and blades are still good and working well, the whole thing can be thrown out, since it has no power to start.
Now, I thought that the battery they used would be some kind of special, custom designed model, made to fit the small enclosure. Imagine my surprise, once I (forcefully) opened the enclosure and saw the actual “battery” used— 2 simple, standard AAA rechargeable batteries!
WTF? Really?! — was my reaction.
Why would they use such small and shitty batteries? And why wouldn’t they allow people to simply replace the batteries? (you know, like we do with remote controllers and… less and less devices nowadays… sigh)
It’s in the genes
At about the same time (2–3 years ago) I bought another Philips product — a bluetooth speaker (model BT3500). And guess what? It had a suspiciously similar life story as the beard trimmer. It was working quite OK when it was new, but after some time, the speaker had to be charged more and more often. About 5 months ago I completely gave up on it’s “portability” and just kept using it while it was connected to the charger. Hey, at least it was still working while charging, right? Well, not so fast— recently it began to have difficulties to turn itself on — even while charging. Right now, it is basically useless, even though the speakers, and electronics inside would still work just fine, they don’t, because the speaker doesn’t start.
So I did what I always do with “broken” stuff — I opened it, to see if I can fix it. What did I find inside? A single Lithium-Ion battery cell — type 18650. OK, this one is perhaps less known than the AA or AAA batteries, but in fact, they are used in a LOT of battery-powered devices and power banks. And you can get one on Amazon or Ebay for about 3–5 bucks. But Philips doesn’t want you to. | https://medium.com/@kchudoba/programmed-obsolescence-or-why-i-stopped-buying-philips-products-b8b4b3bfcb0f | ['Krzysztof Chudoba'] | 2020-07-02 07:18:31.115000+00:00 | ['Philips', 'Environment', 'Battery', 'Planned Obsolescence', 'Electronics'] |
5 Key Similarities Between Writing And Marketing You Need to Know | 5 Key Similarities Between Writing And Marketing You Need to Know
Photo by Alejandro Escamilla on Unsplash
With so many businesses online, the online world has become more saturated than ever before with written content. Therefore, the differences between writers and marketers have become unclear. It may not seem obvious, but both professions work in tandem.
As a writer, you need digital marketing skills — and also a powerful online presence to help get your content in front of other people.
And as a marketer, you need to do exactly the opposite. You need to have writing skills to create content people will consume. Also, you need to write persuasive copy that sells.
Whether you like it or not, with a bunch of content being available online these days — you will need as a writer an online presence that requires some digital marketing skills. And as a marketer, you’ll need some writing skills to create content writing and copywriting.
Okay, but what are the similarities between writers and marketers?
As these professions continue to develop and change, so will these similarities. But for now, let’s see what both of them have in common:
#1. They both create and publish content online
Writers and marketers create and share content on the internet through online channels. These are:
Blogs
Emails
E-books
Social media platforms
Websites
Advertising
Forums
Writers believe their profession could not exist if they weren’t creating content. Content that people will read and resonate with. Therefore, written content is their best strategy to get their pieces in front of other people.
Marketers agree that creating content and sharing it is their best strategy to get leads, customers, and to gain sales.
#2. They know their audience
Both marketers and writers create content often. Both aim to reach people without a commercial purpose. Their goal is the same. Which is for their content to get read by their audiences. But, first, they need to know their audience before publishing the actual content.
So, it’s imperative to first identify an audience. This is the first thing to do in any content marketing strategy.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
#3. They both engage with their audience on Social Media
Writers and marketers need to get their work shown to more people — that’s when social media comes into play. They both need to leverage social media platforms in their favor where they can promote their work with others.
But for this to happen, they need to gain a strong online presence. And how do they do it? By engaging with their audience through content.
They need to adapt and create both written and visual content. This also, depends on the context of the social platform they utilize to reach their audience. The end goal here is to have a strong social media presence, after all. Because with it, they have a digital marketing strategy, and a gained knowledge about SEO
#4. Both marketers and writers know and leverage SEO in their strategy
With over 4 billion people accessing the Internet in 2020 (Statista), that’s 59 percent of the global population. These statistics show that a great number of users search the internet daily. And let’s face it. A world without it would be unimaginable.
More reasons for marketers and writers to leverage the internet in their favor. They must work to understand the basics of SEO, and to incorporate it in their strategy. (which stands for Search Engine Optimization)
It would be hard for marketers to create brilliant campaigns without keeping up to speed with trends and ever-changing practices of SEO. And writers must structure their writing pieces for SEO practices. (use certain headers, title structure, hashtags, incorporate numbers, bullet-point list)
#5. They both use storytelling in their strategy
Both writers and marketers use storytelling in their professions. Marketers use it to entice their audiences, and for building a deep relationship with them. Which will later translate into lasting customers and in getting more sales.
Writers use storytelling as a form of telling their readers genuine stories. They help writers to connect more with their readers.
It’s all about the story. The catch is to tell your story through the lens of your reader’s personal experiences. Whether you’re a marketer or writer, your goal is to get and keep your audience’s attention.
Keep in mind to tell your story by showing your weaknesses to your audience. If you want more people reading your pieces or more people buying from you, get vulnerable. Vulnerability sells. Not perfection.
Be sure to leverage storytelling in your strategy. Because if you don’t use it, you can rest assured that someone else will.
“Storytelling is about connecting to other people and helping them see what you see”. — Michael Margolis.
Conclusion:
Although writing and marketing are different professions, they work in tandem.As a writer, you can’t reach people to read your content without doing proper marketing.And, as a marketer, you can’t build a successful brand or a campaign without creating content.
What do they both have in common?
· creating content daily.
· knowing their audience by heart.
· sharing and promoting their content on Social Platforms.
· knowing SEO and taking advantage of it in their businesses.
· using storytelling as a form of pouring out their soul and get the attention of their audience.
Thanks for reading my article! | https://medium.com/@mitranadiana/5-key-similarities-between-writing-and-marketing-you-need-to-know-77abe2aa62fa | ['Diana Mitrana'] | 2020-12-24 21:23:05.594000+00:00 | ['Content Creation', 'SEO', 'Content', 'Writing', 'Marketing'] |
Know The Purpose Before Investing | Many buyers and sellers just trade aimlessly and with no point. Their only aim turns to be to earn profit. Proper planning and target have to be set before any kind of investment. Since a wide range of age groups tries their luck in the crypto market, there are chances when loss can occur. Inexperience traders fall into the pit with less knowledge and that is where Etor Exchange plays its role to bring the investors to a specific standard where they can be in the trade safe and secure. Etor Exchange is that platform where investors can take the leverage and commence the trade. It is India’s first Margin Trading Exchange which delivers the opportunity to trade in INR. The program has been designed in a way to make the investors know when and how much they have to invest.
Knowing the purpose is very important as that is the key factor for any kind of investment. Vague investments are always at high risk and can damage the investment. This is where Etor Exchange would be very handy and prove its mettle. A wise investment in the right place would give an assured future profit and gain. | https://medium.com/@hardeepkaur1245h/know-the-purpose-before-investing-9c65c86b9bb5 | [] | 2021-07-02 08:27:55.014000+00:00 | ['Trade', 'Trading', 'Cryptocurrency News', 'Margin Trading Exchange', 'Cryptocurrency Exchange'] |
EPISODE 5 : WINSTON-SALEM DASH BASEBALL | CELEBRATE THE OFFICIAL START OF SPRING AT BB&T BALLPARK. Thirsty Thursday’s and Dash Baseball are the perfect way to spend your summer in Winston-Salem. The new BB&T ballpark opened on April 13th, 2010, and since that time it has become one of the biggest attractions in the Winston-Salem community.
Game-days are a family-friendly with top-quality athletes who are only a few levels from the majors. Between-innings entertainment changes every single night. Tickets start at just nine dollars and Thirsty Thursday’s offer dollar beers.
Minor League Baseball at BB&T Ballpark in Winston-Salem, NC
Minor League Baseball in Winston -Salem has a long history that spans all the way back to 1956 where the first team was the Winston-Salem Twins. Since then the team has gone through several incarnations as the Red Sox the Spirits and the Warthogs. The team mascot has changed several times, but one thing has stayed constant. This sports franchise has always provided Winston-Salem residents with a family-friendly home to America’s pastime. | https://medium.com/the-sustainability-graduate-programs/winston-on-the-weekends-episode-5-winston-salem-dash-baseball-5f1a5cc995f0 | ['Wake Forest Mas'] | 2019-05-26 03:03:41.725000+00:00 | ['Baseball', 'Minor League Baseball', 'Winston Salem', 'Wake Forest University', 'Winston Salem Dash'] |
MailPanda Review | An Amazing autoresponder you can own for life | Everybody who is running an online business or planning to do marketing online must have been aware of the fact that email marketing is one of the most effective strategies to grow your online business.
Email marketing helps you to personalize your message according to the responses of your audience. In email marketing, an autoresponder is the best tool for you to do these tasks. Email marketing is great to increase traffic towards your website or the product page.
For newbies marketer, email marketing campaigns and all this stuff will seem to be boring and difficult. Creating a high-converting autoresponder is not an easy task for a beginner. When you send autoresponder emails to your subscriber list and very few messages are read by them, then it seems that you have wasted a lot of money on autoresponders. It is quite common for newbies.
But now this problem is resolved by this Amazing product called MailPanda.
This is a cloud-based autoresponder that makes email marketing simpler and cheaper than ever.
This wonderful product is very useful for a newbie and a seasoned marketer alike. There is no monthly fee, and no restrictions, as you can send unlimited emails to unlimited subscribers.
MailPanda Review | What is MailPanda?
It’s a premium cloud-based email marketing platform that helps you to send unlimited emails to your unlimited subscriber lists with up to 75% inbox delivery.
MailPanda autoresponder tool comes with highly converting email templates and a simple easy to use inline editor also.
MailPanda Dashboard[/caption]
MailPanda Review | Few words about the creator
MailPanda is launched by Daniel Adetunji who is a renowned affiliate marketer and product creator.
His previous launches are ImagePanda, ProfitPixar, ClickBanksProfits, DesignLikePro, XMarketerSuite, InstantCBSuccess etc. His previous products were got decent feedback from experts all over the world.
MailPanda Review | Features
MailPanda created by Marketers for Marketers.
Simply a few clicks will import all your email subscriber lists without fear of any rejection and losing the hard-earned data.
· MailPanda put no limitations on your list size, number of email campaigns you run, number of autoresponders working at the same time. It is freedom from limitations.
· It is a very advanced cloud-based platform and accepted by all major email service providers, and emails sent by this system lands in the inbox
· Super easy automation campaign set up enables even beginners to set up autoresponders without the help of experts.
· Extremely simple to use drag and drop email builder, ability to customize the given templates or you can start afresh in HTML.
· Easy personalization of your emails to interact with your subscribers. Non-techy simple interface.
· There is a Spam Score Checker inside the MailPanda software that helps you to filter out all those keywords which are responsible to take your mail into the spam folder.
· Hight quality email templates for your campaign is included.
· You can send attachments like PDFs and images within the emails from your media library inside the dashboard.
· The system is 100% secured and with regular data backups, so don’t worry about losing leads or any other data stored within your Mailpanda dashboard.
· This Cloud-based software enables you to track your email opens, link clicks, geolocation, and more features to track your campaigns and scale them.
· You can save in draft, and duplicate your campaigns to increased productivity with less time, and effort.
Some more productivity features listed below:
Complete Step by step video tutorials
CAN-SPAM and GDPR Complaint
Complete and Dedicated Support
No Coding, Design, or Technical Skills Required
Regular Update
Complete Step-by-Step Video training and tutorials
Newbie Friendly & Fully Cloud-Based Software
With Commercial License
MAILPANDA REVIEW — PRICE AND UPSELLS
FRONT-END: $17
The front-End price is $17. Grab this Golden opportunity and start creating your email campaigns, with the help of Tried and Tested Templates.
Grab this golden chance right now and you will be ready to start creating as many engaging emails as you can. There is more than 100 Conversion Tested Ready-To-Use Lead Templates that help you to drive maximum leads for your offers inside.
This price will increase after the special launch period, so it is better to grab the opportunity to get an autoresponder for life at a one-time cost.
MAILPANDA REVIEW — THE UPSELLS
Here are some UPSELLs that you can take into consideration to unlock more features and limitations.
OTO 1: MAILPANDA PRO ($37)
This upgrade lets you unlock several other MailPanda features. Including the Advanced List cleaning tool, Multiple SMTP options, Advanced subscriber management, Multiple Lists, and 10+ Features that literally give you an unfair advantage.
OTO 2: MAILPANDA DONEFORYOU ($97)
Inside this pack, you will be able to get:
MailPanda Account Setup
50 More Email Templates
Hyper-Profitable Niche Selection
6X Faster Results
Special Profit Boosting Tweaks Added To Your Account
OTO 3: MAILPANDA ENTERPRISE EDITION ($47)
In this offer, you will get done-for-you products to promote, faster emailing, 1 on 1 VIP, priority support, premium email marketing training & more.
OTO 4: MAILPANDA DFY BLOGS ($67)
This upsell provides you DFY money blogs, 25 pre monetized blogs, all done for you, hosting included.
OTO 5: MAILPANDA PLATINUM TRAFFIC ($67)
In this upgrade, it delivers you Done-For-You traffic and sales for you all year long!
OTO 6: MAILPANDA RESELLER + AGENCY ($97)
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MAILPANDA REVIEW — BONUSES FROM AUTHOR TEAM
Get MailPanda during the launch week, and you can avail these bonuses listed below for free, too:
MAILPANDA REVIEW | WHO NEEDS THIS SOFTWARE?
This Awesome Software MailPanda is suitable for those who frequently send emails or newsletters to their subscribers. As you have no limitations and restrictions for the email subscribers and email campaigns, you can save a lot on email autoresponder monthly expenses with this system.
This is recommended for:
Affiliate Marketers
Bloggers
e-Com Store Owners
Entrepreneurs
Freelancers
Newbies
Professionals
Small Business Owners
YouTube Creators
MAILPANDA REVIEW | Benefits of MailPanda
100% Newbie Friendly
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100 Days Money Back Guarantee
Disadvantage
Can’t figure it out yet, but if I find one I will post it immediately.
MAILPANDA REVIEW — MY OPINION
This is just a great tool to start for beginners as it costs just one time and it comes with all the advanced features of an email autoresponder. It is just great for seasoned marketers as it will boost their results up to 5 times in comparison to their previous autoresponder. It is so easy that you can create and send highly engaging and profit-making email campaigns in no time.
In the MailPanda dashboard, you can see how many emails have been opened or how many links are clicked, it also shows the exact time of mail opening and links click. So you can send emails according to your audience’s preferred time. You can move your subscribers from one list to another easily.
MailPanda can show you stats of how many people opened your email, how many clicked through on your links, exactly what time they clicked the link, how many times they clicked. You can send an email at an exact time, move people from one list to another without having them opt-in manually. And you have to do is just click a link and this product will do the rest for you.
Highly-converting email templates that come with the software are also very beneficial for newbies as well as experienced marketers. You can also track campaign performance and optimize them without any extra expenses.
MailPanda comes with an investment protection feature also as it comes with 100 Days Money Back Guarantee.
Anybody can easily assess the software performance within the period of 100 days that is more than three months. If your issues can not be resolved within this period or you are not satisfied they will give you a full refund. So it is a completely risk-free investment.
…
Originally Posted at https://revoreview.com/blog/2020/12/22/mailpanda-review-an-amazing-autoresponder-you-can-own-for-life/ | https://medium.com/@mauryacravi/mailpanda-review-an-amazing-autoresponder-you-can-own-for-life-e5819a32c52f | ['Chandra Ravi'] | 2020-12-22 13:54:17.468000+00:00 | ['Autoresponder', 'Email Marketing', 'Mailpanda Review', 'Mailpanda Honest Review', 'Mailpanda'] |
Breaking free from the Monolith | Breaking free from the Monolith
And how we evolved with Microservices
A Monolith ruling code monkeys
At Conio it all started with what’s commonly called as a “Monolith”. That is, a single codebase containing everything of the full application: its frontend components, backend components, API services, background tasks; hell, even devops scripts. And it worked very well at the beginning. Only a couple of software engineers, working on separate areas of the codebase (so very little chances of code change conflicts), easy to deploy. Full focus on writing application functionalities, without worrying about much else. How we approached deployment? With only a few beta customers aware of the evergoing progresses, it was not a real issue to shut down services for a while, rollout the full codebase (no matter how small or big the overall changes were, and whether they included database migrations), and then bring services up again.
It was definitely satisfying to see a product taking shape from the ground-up and receive appreciations from end customers. However, we very well knew that this approach is not fit to a modern Fintech company.
What then?
With most software applications, customers are quite tolerant. Yes, Whatsapp might stop working and have outage lasting for a few hours: definitely a nuisance, but not a perceived problem. Same goes for Pokemon Go or your favorite game app. However, that’s not the case when money is involved: mood changes if you cannot login to your bank account or are not able to make trade operations. This is even worse in the case of cryptocurrency applications: most people remember infamous blunders of the past, and whenever they are not able to access their cryptocurrency funds even for a short amount of time, speculations arise. That’s fair. It’s your money, and you should have little or no issue when you want to use it.
The Monolith above is not fit for such a scenario: any change to the codebase in production would require a full deployment, with associated downtime. Every day, we work to improve our services by fixing bugs, making our interface even more friendly, removing old functionalities and adding new ones that have better use. We often release these updates on a daily basis so that our customers can take immediate benefit, and we strive not to have any impact on the customer’s experience. That is, whatever formula we concoct behind the scenes, must be invisible to the outside world (at least, most of the times). So, we moved away from the Monolith, and chose what’s commonly called “Microservices architecture”.
Evolution through Microservices
The massive tightly-glued single codebase is now decomposed into smaller parts, each of which represents a particular service. Whenever executed, services communicate with each other synchronously via standard HTTP protocol and asynchronously via queues (handled for example by RabbitMQ and Apache Kafka).
Interactions in a Microservices architecture
It’s quite challenging to start breaking the monolith into smaller components, but it’s very well worth the effort. In military terms, it’s very similar to what Julius Caesar did to rule steadily the large territory of Gallia: “divide and conquer”.
1) Product can be continuously deployed. A code update now applies only to a microservice: in most cases it can be immediately deployed to production and released with no impact to the customer
2) Code is easier to manage. From a company organization perspective, things change when a team of 2 software engineers becomes a team of 10 software engineers. It’s more effective and with fewer code conflicts when each team member is responsible for his/her own microservice.
3) Code is easier to maintain. A Microservices architecture requires, by nature, the definition of an interface to communicate with the external world (be it the frontend app or another backend service) and it is completely isolated from any other point of view. This allows to review, re-design or even completely re-write from scratch (even in different languages if convenient) single components of the application without impacting the rest.
4) Performance can be enhanced. Each microservice may now use its most appropriate language. Heavy cryptographic computation components may for example be optimized in C, while API services in Python and long running tasks in Go.
5) Improved code isolation and security. Each microservice can be run in its own Docker container, thus providing privilege isolation, network and data segregation and, of paramount importance for a growth phase, enormous scalability potential.
Are Microservices the answer then?
Of course, there is no such a thing as a free lunch. A Microservices architecture comes also with its own set of tough challenges:
1) Operational complexity. DevOps engineers are definitely needed to smoothen the intricacies of the new deployment process.
2) Hardware bloat. Microservices are often run in Docker containers; as soon as the number of microservices proliferates, it becomes more and more challenging to run the full application on the same hardware as before.
3) Intercommunication overhead: each request might need to interact with one or more different microservices through the network. This may cause increased latency and might be subject to temporary failures. In order to implement resilient services as well as improve the scalability of the whole system, it is necessary to move interactions to asynchronous messaging (e.g. using Apache Kafka and/or RabbitMQ)
4) Eventual consistency. This is probably the hardest challenge of a Microservices architecture. Given a single microservice, it is possible to create RDBMS transactions within its boundaries. Unfortunately, though, a common issue in distributed architectures is to deal with multiple transactions that are not within the same boundaries. As a result, the system may end up in an illegal and unrecoverable state. In order to mitigate such issues, Conio adopts different strategies:
Following practices of Domain Driven Design, decompose the higher-level domains into subdomains and confine them into individually bounded contexts; each bounded context is implemented as a microservice, where transaction boundaries are applied. This solves the possibility to have inconsistencies for specific subdomains. Implement idempotent asynchronous interactions, which sooner or later solve inconsistencies. Whenever possible, avoid any action that might involve multiple subdomains.
5) Complex reporting. Since each subdomain lives within a specific bounded context, complex reports that involve multiple subdomains might require to query data from multiple data sources: this may have negative impact both on the expressiveness of the domains and on the scalability of the system. Here in Conio we have adopted a CQRS architecture to support backoffice activity and business analysis reports.
6) Logging system. Each element in a distributed system contributes to the creation of the log of the whole system. Though, it is necessary to implement tools that can create the needed connections among all such separated logs in order to have a unified log for each interaction. Here in Conio we use ELK (ElasticSearch, Logstash, Kibana) stack to store and query log data: each log is enriched with the necessary correlation ids that allow the above mentioned unified log.
Never stop the evolution
Our take? Decomposing the initial single codebase must be viewed as a long-term task, with evergoing refinements. At Conio it took us a couple of years where step by step we moved from 1 massive codebase to over 100 microservices. We have arrived to a point where we do feel proud of the results, but at the same time we keep exploring. There are multiple possible new optimizations: moving from Docker Swarm to Kubernetes? Migrating backend-for-frontend services to serverless lambda functions? Switching to a full continuous deployment operation flow? The possibilities are endless.
We have touched a number of topics and technologies here. In the next articles we’ll share more details on our findings and progress. If you like, feel free to comment and tell us your experience. | https://medium.com/conio/breaking-free-from-the-monolith-d2ba31090c3b | ['Vincenzo Di Nicola'] | 2018-07-19 15:52:05.425000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Software Development', 'Microservices', 'Bitcoin', 'Fintech'] |
5 Tips To Help You Master Digital Photography | Have you already mastered the art of taking photos without red-eye syndrome? Are there some pictures that you know you should have turned out a lot better than they did? It happens to all of us even the expert photographers.
Here are five tips to help you move from beginner to master of digital photography, whether youre using your cell phone or a point-and-shoot camera to snap shots.
Compose Carefully
One of the most basic digital photography tips is to pay attention to whats in the frame of the viewfinder. Fill the frame. Nothing but blue sky, for instance, behind a single subject throws off the proportions of the photo and decreases interest. You can also turn the camera sideways to see if a vertical photo might have more impact than a horizontal shot of the same subject.
You can also try positioning your subject off to the side, rather than in the center of the photograph.
Take Great Close up Photos
Your digital camera has a macro mode think of it as a super magnifying glass. An extreme close up of something like flower petals can bring out textures that you never knew existed, and will add excitement to your photos. Play with this feature, you will find dozens of ways to use it to enhance your pictures.
Buy a Tripod
Digital cameras are prone to blurry photographs if your hands shake even a little bit. Several companies manufacture light, portable, inexpensive versions. Digital photography tips like this can save you hours of frustration and preserve otherwise perfect shots.
Get Active
Take your shot from the top of a teeter-totter, off the side of the boat, or standing on your head. Thinking outside the box can really pay off in unexpected ways. You will truly get once in a lifetime shots by adding a bit of creativity to your thinking.
Take a Class
Are you still hungry for digital photography tips? Theres nothing like practice to improve your photography except practice plus experience gained by learning from a pro. You can find photography classes online, at your local recreation centers, and community colleges.
Becoming an expert at digital photography takes time; you wont become a professional photographer in your first week. Just keep trying new methods each time you use your camera, and before long, your friends and family will be admiring your newfound skills. | https://medium.com/@sanjivksinha2019/5-tips-to-help-you-master-digital-photography-7a3f2410cc3a | ['Sanjiv Sinha'] | 2021-01-21 16:20:21.269000+00:00 | ['Photos', 'Cameras', 'Photographer', 'Photography', 'Camera Lens'] |
Why Expansion of Consciousness triggers the Sh*t out of us | Source: Depositphotos
“Man, I feel like sh*t again. Does this ever stop?” When we go through our expansion of consciousness, we sometimes feel like being caught up in the neverending story. In line with the intense energetic frequency shifts we experience on the planet we go through deep waves of exhaustion, frustration, fear and nothing seems to make sense anymore. Why?
Shifting frequency is fastly done on the energetic level of higher consciousness. This is what often is referred to as shifting into another dimension. What we tend to forget ist that all of our existence: the mental, the emotional and the physical body need to come along, too. And that takes time. Every time we step out of our comfort zone, we cause this process to be set into motion. We can either choose actively to take that step, or prolong and avoid it until the law of attraction does us that favour and delivers us the necessary trigger and situation that kicks us out.
The step into the uncomfortable, into the fear zone triggers a cognitive dissonance followed by an (unwanted) emotion. This is the necessary basis for an energetic frequency shift. It basically shows us where we are still blocking ourselves from unconditional love. Each time we go through such a trigger, there are always two processes running in parallel:
1) Releasing of old Frequency Patterns that do not fit that new Level
The step out of our comfort zone naturally causes an energetic friction between different frequencies within us. Old fear frequencies we still hold in our bodies are surfacing to be let go of. They show up in form of emotions we feel. When we allow ourselves to feel them without being afraid of the pain, without going into the drama or letting our head create a story around it, we shift it quickly. Treating emotions as energy without any interpretation keeps us in our power and in the moment. We feel the old pain and then let it go. We go deep, but feel lighter afterwards.
“Treating emotions as energy without any interpretation keeps us in our power and in the moment. We feel the old pain and then let it go. We go deep, but feel ligher afterwards.”
Depending on which body is cleansing the sensations feel different. The mental (home of the ego/masculine) and emotional body (home of the inner child/feminine) are not as dense as the physical body (embodiment of the energetic frequency band we are currently in/spirit). Releases from the mental body just come in form of “thought garbage” — thoughts that fly by without being able to really grasp them. That is very often experienced in Reiki sessions, as it is the easiest and quickest level to cleanse. The emotional body releases in forms of feelings. They come suddenly and can be quite explosive, and they often feel like the complete overwhelm. The physical body releases from the cellular memory and that takes a lot more time due to its higher density. The releases feel more like pulling out chewing gum. The emotions and thought patterns that come up for release feel subtler and yet go much deeper. It is a deep aching, almost like recalling a past life memory that becomes very real in that moment. In addition to that, old chronic disease flares up, also a final purging of old patterns. This is no fun, and yet it is necessary and important to allow it to be there and to not try to suppress or fight it.
2) Integrating new Information of the new Frequency Band (Dimension)
The second process is that our bodies are integrating new information and are forming new pathways to operate on. We are rewriting the script by taking in the new data. Our bodies are upgrading and learning to maintain the higher frequency band we intend to fully shift into. Also here, the integration of information of the different bodies happens in different speeds depending on the density.
“The whole energetic strucure needs to change to be able to handle the new frequency permanently. That really means to rebuild everything.”
The whole energetic structure needs to change to be able to handle the new frequency permanently. That really means rebuilding everything. Also here, the physical body needs longest to restructure its whole geometry and integrate the DNA upgrades (data / Light codes) we are receiving when we are outside of the comfort zone. The mental body experiences sudden insights and aha moments, where all of a sudden everything is crystal clear and makes total sense. The emotional body experiences unconditional love for the first time through the heart and it can be completely overwhelming and emotional in a beautiful way, feeling connected with all that is energetically. The physical body is integrating new DNA information and changes in behavior, form and structure. Shape shifting is a common thing to observe. As the body is now able to take in more and more light, the form of the eyes changes, weight changes, cravings change, the skin color changes, hair growth intensifies etc. Along with that come tons of symptoms: Blurry eyes, spine pain, especially in the neck area, flu symptoms, especially a sore throat, ringing ears, heart palpitations, joint pain, nerves firing, migraines etc. The whole system is adapting to be able to handle the new frequency and that is far from comfortable. (Of course… because we are outside of the comfort zone…)
The Chaos in between
When we go through these releases and upgrades, we experience a lot of chaos. We are in the middle of two frequency bands and feel that nothing makes sense anymore. We don’t understand what is going on, we feel hopeless, useless and crappy. Although these phases are uncomfortable, they are a necessary part of the process and cannot be avoided. We are recalibrating, reforming, restructuring. The old structures are dissolved, so that the new structure can form. Until we are able to fully hold the new frequency because we have restructured our whole system to handle it, we are experiencing these intense periods of chaos and overwhelm. And that is the feeling like “Sh*t” part that is necessary.
“Although these phases are uncomfortable, they are a necessary part of the process and cannot be avoided. We are recalibrating, reforming, restructuring.”
To make it a bit more tangible, let’s look into Cymatics. Cymatics is the visualization of different sound frequencies (measured in hz). When you put sand on a plate that vibrates to the different sound frequencies coming out of a loudspeaker, geometric patterns form and change. Between two frequency bands, the sand corns are reorganizing and go into chaos. The higher the frequency, the more complex the geometry gets. Looking at this we can understand much better, what is going on within our bodies when we shift our own frequency upwards. Just imagine how much longer that restructuring takes, when you don’t take sand but clay instead (to kind of compare it to our physical body). Our geometric patterns change, yet in between there is chaos. As long as we are not able to fully hold the new frequency, we fall back into chaos. Until we have completely restructured and built our new geometry.
This video shows this experiment beautifully.
So please be patient with your bodies / System when going through the shifts. There is a lot going on within that we cannot see, but surely feel and experience. It is all normal and necessary in order to go through our personal human evolution. Understanding how energy works and connecting with and empowering our inner child plays a vital role in our process. Patience is key, and we really need to become our own compassionate space holders, appreciating what our body does and goes through, in order for us to shift our experience.
The texts I share are always based in my own experience and observations. By no means I am claiming this to be the ultimate truth. I encourage everyone to find their own truth and to be open to it changing as new information integrates. As this is universal wisdom of us ALL, I do not claim any copyright. Feel free to utilize and share, as long as you keep the text complete as it is so it keeps its energetic signature. Thanks Vera | https://medium.com/@veraingeborg/why-expansion-of-consciousness-triggers-the-sh-t-out-of-us-714f2bcb2e76 | ['Vera Ingeborg'] | 2020-12-20 22:40:01.677000+00:00 | ['Emotional Triggers', 'Alchemy', 'Awakening', 'Consciousness', 'Shift'] |
Who Dares Stand For Government? | Who Dares Stand For Government?
Republicans have systematically & strategically undermined people’s faith in government for decades. Who will restore that faith?
Most of my political writing is solution-oriented. This is not that.
This is the article I will keep referencing back to when I am making the case for solutions which show what government can and should be doing to make life better for the citizens it represents.
The Republican Party has been strategically and systematically undermining American’s faith in government for over two and a half decades now. The ideas which Reagan spawned in the early 80’s were re-birthed on steroids by Newt Gingrich in the mid-90’s. Since then, the party has been committed to doing everything in its power to ensure that Americans see government always as the problem, never a solution.
To be sure, even the best governments have flaws and can be wasteful and intrusive. However, they are also the only means by which we can collectively deal with issues we can are unable to manage individually.
Loss of faith in government has directly contributed to the slow-motion disaster that is unfolding before us now.
So where have the Democrats been? Why don’t people view their politics and policies as a counterpoint to the Republicans narrative?
The issue is that while Republicans have been making a clear case about the many ways government is lacking, and pushing that viewpoint at every opportunity, the Democrats narrative is far less clear. It certainly doesn’t make much of a compelling case for government.
Over the past twenty years, Democrats have mostly campaigned and governed in opposition to what Republicans are doing, essentially validating the antigovernment narrative by proxy. When they do advance their own agenda, it is usually narrowly focused, incremental, and in no way part of any larger pro-government narrative.
Making matters worse, Democrats are every bit as reliant & beholden to big-moneyed special interest donors as Republicans are. This means that even when Democrats enjoy ‘successes’, it often isn’t seen that way beyond the narrow corridors of Washington, or within the echo chamber of the D.C. media.
People see how big money donors and large corporations are treated, and they then contrast that with their own individual experiences with government, which are usually nowhere near so positive.
Whether it be an encounter with the police, a fine for fishing/hunting without a license, oppressive fees and regulations to start or run a business, or any other number of ways…government always seem to come down hard on regular folks, while the political donor class gets a free pass.
When government does do something good, it often passes unnoticed, and so the idea that we would be better off without it continues to gain traction.
This is why poll after poll shows fairly broad public support for policies which Democrats ostensibly support, yet it never seems to lead to anywhere near that same level of support for the party itself.
The one time the Democratic Party pieced together a pro-government narrative was during Obama’s 2008 campaign, inspiring millions and giving them Hope that things might actually start to Change for the better.
That hope was quickly dashed when Wall Street was made whole after the housing market crash (which they helped cause), while ordinary Americans were left to fend for themselves.
Any which might have remained mostly died during the fight to pass Obamacare, an enormous giveaway to the health care industry that cemented a broken system into place in order to provide the most low-hanging benefits to consumers and patients.
This gave rise to the Tea Party, with the disastrous (for Democrats) 2010 midterm soon to follow. Since then, the party and its supporters have been forced to defend this deeply flawed law, even as the cost of health care continues to skyrocket and many of the underlying problems persist.
Similarly, the failure to defend Americans against Wall Street gave rise to the Occupy movement.
Obama and Democrats sold people on the idea that government could make their lives better, and then failed to follow through, causing an entire generation of voters to become extremely disillusioned about the government’s ability to do anything positive for them. This has been one of the biggest failings of the Democratic Party, and far outweighs any good done during the Obama years.
People’s trust in government was so shaken, that we turned to a charlatan like Donald Trump in response…with predictable results. There were other reasons to be sure, but do not discount this as one of the major ones.
Photo by Brian Wertheim on Unsplash
Now we stand at a crossroads. People have gotten a good look at an America where the government behaves as if it is powerless to do anything of value for those it represents. Many are rightfully horrified.
What is desperately needed is a party whose members aggressively & consistently lay out a vision for a government that works to improve the lives of its people. This vision must addresses how government is necessary to deal with those issues we cannot tackle individually, such as protecting the environment, ensuring huge corporations play by the rules, creating opportunity for all and providing a safety net for when misfortune befalls people through no fault of their own.
The best hope for this obviously lies with the Democrats, even despite their past failings, and there are some voices within the party beginning to make a case for what government can do.
However, if the party as a whole is unable to divorce itself from the politics of cronyism and continues to fail at offering a narrative that counters the antigovernment one being put forth by Republicans…people will soon look toward other options. Some already have.
In the short-term, at least, this would mostly benefit those undermining people’s faith in government and lead to even darker days ahead.
Let us hope we find enough new Democratic voices that are up to the task…though I am not wildly optimistic.
As I said, none of this is meant to provide a solution. I have multiple upcoming writings planned for the weeks & months to come. Taken together, those will provide the sort of narrative to which I am referring.
What this essay is meant to accomplish is to sound the alarm. It is a warning of what will happen if we do not begin to offer people a counter-narrative to the antigovernment rhetoric that has wormed its way deep into the American psyche. | https://medium.com/politically-speaking/who-dares-stand-for-government-ee5a0a323522 | ['Jeremy Peters'] | 2020-12-05 08:00:29.317000+00:00 | ['Government And Politics', 'Money In Politics', 'Politics And Protest', 'Politics', 'Political Strategy'] |
Medium’s Compensation Tweak Hurts Writers | Medium’s Compensation Tweak Hurts Writers
Including this young Nigerian poet
Photo from the first poem Stephen Emmanuel Ogboh submitted: Wild Child
One happy thing that happened after I started the publication Fourth Wave was that a young man from Nigeria started sending in poems. We developed a nice friendship via email as I published them and we discussed them. Stephen Emmanuel Ogboh submitted the first poem from his own account, which didn’t allow for compensation. After talking it over, we posted the rest from my paid Fourth Wave Editors account and put his author attribution in the subtitle so he would have the opportunity to make money. He didn’t want to invest in a paid membership. He also wasn’t able to format the poetry well on his phone — the technology he had access to. I told him I’d gladly send him any money that his poems earned.
Today I logged into that account to check his lifetime earnings. The first poem we put behind the paywall, back when claps were a main component of the compensation equation, was this one based on the experiences of his mum, which includes a beautiful picture of her that he took himself:
You get a feel for the sincerity of the author in the note about him at the end:
Emmanuel Stephen Ogboh is a young Nigerian poet who loves to write about his observations and experiences. Inspired by Lisa Smallwood, an American poet and Chidinma Abiakalam, a Nigerian counselor he’s written works published or forthcoming on Tuck, Matador Review, Down in the Dirt, Chelsea Review, and elsewhere. Follow him here: https://medium.com/@Stephenecdotes.
Since being published on June 7 of 2019, that poem has earned $6.28 on 170 views, 104 reads, and 23 fans, with an average read time of 33 seconds.
The latest poem he submitted, after claps were devalued in the compensation equation and replaced by “read time” as the principal component, was this one about the troubles women face in Nigeria and elsewhere:
Since being published on Oct. 13 of 2020, that poem has earned 5 cents (!!!) on 123 views, 111 reads and 4 fans, with an average read time of 42 seconds.
So that’s the whole problem right there. | https://medium.com/fourth-wave/claps-and-the-young-nigerian-poet-d5d5351c1ad4 | ['Patsy Fergusson'] | 2020-11-01 17:05:09.252000+00:00 | ['Writing On Medium', 'This Happened To Me', 'Médium', 'Writing', 'Poetry'] |
Telltale Signs You're Dealing With a Fake Person | Telltale Signs You're Dealing With a Fake Person
We are social animals. Relationships are an intrinsic and inseparable part of our life, but for a relationship to be real the person has to be real. Which is why spotting a fake person is a very essential skill to avoid disappointment and future regret.
Luckily, I have this hunch about people that never fails me. And I wanted to share with you some of the common things I notice about inauthentic people so you could spare yourself the time and pain.
P.S. My hunch is very strong. Sometimes I don't even have to wait for someone to speak; it is like the minute they walk in through a doorway I can just tell they're fake. You can count on me. | https://medium.com/@yarakaba/telltale-signs-youre-dealing-with-a-fake-person-a2f39fe685ec | ['Iara Kabakebji'] | 2020-12-27 17:33:24.056000+00:00 | ['People', 'Relationships', 'Signs', 'Personal Development', 'Masks'] |
Learn AI Game Playing Algorithm Part I — Game Basics | Image from [24]
Game AI has always been a popular field with many impressive achievements. Next, I will start writing a series of three posts, talking about some fundamental and important game-playing algorithms.
Part I — Game Basics
Part II — Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS)
Part III — Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR)
In Part I, which is this post, I will explain some of the prior knowledge for game AI. Specifically, I will introduce (1) How to represent a game using computational logical structure (2) Different types of games (3) Three concepts that proven to be important for designing game-solving algorithms.
In Part II, I will present Monte Carlo Tree Search [1,3], a building block algorithm for solving perfect information games like chess and go [2]. In Part III, I will introduce Counterfactual Regret Minimization [6], an effective method of solving imperfect information games like poker [19].
I want to note in advance that I will try to make the concepts more understandable and intuitive rather than striving for rigor. The mathematical language is not standard enough in this series, and please excuse me for this.
Game Representation
The world is full of games, but to solve them with computers, we first need to represent them with logical structures.
Game Tree
The first essential structure is the game tree, which represents the process of a game with a tree whose nodes and edges represents states and actions, as explained below in a game tree of Tic Tac Toe with annotations:
Game tree example of Tic Toc Toe, modified from [4]
Though the game tree looks simple and straightforward, it can model many vital components of a game:
State Player Action; we can define the set of available actions under state s as A(s). Reward R(s, a) Turn Terminal state (end of the game) Decision Sequence (sᵢ, aᵢ) Strategy π(a|s), which is a distribution of actions given state. We also use σ to denote strategy. Utility function u(s) or u(s, a), which describes the usefulness of state s to a player and can be defined individually.
The game tree grants us a powerful mental and programmatical model to represent the playing processes of a wide variety of games.
In fact, game tree is a simplified and perceptual definition for the extensive-form game [7]. Many important games solving techniques like MCTS, Minimax Search [5], Counterfactual Regret Minimization [6] can be generalized as a game tree construction, traversal, and node value update process. In my opinion, I even think the game tree is one of the most important concepts, if not the most.
Game Matrix
Game matrix is another way to represent games, which corresponds to the normal-form game [9], as explained below with a 2x2 board of Tic Tac Toe:
Game Matrix of a 2x2 Tic Tac Toe
As we can see, a game matrix assumes all players act simultaneously. Therefore, to model sequential decisions, the matrix has to expand the game tree exhaustively to cover all possible histories, as shown in the figure above, which makes this representation unscalable for sequential decision games.
However, the game matrix also has its advantages; there are proven methods to find a Nash equilibrium of a game matrix [8]. Nash equilibrium turns out to be extremely useful for understanding the game nature and designing game playing strategies. We will come back to the Nash equilibrium in the later section.
Game Categorization
After we know how to represent games, we can step further to categorize them. Here I present three major categories:
Perfect Information Game
Every player knows the full decision sequence of the game [10].
Examples are Chess, Go, Soduku, Tic Tac Toe, where the game board is the whole game state and can always be observed by anyone, and every player action is public.
Image from [12]
Note that there is another concept called Perfect Recall, which means every player can memorize every event during the game process, which is irrelevant to the game category.
Imperfect Information Game
(Opposite of the former)
Examples are Poker, Mahjong, where you cannot know the opponents’ card stacks.
Image from [13]
In a game with imperfect information, players cannot observe the actual game state s, which means we cannot use π(a|s) to represent strategy. Therefore, we introduce the definition of Information Set [23]. We will come back to this topic in Part III of this series.
Incomplete Information Game
Players do not have the common knowledge of the game being played, e.g. objectives, rules, and even players.
Take an example from [11]: Two bidders bid for one item, and the auction is sold to the highest price. However, each player only knows the item’s value for himself, but not the rival’s valuation (lack of common knowledge).
For a complete information game, we usually assume every player knows the game’s rules and every player’s objective. Therefore, the incomplete information game is indeed more generalized and realistic. Note that the game tree can represent incomplete information by introducing “chance players” [7].
Three Important Concepts for Solving Games
We have learned about the logical structure and categories of games in the sections above. Here we look at three concepts that are behind many game-playing algorithms. In practice, they are often used in conjunction with each other. Understanding them is very helpful.
Idea-1 Bellman Equation
Bellman equation is the basis for most methods of reinforcement learning. However, surprisingly, it comes from a straightforward definition of the state utility, also known as value function V:
where β is a temporal discount factor.
This definition says the value (or utility) of a state s is the maximum reward of every decision sequence from s. As we care more about the present, we discount the reward in time, which feels very logical and natural.
The fantastic thing is that the above definition itself contains an optimal substructure [14], so we can write it in a recursive form, which is the Bellman equation:
Bellman equation is a powerful tool for reinforcement learning, upon which we can design various iterative optimization algorithms. And we can use these optimization algorithms to calculate value function V(s), strategy π(a|s) and even Q function Q(a, s) [15], according to which computers can play games.
Idea-2 Nash Equilibrium
Nash equilibrium (NE) is one of the most essential principles, if not the most important one, for designing multi-player game strategies, which closely relates to defining a good strategy.
It says for every finite game, there exists a Nash equilibrium strategy (NES) for all players, under which no player can have anything to gain by only changing their strategy. This state is called the Nash equilibrium.
In a two player zero sum game, the mathematical form for describing the Nash Equilibrium is:
Moreover, the minimax theorem [16] says that NES in such a game is identical to the minimax search strategy, which may not seem evident initially, but [17] explains this quite clearly.
In real world multi-player games, there is hardly any perfect strategy, because theoretically playing with different players requires that the strategy be adjusted. However, we tend to think that strategies are good if they can maximize personal gain (maximize) and protect ourselves as much as possible from the strong players (minimize), just as the NES does.
Therefore, intuitively, a Nash equilibrium strategy is a conservative but good strategy, though not optimal, like in prisoner dilemma [18], it works well in practice. Many successful works on solving imperfect information games are based on the idea of optimizing strategy to approximate Nash equilibrium state [19,20,21].
Idea-3 Simulation
Compared to the first two concepts, simulation is much simpler. It comes from the basic idea that if we use our computer strategy to play with itself and build game trees, then from this tree we can extract a lot of knowledge and thus discover much stronger strategies.
An examplar game tree from [22]
This is very similar to the way human reasons. By reasoning, we can discover useful and non-obvious knowledge and can even use the new knowledge as a basis for further learning and planning.
Summary
In this post, I talk about game representation, categorization, and three game-solving concepts crucial for further learning of more algorithms. I hope you find it useful. In the next post, I will explain Monte Carlo Tree Search and how it solves perfect information games like chess.
Reference
[1]: Efficient Selectivity and Backup Operators in Monte-Carlo Tree Search https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00116992/document
[2]: Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search https://www.nature.com/articles/nature16961
[3]: Improved Monte-Carlo Search http://old.sztaki.hu/~szcsaba/papers/cg06-ext.pdf
[4]: By Traced by User:Stannered, original by en:User:Gdr — Traced from en:Image:Tic-tac-toe-game-tree.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1877696
[5]: Minimax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax
[6]: Regret Minimization in Games with Incomplete Information https://papers.nips.cc/paper/2007/file/08d98638c6fcd194a4b1e6992063e944-Paper.pdf
[7]: Extensive-form game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensive-form_game
[8]: Nash equilibria in a payoff matrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium#Nash_equilibria_in_a_payoff_matrix
[9]: Normal-form game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal-form_game
[10]: Perfect information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_information
[11]: Games of Incomplete Information http://web.stanford.edu/~jdlevin/Econ%20203/Bayesian.pdf
[12]: By Req: Science Law Chess — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37494366
[13]: By Thomas van de Weerd from Utrecht, The Netherlands — Pokeravond, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2106370
[14]: Bellman’s principle of optimality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellman_equation#Bellman's_principle_of_optimality
[15]: Q-learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-learning
[16]: Minimax theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax_theorem
[17]: Ziv (https://math.stackexchange.com/users/7261/ziv), Difference between Minimax theorem and Nash Equilibrium existence, URL (version: 2011–02–19): https://math.stackexchange.com/q/22824
[18]: Prisoner’s dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
[19]: Superhuman AI for multi-player poker https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6456/885
[20] Regret Minimization in Games with Incomplete Information https://papers.nips.cc/paper/2007/file/08d98638c6fcd194a4b1e6992063e944-Paper.pdf
[21] Monte Carlo Sampling for Regret Minimization (MCCFR) in Extensive Games http://mlanctot.info/files/papers/nips09mccfr.pdf
[22] A Survey of Monte Carlo Tree Search Methods http://ccg.doc.gold.ac.uk/ccg_old/papers/browne_tciaig12_1.pdf
[23] Information set (game theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_set_(game_theory)
[24] Robots won’t just take jobs, they’ll create them — TechCrunch | https://medium.com/@xyzml/learn-ai-game-playing-algorithm-part-i-game-basics-46b522cda88b | ['Xinyu Zhang'] | 2020-12-18 06:43:44.527000+00:00 | ['Reasoning', 'Game Theory', 'Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Reinforcement Learning'] |
An Ally’s Anti-Racist Reading List | Learn about the #BLACKLIVESMATTER movement.
Photo by munshots on Unsplash
As the Black Lives Matter movement gains momentum, you’re probably asking a lot of new questions. Many allies are wondering where they should donate and how to start learning about racial in/justice. A lot of us are unable to be on the front lines of the protests, and we’re looking for other ways to support systemic change.
I’m using this platform to lift up the voices of some powerful anti-racist thinkers and organizers. This will be a living document: if you’d like me to add a link to another organization, article, or reading list, please comment or write to me.
The descriptions of each link are not written by me; they are quoted directly from the sites themselves.
Thought Leaders
Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.
The National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression was founded in 1973 in Chicago, Illinois to mount organized action against unjust treatment of individuals because of race or political beliefs.
Color of Change is the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. We help people respond effectively to injustice in the world around us.
To My People, an article by Black Panther Assata Shakur, written while in prison.
Speech by Angela Davis, delivered at the Embassy Auditorium, June 1972. Transcript and recorded excerpt published by American RadioWorks.
New Allies: Start Here!
Alternatives to Policing
Creative Interventions is based upon liberation — the positive, life-affirming, transformative potential within communities. This website features useful tools, links and other information to help anyone and everyone create collective responses to interpersonal violence.
Reclaim the Block began in 2018 and organizes Minneapolis community and city council members to move money from the police department into other areas of the city’s budget that truly promote community health and safety.
INCITE! is a network of radical feminists of color organizing to end state violence and violence in our homes and communities.
Youth Leadership
Assata’s Daughters organizes young Black people in Chicago by providing them with political education, leadership development, mentorship, and revolutionary services.
Rooted in the long legacy of liberatory education, Chicago Freedom School provides training and education for young people and adult allies to create a just world.
We Charge Genocide is a grassroots, inter-generational effort to center the voices and experiences of the young people most targeted by police violence in Chicago.
Prisons, Incarceration, & Transformative Justice
Critical Resistance seeks to build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe.
Project NIA works to end the incarceration of children and young adults by promoting restorative and transformative justice practices.
The Chicago Community Bond Fund pays bond for people charged with crimes in Cook County, Illinois. Through a revolving fund, CCBF supports individuals whose communities cannot afford to pay the bonds themselves and who have been impacted by structural violence.
Black and Pink was founded in 2005 on the principles of abolition to dismantle the criminal punishment system and to liberate LGBTQIA2S+ people/people living with HIV/AIDS who are affected by that system, through advocacy, support, and organizing
Queering the Struggle
The Body Is Not An Apology is an international movement committed to cultivating global Radical Self Love and Body Empowerment.
Brave Space Alliance is the first Black-led, trans-led LGBTQ Center located on the South Side of Chicago, dedicated to creating and providing affirming, culturally competent, for-us by-us resources, programming, and services for LGBTQ individuals on the South and West sides of the city.
Fierce builds the leadership and power of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth of color in New York City.
Transformative Justice Law Project is a group of radical activists, social workers, and organizers who provide support, advocacy, and free, holistic advocacy and criminal legal services to poor and street-based transgender people in Illinois.
Articles & Reading Lists | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/an-allys-anti-racist-reading-list-8f87b3c2511b | ['Hannah Friedman'] | 2020-08-18 22:42:43.187000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Justice', 'Racism', 'Reading'] |
User experience = Emotional experience + Psychological experience | User experience = Emotional experience + Psychological experience
Illustrated by Nate Girard
Humans are best at making decisions based on human judgements and managing human relationships with empathy. Humans are emotional creatures with psychological needs that must also be met in order to succeed and not burn out. As a human experiences your application, they experience both psychological and emotional responses that together make up most of the perceived user experience. Let’s call these Emotional Experience and Psychological Experience, subsets of User Experience. Together they help formulate a human’s foundational reactions to the task they are expected to perform within our application and carry the most weight when it comes to perceived overall User Experience (UX). These aren’t the ONLY factors in user experience but they are the most fundamental ones that often get overlooked when doing UX Design because it’s easier to push pixels than to address fundamental problems in your application.
Emotional Experience Identifies What Needs Fixing
We’re going to measure Emotional Experience with Emoticons 🤓 because they quickly convey emotions visually. Typically these can be discovered by performing a Journey Mapping interview on users of your application and synthesizing a roughly aggregated Journey Map of a user within the application. There is a great article on that process here . I highly recommend doing these as it is 😳 to see the results coming out of the mouths of your users. It will help you develop empathy for them and to WANT to help fix the issues they are having. If, however, you don’t have the time, resources, or support to do such an analysis, then it’s up to YOU to do the exercise yourself. Sit in a chair and actually USE your application to DO what you expect your users to do day in and day out and to log all of YOUR emotional states as you use the application. Preferably you would do this as an entire UX team so you can simulate multi user interactions and also raise awareness of the variety of emotional journeys that are possible within your application. Whenever you feel an emotion, write down what caused the emotion and add an emoticon that most accurately represents your emotional response. You’ll end up with something like this.
Failed to log in because I forgot my password. 😅 Forced to use 2 factor authentication but my phone is dead. 😡 Forgot answers to my security question. 🤔 Called IT to have an admin reset my password. 🙄 Finally logged in 🥳
It’s funny how relatable these are. They may not all have been in the same experience but everyone has experienced these problems logging into systems before. So the first question you should be asking is WHY is this happening?
Psychological Experience Explains WHY It Needs Fixing
Next we are going to use basic psychology to understand why users are having these emotional reactions and then conjure up potential solutions that will improve their emotional state by catering to their psychological state in different ways. This will alter their psychological experience whereby enhancing their emotional experience and improving their overall user experience.
Look at your emotional journey map. At each low point ask yourself what psychological need isn’t being fulfilled that results in poor emotional state? Emotions are the result of friction with your product. There is a functional need that has a psychological impact which manifests in an emotion that is required in the process there. Emotional Experience is the indicator by which you measure where improvements can be made and also where your delighters and key product differentiators will exist.
In the example above, the first emotional response to forgetting your password is embarrassment. Yeah, you should really know your password but it’s hard to remember all of your passwords, especially with how frequently they all change! This puts stress on your brain to remember these things and psychologically you feel like you dropped the ball. Some people’s brains will punish themselves at this point for forgetting. Others will not expect the brain to hold the responsibility of remembering, that should have been my browser or password manager’s responsibility! If you have a password manager then this probably doesn’t happen to you frequently but you must be authenticated with your password manager for this to be effective which is yet another thing you are pressured to do so you can avoid this embarrassment moment and the psychological stress involved. But what if you didn’t need to remember a password at all?
Look for solutions that result in better psychological state and emotional reaction
Apple looked at this problem and decided we can solve this another way. Authentication is merely verifying the identity of someone with two of the three ways: something you know, something you have, and something you are. Now people have phones with fingerprint recognition and facial recognition built in for unlocking them. Some computers even have fingerprint recognition now. What if your authentication happened whenever you looked at your computer/phone and we no longer needed to authenticate on a website but rather used onboard hardware authentication mechanisms like facial recognition to authenticate you? What if your computer/phone knew who you were when you looked at it instead of forcing you to log in every time and then passed that authentication information along the chain to every website you visited? 🤯 Suddenly Apple’s turned an emotional experience from 😅 to 😊 not to mention how much time is saved from needing to log into every website throughout the day that you interact with.
Rather than accepting the emotional experience that users have day in and day out, challenge it! These are the biggest missed opportunities to improve your product and improve your users perception of your product in a positive way.
For every emotional experience that can be flipped from bad to good by implementing a solution that alters the psychological state of the user, the better your user experience gets. The more of these you do that your competition does NOT do, the more delighters your product will have that sets it apart from the competition. Humans will begin to expect better user experiences because designers will be thinking about their psychological state of mind and building products to hack it so they can get good emotional experiences.
For the next part in this series I’ll use this methodology to perform an in-depth analysis on a common design pattern — the Work List.
Related articles:
Work List Friction — List Management
Work List Friction — Work Assignment
Work List Friction — Polishing the Experience | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/user-experience-emotional-experience-psychological-experience-64dfcb93d1a8 | ['Nate Girard'] | 2021-01-06 00:27:31.011000+00:00 | ['User Research', 'UX', 'Emotions', 'Psychology', 'User Experience'] |
Three phases and attitudes of Product Development | Three phases and attitudes of Product Development
The time the Founding Father of Agile recognized that Waterfall development could work. Two new mental models: 3X (Explore, Expand, Extract) by Beck, and Pioneers, Settlers, Town-Planners by Wardley. Learn how to combine them to enhance alignment in your teams. Simón Muñoz Dec 10, 2020·7 min read
Kent Beck and the 3X Model: Explore, Expand, Extract
The year 2016 is when Kent Beck, founding father of the Extreme Programming and the Agile Manifesto movements, published a changing paradigms article: The Product Development Triathlon.
Beck begins the article with this first paragraph:
25 March 2016. Because I keep careful notes these days, I can identify the precise moment when I asked the question I should have asked twenty years ago: what if those waterfall folks are not wrong? What if they are solving a different problem than I am solving? What problem is that?
This epiphany does not come to him by chance. Beck is working for Facebook at the time, where he founds successful teams working with the most diverse methodologies, including the classic Waterfall development model.
The question then arises. What if there is no model (Agile, Waterfall, etc.) that works for all product development phases? What if in each stage, some models behave better than others?
From there, Beck introduces a Sigmoid-type curve and goes on describing three stages that each product goes through during its evolution: Exploration, Expansion, and Extraction.
Explore, Expand, Extract — Source
In his own words:
Product development proceeds in three phases: 1. Explore–the risky search for a viable return on a viable investment. Successful Exploration is unpredictable, so the highest expected value strategy is to reduce the cost of experimentation and put a little investment into many, uncorrelated experiments. If you are lucky, one of these experiments turns out to be unexpectedly successful, which leads to: 2. Expand–now things are going nuts (think Pokemon Go or Facebook Live Video). Unanticipated bottlenecks appear. All you have time for is to eliminate the next bottleneck just before it derails you. Once growth becomes routine, it is time to: 3. Extract–now the shape of the problem and solution spaces are clear. One euro in equals three euros out. Playbooks emerge: here is how you roll out the service in a new city. Economies of scale matter: delivering the service at lower cost is more profitable.
For Beck, each of these phases presents different problems and, therefore, require particular approaches. We can’t expect to operate the same way during Exploration as when we are in Extraction.
If we assume this postulate, the classic Waterfall so vilified by the Agile Manifesto followers can work. But it works in a particular phase, Extraction, in which you have eliminated all the uncertainty and your future is predictable. This stage is characterized by 1+1 equals 2, allowing you to correctly estimate and lay down plans with a high degree of confidence.
By contrast, in Exploration, where most Startups live, 1+1 can be equal to 0; Or 17; Or any other number. In this phase, the uncertainty is maximum, and your only objective is to optimize the number of experiments to find those growth levers that allow you to reach the next one. Most experiments will fail (1+1=0), but the ones that succeed may be exponential (1+1=17).
In other words, there are no right or wrong models. A model will be more or less successful depending on the phase in which our product is. And this is important because it also affects the profiles, the people, who will stand out (or suffer) in each phase.
Pioneers, Settlers, and Town-Planners (PST)
Therefore we arrive to Simon Wardley, currently a researcher in technology, with experience managing development teams. In 2015, Wardley wrote a post on his blog in which he stated that not only aptitude but also attitude is key when building a team.
Wardley raises three types of profiles according to their mindsets: Pioneers, Settlers, Town-Planners.
Pioneers are those who are better suited to deal with uncertainty. They are the adventurers not afraid of entering uncharted territories. They enjoy exploring, paving the way for the next to come, and have the ability to correct course quickly, even if it means retracing their steps back.
Settlers are those profiles that pick the paths pioneers have successfully opened. They improve, expand, and make them useful to be traveled on (or commercialized).
Town-Planners, pick what the Settlers have enhanced and the market validated, and then industrialize it. Their specialty is optimizing costs by taking advantage of economies of scale. There is little to no uncertainty; each euro earned from the margin is one euro more of profit. Their way of thinking is structured and long-term.
Pioneers, Settlers, and Town-Planners — Wardley
Merging 3X and PST to improve the productivity of your teams
We have seen two mental models, Beck’s 3x and Wardley’s PST. It is easy to see how the phases of one and the other’s profiles overlap almost entirely.
The consequences are not trivial, and it is that, depending on the stage in which your company or product is, some people will fit better than others. Similarly, we must pay special attention to phase changes because the profiles and models you used in one won’t probably adapt well to the next.
For example, if your company is in Exploration, you’ll need Pioneer-type profiles who are comfortable with uncertainty and can withstand or even excel in chaos. However, if those same Pioneers reach the Extraction stage, they will find themselves lost.
Likewise, if you try to explore with Town-Planners-type profiles, you will make them terribly unhappy. Their mental models are not prepared to open new paths; they need certainties and precise plans. And since this is their natural tendency, if you do not identify the problem soon, you may end up building in excess to do any experiment, which in the initial phase of any product can kill you.
I have just introduced an essential concept that of happiness. It is no surprise that your employees’ satisfaction is key to productivity, and this is closely related to having each profile at the right place.
Suppose Pioneers have to act as Town-Planners, or Town-Planners do the job of Pioneers. In that case, unhappiness will grow, productivity and motivation will suffer, not to mention the costs derived from staff turnover, etc.
Use the 3X curve as an alignment tool
Not everything is lost. Fortunately, human beings are smart enough to adapt to different contexts, but it is essential to understand where we are and how it affects what is expected from us.
For example, as a recently graduated engineer, my profile was that of a Town-Planner. I had little adaptability and was easily disturbed by uncertainty. However, over the years, and after having gone through different and varied professional experiences, I learned to embrace change as part of my daily life.
It is that experience that I try to transmit to my teams every day, clearly explaining the phase in which we find ourselves and what the company expects from us. I do it out of self-interest because I need a motivated team, which is impossible to get if we disagree with the game we play.
For this purpose, the Kent Beck 3X curve is an ideal tool. A good team exercise would explain the different phases, draw the curve on a board, and then have each team member point where they think the product is.
The more the team agrees on the stage, the more alignment you will have, and the easier it will be to achieve your goals. If you find yourself at opposite ends, you will need to dig deeper and understand why you think differently until you get to the root of the discrepancy and fix it.
You can do the same exercise at the company level. Misalignment does not only occur between teams but also between departments. Believe me; there is nothing sadder than seeing two areas pulling the company in opposite directions, both believing they are doing the right thing.
A company can have products in several phases
An important note is that while generally, a company is in a single phase at a specific point in time, its products can be in different stages. A good example is Facebook, which we could probably position in Extraction, but having products in various maturity grades.
And this is relevant because it means that all profiles can fill a gap. If an employee has a Pioneer profile, take them to a front-line team where everything is yet to be discovered. On the other hand, if you have a Town-Planner, transfer him/her to those teams that work more long-term and need more structured thinking. Both will be happier, but above all, also more productive.
Conclusions | https://medium.com/@simonmunoz/three-phases-and-attitudes-of-product-development-9aaf1fd7394b | ['Simón Muñoz'] | 2020-12-13 10:07:02.209000+00:00 | ['Product', 'Development', 'Product Development', 'Product Management', 'Startup'] |
Being Caught | Lockdown hasn’t been much hard on me, but after three months of it, it has started to make me worried a bit. No No, it’s not the worry about if we’ll be able to control the pandemic, it’s about how people are adapting to the present scenario. I’m afraid that lockdown has made me so cozy under the blankets, that even the slightest rain makes me cold. I embraced this state of ‘doing nothing’ until May End; Until when the online classes started from June 1st. I suddenly realize being at home and on social media for so long, has decreased my attention span to even less than fifteen minutes.
A month ago I read about ‘the new model’ of TCS to continue Work From Home (WFH) post-pandemic and to normalize it. Back then, I was overwhelmed to see their immediate results in shifting from the common norms and taking their stands to save their employees from the long hectic commute. Especially when I’m the kind of person who loves to stay indoors. But a month later, this is what I think about LIVING ONLINE.
Let’s just go back to our good old days, say 6 months back. Though getting up early morning and rushing to classes was a headache, there was always an urgency in getting out and getting things done. Even though I had barely 100 steps to reach my classroom from the hostel room, the fresh morning air prepared me to leave the laziness behind and perform better.
And when it’s lunch break, it’s not the same people you’re having lunch with. It gets to be a different group, a different idea, and a different taste altogether. And how not to mention the countless number of tea breaks and Leisure times, we spend with people, get introduced to new folks every day, networking and collaborating.
And when it’s evening, it’s time to leave and make life more beautiful. Each day ends with a surprise in itself. Some days you just sit around with friends while some days are dedicated to sharing with interest groups. Some days can’t be made any better, that you just want to be back home and value the silence in life. Some days you want to see around, go for a walk alone, and contemplate about life decisions.
And forget about relocating yourself to a new place. If WFH comes into effect, the childhood dream of every typical Indian of going places when I get a job will remain left out forever. Would that also mean companies can start paying the employees less and professors can take longer hours for students?
The Point is:
It is not about going out and meeting people.
It is not about having gatherings and festivals.
It is not about lazing around during overtime.
It is not about making weekends, weekdays.
But it is about creating impacts and leaving footprints.
Ofcourse, What can be a better Work Partner than a Black Coffee?
Home has always kept me Extra Productive and Work From Home was kind of my dream job till lockdown happened. But I feel the quality of life is gradually decreasing and no value is being added in daily routines. I’m just trying to do stuff every day, but I also realize that I’m not at my best. Creative Block being most prevalent, lack of drive to work on makes me more divergent. Zoom Fatigue has hit hard, harder is staying focused for a long time online.
Here are a few pointers that I have thought of to keep a healthy Work-Life balance with WFH and SFH (School From Home)being prevalent:
Keeping Realistic achievable tasks for each day, and developing software that ensures the worker stops working after a time limit and after task limits.
Motivate employees to complete the task within deadlines and critical path method for a weeks task.
Ensure that Weekends are not made Weekdays (and vice versa😉)
Implementing Operations management, Work Study and Ergonomic techniques to Employee management to have optimal results.
Ample office working hours for brainstorming, get-together, lunching and sharing emotions.
Keeping classes spread across the day, (morning, afternoon and evening sessions) with each subjects having close links connected.
Opportunities for Students to discuss and debate online creatively.
And this is a great chance to actually implement the value based education system as teachers can now assign work according to the child’s rate of learning and grasping abilities. A continuous and comprehensive evaluation system can reduce the pressure for end sems and keep a positive learning curve throughout.
From an employer’s view, WFH is an easy cost-cutting method. But with time, the decrementing levels of an employee may affect the company in itself and will be kept unrecognized. And when it comes to schooling online, its going to be a challenging task ahead.
A perfect mix of both options if considered, for schooling as well as for work, may help us get the optimal balance! The Right Balance for S.M.A.R.T work! | https://medium.com/@taniajohn/being-caught-fc04a882dd72 | ['Tania John'] | 2020-06-08 17:49:33.372000+00:00 | ['Online Classes', 'Office Culture', 'Covid Diaries', 'Zoom Meetings', 'Work From Home'] |
What is Coconut Meat? Nutrition Facts & Health Benefits | Living and growing up in Indian society, we can see the inevitable role that coconut plays in various religious events. In India, we can easily find coconut meat at grocery stores or even at the bus stands or railway stations. The freshly cut coconut looks amazing with its white meat and comes up with a lot of health benefits.
Coconut plays an essential part in the staple diet of the people living in the tropical regions as coconuts are found in abundance in tropical climates. People enjoy a lot of delicacies made up of coconut meat such as coconut chutney, sweets, or even raw coconut meat.
Defining Coconut
Is coconut a fruit? A nut? Or a seed?
When you pick up a coconut that has been fell from the palm tree, you will notice the hard and green layer over it which is termed as EXOCARP.
Under this layer is the brown colored husk which is called the MESOCARP.
Furthermore, under mesocarp, you will find the coconut meat with some liquid, known as coconut water.
Therefore, we can say that coconut is a mix of fruit-nut-seed.
Also Read: Benefits of Omega 3 Fatty Acids
Some Nutritional Facts
Coconut meat contains a lot of nutrients, some of them are as follows
Carbs
One piece of coconut meat contains 6.8 carbs, in the form of insoluble fiber i.e. an indigestible form of dietary carbohydrate. This insoluble fiber is good for health, in a way that helps in easy bowel movement preventing constipation. While eating raw coconut meat, you might experience the sweet taste. A piece of coconut meat contains 2.8 grams of sugar.
Fats
Yes, coconut meat contains fats also. The amount of saturated fat is about 13.4g, whereas monosaturated fat and polyunsaturated fat make up 0.64g and 0.16g respectively.
Proteins
Coconut meat contains proteins in a great amount i.e. 1.5g per serving.
Vitamins & Minerals
A single serving of this meat contains 34% of the daily need vitamins and minerals such as manganese, to maintain a healthy brain, nervous system as well as the immune system.
10% copper, 6% selenium, 6% iron, and small quantities of phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, and zinc are few essential minerals being provided by coconut meat.
Also Read: Is it good to take a multivitamin everyday?
Types of Coconut Products
You can consume coconut in various forms to have the required health benefits:
Kernel is the second name for Coconut Meat. Consuming this in its unprocessed form will give you a sweet and delicious flavor that will satisfy your taste buds.
is the second name for Coconut Meat. Consuming this in its unprocessed form will give you a sweet and delicious flavor that will satisfy your taste buds. Coconut can be eaten in its processed form or by slicing, shaving, or grating it.
You can also use coconut meat to make milk or cream by processing the raw or grated coconut meat.
Coconut meat can also be used by drying it. ooking or baking could be done with dried coconut meat.
One can also extract coconut oil from coconut meat, which can be used for cooking food.
How to choose the Best Coconut?
You can find the coconut available in the market throughout the year. You can also plant your coconut tree, but it will take around 12–13 years of your life to have the coconut meat from your coconut tree.
While going out in the market, you may have come across broadly two types of coconuts, brown and green. They differ in age i.e. green coconuts are young and contains less meat and more liquid whereas brown coconuts are mature and contain more meat and less juice.
To choose the best one for yourself, you have to find the one that feels heavy and on shaking you can listen to the sound of liquid. Do not buy coconuts with cracks.
Also Read: Best Treadmill for Home Use
How to store them?
A coconut can be stored at room temperature for four months. Coconut meat can be stored in the refrigerator for seven days and it can also be deep freeze for about three months. Also, coconut milk can be refrigerated and should be consumed within three days.
Shredded coconut can be stored in an airtight container for about six months at room temperature.
Now as we have a lot of information about coconut meat, let us have a look at the benefits of consuming coconut meat in a certain amount.
Health Benefits of Coconut Meat
High in Nutrition- Coconut Meat Nutrition
As mentioned above, coconut meat is rich in a variety of nutrients and minerals such as manganese, carbohydrates and various types of proteins, etc.
It is also a rich source of iron, which helps make red blood cells as well as selenium, which is an antioxidant that protects the cells of the body.
Apart from these nutrients, coconut meat contains fats also which is in the form of medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs). Human body absorbs MCTs instantly. It provide us energy and strength. This is also useful in reducing fat from the body.
Benefits the Heart Health– Coconut Meat Nutrition
According to the studies it has been proved that people living on Polynesian islands eat coconut meat more frequently and have lower rates of heart diseases as compared to those who are following the western diets.
Consuming coconut oil have a neutral effect on our health as it contains higher levels of HDL (good) cholesterol as well as LDL (bad) cholesterol.
Virgin coconut oil proves to help reduce belly fat.
Controls Blood Sugar Levels- Coconut Meat Nutrition
Coconut meat contains fewer amount of carbs and a high amount of fiber and fat, which in turn helps in balancing the blood sugar levels.
In a study conducted on diabetic rats, it has been found that the rats that are fed with proteins made up of coconut meat are showing improved levels of insulin and metabolism. This is because the protein that has been made with the coconut meat contains arginine content which is helpful in the functioning of pancreatic cells.
Contain a lot of anti-oxidants- Coconut Meat Nutrition
Coconut meat contains phenolic compounds. It work as antioxidants to prevent the cells from getting oxidized. The phenolic compounds included in coconut meat are as follows:
Gallic acid
Caffeic acid
Salicylic acid and
P-coumaric acid.
These antioxidants prevent the arteries from making plaques, reducing the risks of heart diseases.
Could be added to Everyday Diet- Coconut Meat Nutrition
Flaked or shaved coconut can be used in a variety of dishes to increase their flavors such as curries, fish stews, rice dishes, etc. Shredded coconut meat can be used for baking and also add a tint of sweetness and some moisture to cookies, muffins, and bread. Coconut flour is also beneficial for health. Cooking, baking, sautéing, or even for roasting food could be done with coconut oil.
Like everything has its pros and cons, so as coconut meat does. Consumption of excessive coconut meat could lead to ill health effects.
Some of the drawbacks of coconut meat are as follows:
Firstly, being rich in fat, it adds on the calories.
Secondly, it can lead to weight gain.
Lastly, it can causes allergies.
Takeaway
Having a proper amount of coconut meat or coconut oil in our diets can help overcome a lot of health problems.
As the coconut meat is full of MCTs, it will help reduce weight, proper functioning of the heart, and proper digestion.
Though it is high in calories, therefore it must be consumed in a moderate amount. | https://medium.com/@teamfitnessrobust/what-is-coconut-meat-nutrition-facts-health-benefits-4a643d11a377 | [] | 2020-12-26 13:18:19.025000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Coconut', 'Coconut Oil', 'Healthcare', 'Nutrition'] |
‘I hope we passed the audition’ | ‘I hope we passed the audition’
Why The Beatles played their last gig on a windy rooftop.
Note that John & Ringo are wearing their respective wives’ coats
By 1968 the threads that held The Beatles together were fraying. After the bitter infighting that surrounded the recording of The Beatles it was agreed that something had to change.
The problem was that there was no consensus on what that change should consist of. Since the death of Brian Epstein in August 1967, Paul had been the practical driving force behind The Beatles. This leadership role had held the band together but was now increasingly resented by the others.
Paul’s new proposal — that they rekindle their creative energy by returning to their roots as a rock and roll band — was greeted with wariness and suspicion. George was adamant that he would not return to touring by the back door. John interpreted the ‘back to basics’ part as a pretext to replace George Martin — on the grounds that Martin’s studio ‘jiggery-pokery’ was stifling his artistry. Ringo just wanted everyone to get along better.
A fresh start?
Ever ambitious, McCartney suggested that the new album be accompanied by a ‘making of’ documentary. It was a decision they all came to regret but at the time nobody had a better plan. Michael Lindsay Hogg, a promising young film director was commissioned to make the film.
Hogg, who it would later transpire was the unacknowledged son of Orson Wells, proved to be a gifted documentary maker. He was, however, entering the extremely eccentric world of the recently formed Apple Corporation.
The first issue was that it was open season for bonkers proposals. One of the loopiest — a making-of-the-album documentary culminating in a live concert from Roman ruins in Tunisia — was initially given the thumbs up by the four emperors of the Beatles Court.
“The Beatles were to start playing as the sun came up,” explained director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, “and you’d see crowds flocking towards them through the day.”
Nobody bothered to think through the logistics of this masterplan. Those sort of details could be left to the suits, the squares to sort out.
Twickenham Tantrums
One point of agreement was that the rehearsals be completed away from Abbey Road. In early January 1969 he band duly trooped off to a sound studio in the London suburb of Twickenham. It did not go well.
Lennon, who always hated rehearsing (“we’re grown men”) was matched in his antagonism by Harrison, who loathed the sound quality of the studio. Everyone complained bitterly about the bitter cold.
The Beatles also hated the presence of outsiders. One of these, Michael Housego of the Daily Sketch, claimed that the atmosphere of ‘hostile lethargy’ had descended into a physical fight between Lennon and Harrison. The latter issued a half-hearted denial on January 16. “There was no punch-up. We just fell out.”
This falling out did, however, lead to Harrison downing tools. As he left he famously said “See you around the clubs” — the Beatles equivalent of a resignation letter.
It took several day of negotiations to reel him back in. The peace treaty contained a ‘no more Twickenham’ clause — and rehearsals restarted on 21 January at the new Apple Studio, in the basement of the Apple Corporation building in central London.
By this point, The Beatles had had cooled on all talk of wild locations like the Sahara desert or Tunisian ruins. There was no prospect of anyone getting on a plane to North Africa.
This left the film without big finish or indeed any finish at all. And the one thing everyone agreed upon was that filming needed to end quickly. After more haggling, they agreed to a suggestion — possibly from John, possibly from Lindsay-Hogg, possibly even from Ringo— that they do the concert right there.
So on the 30th of January 1969 the group — plus guest member Billy Preston — climbed five stories onto a very windy rooftop. There a hastily constructed stage, mirrors, cameras and cue cards — for the notoriously forgetful John — awaited.
More tantrums — and tiaras
Typically, there was last minute melodrama. On the final landing, a team meeting was hastily convened. George suddenly went cold on the plan, Ringo was lukewarm. The whole project was in the balance.
It was the intervention of John that proved decisive: “Oh fuck it,” he said retaking control of the band he had formed. “Let’s do it.”
The Beatles looking like they’ve been rescued from a shipwreck. Yoko is close proximity
Wrap up warm
Performing outside in a coldish (45f/7c) January and a sharp wind created practical problems, particularly with regard to stage costumes. John complained that his fingers were too cold to form chords. Yoko — always within ten feet of him — came to the rescue with her fur coat.
Ringo, who had heroically performed in the Austrian snow during the filming of the ‘Ticket to Ride’ segment of Help, followed his band-mate to the wives’ dressing up box. Maureen supplied him with a shiny red rain coat, while George wore and equally peculiar black feather jacket.
Paul went for a contrasting look — that of a man dressed for a hotel breakfast buffet after a night on tiles with business associates. Even his machismo was somewhat undermined by some camp mugging to camera.
Setlist
The impromptu set lasted 42 minutes, with a playlist as ragged as their appearance.
The Beatles played “One After 909,” two complete versions each of “Don’t Let Me Down,” “Dig a Pony” and “I’ve Got a Feeling,” and three versions of “Get Back” — plus various incomplete takes, including a line from the Irish folk song “Danny Boy.” In addition to these, the band tossed off snippets of several songs that didn’t make the cut for Let It Be. These include a few bars of “I Want You,” later released on Abbey Road, and lines from the Irving Berlin chestnut “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.” The most complete of these off-the-cuff performances is an instrumental version of “God Save the Queen,” played while engineer Alan Parsons changed tape reels. These were little more than jokes, and were never seriously considered for any official release. from Jordan Runtagh, Rolling Stone
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With hindsight, there is a tentative feel to the concert, a sense that that they are testing ideas rather than showcasing their new material with confidence.
The stand-out performance recorded on film is ‘Don’t Let Me Down’. This showcases Lennon’s voice at its most powerful. He even manages the higher harmonies with out sounding like he’s about to carted off in an ambulance. Ironically, he is the one who inspires the others to fulfill Paul’s ambition. For those three and a half minutes they become the thrilling live act they were before the screaming started.
And say what you like about Yoko, she clearly is his muse for this recording — he sings “I’m in love for the first time” with her sitting just stage left. Tough on Cynthia but great for his vocal.
As for the rest
Overall, there is an elegiac feeling to the session. Even the ostensibly ‘new’ “One after 909” dates back to their Hamburg days. The snippets go back still further, to the songs of their are childhood.
In recent years has McCartney acknowledged that a ‘guilty pleasure’ he shared with Lennon was a love of show tunes. This occasionally surfaced in their early work (‘Besame Mucho’. ‘Till there was you’) but it was nut until 2012 that Paul recorded Berlin songs for his superb American songbook album, Kisses on the Bottom.
Here the snatches of old songs express their friendship and shared past. The divorce is coming but the tunes will always be with them.
Who called the fuzz, man?
The cartoon villain for many casual Beatles fans is the young policeman who comes to close down the concert. The narrative goes that the square establishment sent him to shut down all the fun.
But the excellent 2017 BBC radio documentary The Last Beatles Concert definitively clears him of the charge of being a blue meanie. In reality the authorities showed remarkable restraint in the face of a flagrant breech of public bylaws.
The problem was that nobody from Apple had bothered to get permission for a public performance. When complaints about loud music from local residents and businesses began pouring into the police station opposite the Apple building, the police were legally obliged to take action. They negotiated with Apple representatives and eventually gave them ten minutes notice to end
The now retired PC sent to pull the plug was a Beatle fan himself. As Lindsay-Hogg puts it:
the young bobby had a duty…he discharged it as discreetly as possible and as politely as possible BB documentary audio here (23.38–26.29)
The Legacy
By happy accident The Beatles dodged a Spinal Tap style finale amidst Roman ruins. Plenty of fine acts have lured into that trap — step forward Pink Floyd on the Wall, for example. Yet the spectacular backdrops are no match for the sight of four young men on a windy roof having fun together for the last time.
Yes, John, you passed the audition. RIP | https://medium.com/the-beatles-faq/why-did-the-beatles-play-their-last-gig-on-a-rooftop-5a56981c21b | ['Kieran Mcgovern'] | 2020-10-17 08:42:10.661000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Rock', 'John Lennon', 'Beatles', 'Paul Mccartney'] |
Part 10 — Blood: Respite. | They three looked around the cabin.
“What now?” asked Steph.
Tyler walked to the gun cabinet: “Stock up here and then get the fuck out of dodge.”
Mark dropped his clip and cleared the chamber: “Then what?”
Tyler calmly sat down at the kitchen table. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the bag of diamonds: “We fence these.”
Steph lit a cigarette: “We know that guy in the diamond district.”
Mark angrily asked: “How do we get there?”
Steph retorted even angrier: “I don’t …”
Tyler interrupted: “You two really married?”
They replied together: “Yes.”
“You need therapy.” | https://medium.com/etc-magazine/part-10-blood-respite-73a9e11b0561 | ['Keith R. Higgons'] | 2020-11-30 12:26:49.801000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Crime Fiction', 'Crime', 'Fiction Series', 'Very Short Story'] |
PMG Boosts Brand Creative and Expands Creative Studio | Top recruits include creative leadership from The Richards Group
On the heels of winning a new global TikTok assignment last month, independent digital agency PMG continues its global expansion and rapid growth to support increasing client demand for creative that can fuel strategies that blend brand-building and production with data, insights and automation intelligence.
This month the agency welcomes 12 newly-created creative positions, including two award-winning, Dallas-based creative leaders, Kyle Kelley and Andrew Harper, as Executive Creative Directors. Kelley and Harper are best known for their innovative creative leadership for brands like Dr Pepper, The Home Depot, Chrysler, GameStop, and AMC’s Mad Men during their tenure at The Richards Group in Dallas.
Image of Andrew Harper and Kyle Kelley
Kelley joined The Richards Group over ten years ago as an intern, eventually working his way up to Creative Group Head at the agency. Kelley was the architect of several trendsetting creative campaigns for high-profile brands, including GO RVing, GameStop and Dr Pepper. In his previous role as Creative Group Head at The Richards Group, Harper built integrated campaigns for household brands like Dr Pepper, A&W Root Beer, ULTA Beauty and AAA, garnering industry recognition from The One Show and the Webby Awards for his creative ingenuity.
At PMG, the pair will be based in the agency’s Dallas office and will partner closely with Scott Everett, who currently leads PMG’s creative team. All three will report to PMG CEO George Popstefanov.
“The addition of Kyle and Andrew will enable PMG to compete on a larger stage and at a greater scale, enhancing the incredible work of our creative team,” said Everett, Senior Creative Director. “They bring with them a wealth of campaign experience with global brands like Dr. Pepper and Home Depot, and we’re excited about everything we’ll accomplish together. Their addition to the team brings new depth, creative acumen, and fluency to how we deliver creativity at the pace and scale clients need as they accelerate in digital.”
Other new roles include Nick Denman as Associate Creative Director, and Fiona Cohen and Luis Cuenca as Motion Graphics Designers, with all three joining from The Richards Group. In addition, Lynn Bossange as Associate Creative Director, Gary Offutt as Senior Copywriter, Tina Mendez and Hannah Chalfant as Junior Graphic Designers, Benjy Joung as Copywriter, Miriam Kalala as Project Manager and Kaylee Wheeler as Junior Project Manager.
PMG’s creative practice collaborates with the agency’s data innovation teams in using Alli, PMG’s marketing intelligence platform, to bind automation and technical innovation with creative excellence for the company’s growing client list of global and national brands that include Beats by Dre, Old Navy, Sephora, SurveyMonkey, GitLab and more.
Fueling this growth are recent client wins, including TikTok selecting PMG as the lead social strategy agency for TikTok for Business, tasked with overseeing cross-channel strategy, creative, content development, and production for the brand. | https://medium.com/agencypmg/pmg-boosts-brand-creative-and-expands-creative-studio-fd43456fab93 | ['Pmg Digital Agency'] | 2020-12-16 17:57:28.562000+00:00 | ['Creative', 'Design', 'Culture', 'News'] |
How To Get More Organic Traffic | How To Get More Organic Traffic — Serious Marketers Only
How To Get More Organic Traffic
In these difficult times it’s often not prudent to spend a lot of money driving paid traffic to your websites, this is where getting more organic traffic can really help you. In this blog post I’ll be looking at simple ways that you can start to get more organic traffic and start to replace paid traffic.
Before we start please ensure that you have added your site to Google Analytics and Google Search Console. The more Google know about your site the more search traffic they can send you plus it allows you to analyse your increase in Organic Traffic and set monthly goals for growth..
Step #1 Content Marketing — Choose the Right Topics
Whether you like it or not you are now a content marketer, this means you need to think smartly about the content you create.
Don’t just treat a piece of content as an article create it correctly and pay attention to every aspect. Then it can generate organic traffic for you for years to come.
The first place to start is by creating content people actually want. Do some research and choose your main keyword. The ideal place to start is to look at your close competitors and look at what they are writing about. Next take time to look at the top websites in your niche and try to identify their best performing content.
The simplest way is to look at the number or comments, although not scientific this will give you some ideas. Next start to use a keyword research tool such as Keywords Everywhere, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools or Ubersuggest. All 3 have limited free access or free trials.
You are looking for keywords that you can rank for with ease. Ignore the search volume, the difficulty level is much more important. As we’ll see you can rank for multiple keywords based on a main keyword.
For Example here are the keyword research results for the keyword: How To Name a Blog
It shows a search Volume of 480 and a difficulty of 13 so it should be relatively easy to get an article to rank.
Now let’s look at how many keywords an actual article using this keyword term ranks for.. 204 and that will to continue to grow over time.
Next aim to create engaging content that answers specific questions people may ask about your main keyword.
For example if someone asked on google “How Do I Train My Dog To Fetch” Then Google would be more inclined to show them relevant content that addresses that question rather than the wider topic of dog training.
But the inverse is also true.
“How to train your dog to fetch” would more than likely rank higher than “101 Dog training tips”
Whereas “101 Dog training tips” would rank higher if the person asked for “Dog Training Tips”
On top of the questions people ask start to think about Long Tail Keywords these are the terms that relate to your target keyword. An example is that “Dog Frisbee” might be a term that your dog article would also rank for.
Look at the examples in the images above, we’ve got the potential to get organic traffic for over 200 keywords some of which may just get 4 or 5 searches a month but because of that they aren’t targeted.
In the past I’ve found a simple article rank for hundreds of keyword terms that I’d never considered. Some keywords aren’t even in the article but Google is so good at understanding what your article is about is will show it for related terms you’ve not though about. They may only get searched for a few times a month but all that traffic adds up.
My personal rule is, if a search term has a search volume listed it’s a candidate for having an article written around it.
Article Length
How Long Should Your Article Be?
Over time, you’ll find that long form content is treated better by google than short content so take time to cover every topic you can think of. Increasing the length of your post will naturally get you more Long Tail Keywords.
There are hundreds of keyword opportunities available for every article so take time to think about related terms you can add throughout the article. As we already discovered Search volume doesn’t matter, I wish people ignored it and just ensured that they created quality content rather than try to fit in high volume keywords.
The good news is that Google is good at this so you don’t need to find all the long tail keywords just think of a few and add them google should do the rest.
Summary
Create Content That Answers People Questions
Don’t Obsess over Search Volume
Focus On Keyword Difficulty
Use Long Tail keywords
Trust Googles ability to Understand what your content is about
Step #2 — Search Engine Optimization
You don’t need to be an SEO expert to get more organic traffic to your blog, just a few simple things can make all the difference.
For now, we’ll just be focusing on “On Page Optimization“. Off-Page SEO Optimization can come later when you are trying to get those top few ranks in Google, it’s a long soul-destroying process so if we can get the best start with on-page SEO then it’s worth doing.
Although ranking on the first page of Google may be your ultimate aim search ranking isn’t the be all and end all of the process.
Later we’ll look at how distributing content, relaunching content and repurposing content your content will all draw referral traffic long before google has ranked your content. These are the things you can do on your blog that have a big impact on your search engine ranking and therefore you’ll get more traffic from organic search.
But for now lets just ensure that your content is given the best chance of being blessed by Google with a first page ranking.
The first step is to get an SEO plugin such as Yoast or an app like Textmetrics which I am using. This will guide you and show you what you need to do to get the maximum SEO boost on each piece of content.
One of the most important tasks is to ensure you have created the Meta Description which helps Search Engines know what your content is all about.
Here the meta data from this post (Including spelling mistake!)
I use Textmetrics which I got as a lifetime offer on AppSumo (I documented why I’ve spent over $3000 on AppSumo Deals here).
Getting There…
It gives me a simple step-by-step guide to optimizing the SEO on each blog post.
I simply follow the instructions on-till I get as close to 100% as possible.
It’s the same principle with YOAST, Once you have your plugin installed simply follow the instructions and try to get the highest rating possible.
It’s amazing the effect a few minor tweaks can have.
The next step to take is to find content within you site that is related and link to it with internal links, this ensures that search engine “spiders” can find all your content.
This should help you get more search traffic to all your blog posts over time.
Summary
Use an SEO Plugin Or App
Follow The Recommendations
Set Up your meta tags and ensure the search engines know what your content is about.
Use Internal Links to Link Between Content on Your Site
On-Page SEO before Off-Page SEO
Step #3 Repurpose & Relaunch Your Content
The most successful content creators repurpose content, why write a great post and only use it once?
The choice is yours but would you rather write 5 or 6 pieces of content each year or 50+?
Having 2 or 3 great pieces of content is much better than having 20 poor ones, so aim for quality engaging content from the start. The best place to start with repurposing or relaunching content is with a site audit.
List each piece of content you have in a spreadsheet and decide what you can do with it. It should be classified as follows.
Fine as it is no action needed
Can benefit from an upgrade or rewrite
Out of date, time to retire
Can be improved to merging with another article
Once your content is classified then decide what you should do with it there are 2 choices.
I use the spreadsheet to list each piece of content to be either repurposed or relaunched and this process is repeated yearly.
Repurposed content is turned into different types of content videos, podcasts LinkedIn Posts,Facebook posts etc.
Relaunched Content is added to a social media posting schedule and dripped out over the coming months.
After you’ve been through an audit and classified your content it’s time create a content plan for the coming months.
If you repurpose and relaunch your content correctly you’ll need far less content and you’ll get far more traffic in the future so it’s worth the effort.
First off make sure you post all “new” content to your social network of choice. That’s the bare minimum you need to do.
I schedule each article to be distributed 9 times over the next 12 months. The chosen social network will receive it multiple times in the first 3 months and then less as time goes on. Over time the views and organic traffic grows.
I generally use Twitter , Facebook and Instagram for each piece of content I create. If you create good content this can ensure regular social media shares throughout the year.
Here is my twitter stats for the last 5 distributed articles, the top article was repurposed and relaunched 2 weeks ago.
Repurposing and relaunching content isn’t difficult and it’s usually less time-consuming than writing a new article.
Look at all your existing content and ask yourself can this content be improved?
If it can then improve it and do a content relaunch, which is exactly the same as you do to distribute a new article. In step 4 of this article I’ll give you some ideas.
I find that creating an SEO blueprint and referring back to it helps me keep on track. Every 6 to 9 months I’ll revisit every piece of content and decide if I can improve it or if it’s time to replace it.
If I decide to update it I’ll consider increasing the length of the post to potentially get ranked for more Long Tail Keywords.
A typical content relaunch might consist of some of the following:
Post your content to Medium after 30 days. If you’ve not done it yet open a Medium account and ensure that your content is posted there after it’s been on your site for 30 days. Also ensure that you set the canonical URL in Medium to your own article in your site. That will ensure there are no duplicate content penalties.
If you have a YouTube channel, create a video version of the article, and link back to the original article in the description and then create a comment which you can pin to the top of the comments section with your Call To Action.
You can then repurpose the video to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Mix up the links so that some go to your video and other go to the original article.
Finally, get a social media scheduling tool that can do the work for you! Hootsuite and Missinglettr are 2 I use but there are lot’s available
Summary
Do a content audit and classify each post
Decide if your content can be relaunched or if it should be repurposed
Distribute updated content as you would new content.
Use a content distribution tool and schedule the posts over the period of the next few months
Step #4 — Further Steps You Can Take To Get More Organic Traffic
In this part of the article I want to give you some ideas for growing your organic traffic over time. This will build on the work you’ve done in the first 3 sections.
You don’t need to do them all pick a few and stick to them, keep doing the ones that work and drop the ones that don’t.
1. Do a Guest Post.
Doing a guest blog post has fallen out of favour in the last few years but it’s still a great way of link building (check that backlinks on the site are Do Follow) and getting a steady trickle of organic traffic to your site.
Here’s a good search to use to get started just use your niche at the start
I would strongly recommend creating the best guest post you can and treating it as if it was some key content for your own blog.
2. Build Simple Backlinks
There are lots of sites out there where you can get backlinks with very little effort it really doesn’t matter if they are no follow or do follow as you should have a mixture of both.
Things like profile links on social media websites, links from forums or even content you can post on hosted blogging sites like WordPress.com.
I’d recommend keeping a list of the sites you use and every time you create content or post an article you use the list and generate backlinks
Using your keyword tool can be a good way of finding these.
3. Create More Video Content
Youtube can generate a lot of traffic if used correctly, as we discussed earlier in the post links to your content from your video descriptions and a pinned comment on your videos.
4. Featured Snippets
Make an active effort to get listed in Google as a featured snippet. As part of the content creation process create sections in your post which answer questions in that people may ask in a list form.
Check out this post by Neil Patel to learn more about how to get featured snippets
5. Link Building.
Building links isn’t for everyone and if you one of those people who hate the thought of it don’t worry about it. By distributing your content and getting eyes on it you’ll naturally build links over time. If you don’t mind taking time i would recommend coming up with a plan that will get you a whole host of backlinks.
I would start by sending details of your best content to sites that have linked to similar content in the past.
You could also try writing about a large site and then sending them details of the post, they may link back to it or ask you to write a guest post. Earlier I link to a post I wrote about AppSumo, I sent them a link via twitter, and they asked me to write a version for them. https://blog.appsumo.com/grow-a-business/
That resulted in organic traffic and several high value backlinks.
6. What is Your Traffic Source For Organic Traffic?
Look at your Google Analytics reports or SEO tool every quarter and try to determine which is your best source of traffic, then work at getting more traffic from there.
For example if you get a lot of traffic from Pinterest and hardly any from Twitter then focus the time you spend on Twitter on Pinterest.
7. Put Your Content on Product Hunt
I’ve hidden this one down the list as a bonus for people who take time to read this far down.
I’ve seen some people get amazing results by adding free content to product hunt. Create a free guide or curate some great content and offer it. The product below ranks high for SEO on the ProductHunt site, that is a link to their site on the top left and also in the get it button.
8. Guest Post on Relevant Sites
We’ve discussed this before but by creating guest posts you can get both links and traffic to your content. It can be time consuming but if you have time to create 5 great articles you can reach out and give people a list of content they can choose for their sites.
9. Post unique content where your target market is.
A Bit of a no-brainer this one, but wherever your audience hangs out make posts that give great information and then link to your main content at the end or in the comments. I did this ONCE in Reddit and I still get traffic to this day, this image shows the traffic for the month I posted it, If I paid for that traffic it would have cost over $2000
10. Tell The World — Create Press Releases.
This is an oldie but still a Goldie! If you write a great piece of content then create a press release and get it distributed this isn’t just for getting eyes on it but you will find you will also get backlinks and some organic traffic. | https://medium.com/@seriousmarketersonly/how-to-get-more-organic-traffic-534e4a4648e7 | ['Mark Thompson'] | 2020-12-21 09:33:11.494000+00:00 | ['Content Strategy', 'Affiliatemarketing', 'Content Marketing', 'SEO', 'Articlesrank'] |
An Unforgotten Love Story: | I remember the moment perfectly.
Boston. The banks of the Lower Basin of the Charles. Fifty years ago. Two young men sprawled together on the grass, very early one summer morning just before the city awoke.
Easy laughter. Easy talk. At least so it seemed to me.
Learning that, maybe, a man can also love a man. I had never taken the idea seriously, although I had often felt physically attracted to both men and women..
We had met the evening before, and inexplicably here we still were. We were here even after what he called, with a chuckle in his voice, a ‘second bite at the cherry’.
No I thought, of course, this isn’t love, but I do feel something very deep here, and utterly out of the blue.
He smiled at me as I listened to his guitar’s easy boom-chika, boom-chika strum.
Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a soft snarl: “Did you think, I enjoyed that? That I might want to see you again?”
Long pause.
“Well, yes, I did think that.”
A single down stroke with the thumb, “Not likely, kiddo. I knew you were a fucking queer soon as I laid eyes on you.”
“I’m not a queer, at least no more than you are. Why are you joking like this? . . . It isn’t funny.”
“I’m not laughing, faggot. I got off, and now I need you to Get. Fucking. Lost.”
— — — — — —
This is the sun just before an eclipse, just before the moon’s shadow began to encroach on the Sun’s disc. Photo by D W Chambers.
Once upon a time I was falling in love
Now I’m only falling apart
There’s nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the heart
Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there’s only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart
Source of Song Lyrics
Total solar eclipses occur when the Moon comes between the Sun and the Earth and casts the darkest part of its shadow (the umbra) on Earth. At this time, the Sky goes dark, temperatures fall drastically and birds and animals often go quiet. | https://medium.com/prismnpen/an-unforgotten-love-story-c3d98a054ad2 | ['David Wade Chambers'] | 2020-05-17 20:26:41.105000+00:00 | ['Creative Non Fiction', 'LGBTQ', 'Love', 'Memoir', 'Lovestory'] |
Earn money as a freelancer in digital marketing? | If you are quite serious about Digital Marketing and want to grow yourself in this field whether for Freelancing or as a profession. The best you can get from this Digital Marketing field is that it can make you financially independent. Because of the continuously growing demand for digital marketing, it opened lots of opportunities for different freelancers as well. In order to earn money as a Freelancer in Digital Marketing, you need to undergo the basic concept of Digital Marketing. I will never suggest you to buy any Digital Marketing course to Learn about it because in today’s time there is nothing which is not available on the Internet. But if you want to invest in some course to learn about Digital Marketing then it’s totally your wish.
Here I will discuss the Proven Method you can use to build your wealth by using Digital Marketing Knowledge. I will not promise you that you will become Millionaire by end of the day or the week of the month. This is not gonna happen but if you start it today then you will definitely on another phase of your life within a year or two. Which can be much better from your current situation.
Top 5 Practical methods to earn money as freelancer in digital marketing
Write A Blog
The most common but still underrated by new commerce. Creating your own website and writing about Digital Marketing and anything which you know that will be beneficial for your reader is the most simple and easy method to start your journey to earn money as a freelancer in Digital Marketing. Writing a blog is much easier than making a video for YouTube and any verbal communication with your client in order to get money.
Create a website and writing will not make you rich overnight it is a slow and steady way to earn but if you are enthusiastic about it then it will surely give you an amazing result in some span of time. Being in the field of Digital Marketing you already know that earning from a website is totally depends on the traffic you are getting. So it becomes important to optimize your content before publishing it so that it can rank on Different Search Engine Like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Duckduckgo, etc.
Social Media Promoting
Almost every Business no matter whether its a Small Scale, Medium Scale, Or a Large Scale are present in social media and they continually use different social media technique to promote their business over the internet. In order to get their work done they hire a Freelancer or a professional Digital Marketing Expert depending on their spending. This is the reason many Digital Marketing Freelancers earn a handsome income via promoting other company products or services using Digital Marketing Knowledge. For a beginner, it may be difficult to reach out to a company and convince them to trust you. In order to build trust, you need to create your portfolio and this can only be created once you do service for free. I know it sounds silly but there is no point in asking a Big amount for your service as you are already a beginner Freelancer. Once you build your portfolio then you need not to ask for the price you will automatically offer by the different brand with a handsome amount. So First building a portfolio and trust are more important than anything.
Affiliate Program
You already know what is Affiliate Marketing of Affiliate program is. If you don’t know about this then you can refer to this article to know more about this. Affiliate Marketing Depth. You have seen many different coupons and promotional website are available which offer some discount coupon of different Ecommerce Website. They are following the same concept of the Affiliate Program to earn money. So you can follow the same to earn money as a Freelancer in Digital Marketing. You can run a deal and promotion website or a coupon website or even you can create your blog to promote the different products on some popular websites like Amazon, Flipkart, etc in order to earn money from Affiliate Program.
Whenever a user buys a product from your affiliate link then you earn a commission from this eCommerce website. Learn More About this from here .
Freelance Writer
Content is the backbone of every website or blog. Many website owners write their content from freelancers and pay them a good amount. Writing Content for 3rd party website will increase your thought process and writing skills which you can later use to build your own blog or website.
Content writing earning depends on the length of content and type of content. The more and SEO-friendly you wrote the more chance to get ranked your content on the search engines. It is the first step to becoming a professional content writer. Don’t forget that it is a part of Digital Marketing.
Use Freelance website
Climbing First Ladder is always Difficult and getting your first client is not an easy job. But this can be made easy by using Different Freelancer websites like Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, etc. In order to attract your first Client, you need to offer your service at a very low price as compared to others who are offering the same service as you. This is not guaranteed that you will get your first client so easily by just sign up and creating an account on this platform. But you need to do some research on a regular basis on Different Social Media platforms and approaching them with strong communication skills. There is some company who are ready to deal with a freelancer because they know that a newbie Freelance rate is much cheaper than an experienced one. So what are you waiting for go and approach the brand that first comes to your mind? Go to their social media handle and approach them by offering your skills in Digital Marketing.
Final Word | https://medium.com/@digitaldk-in/earn-money-as-a-freelancer-in-digital-marketing-210c58c64781 | ['Dheeraj Bhandari'] | 2020-12-19 06:19:32.693000+00:00 | ['Freelance Writing', 'Digital Marketing', 'Freelance', 'Blogging'] |
Work smarter not harder! | Work smarter not harder!
Happy Sunday!
Sometimes, we let others manage our days. We let everyone add tasks to our to-do list as if we didn’t have enough work on our plates already. But that behavior needs to end now.
We tend to confuse being busy with being productive. The larger our to-do list, the better employees we think we are. That’s a mistaken belief.
Rather, productivity is about gaining control of the decisions you make, the apps you use, and the time you spend on each task. It means tackling priorities in a smarter and more effective way.
In each of today’s articles, you’ll be able to learn a new tip, trick, or hack that will make you achieve more by doing less.
Hope you enjoy,
Steve. | https://medium.com/productivegrowth/work-smarter-not-harder-c73050b8e855 | ['Andrea Paola'] | 2020-12-13 15:27:45.462000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Management', 'Task Management', 'Workplace', 'Self Improvement'] |
Gun Rights & 1776 vs. the Christian Pansies (ICYMI) | Gun Rights & 1776 vs. the Christian Pansies (ICYMI)
Toward a Theology of Legitimate Government or Rebellion
In the video below, Jacob Brunton and Cody Libolt cover hot topics from the culture, politics, and Christianity.
Is the right to bear arms legitimate?
Was the American Revolution legitimate?
Not according to many of the products of today’s colleges and even seminaries.
Even a topic as basic and obvious as the validity of the American Revolution is now on the table, it seems, and with it, the right for men to bear arms.
This video covers:
Gun Grabbers
Christian Pansies
The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate
The Legitimacy of 1776
A Roadmap for Christians to fight back against tyranny
Video below:
Access the exclusive full length podcasts by becoming a Patron. | https://medium.com/christian-intellectual/gun-rights-1776-vs-the-christian-pansies-icymi-470227ac443e | ['Cody Libolt'] | 2020-11-19 00:37:36.270000+00:00 | ['Gun Rights', 'Politics', 'Christianity', '2nd Amendment', 'Constitution'] |
Rapid unplanned-urbanization is killing the environment. | Rapid unplanned-urbanization is killing the environment.
Our greed for money and wealth is also responsible for this disaster.
Thank you for your thoughts, Allison. | https://medium.com/@meetmamun/rapid-unplanned-urbanization-is-killing-the-environment-1469256989d0 | ['S M Mamunur Rahman'] | 2020-11-21 15:21:20.949000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Birds', 'Urbanization'] |
Closing This Chapter: Our Learnings On Transforming How People Move | In early 2016, we started Voom with the ambition to democratize access to the skies and transform how people move in urban environments. Over the last four years, Voom has grown from a project inside Airbus’ innovation center in Silicon Valley, Acubed, to a multinational company operating in Brazil, Mexico and the US, flying passengers in three of the most populous and congested metropolitan areas in the world. We have taken great pride in delivering the best possible service to our customers, and have gleaned key insights into the potential of the air mobility market and passenger preferences along the way.
Scaling globally isn’t easy for any business, and we found this to be especially true in an expensive industry with a truly transformative model for both Airbus and the transportation market as a whole. Couple these truths with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, and we have been faced with some hard choices, as are so many businesses today. On March 23 we made the difficult decision to cease global operations due to the virus, and today with our Airbus leadership, we have made the tough call that Voom will not resume its operations.
While we would have loved to continue our ambitious work, we have achieved our two major initial goals for this project. The first one was to create and launch the first-to-market mobile helicopter booking platform providing Airbus with valuable behavioral and operational data about urban air mobility (UAM) in today’s global markets. To that end, we learned a lot about customer preferences — booking and movement patterns, most popular routes, willingness to pay — as well as about operational challenges related to lack of infrastructure, public acceptance, on-demand versus scheduled routes, etc. We also shared valuable data with Airbus to help inform the company’s decisions on the design of any future electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (eVTOL), including the average number of passengers per flight and flight time, the optimum end-to-end customer experience and infrastructure-related costs.
Our second goal was to democratize access to the urban skies. I am proud to say that over the course of our operations, we acquired nearly 150,000 active users and flew more than 15,000 passengers. In our first year of operation, 60% of our customers were first-time helicopter users, proving that we truly opened the skies to a new audience. We achieved a 45% repeat customer rate and an average ticket price equivalent to 2x the cost of a private car service for 1/10th of the time, making accessible and affordable urban air transportation a reality.
I am extremely proud of and grateful to the global team we built. Voom employees are an amazing group of talented and diverse individuals and aviation enthusiasts who are passionate about urban air mobility. Together, we have worked hard over the years to improve people’s lives by giving them access to urban skies. As co-founder and COO, and now CEO of Voom, my greatest source of inspiration has been the mission we set for the company and the team assembled to achieve it.
I would like to thank our strategic partners, the helicopter operators and the helipad management companies in São Paulo, Mexico City and the San Francisco Bay Area who have all demonstrated an exceptional level of commitment to customer service, professionalism and passion. You have been incredible partners.
This is just one chapter in urban air mobility, with so much more to come. It is not a question of whether the UAM market will open up, but when. Having been in this space for the past four years, leading one of the few companies providing a UAM service to passengers, I am well aware of the challenges to making UAM possible with eVTOL within this decade. I still believe they can be overcome, and I remain excited and optimistic about the progress being made to build out the interconnected ecosystem required to make UAM a reality. In that regard, Airbus continues to invest in the UAM arena and will be able to leverage the knowledge gained through Voom.
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the leaders of Airbus and Acubed. Without their support, we would not have been able to transition an idea into a project and grow it into a global company that customers around the world relied upon to transform how they move.
Thank you to everyone who has been part of this fascinating adventure with us. It has been an amazing journey! | https://medium.com/@clmentmonnet/closing-this-chapter-our-learnings-on-transforming-how-people-move-548550b82ee4 | ['Clément Monnet'] | 2020-03-30 21:26:16.344000+00:00 | ['Mobility', 'New Chapter', 'Helicopter', 'Transportation', 'Urban Air Mobility'] |
Breast Cancer Detection Using Logistic Regression | Are you aware that 1 among 8 women in the United States is being diagnosed with breast cancer? Breast cancer is a disease in which the healthy cells of the tissue in the breast are invaded and mutated, which further grow in large numbers to form a malignant tumor. It can most likely occur at any age.
Few risk factors that contribute to breast cancer.
It occurs 100 times more in women than in men
Genetic factors such as mother, father, sister or brother had been diagnosed with ovarian or breast cancer.
· Early puberty, late menopause or child birth at an older age or no child birth can increase the risk
Dense breast tissue can also surge the risk of breast cancer. Detection can also be delayed due to the compact nature of the tissue.
Obesity, alcohol abuse, poor nutrition and exposure to frequent radiation can also increase the risk.
Early detection increases the survival chances by almost 99%. By realizing the symptoms and signs, this cancer can be detected early. Self-examination and clinical examination can be conducted for detection of lumps. Mammography is a technique where the breast is exposed to a small dose of radiation to capture the images of the affected area. It can detect cancer before the formation of lumps.
Detection of Breast Cancer Using Classification Algorithm
Unsplash image by National Cancer Institute — Mammography
Early detection of the malignancy of a lump is the key to high probability of survival. Many imaging techniques have been developed for detection and possibility of cure and decrease the mortality rate due to breast cancer. Although Mammograms are one of the best tools for breast screening, there are other imaging techniques such as Breast Ultrasound and Breast MRI.
To facilitate accurate classification of images using Machine Learning algorithms, the data processing is divided into 3 stages, namely preprocessing, feature selection and classification. Feature selection is the most important stage in algorithm building. The dataset generally contains several features and feeding too many features decreases the performance of the algorithm. Features can be extracted using Recursive Feature Extraction (RFE). Ensembling/Combining two or more algorithms could boost the performance of the model. They avoid overfitting and substantially contribute towards improving the accuracy and recall values. In the classification algorithm here, VotingClassifier has been used to combine two logistic regression models using various hyper parameters to classify the dataset. VotingClassifier combines models by giving importance to each, based on the weights assigned to them. Other boosting methods are:
AdaBoost (Strong classifier with low weights)
XGBoost (Extreme gradient boosting)
Catboost (Comes with good initial parameters and can automatically encode categorical variables)
Objective
The aim of this analysis is to use Logistic Regression to classify the data into two classes of diagnosis— Malignant & Benign. The evaluation metrics used are accuracy, ROC, confusion matrix, precision-recall.
Dataset
The Wisconsin Breast Cancer (Diagnostic) dataset has been extracted from the UCI Machine Learning Repository. Features are computed from a digitized image of a fine needle aspirate (FNA) of a breast mass. They describe characteristics of the cell nuclei present in the image.
Class distribution: 357 benign, 212 malignant
benign, malignant Number of instances: 569; Number of attributes: 32
Attributes: Ten real-valued features are computed for each cell nucleus
a) radius (mean of distances from center to points on the perimeter)
b) texture (standard deviation of gray-scale values)
c) perimeter
d) area
e) smoothness (local variation in radius lengths)
f) compactness (perimeter² / area — 1.0)
g) concavity (severity of concave portions of the contour)
h) concave points (number of concave portions of the contour)
i) symmetry
j) fractal dimension (“coastline approximation” — 1)
Preprocessing
The dataset provided is already clean and does not have any missing values. As a part of the preprocessing stage, the data is standardized using Standard Scaler library. It transforms the attributes to normal distribution
# Read data
dataset = pd.read_csv('data.csv')
# drop the last column from the data
dataset = dataset.drop(['Unnamed: 32','id'],axis = 1) # Impute the only categorical column
dataset["diagnosis"].replace(to_replace = dict(M = 1, B = 0), inplace = True)
dataset.head() #check the value count of the benign vs malignant cases
target_count = (dataset['diagnosis']).value_counts()
sns.countplot(dataset['diagnosis'])
pd.Series(dataset['diagnosis']).value_counts()
print('Proportion:', round(target_count[0] / target_count[1], 2), ': 1')
Proportion: 1.68 : 1
Correlated Features
A correlation between variables indicates that as one variable changes in value, the other variable tends to change in a specific direction. Scatter plots and heat map are good visualization techniques to view correlation between continuous variables
Correlation Matrix
Positively correlated features are the ones where the value of one variable increases as the other increases resulting in an upward slope indicating a positive correlation with all the data points falling on the line. Following are positively correlated features.
Positively Correlated Features
Negative correlated features represent cases when the value of one variable increases, the value of the other variable tends to decrease producing a downward slope.
Negatively Correlated Features
Features with high correlation are more linearly dependent and hence have almost the same effect on the target (diagnosis) variable. So, when two features have high correlation, one of the features can be dropped.
Evaluation metrics for classification
Accuracy cannot be completely relied upon as an evaluation metric for Classification.
Confusion Matrix: It is a matrix representation of the results of any binary testing. In this study, the hypothesis is to validate if the person having the lump is malignant or benign. Confusion matrix is used to represent the actual values and the prediction values
Confusion Matrix
True positive (TP): Malignant lump correctly identified as malignant
True negative (TN): Benign lump correctly identified as benign
False positive (FP): Benign lump incorrectly identified as malignant
False negative (FN): Malignant lump incorrectly identified as benign
Accuracy : Accuracy is the proportion of true results among the total number of cases sample : (TP +TN) / (TP + TN + FP +FN)
: Accuracy is the proportion of true results among the total number of cases sample : (TP +TN) / (TP + TN + FP +FN) Precision : The proportion of predicted Positives that is actually positive : TP / (TP + FP)
: The proportion of predicted Positives that is actually positive : TP / (TP + FP) Recall OR Sensitivity OR TPR : The proportion of actual positives correctly classified : TP / (TP + FN)
: The proportion of actual positives correctly classified : TP / (TP + FN) Specificity: The proportion of actual negatives correctly classified : TN/(TN + FP)
The proportion of actual negatives correctly classified : TN/(TN + FP) F1 Score: F1 score kind of maintains a balance between the precision and recall for the classifier by giving equal importance to both precision and recall. Lower the precision, lower is the F1 score. Lower the recall, lower is the F1 score. The F1 value is between 0 and 1 and is the mean of precision and recall : 2 * (Precision * Recall / Precision + Recall)
AUC ROC : Area Under Curve (AUC) is the area covered under the ROC. Receiver Operating Characteristics. ROC is the ratio of True Positive Rate (TPR) and False Positive Rate (FPR) where TPR is proportion of actual positives correctly classified by the model and FPR is the proportion of false positives classified by the model. We have the above values (TPR, FPR) from the model. We can use various threshold values between 0.1–1 to plot the sensitivity and 1-Specificity on the graph. The curve derived is the ROC curve. Lower threshold can increase the number of FP and decrease the number of FN. Higher threshold can decrease the number of FP and increase the FN.
Classification using Logistic Regression (Using RFE for feature elimination)
After splitting the data into training and test set, the training data is fit and predicted using Logistic Regression with GridSearchCV. GridSearchCV is a function that belongs to the sklearn library. It is a process to optimize the model performance by tuning the hyperparameters, automatically, by setting a few parameters in the function. Choosing optimal features for model training is an extremely difficult task to achieve. Feature selection is a key technique to improve the performance of any model. Feature selection can be done using Principal Component Analysis, but it provides us with the principal components which are achieved by a combination of features. It does not clearly declare the features, used to calculate the principal components.
Recursive Feature Elimination technique selects individual features by recursively training the data for a given model. Thus a set of features with high importance is used to improve performance of the model.
# Using GridSearchCV in Logistic regression param_grid = {'penalty' : ['l2','l1'],
'C' : [0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1, 10, 100, 1000]
}
log_clf = LogisticRegression(random_state = 42)
CV_log_clf = GridSearchCV(estimator = log_clf, param_grid = param_grid , scoring = 'accuracy', verbose = 1, n_jobs = -1) CV_log_clf.fit(X_train, y_train) best_parameters = CV_log_clf.best_params_ log_clf = LogisticRegression(C = best_parameters['C'], penalty = best_parameters['penalty'],random_state = random_state) selector = RFE(log_clf)
selector = selector.fit(X_train, y_train) y_pred = selector.predict(X_test)
y_score = selector.predict_proba(X_test)[:,1] # Confusion maxtrix & metrics
cm = confusion_matrix(y_test, y_pred)
class_names = [0,1]
plt.figure()
print('Confusion matrix :
',cm)
plt.show() show_evaluation_metrics() # ROC curve
fpr, tpr, t = roc_curve(y_test, y_score)
plot_roc()
Confusion matrix :
[[106 2]
[ 2 61]]
Accuracy = 0.977
Precision = 0.968
Recall = 0.968
F1_score = 0.968
ROC using scoring = “accuracy” as hyper parameter
With a cross validation of 5 folds and a threshold > 0.53 and a recall = 98%, following is the performance score of the Logistic Regression model with accuracy as the hyper parameter.
Accuracy = 0.988
Precision = 0.984
Recall = 0.984
F1_score = 0.984
To further improve the performance of the model optimize the hyper parameter scoring = ’recall’ in GridSearchCV on Logistic Regression
# Using GridSearchCV in Logistic regression with Recall
param_grid = {'penalty' : ['l2','l1'],
'C' : [0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1, 10, 100, 1000]
}
log_clf = LogisticRegression(random_state = 42)
CV_log_clf = GridSearchCV(estimator = log_clf, param_grid = param_grid , scoring = 'recall', verbose = 1, n_jobs = -1)
CV_log_clf.fit(X_train, y_train) best_parameters = CV_log_clf.best_params_
print('The best parameters for using this model is', best_parameters) CV_log_clf_1 = LogisticRegression(C = best_parameters['C'],
penalty = best_parameters['penalty'],
random_state = random_state) CV_log_clf_1.fit(X_train, y_train)
y_pred = CV_log_clf_1.predict(X_test)
y_score = CV_log_clf_1.decision_function(X_test) # Confusion maxtrix & metrics
cm = confusion_matrix(y_test, y_pred)
class_names = [0,1]
plt.figure()
print('Confusion matrix :
',cm)
plt.savefig('6')
plt.show() show_evaluation_metrics() # ROC curve
fpr, tpr, t = roc_curve(y_test, y_score)
plot_roc()
Confusion matrix :
[[106 2]
[ 1 62]]
Accuracy = 0.982
Precision = 0.969
Recall = 0.984
F1_score = 0.976
ROC using scoring = “recall” as hyper parameter
Ensembling two models by using Voting Classifier
Maximizing precision and detect all malignant tumors (high recall value) can significantly improve the performance of the classifier. This can be done by combing/ensembling two or more models with a 5-fold cross validation and selecting an optimum threshold > 0.5
Confusion matrix :
[[106 2]
[ 1 62]]
Accuracy = 0.982
Precision = 0.969
Recall = 0.984
F1_score = 0.976
ROC using VotingClassifier
Precision Recall Curve
The precision-recall curve shows the tradeoff between precision and recall for different threshold. A high area under the curve represents both high recall and high precision, where high precision relates to a low false positive rate, and high recall relates to a low false negative rate. High scores for both show that the classifier is returning accurate results (high precision), as well as returning a majority of all positive results (high recall) for a threshold > 0.5.
Precision Recall Curve
That’s it!
You can get the code here!
References | https://medium.com/swlh/breast-cancer-detection-using-logistic-regression-7bef0110aff5 | ['Ranjani Rajamani'] | 2020-11-04 09:37:13.253000+00:00 | ['Logistic Regression', 'Precision Recall Curve', 'Breast Cancer', 'Voting Classifier', 'Confusion Matrix'] |
How to be Your Own “Writers’ Contest” Judge | If you’ve been struggling, working on your book for more than a couple of years, then the odds are pretty darned high that from time-to-time you’ve lost perspective about how good your writing is, how interesting your characters are, how clear their motivations are, and whether readers will care about or connect to your story.
Entering your story into a contest can give you fabulous feedback on all kinds of important areas about your story that can help boost your confidence and make your story even better.
But, if you’re still in the editing stage, you may not be ready to enter real contests. So, creating a contest situation just for your book is a perfect solution!
Although you could absolutely use the questions in this mock contest evaluation to review your own manuscript, it really will work better if you find two or three trusted readers to “judge” your first 25 pages.
By ‘trusted’ I mean a couple of specific things:
Your ‘judges’ read and love the genre you’re writing in.
They have an appreciation for the fact that books do not fall from fingertips in their final form and know how to offer constructive feedback.
They are people whose opinions you trust
If you send your pages to three judges you may get back three very different scores and comments. So, when your judges send back your scoresheets, it’s often helpful to review their comments and then set them aside for a few days to see what resonates and what you can ignore.
And make a conscious point to celebrate all the high scores and positive comments! | https://medium.com/love-and-stuff/how-to-be-your-own-writers-contest-judge-45030a7d2cf6 | ['Danika Bloom'] | 2019-08-13 01:29:49.464000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Writing', 'Writing Tips', 'Writer', 'Fiction'] |
Deconstructing Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles For Good Design–Part 3 | This is the final part in a series of three articles that critically examines Dieter Rams’ ten principles for good design. This article covers principles 8–10 and contains a conclusion. If you haven’t read the other articles, you can check out part one here, and check out part two here.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail
Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the user.
This principle speaks to me as a designer the most out of all ten principles. However, when considering digital, I would probably phrase this as, “Exceptional design is thorough down to the last detail.” The reality is the vast majority of digital products we use have not been thorough down to the last detail. And many of those products I would still be comfortable calling “good design”. They have not necessarily been disrespectful towards the user. Rather, those details left unconsidered are usually the result of an iterative approach to building digital products.
Still, I find this principle inspiring and a compelling reminder of the mentality designers should approach their work with. The foundations of truly exceptional design is the culmination of countless carefully considered details and decisions. Even if those details are not consciously appreciated by the user, their collective impact leaves an unmistakable impression. Using a wonderfully designed product there is the ever present feeling that this is a work of high quality; it exudes the feeling that it has been crafted with skill and great care.
Caring about the details is often where you can delight users the most, as it’s in the details where your users are least expecting to be surprised. While your core features are your most important, and rightly deserve the most attention, it’s still the little touches in the unexpected places that will most likely make your product remembered and create talking points.
In digital product design we can often create these talking points and delight users when it comes to animations and interaction design. People are often not expecting to be given an experience when simply moving from one page or task to another.
Many details have been considered in this wonderful UI Interaction by Anton Skvortsov
9. Good design is environmentally-friendly
Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimises physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.
As design is mostly employed as an instrument of business, its ethics are often lost in the concerns of finance, marketing and sales. But ethical design, in terms of being sustainable and environmentally friendly, is no longer bad business. We’re now at a point where being ethical can give you the competitive edge. But ultimately ethics must be divorced from business. We must do things because they are right, not because they make good business sense and just so happen to have the bonus of being ethical.
Dieter Rams became conscious of the materials his products were using towards the end of his career. Many of his products used plastics and materials that cannot be easily recycled, and will ultimately pollute the environment for many years to come. However, he was designing in a time where few people were questioning the life cycle and environmental impact of these relatively new man-made materials. To arrive where he did illustrates a progressive attitude; a desire to question and improve his practice throughout his career, which is something we should all aspire to do.
My only issue with this principle is that it does not go far enough, and it should be updated to address our current reality. I believe we must consider the design of physical products within the context of a circular economy, where all materials and processes are selected with an understanding of how they will be reused and the energy they will consume.
Design should not be left off the hook with just making “an important contribution”, but charged with leading the way in new sustainable methods of production. We can look to studios like The Agency of Design and their Design Out Waste project for inspiring examples of different strategies to create “circular material flows”.
The Optimist Toaster, designed to last for generations. With permission from The Agency of Design.
In the world of digital product design we are only just beginning the conversation around the physical impact of the products we design.
Digital is physical. Digital is not green. Digital costs the Earth. Those data centers are not in the Cloud. They’re on land in massive physical buildings packed full of computers hungry for energy.
~ World Wide Waste, Gerry McGovern
When it comes to digital, building performant products that use, collect and store as little data as possible should be a clear requirement for how we understand good design.
10. Good design is as little design as possible
Less, but better — because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.
This principle aligns in many ways to the philosophical idea of via negativa. That is, in action it is much better to subtract than to add. From personal experience, simplicity within design often comes through iteration. We start by over designing and then through subtraction and simplification we gain a cleaner, more usable solution.
I tend to push for simplicity within my design work, but I’m always aware of its limitations. Like many overly-hyped design trends that are better understood as movements, simplicity and minimalist design is pursued as if there are no possible negative consequences; and that it can be continuously pushed further and applied regardless of context.
Rams’ final principle is inspired by minimalism, a design aesthetic that when seen at scale and followed to its extreme can be argued to result in monotonous, cold and same-ish designs that collectively appear as a failure of imagination. Braun was able to build a brand around minimalist simplicity at at a time when that approach was perceived as new and fresh. When minimalism is popular, this design and branding strategy proves less distinctive, striking and effective.
Yawn or Brawn? A collection of homepages from minimalist websites.
Describing simplicity as ‘pure’ is problematic on a number of levels. It suggests complexity is impure, but clearly it can be necessary, even desirable. Some complexity, designed and integrated with empathy for the user, can add depth and an extra level of value to a product, especially when we consider products aimed at professional use. Simplicity viewed as purity by deduction implies a value, even moralistic, judgment of decorative and eclectic design traditions.
Simpler is not necessarily better. As mentioned in part one of the series, under the third principle, “Good design is aesthetic”, there are many designers who reject the less is better ideal outright and advocate “more is more” — a maximalist approach to design.
Rams’ position is a distinctly modernist, western view and should be understood as a narrow definition of good design bound by a specific culture and time. Designers working in different contexts and cultures at different times, producing very different work, should not be held to the this subjective ideal of good design. As described in the exhibition, Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design:
Encouraged by the pluralism permeating many cultural spheres at the time, these artists [exhibiting work] accommodated new ideas, modes, and materials, challenging entrenched categories that marginalized non-Western art, fashion, interior design, and applied art.
~ Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design
Conclusion
Dieter Rams’ ten principles for good design should be understood, and appreciated, with an awareness of a number of factors.
Primo, Dieter Rams was an industrial designer working on products for the home. His principles would be better understood as “ten principles for good industrial design (of homeware)”. If you are not an industrial designer, you must consider the differences between this field and your own. We have seen Dieter Rams’ influence particularly in the graphic design world and follow through to digital design. Repeatedly through deconstructing the principles we’ve seen how many of the principles do not entirely hold up within the different requirements of these design fields.
Secundo, Rams’ principles must be understood as subjective. They are a product of a specific culture and time, and as soon as we start thinking about them as objective rules that we can follow at any time, in any place, we have become ignorant of another world of possibility and practice.
Tertio, there’s much wisdom and experience packed into Dieter Rams’ ten principles for good design, but beware of blindly following the ideas of others. By being aware of the weaknesses and inconsistencies of these ten principles, we’re actually in a better place to make use of all they have to teach of us. Like any rules or principles handed down to us from another time, we have to appreciate that they represent the collected experience and knowledge of that individual’s life work. You are living and working in a different time, with different clients, different products, different users, and faced with a different world. Take what speaks to you, understand its limitations and evolve the ideas to your practice. And then you will find what good design means for you. | https://uxplanet.org/deconstructing-dieter-rams-ten-principles-for-good-design-part-3-6be4e9336a19 | ['Pascal Barry'] | 2020-12-08 09:13:11.366000+00:00 | ['Dieter Rams', 'Design', 'UX', 'Product Design', 'Design Process'] |
Azure Functions Kafka Trigger Performance Tips, Concept, and Architecture | I frequently asked about the concept of the Azure Functions Kafka Trigger. I create a video and this blog to understand the Kafka Trigger’s concept. Kafka Trigger is one of the most straightforward solutions for Kafka consumer.
Azure/azure-functions-kafka-extension: Kafka extension for Azure Functions (github.com)
Video
TL; DL, You can watch 12 min video to understand the concept and performance tips overview.
Single Mode / Batch Mode
Kafka Extension has two modes. One is Single Mode, and the other is Batch mode. If you want to have one message per one azure function execution, you can use Single Mode. Kafka Lister read messages within a fixed time, and then Functions execute the message one by one.
Single Mode
From the Kafka Extension side, the Single Mode is identified by the method parameter signature. If the KafkaEventData parameter is non-array, the extension defined it as Single Mode.
[FunctionName(nameof(SampleConsumerAsync))]
public async Task SampleConsumerAsync(
[KafkaTrigger(
"BrokerList",
"reproduce2",
Username = "%ConfluentCloudUsername%",
Password = "%ConfluentCloudPassword%",
Protocol = BrokerProtocol.SaslSsl,
SslCaLocation = "confluent_cloud_cacert.pem",
ConsumerGroup = "$Default",
AuthenticationMode = BrokerAuthenticationMode.Plain)] KafkaEventData<string> kafkaEvent,
ILogger logger){
Batch Mode
Batch Mode execute a function with several messages. Kafka Listener read messages during a fixed time, then a function executed with several messages. The Mode is defined by the method signature that has KafkaEventData<T>[]
[FunctionName(nameof(SampleConsumerAsync1))]
public async Task SampleConsumerAsync1(
[KafkaTrigger(
"BrokerList",
"reproduce2",
Username = "%ConfluentCloudUsername%",
Password = "%ConfluentCloudPassword%",
Protocol = BrokerProtocol.SaslSsl,
SslCaLocation = "confluent_cloud_cacert.pem",
ConsumerGroup = "$Default",
AuthenticationMode = BrokerAuthenticationMode.Plain)] KafkaEventData<string>[] kafkaEvent,
ILogger logger){
You can define maxBatchSize on your host.json . The parameter indicate 3 messages send to a function at a time.
host.json
{
"version": "2.0",
"extensions": {
"kafka": {
"maxBatchSize": 3,
},
}
If you use Java, you can define the batch mode with cardinality = Cardinality.MANY . If you specify the cardinality , you need to define dataType ; usually, it is a string.
public void runMany(
@KafkaTrigger(
name = "kafkaTriggerMany",
topic = "message",
brokerList="%BrokerList%",
consumerGroup="$Default",
username = "%ConfluentCloudUsername%",
password = "%ConfluentCloudPassword%",
authenticationMode = BrokerAuthenticationMode.PLAIN,
protocol = BrokerProtocol.SASLSSL,
cardinality = Cardinality.MANY,
dataType = "string"
) String[] kafkaEventData,
final ExecutionContext context) { @FunctionName ("KafkaTrigger-Java-Many")public void runMany(name = "kafkaTriggerMany",topic = "message",brokerList="%BrokerList%",consumerGroup="$Default",username = "%ConfluentCloudUsername%",password = "%ConfluentCloudPassword%",authenticationMode = BrokerAuthenticationMode.PLAIN,protocol = BrokerProtocol.SASLSSL,final ExecutionContext context) {
For the other languages, you can define it on the function.json
This is a Python example.
import logging
import typing
from azure.functions import KafkaEvent def main(kevents : typing.List[KafkaEvent]):
for event in kevents:
logging.info(event.get_body())
As you can see the, cardinarity and dataType is defined. For the Java implementation, the azure-functions-maven-plugin generate a function.json so that essentially the same.
function.json
{
"scriptFile": "main.py",
"bindings": [
{
"type" : "kafkaTrigger",
"direction": "in",
"name" : "kevents",
"protocol" : "SASLSSL",
"password" : "%ConfluentCloudPassword%",
"topic" : "message_python",
"authenticationMode" : "PLAIN",
"cardinality" : "MANY",
"dataType": "string",
"consumerGroup" : "$Default",
"username" : "%ConfluentCloudUserName%",
"BrokerList" : "%ConfluentBrokerList%"
}
]
}
Channel
Kafka Extension has a Kafka Listener that consumes messages from the broker. It read messages during SubscriberInternalInSecond. Kafka Lister doesn’t execute functions. Instead, send messages to the channel. The channel is a buffer between Kafka Listener and Functions. Channel can keep the number of messages that is maxBatchSize * ExecutorChannelCapacity . ExecutorChannelCapacity is one by default. If you increase the value, you can increase the buffer size. Function read the messages from 1 or maxBatchSize according to the Mode, execute a function. Once the channel reaches the limit, Kafka Listener stops consuming. ChannelFullRetryIntervalInMs is the time (ms) to retry to write channel.
Kafka Listener, Channel, and Function
The other important configuration is MaxPollingIntervalMs , which is the maximum interval between fetching messages to commit. If you have a big maxBatchSize with Single Mode, Read a bunch of messages, then run Function One by one; the time the last message reads is way longer than the timeout by default (300000ms — 5 min). In this case, once the timeout happens, the offset commit won’t progress. In this case, MaxPollingIntervalMs will be a good tuning parameter.
{ "version": "2.0", "extensions": {
"kafka": {
"maxBatchSize": 3,
"SubscriberIntervalInSeconds": 3,
"ExecutorChannelCapacity": 1,
"ChannelFullRetryIntervalInMs": 50,
"MaxPollIntervalMs": 300000
}
}
}
Parallelism / Concurrency
How can we run the function parallel or concurrent? You might increase the throughput. You can consider this concept Topic , Partition , and Consumer Group .
A kafka broker has a Topic is a logical unit that receives messages from a producer and passes it to consumers. That has several partitions. The number of the divisions will be the max number of parallel/concurrent execution of the functions.
For the first example, six partitions are there. The Function App has a worker. One function is defined with a Consumer Group. In this case, Function receives messages from all the partition, and the Function executes one by one — no parallel/concurrent execution.
One Function
You might want to run parallelly; then, you can do Scale-out . I create several workers. Then, Function can run parallelly. The throughput will be double.
Two workers (2 functions)
The maximum throughput will be introduced when you scale-out to 6, which means the same number of the partition. Each Function consumes from one partition. Then Function runs parallelly with 6. The most important thing is the maximum parallel, and concurrent will be the same number as partitions.
Six workers (6 functions)
What if the scale-out exceeds the number of the partition? The 7th function will do nothing. You need to pay extra money. Azure Functions Premium Plan provide Elastic Scale. However, it won’t scare more than the number of the partition.
You might wonder, the six workers is the fastest. However, you might want to save money. If the worker’s CPU is just 5%, however, you want to get good throughput. Then you can define several functions of a worker. That means define several functions with the same consumer group.
In this example, the number of the consumer = function is 6. It is the same as the fastest plan. However, It is two concurrent x 3 parallel. In this case, you can get a pretty good throughput. However, in this case, you need to have a balance between CPU/Memory and Cost.
Three workers (6 functions)
The last example is two consumer groups. If you have two consumer groups, it doesn’t share the offset commit. So that Consumer Group read a message from Partition 0, Consumer Group read the same massage as Consumer Group B. Among the Consumer Group, each function doesn’t read the same message unless something happens. This strategy works for AppService Plan since the Premium Plan’s current scaler optimized for the one partition — 1 worker model .
Two Consumer Groups
Enable Message Key
Kafka message contains Key and Value. However, if you specify the Generic parameter with 1, the Key will be null. If you want to use the message key, you need to set two generic parameters with KafkaEventData like the example.
[FunctionName(nameof(SampleConsumerAsync1))]
public async Task SampleConsumerAsync1(
[KafkaTrigger(
"BrokerList",
"reproduce2",
Username = "%ConfluentCloudUsername%",
Password = "%ConfluentCloudPassword%",
Protocol = BrokerProtocol.SaslSsl,
SslCaLocation = "confluent_cloud_cacert.pem",
ConsumerGroup = "$Default",
AuthenticationMode = BrokerAuthenticationMode.Plain)] KafkaEventData<string, string>[] kafkaEvent,
ILogger logger){
Exception and Function not completed
When the Functions through an exception, when the worker rebooted, what happens?
Kafka message is read in Kafka listener in advance and passed to the functions. Once function is successfully executed, it will commit the offset commit . If the function is broken, after the recovery, Kafka extension will read the message after the offset commit.
If the reboot happens, that means Kafka Listener read the message; however, before finishing the function, stop execute it. In this case, offset commit is not progress so that Kafka Listener will read the same message again.
That is why the Kafka Trigger functions should be idempotent which means if you execute a function with the same parameter several times, the result is the same. Design your function with idempotent. Kafka’s original concept is, At least Once policy. So that It could happen, we read the same message.
Lastly, Exception throwed from the Function. In this case, offset commit will be progress. Why? In the high throughput environment, If the function doesn’t the offset commit the offset in the high throughput environment, the continuous message is back to the broker and easy to piles up. For more details, this official documentation explains it.
Kafka Extension is designed to be similar to the EventHub extension.
Debug
We use Confluent.kafka library. That library uses librdkafka library. Sometimes, you want to see the detail logs to understand the behavior or troubleshooting. Then You can use LibkafkaDebug you can configure several options. Search debug on this page. That requires logging.logLevel` configuration.
{
"version": "2.0",
"logging": {
"logLevel": {
"default": "Debug"
}
},
"extensions": {
"kafka": {
"maxBatchSize": 2,
"AutoCommitIntervalMs": 200,
"SubscriberIntervalInSeconds": 3,
"ExecutorChannelCapacity": 1,
"ChannelFullRetryIntervalInMs": 50,
"MaxPollIntervalMs": 300000,
"LibkafkaDebug": "fetch"
}
}
Latest Version
I always recommend the latest official version. It always includes a new bug fix and performance improvement on the librdkafka side.
Releases · Azure/azure-functions-kafka-extension (github.com)
More tuning parameter
That’s it. However, there is one more powerful tuning technique. librdkafka provide a bunch of configuration parameter. Not all of them are supported by Kafka Extension; However, if you send a pull request, you might be able to use it.
For example, the Confluent page recommends changing fetch.min.bytes and use a specific compression method.
Optimizing for Throughput — Confluent Documentation
This best practice introduce socket.receive.buffer.bytes to increase. It is for Java, so that I’m not sure these parameters work; however, we can also configure it.
20 Best Practices for Working With Apache Kafka at Scale — DZone Big Data
If you want to add more configuration, send a pull request! It won’t be challenging. This PR includes change. (Sorry, a little complex, however, the change configuration part is not many parts. See KafkaOption’s change.
Upgrade 1.5.2 and improve debugging with avoiding limitation of Azur… · Azure/azure-functions-kafka-extension@d6ddb6c (github.com)
Code Sample for this blog
Kafka Extension Example (github.com)
Conclusion
I introduced the concept, tips, and architecture. I hope it helps to understand it. Performance tuning is a tough part. For example, Generally speaking, Batch Mode is a way better way for throughput; however, a customer said they improve the throughput to make it from Batch mode to Single Mode. If it is fast, it will take 100–200ms; however, it includes REST-API call, it could be 30 sec, sometimes happens. In this case, if you have 100 maxBatchSize, 100 messages are executed; however, once you’ve got 30-sec REST-API, it will delay all 100 messages so that they run single with multiple partitions.
I hope you enjoy the Kafka Extension journey! | https://medium.com/@tsuyoshiushio/azure-functions-kafka-trigger-performance-tips-concept-and-architecture-ec94a31d8b93 | ['Tsuyoshi Ushio'] | 2021-02-27 18:08:36.830000+00:00 | ['Serverless', 'Azure Functions', 'Kafka'] |
Feature Extraction Techniques | Before feeding this data into our Machine Learning models I decided to divide our data into features (X) and labels (Y) and One Hot Encode all the Categorical Variables.
Successively, I decided to create a function (forest_test) to divide the input data into train and test sets and then train and test a Random Forest Classifier.
We can now use this function using the whole dataset and then use it successively to compare these results when using instead of the whole dataset just a reduced version.
As shown below, training a Random Forest classifier using all the features, led to 100% Accuracy in about 2.2s of training time. In each of the following examples, the training time of each model will be printed out on the first line of each snippet for your reference.
2.2676709799999992
[[1274 0]
[ 0 1164]]
precision recall f1-score support
0 1.00 1.00 1.00 1274
1 1.00 1.00 1.00 1164
accuracy 1.00 2438
macro avg 1.00 1.00 1.00 2438
weighted avg 1.00 1.00 1.00 2438
Feature Extraction
Principle Components Analysis (PCA)
PCA is one of the most used linear dimensionality reduction technique. When using PCA, we take as input our original data and try to find a combination of the input features which can best summarize the original data distribution so that to reduce its original dimensions. PCA is able to do this by maximizing variances and minimizing the reconstruction error by looking at pair wised distances. In PCA, our original data is projected into a set of orthogonal axes and each of the axes gets ranked in order of importance.
PCA is an unsupervised learning algorithm, therefore it doesn’t care about the data labels but only about variation. This can lead in some cases to misclassification of data.
In this example, I will first perform PCA in the whole dataset to reduce our data to just two dimensions and I will then construct a data frame with our new features and their respective labels.
Figure 2: PCA Dataset
Using our newly created data frame, we can now plot our data distribution in a 2D scatter plot.
Figure 3: 2D PCA Visualization
We can now repeat this same process keeping instead 3 dimensions and creating animations using Plotly (feel free to interact with the animation below!).
While using PCA, we can also explore how much of the original data variance was preserved using the explained_variance_ratio_ Scikit-learn function. Once calculated the variance ratio, we can then go on creating fancy visualization graphs.
Running again a Random Forest Classifier using the set of 3 features constructed by PCA (instead of the whole dataset) led to 98% classification accuracy while using just 2 features 95% accuracy.
[10.31484926 9.42671062 8.35720548]
2.769664902999999
[[1261 13]
[ 41 1123]]
precision recall f1-score support
0 0.97 0.99 0.98 1274
1 0.99 0.96 0.98 1164
accuracy 0.98 2438
macro avg 0.98 0.98 0.98 2438
weighted avg 0.98 0.98 0.98 2438
Additionally, using our two-dimensional dataset, we can now also visualize the decision boundary used by our Random Forest in order to classify each of the different data points.
Figure 4: PCA Random Forest Decision Boundary
Independent Component Analysis (ICA)
ICA is a linear dimensionality reduction method which takes as input data a mixture of independent components and it aims to correctly identify each of them (deleting all the unnecessary noise). Two input features can be considered independent if both their linear and not linear dependance is equal to zero [1].
Independent Component Analysis is commonly used in medical applications such as EEG and fMRI analysis to separate useful signals from unhelpful ones.
As a simple example of an ICA application, let’s consider we are given an audio registration in which there are two different people talking. Using ICA we could, for example, try to identify the two different independent components in the registration (the two different people). In this way, we could make our unsupervised learning algorithm recognise between the different speakers in the conversation.
Using ICA, we can now again reduce our dataset to just three features, test its accuracy using a Random Forest Classifier and plot the results.
2.8933812039999793
[[1263 11]
[ 44 1120]]
precision recall f1-score support
0 0.97 0.99 0.98 1274
1 0.99 0.96 0.98 1164
accuracy 0.98 2438
macro avg 0.98 0.98 0.98 2438
weighted avg 0.98 0.98 0.98 2438
From the animation below we can see that even though PCA and ICA led to the same accuracy results, they constructed two different 3-Dimensional space distribution.
Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA)
LDA is supervised learning dimensionality reduction technique and Machine Learning classifier.
LDA aims to maximize the distance between the mean of each class and minimize the spreading within the class itself. LDA uses therefore within classes and between classes as measures. This is a good choice because maximizing the distance between the means of each class when projecting the data in a lower-dimensional space can lead to better classification results (thanks to the reduced overlap between the different classes).
When using LDA, is assumed that the input data follows a Gaussian Distribution (like in this case), therefore applying LDA to not Gaussian data can possibly lead to poor classification results.
In this example, we will run LDA to reduce our dataset to just one feature, test its accuracy and plot the results.
Original number of features: 117
Reduced number of features: 1
Because our data distribution closely follows a Gaussian Distribution, LDA performed really well, in this case, achieving 100% accuracy using a Random Forest Classifier.
1.2756952610000099
[[1274 0]
[ 0 1164]]
precision recall f1-score support
0 1.00 1.00 1.00 1274
1 1.00 1.00 1.00 1164
accuracy 1.00 2438
macro avg 1.00 1.00 1.00 2438
weighted avg 1.00 1.00 1.00 2438
As I mentioned at the beginning of this section, LDA can also be used as a classifier. Therefore, we can now test how an LDA Classifier can perform in this situation.
0.008464782999993758
[[1274 0]
[ 2 1162]]
precision recall f1-score support
0 1.00 1.00 1.00 1274
1 1.00 1.00 1.00 1164
accuracy 1.00 2438
macro avg 1.00 1.00 1.00 2438
weighted avg 1.00 1.00 1.00 2438
Finally, we can now visualize how our two classes distribution looks like creating a distribution plot of our one-dimensional data.
Figure 5: LDA Classes Separation
Locally Linear Embedding (LLE)
We have considered so far methods such as PCA and LDA, which are able to perform really well in case of linear relationships between the different features, we will now move on considering how to deal with non-linear cases.
Locally Linear Embedding is a dimensionality reduction technique based on Manifold Learning. A Manifold is an object of D dimensions which is embedded in an higher-dimensional space. Manifold Learning aims then to make this object representable in its original D dimensions instead of being represented in an unnecessary greater space.
A typical example used to explain Manifold Learning in Machine Learning is the Swiss Roll Manifold (Figure 6). We are given as input some data which has a distribution resembling the one of a roll (in a 3D space), and we can then unroll it so that to reduce our data into a two-dimensional space.
Some examples of Manifold Learning algorithms are: Isomap, Locally Linear Embedding, Modified Locally Linear Embedding, Hessian Eigenmapping, etc…
Figure 6: Manifold Learning [2]
I will now walk you through how to implement LLE in our example. According to the Scikit-learn documentation [3]:
Locally linear embedding (LLE) seeks a lower-dimensional projection of the data which preserves distances within local neighborhoods. It can be thought of as a series of local Principal Component Analyses which are globally compared to find the best non-linear embedding.
We can now run LLE on our dataset to reduce our data dimensionality to 3 dimensions, test the overall accuracy and plot the results.
2.578125
[[1273 0]
[1143 22]]
precision recall f1-score support
0 0.53 1.00 0.69 1273
1 1.00 0.02 0.04 1165
micro avg 0.53 0.53 0.53 2438
macro avg 0.76 0.51 0.36 2438
weighted avg 0.75 0.53 0.38 2438
t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE)
t-SNE is non-linear dimensionality reduction technique which is typically used to visualize high dimensional datasets. Some of the main applications of t-SNE are Natural Language Processing (NLP), speech processing, etc…
t-SNE works by minimizing the divergence between a distribution constituted by the pairwise probability similarities of the input features in the original high dimensional space and its equivalent in the reduced low dimensional space. t-SNE makes then use of the Kullback-Leiber (KL) divergence in order to measure the dissimilarity of the two different distributions. The KL divergence is then minimized using gradient descent.
When using t-SNE, the higher dimensional space is modelled using a Gaussian Distribution, while the lower-dimensional space is modelled using a Student’s t-distribution. This is done, in order to avoid an imbalance in the neighbouring points distance distribution caused by the translation into a lower-dimensional space.
We are now ready to use TSNE and reduce our dataset to just 3 features.
[t-SNE] Computing 121 nearest neighbors...
[t-SNE] Indexed 8124 samples in 0.139s...
[t-SNE] Computed neighbors for 8124 samples in 11.891s...
[t-SNE] Computed conditional probabilities for sample 1000 / 8124
[t-SNE] Computed conditional probabilities for sample 2000 / 8124
[t-SNE] Computed conditional probabilities for sample 3000 / 8124
[t-SNE] Computed conditional probabilities for sample 4000 / 8124
[t-SNE] Computed conditional probabilities for sample 5000 / 8124
[t-SNE] Computed conditional probabilities for sample 6000 / 8124
[t-SNE] Computed conditional probabilities for sample 7000 / 8124
[t-SNE] Computed conditional probabilities for sample 8000 / 8124
[t-SNE] Computed conditional probabilities for sample 8124 / 8124
[t-SNE] Mean sigma: 2.658530
[t-SNE] KL divergence after 250 iterations with early exaggeration: 65.601128
[t-SNE] KL divergence after 300 iterations: 1.909915
143.984375
Visualizing the distribution of the resulting features we can clearly see how our data has been nicely separated even though being transformed in a reduced space.
Testing our Random Forest accuracy using the t-SNE reduced subset confirms that now our classes can be easily separated.
2.6462027340000134
[[1274 0]
[ 0 1164]]
precision recall f1-score support
0 1.00 1.00 1.00 1274
1 1.00 1.00 1.00 1164
accuracy 1.00 2438
macro avg 1.00 1.00 1.00 2438
weighted avg 1.00 1.00 1.00 2438
Autoencoders
Autoencoders are a family of Machine Learning algorithms which can be used as a dimensionality reduction technique. The main difference between Autoencoders and other dimensionality reduction techniques is that Autoencoders use non-linear transformations to project data from a high dimension to a lower one.
There exist different types of Autoencoders such as:
Denoising Autoencoder
Variational Autoencoder
Convolutional Autoencoder
Sparse Autoencoder
In this example, we will start by building a basic Autoencoder (Figure 7). The basic architecture of an Autoencoder can be broken down into 2 main components:
Encoder: takes the input data and compress it, so that to remove all the possible noise and unhelpful information. The output of the Encoder stage is usually called bottleneck or latent-space. Decoder: takes as input the encoded latent space and tries to reproduce the original Autoencoder input using just it’s compressed form (the encoded latent space).
If all the input features are independent of each other, then the Autoencoder will find particularly difficult to encode and decode to input data into a lower-dimensional space.
Figure 7: Autoencoder Architecture [4]
Autoencoders can be implemented in Python using Keras API. In this case, we specify in the encoding layer the number of features we want to get our input data reduced to (for this example 3). As we can see from the code snippet below, Autoencoders take X (our input features) as both our features and labels (X, Y).
For this example, I decided to use ReLu as the activation function for the encoding stage and Softmax for the decoding stage. If I wouldn’t have used non-linear activation functions, then the Autoencoder would have tried to reduce the input data using a linear transformation (therefore giving us a result similar to if we would have used PCA).
We can now repeat a similar workflow as in the previous examples, this time using a simple Autoencoder as our Feature Extraction Technique. | https://towardsdatascience.com/feature-extraction-techniques-d619b56e31be | ['Pier Paolo Ippolito'] | 2019-10-11 20:16:00.471000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Towards Data Science', 'Programming'] |
Dr. James Boudwin | Jason Boudwin watched the water in his basement rising an inch an hour. Outside, Hurricane Sandy bore down on his townhouse in Somerset County, N.J. The storm had knocked out the electricity. Knowing that no technician could come to his house for an emergency repair, he called the only other person he thought could help.
His father, Dr. James Boudwin, arrived at the house within an hour. He had duct tape, a water pump, a garden hose and speaker wire.
The elder Boudwin was accustomed to making house calls. As a physician in Dayton, N.J., he sometimes treated two or three generations of the same family. Once, when a child sliced open his knee on a birthday party slip-and-slide, Dr. Boudwin stitched him up in time for cake. He loved caring for patients so much, he told his children he would work until the day he died.
The emergency at hand called for a different set of skills. Dr. Boudwin cut two pieces of the garden hose and taped one to each side of the pump. He dropped the first end into the basement. The other end he fed into a toilet upstairs. He ran the speaker wire from the pump to Jason’s car and started the engine.
The contraption worked. Dr. Boudwin celebrated as if he had stuck the moon landing.
Dr. James Boudwin examines a patient in 1987. (Photo courtesy of Jason Boudwin)
For as long as Jason and his two younger siblings, Dan and Karen, could remember, their father had worked a minimum of 70-hour weeks. When Karen filled in as an assistant receptionist in her dad’s practice, she and Dr. Boudwin sometimes started their days as early as 4 a.m. and didn’t get home until midnight.
The medical office ran chronically behind schedule. Jason’s wife, Regina, who also worked in her father-in-law’s practice as a teenager, remembers peeking into the crowded waiting room with trepidation. Sure, some people complained about the delay. But many loyal patients were content to wait: They knew that when it was their turn, Dr. Boudwin would give them all the time they needed.
His work never ended at the clinic door. On an errand to the grocery store or Pierre’s, the local deli, Karen could bet her father would run into a patient and spend 45 minutes quizzing them about their lives. When a family friend fell terminally ill recently, he welcomed the woman and her family into his home so that he could provide her with hospice care.
Even outside of medicine, his focus rarely fell on himself. On winter vacations, Dr. Boudwin skied backwards so that he could film the rest of the family. He built computers for relatives when he realized they couldn’t afford to buy them. He encouraged young people to become doctors by teaching them to draw blood out of his arm.
Dr. Boudwin’s everyday heroics were tempered by a playful, often juvenile sense of humor. He regularly asked each of his children if they had experienced a bowel movement that day, needling them further if they showed any sign of embarrassment. While dining at a Chinese restaurant once, he orchestrated a diversion so that he could swap out the fortune cookies at their table with ones with dirty jokes written inside.
He was an enthusiastic but tone deaf gift giver, buying matching monogrammed robes for the children and their significant others, and a gift certificate to a palm reader for his wife. “If he wasn’t so excited,” Jason said, “it would have seemed thoughtless.”
Dr. James Boudwin with Karen’s son James in 2015.
By 2020, Dr. Boudwin had practiced medicine for more than three decades. His wife had died in 2018. He remarried in September 2019. He had nine grandchildren. Jason, Dan and Karen wondered if their dad would reconsider his retirement plans.
Dan wanted his father to put himself first for a change. He bought an airplane a few years ago, knowing Dr. Boudwin loved to fly and thinking some new hobbies would make retirement irresistible. Dan could see how much his father loved snapping photos at his grandson’s baseball games, loved baking cookies with his granddaughter, loved falling asleep with Dan’s youngest child in his arms. The devoted doctor warmed to the idea of retiring.
This spring, Dr. Boudwin told Dan that he was afraid Covid-19 would kill him. He continued to see patients. And then he got sick.
He developed a fever, body aches and a cough. By the end of the second week, he was short of breath. He suspected he contracted the disease from a patient.
At last, 16 days after he started showing symptoms, Dr. B. checked into the emergency room at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick. His blood oxygen was at 54%. It should have been 90% or higher.
He told loved ones that when he recovered, he planned to volunteer to treat Covid-19 patients. After that, he would retire.
He died two weeks later, on April 28, at 67. | https://medium.com/portraits-of-before/dr-james-boudwin-56f7917eba69 | ['Amy Dipierro'] | 2020-06-08 11:57:49.920000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Coronavirus', 'New Jersey', 'Family', 'Doctors'] |
5 Exciting Facts About Power Banks That You Had No Idea About | 5 Exciting Facts About Power Banks That You Had No Idea About Pivoi usa Apr 14·7 min read
The popularity of power banks is exploding as the slim convenient gadgets become trendy, especially among the tech-savvy crowd. For the most part, you know that you use a power bank to power up your cell phone when it’s dead, and you are not near a power outlet.
However, Power banks can also be used for other unknown and subtle things that we would like to talk about in this article.
1. Power banks are now solar-powered and environmentally friendly
Did you know that power banks are now solar-powered, which simply means that you do not have to plug it into the outlet to charge the bank before using it? For the outdoorsy types, this is the best of both worlds. Imagine that you are on a weeklong camping trip when you are exploring the area, you can leave the power bank charging using the solar panels it comes equipped with on the outside of your carrier bag and then uses it at night when you pitch your tent.
How does this Power Bank help protect the environment?
In a roundabout way, the power bank is environmentally friendly for this reason. And that is the lithium-ion battery inside every power bank.
Lithium-ion batteries are also considered environmentally friendly because, first of all, they are long-lasting, and second of all, they are rechargeable, which means that you will be using a lot less of them than the standard AA batteries or disposable alkaline batteries which contain particular heavy substances.
These heavy substances like lead, cadmium, and nickel are a significant determinant of water and soil pollution when they are disposed of irregularly.
These items are toxic to every plant and animal life that resides in the area around where they are disposed of. People who touch or inhale will be subject to diseases like cancer, which also runs several generations deep. When the plant and animal life is infected, any humans consuming them as food could also be infected with the contamination.
Another advantage of the lithium-terminal is its low discharge, so even if it’s not used for a long time, it does not need to be charged as often. This reduces the loss of electrical energy that has to be dispersed when charging frequently.
Even if the power bank is not used, there will not be a lot of discharge of electricity in the bank because of the low release, which basically means that a fully powered bank will still have power three months later, unlike other unchangeable batteries that still drain their energy even though it has not been used in a while.
We do recommend that an unused power bank be charged every three months or so. Moreover, with the above reasons, yes, we may consider a power bank environmentally.
2. Power banks as advertising devices
For a business looking for a unique business opportunity, there are marketing companies that will create branded power banks with your business name, logo, message, and contact information as well as address.
Besides, a power bank is not an object that will degrade within 1 or 2 years, plus when it is still in use, it will be carried so your business will have maximum exposure. For example, rice dishes come in many forms, including glass plates, plastic plates, zinc plates, melamine plates, and even paper plates made from water hyacinths. These plates have the brand embossed on them to create exposure for the company. Similarly, you can create a cover for the power bank made from a cheap plastic band with a call-to-action message and other promo ideas for your business. Generally, you can use the following ways to achieve this idea.
Zipped pocket, zip case, any hard case, for example, like a CD case that is waterproof, shockproof, has a storage area for the power bank charger and charger cable. You can actually have such a case molded to your specific dimensions that are useful and practical.
Clear soft plastic tubes, which are PET, can work excellently for this project because you want a transparent outer case with the advantage being that the product is visible inside.
3. Power Banks as a backup battery
The similarity of the backup battery to the power bank
You might be wondering why there are so many backup batteries for sale today and if you can’t use a power bank for the job so that you can stop buying so many batteries.
The issue between the backup battery and the power bank answer is that they are both hardly different when it comes to their assembly. Both have the same main components which include
The outer structure material may be made of plastic or metal, such as aluminum, etc.
Li-Ion (Lithium Ion) or Li-Polymer (Lithium Polymer) batteries
Cycle to optimize Or protect circuit against the danger that may be caused by a short circuit
Accessories included in the kit, such as a charging cable, charger for various phone models.
Well, it’s in the components that make a difference in price. Moreover, it is the price that will be a significant determinant if you will just get a backup battery or a power bank.
The power bank may be a bit higher when it comes to price than the regular backup battery; however, the power bank lasts longer, so in the long run, it might be more economical to use it as your backup battery.
4. Power banks charge other less common electronics
I am sure you’ve asked yourself if your power bank can charge something else other than your smartphone. The power bank can charge any item that is within its voltage capacity range. For example, if you want to charge your laptop, then you will require a power bank with a higher voltage output of about 16V to 20V.
However, most power banks have and use 5V USB outlets, which basically means that without a power bank with a higher capacity output, it might not be possible to charge your laptop or any other item for that matter.
Because most of the smaller power banks have an output of 5V, you will only be able to charge your smartphone or other smaller devices. But did you know that you can use a power bank to fire up your TV?
Yes, it is definitely possible to watch TV, run the fans or coolers and even power up your drone. Those higher voltage power banks do this. So if you think the following items are necessary for your livelihood, then you should invest in the aforementioned higher voltage power banks.
5. USB-C and Wireless Power Banks
The quick advancement of modern mobile technology has infused today’s portable power banks with the latest in USB-C charging capabilities to get back to your day quickly.
These power banks are very capable of charging not only your mobile devices but also your laptops and other devices as well.
They are usually constructed with premium materials to provide a 92% efficient battery cell, which provides a reliable charging experience. They are blazing fast, so the iPad Mini can charge 3.5 hours more quickly than with the typical power bank.
They provide 10k and above mAh capacity, which is equivalent to 500+ recharges, and they have enough ability almost instantly to charge most devices and provide the fastest charge possible.
They also incorporate multiple layers of safety protection into the box so that your equipment will be as safe as possible. The foundation of this safety comes from the Grade A lithium-ion polymer cells. This has been combined with a four-layer smart safety protection circuit that protects from burnout, shorts, and other common portable battery issues that come up with the competition. The power bank within this battery will also automatically adjust to the device that has been connected to it.
The power output levels are based on the connection instead of providing one standard flow rate.
They are compatible with specific Bluetooth devices, GPS units, older generation Apple products like the iPod classic or Nano, the LG G2, or the HP Touchpad. They also have an easy LED indication system that shows the charging and discharging status. As long as you are using a charging cord that came with your device, the experience of using this external portable battery is virtually effortless.
You can charge more than one device because they have dual output ports that will charge two devices at the same time. This is where up to 3.1 amps of output come into play. For example, the left port offers a 5V 2.1A charging experience, while the right port provides a 5V 1.0A charging experience.
The input which is for charging the power bank is usually directly positioned in between these two output ports, allowing for a more efficient user experience.
Instead of having charging cords coming out in multiple directions, the flow of this design is simplistic yet functional and still keeps the preferred smart device fully charged.
Similarly, some of the newer power banks have wireless charging capabilities to help you eliminate the need for wires and cords. | https://medium.com/@pivoi/the-popularity-of-power-banks-is-exploding-as-the-slim-convenient-gadgets-become-trendy-2030605f3217 | ['Pivoi Usa'] | 2021-04-14 07:47:37.597000+00:00 | ['Wireless Charging', 'Power Port', 'Power Bank', 'Charger'] |
Anguilla 2015 | Had a great time with the fam in Anguilla this year! The first picture in the mix is a collage of 47 photos stitched together from the cliff overlooking Sandy Ground on South Hill. HERE (78MB) is the full size if you want to take a look. The kids were all much better than we had anticipated them being and everyone had a pretty good time! | https://medium.com/andytillo/anguilla-2015-f2b9fdffbae3 | ['Andy Tillo'] | 2017-02-18 19:22:43.616000+00:00 | ['Carribean', 'Caribbean', 'Anguilla', 'Crocus Bay'] |
How to Deliver Constructive Criticism | Criticism, like making a sandwich
No one likes criticism, but it’s a part of working life. When you’ve got to give criticism, it’s most productive to do it in a positive way. Think of delivering criticism like making a sandwich.
The first layer, the bread, should be a positive compliment, something the person has done well. The filling is the criticism, the meat, cheese, lettuce, and condiments of your message. And finally, the top layer of bread is an action plan with follow up ending things on a positive and productive note.
Begin with a positive compliment
Let’s pull those ingredients apart again and consider how they fit properly together. Delivering constructive criticism should begin with a positive compliment. People react positively when complimented about something done well. They’re less defensive and more open to ideas and ways to change. It allows them to take the criticism that follows as a specific instance and not a general condemnation.
Start by praising what went well before turning to the not so well. You’re critiquing, not attacking. Keep your delivery, tone of voice and body language positive. After the positive compliment comes the criticism or what needs to change.
Focus on behavior
Don’t jump straight into the criticism. First, ask for your delegate’s thoughts and opinions. Ask your delegate if there is anything they might have done differently and get their opinion on how things went. You’ll be surprised how often they’ll know what’s gone wrong and readily acknowledge it when they feel safe and not under fire.
They may even have their own ideas about how to improve. And that makes it much easier to work with them to get better results. If they don’t know or acknowledge what went wrong, you’ll have to tell them. Focus on their behavior on the process and how they went about it. This isn’t about their false as a person, it’s about an action or behavior what the person did not who the person is.
Don’t deliver the issue
Ensure your delivery is concise and to the point. Once they understand the problem move on, don’t deliver the issue. Agreeing on an action plan and follow up is the final part of the criticism sandwich. This is how you leave things on a positive note. Here is where you both agree on how they’re going to improve and move forward.
Agree on clear learning points and what steps you’re each responsible for in order to ensure that improvement happens. Make them feel that they’ve got every chance to succeed and show them that you mean it. Most importantly, remember to plan for follow up. Schedule times when you can offer help and guidance, but also for checking in on their progress.
Stay calm and positive
Giving criticism requires thought and care. Don’t do it when you are angry. Don’t make it personal. Both are counterproductive; instead stay calm and positive. Focus on the process and the behavior not the individual. Remember, you’re making a sandwich with positive comments and action plans on the outside and constructive useful criticism on the inside.
The tasty results are moving forward with better performance and better results for you, your team and the organization. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/how-to-deliver-constructive-criticism-df93fdf461fd | ['Sorin Dumitrascu'] | 2020-11-17 17:12:30.239000+00:00 | ['Critical Thinking', 'Leadership', 'Crticism', 'Management'] |
Artists Can… | Interview Elizabeth Barden
‘Artists can enter into the recesses of the unfathomable pit of human existence, and completely fail in their attempts to extract any kind of reality there.’
The work of Anthony J. Parke is intricately and deeply layered in symbolism and personal meaning. He references psychopathological scenarios, Jungian theories, biblical tales, myths and iconography, in an endeavour to explore the human condition and the world around him.
How has your style evolved and what contributed to the changes?
In general my work has grown more psychologically complex and darkly labyrinthine. As such it has revolved into something more authentic in its reflection of my inner obsessions and complexes. I mostly turn to a broader spectrum of human psychopathology for stimulus. I now lean closer to the existential concerns of the destitute mind rather than the leafy, suburban still lives which infested early works. If you metaphorically slice open a human’s psychic entrails they are no less beautiful than the demure skin which encases it. So I paint skin and the metaphorical entrails with equal desire and fascination.
What is your favourite/ least favourite part of the creative process?
Every element is a fascinating and essential journey. I don’t really differentiate between each element. They merge into an holistic, beautiful performance: from creating concepts, to research, to applying active imagination, to dalliances with madness — it is all essential, and each element possesses an irrefutable value which has an abiding allure.
Describe a moment you had an epiphany concerning your creative life.
It was the day I realised I didn’t need permission to create. Having been expelled from art school I regarded that as a death sentence to a creative life. When many years later I saw beyond this, I felt supremely empowered to create freely and authentically. Since then I’ve had a deep distrust and dislike of artistic institutions for their inability to cater for the socially unique.
Detail a moment which was the highlight for you, thus far.
The day my gallery rejected my new work. That day I was reborn into an authentic skin, exfoliated from the skin of pretence, commercialism and pretty hyperrealism. Another highlight has been my perfect, abject failure in the world of art, such that I’ve been thrust to the outer extremes, free and unencumbered to create beyond fear of any external pressures.
What do you hope to convey through your work?
An apocalyptic social underbelly reflecting the complex psychopathology of human existence. Having been raised in the psychotic, delusional world of an elder sibling, raised in the horrors of insanity, I have come to love the debauched and the deluded and prefer to seek out psychologically marvellous personalities as though they were distant relatives. Confronting the sane and sanitised are ideal for afternoon tea, but offer little in the way of stimulation for the creation of my artworks.
How would you like people to interpret your work?
Everything I do is fabricated in a make believe world that is constructed out of implausible thoughts and gauzy materials. It’s never been enough for me to leave an audience entirely to their own devices when interpreting this fabricated world. Without an artist’s meaning in a work there is a heavy void. You cannot create a good film without a keen script, an efficient director, and intellectual intent. This is what makes filmmaking so powerful and unrivalled. Art is always first and foremost about the artist, their images and ideas, not the general reveries of the unknown audience.
‘VISAGES D’EVE’
The audience’s interpretation should always follow and be guided by the artist’s primary expression. I always look to attempt to release a percentage of the meaning of my work. I cannot paint without writing about it first. Words precede painting. In an unstable world it is quite-likely a pointless attempt to control; to order the unfathomable nonsense of my disparate thoughts. Such are the remnants of an out-of-control childhood borne into chaos. Control. By offering a certain degree of meaning I seek to ensure a willing audience travels (at least in part), on my chosen journey. From there, they can deviate at will. It is true, left to their own devices their own interpretation may be far richer than that of the artist’s. As such the artist may delimit such interpretation by strangling a work with their own limited meanings. But that should not be the concern of the artist. We should rarely paint for an external world (an audience), rather, paint for one’s own internal audience. That is the source of authenticity. While your art may be repetitive, your thoughts should always make you unique. What I think about my artwork, ‘is’ my artwork. My thought-words, and my images, are not separate things. To not write and share my meanings is to deliver only half my creativity, as such its existence would be amputated. I give no qualitative notion of these thoughts. I’m sure for most they’re poorly formed and extremely uninteresting. But they are mine and integral.
What advice would you give to up and coming artists.
You will choose to create, but just like the gravitational pull of planets can warp and weave the orbital journeys of nearby satellites, so may the desire to sell your art for money, warp and weave your original creative impulse. Nearly all artists have to sell to survive. Being a professional artists means selling work to finance the creation of more work. The authentic artist will refute the gravitational pull of commercialism and attempt at all costs to stay true to an authentic self while still selling and producing. | https://medium.com/@anthonyjparke/artists-can-7606d1c0c817 | ['Anthony J Parké'] | 2020-12-18 13:53:42.013000+00:00 | ['Anthony', 'Parke', 'Symbolism', 'Art', 'Painting'] |
75M People Voted for Donald Trump | What if I was to tell you we could eradicate racist biased behaviors in four generations? I know it’s crazy, but exciting concept huh?
Half the country is considerate of their fellow man. Some Trump supporters voted for him because of his policies, economics, or because they feel whites should rule supremely.
Chappelle was right! You use to love masks! Couldn’t get enough of them. What happened there? You and masks fell out?
As I watched the vote count go up, Biden and Donald gaining neck and neck, I realized what she meant when Angela Davis said it wasn’t enough to not be racist, you have to be anti-racist. To be actively anti-racist means to breed out elitist traits in your children and your community.
You have to defend someone being attacked by a Karen. You have to be willing to hear hard things, process them, and hold yourself accountable. Being anti-racist means bringing external consultants into your workplace. Don’t ask Blacks & minorities in your office to take on the additional work of diversity, inclusion, equality, and anti-racism on top of their daily tasks. Call on the professionals of The 11 Step Program brought to you by The Bias Rehab Center. | https://medium.com/justice-for-all-of-us/75m-people-voted-for-donald-trump-655f3c5a878b | ['Brooke Sinclair'] | 2020-12-02 15:27:02.944000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Technology', 'Venture Capital', 'Silicon Valley'] |
The Azure Journey: Configuration Management | Somewhere in Aruba — 2018
If you’ve been in the IT business on the technical side for any length of time, you’ve most likely encountered at least a few different ways to manage configuration for applications. Taking a look backwards, I’ll share some of mine but then we’re going to take a step forward and explore a service based approach to it called Azure App Configuration.
Before we get started, we should at least seek to understand the goals behind configuration management. The fundamental core of this practice is simply to manage the configuration differences for applications as they are deployed from one environment to another. While it may appear on the surface that CM and Security are the same, their relationship tends to be intertwined. CM cares about practices that help manage the settings (e.g., connection strings) of applications whereas Security cares about protecting those settings from people who shouldn’t see their values. To keep this conversation a little higher level, we’ll confine “Configuration Management” to the management of a connection string for a database server. We’ll add one additional item to the mix; Feature Flags.
Feature Flags
No organizational DevOps practice is complete without the incorporation of feature flags. Feature flags at their heart are simple bit values (On or Off). Their goal is to promote “roll-forward” deployments as opposed to “rollback” deployments. In practice, rolling an application backwards has as much or more risk than rolling it out. An application with any complexity will typically cost both time and budget to roll back. Time-consuming rollback impacts the bottom line either in the form of application management cost or lost revenue.
On one engagement, we were asked to roll out a new feature to improve performance. The underlying service had been improved to use Azure Search to return data.
Widgets Sell!
In “the old days”, we would have refactored the service and rolled it out hoping for the best. With a feature flag in place, we could roll out a new version of the service keeping the original in place until we turned on the feature flag. The size we picked for Azure Search couldn’t handle the number of requests. When we turned the flag on, the queued requests metric shot through the roof threatening downtime (lost sales). We quickly turned the flag off reverting the application back to the slower but more stable former version of the service. This allowed us time to resize Azure Search and then turn the feature back on for vastly improved performance.
Historic Configuration Management
Configuration Management has evolved over the years (decades now) from completely manual to some degree of automation. I thought I’d share some of the “flavors” I’ve seen over the years. Some of them were the best we could have at the time while others are borderline “questionable”.
Human Touch Deployment
One of my least favorite approaches to managing configuration is the manual approach. As much as we like to believe we are machines, we humans aren’t. We are exceptionally error prone. That said, we are not necessarily the best option for repetitive tasks like configuring connection strings. My favorite adventure was discovering a fully manual approach where developers would compile the code locally then attach the compiled binaries to an email. The email was received by a “Configuration Manager” who followed the instructions in the email to deploy changes.
This really happened!
Configuration Deployment Avoidance
This is another approach I’ve seen where configuration is all performed on the application servers (or app services). It’s another of the manual deployment approaches that introduces the risk of downtime because a human (remember we’re error prone!) is responsible for ensuring that the new connection string is available on the application server. While it makes the inside attack surface smaller, it almost always results in failed deployments. As well, it makes upgrades challenging. It’s not unusual these days to add assembly binding redirects (ABR). A number of packages available from nuget all have dependencies. When we upgrade one of them, an ABR is needed to ensure that requests for version 1.2 can be redirected to version 1.4.
In my personal opinion, this type of CM is a born of laziness more than anything else.
The All Hands Deployment
Another flavor of Human Touch Deployment is the “All Hands” version. We used this approach at a company I worked for. Every quarter, the entire company committed to a weekend of rolling out the application. Think Human Touch Deployment on a massive scale.
I remember waking up Saturday morning under my desk, wondering when I was going to die so that it could just end.
The Analog Safe
Most of us these days are using Azure Key Vault to varying degrees. One of my clients used the analog version of Key Vault and kept all the application secrets in an envelope in a safe he had bolted to the floor of his office. This particular application was a first foray into service oriented architecture. The application front end was a very thin client with a number of services supporting each of its respective features. A deployment required an additional trip to his office so that he could open the safe and get out the secrets which he then applied to each service following the deployment.
Compliments of HarborFreight.
Multiple Web Configs
Before Microsoft introduced Web Config Transformations (and a really cool tool called Slow Cheetah extended it to all XML configuration files), many of us stored web.[Environment].config in source control. Either a custom build server task or a manual post-deployment task would then take the appropriate configuration file and rename it to web.config.
Configuration Transformations
I don’t recall when Microsoft introduced these but a quick “Google” reveals that configuration transformations were introduced in 2012. At build time, the msbuild engine would take the configuration (Debug, Release, etc) and apply XML transformations from the respective web.[configuration].config to the web.config file. This approach moved the needle further away from human touch deployment to the end goal “No Touch” Deployment.
Protecting Secrets
With the exception of the more centralized human approaches above, all of the aforementioned approaches exposed the configuration of upper environment application secrets to source control and invariably to all the engineers, testers, project managers and administrators of source control. For some applications, this isn’t a huge security concern. For example, a CMS that shows content to anonymous end users isn’t a risk. At least, it isn’t until that employee who got fired decides to get revenge and replace all the media assets (images) with images of body parts in various states of undress. This actually happened a few years back and No, I wasn’t the person who did it but my clients’ brand image was severely tarnished resulting in lost revenue. Ultimately, ANY configuration value that results in access to back ends can create the potential for a security breach. Many membership providers capture the bare minimum for registered users usually in the form of email address, name, phone number and password. This is quite often enough information for a “bad guy” to start down the path of impersonating the user. Many of us have bad habits on the internet and will often use the same password across sites. This combined with the capture of membership data opens the door for identity theft or at bare minimum, some embarrassing pictures on facebook.
Environment Variables
Applications that rely on environment variables for their secrets is a great first step towards protecting an application. They offer ease of setup from the development environment to production. Unfortunately, they still offer people with enough credentials to see them and they are typically stored “in the clear”.
DevOps Tokenization
Moving configuration to a build server is another widely used approach. Instead of storing the values in environment variables, they are stored in a list of key/value pairs and typically replace tokens stored in configuration at build or release time. Without encryption though, the values are still stored on disk in the clear and anyone with access to the server can see the values once they’re deployed. Even moving secrets to Azure Key Vault and exposing them at build/compile time results in the same thing, “in the clear” data at rest.
Encrypted Configuration
If you’re going to use configuration transformation, this approach helps ensure that prying eyes can’t see the upper environment configuration in the clear within source control.
Azure Key Vault
Key Vault moves the management of secrets (our connection string) to a secured API. With access policies, we can then secure the secrets from prying eyes and the data is encrypted at rest. If you pick any of the non-encrypted approaches above though, you’re still exposing your connection string.
Azure App Configuration
Azure App Configuration is a “newish” service offering from Azure. Per its description “Azure App Configuration allows developers to store, retrieve and manage access to application settings all in one place. It is easy to set up and simple to use from any application. It gives developers the ability to modify an application’s behavior on demand without having to redeploy the application. App Configuration offers the following benefits:
A fully managed service that can be set up in minutes.
Flexible key representations and mappings.
Versioning with labels.
Point-in-time replay of settings.
Comparison of two sets of configurations on custom-defined dimensions.
Enhanced security through Azure-managed identities.
Complete data encryption, at rest or in transit.
Native integration with popular frameworks, including .NET and Java.”
In short, app configuration is your “one stop shop” for configuration values. One key take-away here though is the bullet “enhanced security through Azure-managed identities”. Managed identities (V User Identities) are tied to the app service. If the app service is removed the managed identity goes bye bye as well. If your shop is a stickler for infrastructure as code (provisioning via ARM templates) this may not be a problem for you.
When you’re planning your system architecture, one thing you’ll need to think about is how much you’ll want to mix settings within the same App Configuration service. For higher availability on larger architectures, you may want to consider having multiple app config services. In fact, Microsoft’s documentation on Best Practices suggests a configuration instance per region.
Simple Key/Value Pairs
App Configuration supports key/value pairs (similarly to Key Vault) although per the documentation, it doesn’t recommend storing secrets. You need to decide what a secret is. An API key that allows full access to the underlying data is most likely a secret whereas an email address we send from “[email protected]” is most likely not. Use your best judgement.
Azure Key Vault Secrets
Secrets are best stored in Azure Key Vault. Azure App Configuration supports storage of keys that are a reference to a key vault secret. Behind the scenes, app config just stores a json string that contains the URI to the secret from key vault.
Feature Flags
Feature flags are awesome. Period! When I was first introduced to them, it opened up a whole new world for me. I’ve already talked about it above but it’s helpful to reinforce it here. If you’re not using Feature Flags in your application, you may want to take some time and reflect on your Engineering and DevOps practices.
One thing to remember with feature flags when you’re retrieving them, regardless of the Name you gave them they are case sensitive and the name you provide is preceded by “.appconfig.featureflag/” as a namespace. The result is a json string consisting of id, description, enabled and an array of filters. The filters support advanced use cases such as enabling a new feature for a select group of users. One potential use although I haven’t experimented with it could be something similar to A/B testing or a rudimentary form of personalization.
Static V Transient App Configuration
Based on the needs of your application, you’ll need to determine which settings will hold constant (static configuration) for the lifetime of the application and which should immediately be reflected when app configuration changes (transient). This will determine for you whether you’ll use Config Builders or access the App Configuration via its API. Connection strings (secrets) aren’t likely to change for most applications so they can be relegated to a config builder and accessed when the application starts. The aforementioned “from” email address is most likely another one of those types of settings that’s more static in nature.
Sample API Code
Simple Feature Flag model (minus filters)
Simple Synchronous API client
For settings like Feature Flags, you’re almost always going to need to access them via the API. The sample above, while not production quality, serves as an example of how simple it is to interact with the service.
One thing to be hyper aware of is the cost surrounding excessive querying of the service. The section entitled “Reduce requests made to App Configuration” in the Best Practices link above talks about this in detail and offers some examples of how to avoid “over-querying”.
Take-Aways
If you’re considering improving your DevOps/Engineering practices, I urge you to take a serious look at the App Configuration service and at Key Vault. Additionally, think about how you’re going to release that next feature and what can happen if it breaks the application. There are great articles out there that talk about Feature Flags and how to incorporate them into your application. That knowledge combined with storing them in App Configuration can be transformational for your practices. | https://medium.com/@timpellison/the-azure-journey-configuration-management-de96a7ecd0b1 | ['Tim Ellison'] | 2020-12-18 19:03:42.654000+00:00 | ['Azure', 'Azure App Configuration'] |
GLOBCOIN: INVESTMENT BASKETS THROUGH BLOCKCHAIN | GLOBCOIN Crypto Platform (GCP, or GC platform) provides the infrastructure to build baskets of currencies corresponding to specific communities/users’ needs. This market place is the solution for the challenges that face the traditional investing systems. Investing in cryptocurrency cannot be done through traditional means. They rely so much on market analysts who try to speculate on which currency will increase in value or which one will decrease. Time and again, cryptocurrency value has proved market analysts wrong as it does not follow traditional market norms. They can gain value at a really high rate and the come crashing as investors scramble to put their money in the cryptocurrency. Its value is based on its supply and demand which is hard to predict with the current systems that we have. This unpredictability of cryptocurrencies makes investors shy off from them. However, they often get disappointed when they see the gain in value some of these currencies make. For the general public, they hear and read about stories of how people became rich through investing gin cryptocurrencies and this entices them to also invest in them. The public also faces the challenge of predicting the value of cryptocurrencies.
The GC platform wants to stand out as a place of safe investments for cryptocurrency. GC will use algorithms to help them safely invest for their members. They take away the burden of having to learn all about crypto trading from the public by providing a space where all they have to do is put their money and wait for the returns. The money invested though GC is done via token purchases of the GLX token. These tokens represent a specific value in the normal currency that we use. GC has different categories of investments that will indicate to those wishing to take part in the program how many GC tokens they will require in order to make a particular amount of money. The great thing about this system is that users get to keep the tokens they bought as they gain in fiat every time they lend their tokens.
A platform that deals in such transactions needs to be secure and transparent at all times. GC will employ block-chain technology as it is the most successful technology when it comes to these two aspects. It will also form the basis of decentralization in the GC platform. Blockchain keeps a detailed record of every transactions thus users will gain trust in the GC platform.
GC will revolutionize investing through this platform. Its success may very well be the beginning of the change of tact in investment from traditional ways to a more secure way that may even be able to prevent market crashes. The application of the GC platform are endless. Its success in the cryptocurrency world may lead to its applications in other sectors. The future of investment is bright and if you would like to share in that future, you can help GC develop their platform by supporting their public ICO through https://globcoin.io/assets/ to learn more about how they plan to carry out their activities, you can go through their white paper on https://globcoin.io/assets/whitepaper-GCP-v2.0.pdf | https://medium.com/ottpay/globcoin-investment-baskets-through-blockchain-88325909b84f | ['Martin Muroria'] | 2018-03-20 13:31:54.920000+00:00 | ['ICO', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto'] |
Sacredness of Being | Sacredness of Being
Spiritual poetry
A Sacred Space, Photo by Author, Copyright All Rights Reserved
The sacredness of being
I drink you in
Moments so random
No map can be held
No GPS coordinates set
Breath I take and release
To stillness
Under the tree waits for me
Drumbeat I hear in the distance
As I expand
Always brings a smile
To my face
Sacredness in a drop of water
Resting on a blade of grass
Waiting as time pass
I find stillness speaks
on the canvas of my mind
Where everything is possible
The sacred I feel in this moment
Is hard to describe
The beauty of all fills the landscape
of my mind, and I know true bliss | https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/sacredness-of-being-5f2059ea38ac | ['Rhonda Skinner'] | 2020-10-31 06:02:10.981000+00:00 | ['Spiritual Secrets', 'Sacred', 'Shamanism', 'Poetry', 'Spiritual'] |
Visualizing symptoms, sensations and stories | Drawing symptoms on a body shape
Some of the most fascinating findings came out of analyzing the body drawings; these represented how someone’s body was feeling when they came to the ER. Here’s what the empty worksheet looked like:
What did we learn?
The color red means pain, heat, injury
I’m going to start with the most obvious one, but it’s worth laying down — you’ll see this over and over through the rest of the examples.
Sharp shapes indicate sharp pain
Especially when combined with a red-orange-yellow color scheme:
Star polygons and lightning bolts combined with red-orange-yellow indicate sharp pain. The lower left image shows swirly patterns inside — perhaps this is meant to be a colon?
This interesting drawing seems to show skewers in the head, along with pain in the left eye. What appears to be a delicious slice of pizza in the middle I’ve just realized is a shining light…so this might be a migraine image.
Radiating lines from a wound mean pain
These lines from two different people’s drawings are emanating from a wound and, combined with the color red, seem to indicate ‘pain.’
Dots showed ‘itching’
These red dots were used to show ‘itchy pain’
Cross-hatching meant ‘tightness’
The image on the left shows cross-hatching on core muscles; the one on the right is showing a tight back/back pain.
People drew both literal and figurative sensations
Some people drew organs, like lungs, on the body. I find this interesting because there are not as many metaphors for the sensation of not being able to breathe; so drawing the lungs is a reasonable way to explain what’s going on.
Both people drew lungs as pink — very literal. The one on the left drew yellow liquid in the lungs.
At other times, people drew a metaphor on the body. Below, the drawing on the left shows a lower back ‘on fire’ and the one on the right shows some kind of striated cube on the lower back (interesting that both of these were on the lower back):
The image on the left shows a lower back cut open with a sharp knife and flames coming out. The cube on the right seems to communicate tightness.
Cool tones helped contrast the area of pain/injury with the rest of the body
Looking at the images together, another trend surfaces; some people tended to color the entire body in a ‘cool’ green or blue hue, to indicate that that part of the body was fine. Cool colors indicate calm, while warm colors were used to show when something was wrong.
Participants had different strategies for visualizing mental state
There are a lot of sensations in the mind that are hard to communicate: confusion, wooziness, lack of concentration, worry. People tend to draw these sensations outside of the body, especially the head. You’ll notice a ‘scribble cloud’ theme below:
Three of the above images show a ‘cloud’ around the head. We see words like woozy, help. The person in the lower left seemed to draw an actual brain (with the left and right hemispheres) combined with the words ‘can’t concentrate on anything else.’
Here two different people drew lines coming out of the head:
The lines seem to indicate a feeling of alarm, worry.
People used facial expressions to communicate mood & sensation
Another way to reflect mental state was to draw expressions:
The person on the left is clearly not happy. The one on the right is happy enough but has a lot of questions.
One patient with arthritis actually drew little faces all over the body shape to indicate how a given part of his body felt:
This is a fascinating way to think about pain. It makes me think — what if people could draw or paint on their actual bodies to show how they were feeling?
Body fluids
One person drew body fluids —both sweat and vomit:
Note the colors — sweat is blue, vomit is green, the wound is red.
UTI similarities
It was fascinating to see how two different drawings of a urinary tract infection; the drawings have different colors but overall are very similar. Both include fever, lower left back pain, and pain while urinating.
It hints at the potential of drawings to assist with diagnosis; what do given conditions ‘look’ like, on average, from a symptom/sensation perspective? | https://medium.com/pictal-health/visualizing-symptoms-sensations-and-stories-7de99c7ad1d8 | ['Katie Mccurdy'] | 2018-06-12 15:43:14.443000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Healthcare', 'Patient Experience', 'Healthcare Innovations'] |
Buy Ark Token in India — Step by Step Guide for Beginners | What is Ark ?
Ark is a cryptocurrency that’s focusing on interoperability and user adoption. The ARK team wants to create a sandbox development kit that makes deploying your own blockchain easy and efficient, and they want their platform to be used as a bridge between various blockchains.
Ark is a decentralized system designed to increase user adoption of blockchain technology. The Ark Crew, the self-named development team, has outlined clearly in their whitepaper that they plan on bringing blockchain to the masses by building “A Fast Secure Core Technology” with “Practical Services for Real People.”
Key elements of Ark include:
Support
We provide the tools and resources that enable individuals, developers and startups to apply blockchain technology as a foundation for their own projects, applications and ideas. Leverage
ARK empowers everyone, regardless of their aim or technical background, to quickly and easily leverage blockchain technology. Interoperability
Ark is steadily working to bring interoperability and usability to the blockchain industry. The Crew realizes that bringing a complex idea like blockchain technology to the public eye has to start with exemplary design.
How to Buy Ark Token in India?
Ark token can be bought through on our marketplace, or converted from major digital currencies on our cryptocurrency conversion service. This means you can buy ARK with INR, ZAR, EUR, NGN, GBP, AUD and many more.
Supporting 25 countries including INR, ARK can be bought using the most convenient local payment method; including bank transfers, PayPal, TransferWise, supported fiat deposits and direct deposits.
Buy Ark in India — Step by Step Guide For Beginners
BuyUcoin is an exchange that provides buying and to Selling Ark token in India as well as other cryptocurrencies. Below is a step by step guide to buy Ark token via BuyUcoin:
Step 1 — Open a Digital Wallet
A digital wallet is where you hold your cryptocurrencies and interacts others via the blockchain technology. There are many providers of digital wallets, however, it is important to make a deep research before you decide which one is the best for you. Currently, the most popular digital wallets provider is BuyUcoin.
Step 2 — Register & Open an Account
Once you enter buyucoin/signup, register and open an account that can provide you with their service. Select the type of your account either individual or corporate. Select your country and agree the terms and conditions to register your account for crypto trading.
Open Ark Token wallet on BuyUcoin
Step 3 — Complete KYC
KYC and AML is mandatory for Indian jurisdition. Your data is save and encrypted and is stored in Indian data centers only. You will be redirected to a different URL to complete your KYC. Please be ready with your recent selfie. You will need the images of your pan card. You will need the mobile number with you which is linked with your Aadhar.
Step 4 — Google 2 step Verification
To use 2FA you will have to install an Authenticator app on your smartphone or tablet. Once enabled you will be asked to provide an additional six-digit one-time password along with your email and password every time you login to your BF account. This works only when signing in with email and password. When using Facebook or LinkedIn you can enable 2FA with your social media provider settings.
For security purpose, enabled google 2fa
Step 5 — Add Bank details
Add the credentials of your bank name, holder account name followed by account number and IFSC code details.
Add bank account for buy ark token with INR in buyucoin.
Trade Ark Token in India
ARK token price is up 2.3% in the last 24 hours. It has a circulating supply of 150 Million coins and a max supply of ∞ coins. Bittrex is the current most active market trading it. In order to explore addresses and transactions, you may use block explorers.
Can I Use Regular Money to Buy Ark Token?
Yes, you can use INR to buy ARK token. Some cryptocurrencies aim to become valuable through rarity and limited supply. ARK aims to become valuable by being extraordinarily useful and widely available. It’s a complete system rather than just a token. It has a lot of defining features, but the main one is probably its bridging chains.
These let the ARK system connect with existing blockchains such as Ethereum and endless others that have yet to be created. These bridging chains let ARK adapt to include new features over time and bring the most useful elements of other blockchains into its own ecosystem.
Getting a Ark Token Wallet
The ARK desktop and mobile wallets are highly secure. The intuitive user interface makes them quick and easy to use. Plus, with 8-second block times, you can even see your transactions occur in real-time.
All this means the ARK Wallet is one of the best cryptocurrency wallets out there. Whether you’re checking your balance, sending & receiving funds or voting for your preferred delegate — ARK wallets make it as easy as possible.
Ark Exchanges in India
Buy ARK directly from the ARK Desktop Wallet or through one of 20+ exchanges supplying ARK tokens using BTC, ETH or other trading pairs. If they continue to accomplish everything on their audacious roadmap, there’s no doubt that this ecosystem could be one of the most influential catalysts of blockchain technology adoption.
Ark Mining
Ark operates using a consensus algorithm. Unlike Bitcoin, in which miners secure network transactions, delegates secure the Ark network. There are hundreds of potential delegates, but token holders continuously vote on the 51 that get to be an active, forging delegates.
As a token holder, you’re only allowed to vote for one delegate at a time. The fee to vote/unvote is just 1 ARK with plans to soon decrease this fee to 0.02. So. it’s advantageous to at least vote once for a delegate you support. The more ARK tokens you own, the more powerful your vote.
Reputable delegates have written proposals in which they document how they operate. Many of the popular ones include profit sharing from the rewards they receive when they forge new blocks. If you vote for a delegate with profit sharing, you effectively get dividends over time.
Other delegates run with the intention to fund development projects, giving voters an equity stake, or provide services on applications that may be unprofitable otherwise. With your vote, the choice is entirely your own. The network was launched with 125 million ARK in the genesis (first) block.
Conclusion
No matter which wallet you choose, we highly recommend that you vote for a delegate. It only cost 1 ARK (less than $1 at the time of this writing). You can use your vote to support a delegate who’ll payout dividends from their block rewards or one who’s working on a cool project that you want to support. | https://medium.com/buyucoin-talks/buy-ark-token-in-india-step-by-step-guide-for-beginners-cbe7c54c02c | ['Rinkesh Jha'] | 2020-12-09 18:28:34.490000+00:00 | ['Beginner', 'Guides And Tutorials', 'How To', 'Buy Ark Token In India', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Unbranded: The advent of submissive advertising | This seems to be the overriding sentiment behind the latest trend in content marketing; the lesser-spotted unbranded ad. Long gone are the days when brands unabashedly touted their names. They’ve been relegated to the bottom of the commercial chain, the very last rung of the self-promotional ladder. And there they skulk like hunters in the forest, hoping to lure in unsuspecting consumers with just the right grade of meaty ‘content’.
OK, I’m exaggerating. Unbranded advertising, as the latest spawn of the digital marketing age, is promising. It is rich, shareable content that’s been cleverly designed to engage, inform and entertain, all without making any overt references to the brand or product it represents. Some standout examples are L’Oreal’s content beauty hub Fab-Beauty.com, aimed at ardent beauty enthusiasts, Eurostar’s Somers Town film, which finely spliced art with the travel-bug, and Johnson & Johnson’s BabyCenter.com, providing information and resources for parents.
All successful unbranded content is centred around an idea, rather than a product, and all strive to add value to the consumer. They aim to build engagement, gain traction, and in the long-run, promote brand recognition and/or reinforce brand loyalty. But the ‘long run’ is the operative term there, as unbranded content is a slow burner; not ideal if you are seeking a serious and sudden spike in brand equity.
The purpose of unbranded advertising appears to be less about reaching customers, and more about understanding them. L’Oreal’s Fab-Beauty has identified valuable insights through analysing the behaviour of its website visitors, including how they self-describe and what content they care about. This is where the potential of unbranded content really shines. It provides prime fodder for long-term brand strategy, and if leveraged correctly, can help marketers really hit their mark.
And the raw appeal of the unbranded campaign is undeniable; it relies on quality, not quantity, or reputation. Crucially, it builds trust, the holy grail of brand loyalty. And possibly best of all, the brand needn’t suffer the fallout of a conventional campaign that fails to deliver, as the unbranded ad comes with little risk, and less accountability. But therein, perhaps, lies the problem.
In their efforts to placate a mass market and appear authentic, are brands undermining their integrity and losing touch with their true proposition?
You must remember this
Advertising guru David Trott claimed that only 4 per cent of adverts are positively remembered, while 7 per cent are negatively remembered and a staggering 89 per cent are entirely forgotten. He argues that it is more important to be a part of the 11 per cent, whether positive or negative, than to fall into the vast abyss of the forgotten ads. He, like many of the more ‘seasoned’ creative types, believe it is better to be be daring and bold than to play it safe and sink into obscurity.
In this respect, unbranded advertising is the very definition of playing it safe. It is unaccountable, awkwardly apologetic and essentially grasps at straws for recognition. Like so many digital epidemics, it relies on the power of influencers, and the hope of a namedrop. It lacks balls.
We all know where this need to placate the consumer has come from: the sinister malevolent force of cynicism and shrewdness that is the dreaded generation X/Y/Z delta 1 — the digital youth. They’re widely considered all too savvy for the likes of traditional marketing shenanigans. So utterly infallible to the charms of a well-placed tagline or shiny bit of art direction, that advertising, in its purest form has become original sin.
But can we know this for sure? Do digital natives truly prefer the advertising wolf in the content sheep’s clothing to the more traditional method of simply trying to solve a simple need with a simple proposition? And is it possible that in pandering to the fickle whims of the social media age, advertising is losing its edge?
Of course unbranded and branded content needn’t be mutually exclusive. One way to utilise the power of authentic, engaging content is to simply keep the branding to a minimum, as deftly demonstrated by Australia’s audacious Metro ad. Here the content performs first, before the brand steps up and takes a bow. Another example of the light branding technique hailed from boutique clothing store Wren, whose First Kiss video incited mass curiosity that resulted in both traffic and sales increases. Both examples effectively create intrigue and tap into the zeitgeist, while preserving brand integrity.
Ultimately, there is a lot to be said for the benefits of tapping into the unbranded medium of influence, and with a well executed strategy and some longsighted vision it can definitely pay off. And yet something about it still strikes me as a little obsequious. Being unabashedly branded will always ring true, it’s more authentic and certainly braver. Sure some people will hate it, but as Trott would say, at least they’ll take notice.
By Suzy Kostadinov, Copywriter at Hugo & Cat
To find out more about brand experiences, drop us a line at [email protected] | https://medium.com/nowtrending/unbranded-the-advent-of-submissive-advertising-b18596bcb81f | ['Hugo'] | 2017-06-07 10:38:43.611000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Unbranded', 'Submissive', 'Advertising'] |
What Should I Do If I Want To Start With SEO In 2021 | Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash
If you are brand new to SEO and want to hit the ground running, here are five things you should pay attention to in 2021.
Even you are brand new to Search Engine Optimization. It doesn’t need to be complicated to get started.
Google Core Web Vitals:
Google has a heavy focus on the excellent user experience, also known as Google’s Core Web Vitals.
Make sure that your website is mobile-friendly, easy to navigate, and loads blazing fast.
Google has already announced that in May 2021, load speed is a ranking factor — so fix it before may!
So a shared Webhosting $3.95 per month account is probably not the best place to host your website.
Here are the five most important things to focus on in 2021:
Act as a business if you want to be considered as a business
Google puts a great effort into fighting web spam — especially sites that don’t seem to have other purposes than ranking in Google and make an income from affiliate income or ads.
If you are running a business, try to act like a business — list your phone number, business address, terms and services, and other legal stuff.
Who are you and your business? Use an “About us” to tell about your company, your staff, products, or services.
Keyword research — What keywords are your users using?
It all starts with a user typing a keyword into Google. You need to know what kind of keywords your users are typing in.
You also need to know what kind of search volume (how many times a keyword is typed into Google monthly).
You can use different tools, and if you are on a shoestring budget, you can start by using these ten free keyword tools.
Content is still king.
My best advice is: Write for the users, optimize for Google.
You need to engage with your users, answer their questions, inform and entertain them.
You need to be better than your competitor — if your competitors on page one in Google is using an average of 1500 words, it is pretty safe to predict that you don´t have much of a chance to outrank them with a 350-word article.
You need to make your content more engaging for the users, focus on the user intent behind a search query: What is it the user wants to achieve by typing in a specific keyword in Googe?
Perhaps the user intent is buying a product, a search for a review, additional information, or questions.
It doesn’t need to be hard to create content optimized for SEO. Please read this blog post I made.
Onpage optimization
No matter how good content you create, it would help if you had a strong foundation so Google can read, index, and rank your content.
Structured data, SEO friendly URLs, and keyword optimization — many things can be optimized, which would help Google favor your website.
Fabian has created quite an impressive blog post about how you can structure your onpage SEO. You can read the onpage SEO blog post here.
Link Building — Still a reliable ranking signal in 2021
Most people that are just getting started with SEO seem to struggle with link building.
Even experienced SEO´s can have a hard time locating and obtain the right type of backlinks.
Beginners often make a giant mistake and think that link building is a pure numbers game — the more, the merrier.
Building a ton of low-quality backlinks can end up harming your website, so don´t buy links on Fiverr or similar places.
Google is smart enough to determine if a link has relevance and authority.
Your goal should be to aim for high authority links from websites within the same niche as yours.
It might be a bit overwhelming trying to locate links, but the good thing is that there are tools to help you with the entire process.
You can target sites based on specific keywords and locate relevant niche directories or websites to publish a guest blog post.
There are several more features, and you can read my Link Assistant review here.
Final thoughts — If you are still with me! :-)
Now you got a quick overview, and of course, there are many moving parts in SEO.
The good thing is that it is never too late to get started. Starting a brand new website is often easier compared to the job of optimizing a big established website.
My partner in crime, Fabian, has also written a quick guide to Search Engine Marketing you might find interesting.
You can also download our free Ebook on our website, SEO GEEK LAB.
Sign up for our newsletter and be the first to know what is cooking in the SEO Geek Lab | https://medium.com/seo-geek-lab/start-with-seo-in-2021-28ce6d769a74 | ['Brian Petersen'] | 2020-12-27 22:31:09.518000+00:00 | ['Seo Tips For Beginners', 'SEO', 'Startup Lessons', 'Marketing', 'Online Marketing'] |
The State of Worldwide Giving | The State of Worldwide Giving
Every year, Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) publishes its World Giving Index. The index aims to quantify the scope and nature of generosity around the world, and is based on three equally weighted aspects:
Helping strangers Donating money to charity Volunteering time
These giving behaviours are self-reported: Gallup calls or visits thousands of people in 144 countries and asks them about their actions in the past month. The published data is only sliced by gender and rough age buckets. The scale of generosity (e.g., how much individuals donate) is not captured. The index does not take into account the country’s context, such as religion and culture, political regime, or wealth. In other words, there are limits to what we can learn from Gallup’s data; and yet the World Giving Index is the best reflection of global generosity we have¹.
Why am I telling you all that? Most importantly, to put you on guard. I will praise some countries and rebuke others based on their positions in the index. While there is truth in this data, it is one-sided and likely inaccurate. Just keep that in mind before tweeting that Japan sucks². I also hope that the limitations to what we know will inspire someone to take a deeper look and come up with a better way to estimate worldwide generosity³.
Note that CAF just released World Giving Index 2019. However, due to Gallup making substantial changes to the questionnaire, they decided not to publish the generosity data for 2018, instead focusing on the worldwide giving over the past decade.
#1 Indonesia is the world’s most generous country
In 2018, after a four-year reign of the index, Myanmar was replaced by Indonesia as the world’s most generous country. 46% of Indonesians help strangers, 78% donate money, and 53% volunteer. Indonesia’s GDP per capita is $3,830/year, making it poorer than 117 countries. 5.7% of its population is extremely poor, and 9.8% is poor (though some argue that the official poverty line is much too low). And yet 78% of Indonesians donate.
Here’s the full top-10 list (with Indonesia, Kenya, and Myanmar clearly punching above their GDP-per-capita weight):
Indonesia 🇮🇩 Australia 🇦🇺 New Zealand 🇳🇿 United States 🇺🇸 Ireland 🇮🇪 United Kingdom 🇬🇧 Singapore 🇸🇬 Kenya 🇰🇪 Myanmar 🇲🇲 Bahrain 🇧🇭
#2 Yemen is the world’s least generous country
And it definitely can’t be blamed for that just now. Yemen has been ravaged by civil war and famine. I am surprised 2% of Yemenis still manage to donate, and 36% help strangers in other ways.
Several other countries at the bottom of the giving list are in similarly precarious situations. Palestine has been entangled in a military conflict with Israel for the past fifty years, Afghanistan is a failed state, and Tunisia is still struggling after the Jasmine Revolution of 2011.
#3 Greece should be ashamed of itself
And Lithuania and Latvia, too (full disclosure: I am Lithuanian, and I am deeply ashamed).
Greece is #143 on the generosity list. 36% of Greeks help strangers, 7% donate money, and 7% volunteer. The only country that does worse is the war-torn Yemen. I understand, Greeks have been through a lot these past few years. Unemployment, austerity, civil unrest… And yet their situation is hardly comparable to Palestine’s (2 places higher), Afghanistan’s (7 places higher), or Rwanda’s (40 places higher).
Here’s the full bottom-10 list:
Yemen 🇾🇪 Greece 🇬🇷 China 🇨🇳 Palestine 🇵🇸 Cambodia 🇰🇭 Azerbaijan 🇦🇿 Lithuania 🇱🇹 Latvia 🇱🇻 Afghanistan 🇦🇫 Tunisia 🇹🇳
#4 Japan should be ashamed of itself, too
Yes, Greece is at the bottom of the giving list, but as I said, it has had its share of troubles. Its economy tanked in 2009, and its GPD per capita in 2017 was $18,900/year, half of what it had been back in 2008.
Now here’s an idea: what if we divided each country’s donation score by its normalised GDP per capita? We’d get a very flawed, back-of-the-envelope measure of income-adjusted generosity. After all, while Afghanistan can’t donate much (55% of its population is poor), Australia is 100 times richer and could be expected to chip in.
Measured this way, the dubious honour of being the world’s ultimate scrooge is hereby bestowed upon… Greece. Yes, no matter how you look at it, it seems that Greeks are the least generous people on Earth. But Japan is following close behind, with GDP per capita of $38,300/year, yet only 18% of its population donating money.
Here are the top-10 countries whose populations donate much less than could be expected given their income:
Greece 🇬🇷 Japan 🇯🇵 Luxembourg 🇱🇺 Venezuela 🇻🇪 France 🇫🇷 Switzerland 🇨🇭 Finland 🇫🇮 Norway 🇳🇴 Botswana 🇧🇼 Portugal 🇵🇹
#5 Myanmar is a rockstar
With GDP per capita of $1,250/year and extreme poverty at 6.4%, 88% of Myanmarese nevertheless donate.
And here are the top-10 countries whose populations donate much more than could be expected given their income:
Myanmar 🇲🇲 Haiti 🇭🇹 South Sudan 🇸🇸 Kenya 🇰🇪 Tajikistan 🇹🇯 Nepal 🇳🇵 Kyrgyzstan 🇰🇬 Gambia 🇬🇲 Indonesia 🇮🇩 Sierra Leone 🇸🇱
The two lists above clearly correlate with country incomes. Is that because the metric is too simple? Probably yes. As I said before, existing data is limited, and thus any conclusions I draw are at best approximate. GDP per capita is not always the best measure of individual wealth either. Nor did I take into account economic or gender inequality, both of which affect the proportion of the population that has opportunities to donate.
And yet the fact is that most Myanmarese are poor, and most donate; while most Japanese are rich, and very few donate.
#6 Men are more generous than women
… or are they? As I said, measuring generosity is really really hard. On the face of it, men indeed appear to be more generous: they help strangers more often, donate a tiny bit more often, and volunteer more often.
And yet if you look at the countries where gender differences in generosity are most pronounced, you might notice something curious:
Afghanistan 🇦🇫: men are significantly more likely to help a stranger than women (26 percentage point difference)
Kosovo 🇽🇰: men are more likely to donate (21 p.p.)
Liberia 🇱🇷: men are more likely to volunteer
Belarus 🇧🇾: women are more likely to help strangers (10 p.p.)
Sweden 🇸🇪: women are more likely to donate
Switzerland 🇨🇭: women are more likely to volunteer
The two sets of countries, those where men are more likely to engage in generous activities, and those where women are more likely to do so, also fall squarely on the opposite ends of the Gender Development Index. So maybe women are not less generous than men — maybe they simply have fewer opportunities to act upon their generosity.
#7 Individuals are the greatest source of donations worldwide
This is not something the World Giving Index could tell you, but it is an important fact to help you put the learnings above into context.
In the US, 70% of all charitable giving, amounting to a staggering $410B in 2017, came from individuals. Similarly, in Europe, 53% of donations come from individuals (with data extremely spotty, only 18 European countries taken into account, and findings now six years old, the real impact of individual giving should be significantly higher than the estimated €46B/year).
In other words, individual behaviours matter. Encouraging more people to give as millions join the middle class every year is one way we can have a real effect on addressing the world’s toughest problems. | https://medium.com/@ernes7a/everything-i-thought-i-knew-about-generosity-around-the-world-is-wrong-47d3729a67e0 | ['Ernesta Orlovaitė'] | 2019-10-20 07:28:58.710000+00:00 | ['Economy', 'Philanthropy', 'Giving', 'Society'] |
Wow well done this is such an amazing article! | Wow well done this is such an amazing article! You have covered everything in so much detail and it is very insightful. Keep up the good work! | https://medium.com/@imjoeloughton/wow-well-done-this-is-such-an-amazing-article-6d1cdb3d3a48 | ['Joel Oughton'] | 2020-12-24 15:25:14.832000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Design', 'iPhone', 'Cameras', 'Photography'] |
6 Pitfall to Watch out for while Managing Agile Project | Here are few pitfalls to manage during Agile software development. I highlight 6 critical pitfalls that can lead many projects to failure. They are by no means specific to any one project, this means no matter what software project you’re managing these six pitfalls are always present. Knowing them is the first step to not derail your project and looking back at past projects, both the successful and the not-so-successful, you can identify one or more that were present. Let’s do a deep dive into identifying and managing these pitfalls.
1# Zero Documentation
There is a statement in the Agile Manifesto that reads “….agile focus on working software over comprehensive documentation”. This single statement had many firms focused solely on developing software and neglecting important documentation. However, documentation is crucial in helping the team align with the requirements of the solution.
Suggested article: 5 Hacks for Agile Projects’ Documentation
2# Specialist Syndrome
The term Specialist Syndrome is given when a member of the Dev team is the sole expert in a given skill, for example, front-end or back-end developer. This introduces the risk of a bottleneck in the project. One approach to negating this pitfall is to ensure that a culture of knowledge sharing is fostered among the teams.
3# Context Switching
Context switching is when an individual is shared among multiple projects. This introduces inefficiencies due to the need to refocus when transitioning from one task into another. To eliminate context switching its ideal to have individuals work on one project at a time and a maximum of two.
4# Burying Risk
Risks are not always clear at the initial stages of a project. Further, it is the tendency of the team to downplay potential risks. Therefore without effective probing, we run the risk of having risks buried beneath the day to day activities.
5# Uncertainty in Estimation
In agile we tend to estimate the level of effort of the User stories within our backlog. Estimates are normally a random guess which leads to padding or underestimation, affecting the sprint velocity. One way to avert this pitfall is to make relative estimates based on past experiences.
6# Technical Debt
Technical debt is a concept in programming that reflects extra development work that arises when code that is easy to implement in the short run is used instead of applying the best overall solution (Technopedia). It is normally caused by incorrect estimates, a lack of knowledge on best practices, or rushed deadlines. Technical debt can be averted by observing the corrective measures for all of the other pitfalls mentioned in this article. | https://medium.com/@oldane-graham/6-pitfall-to-watch-out-for-while-managing-agile-project-f98e700d64fa | ['Oldane Graham'] | 2020-06-01 12:01:01.118000+00:00 | ['Agile', 'Scrum', 'Agile Methodology', 'Project Management', 'Risk Management'] |
WhiteCub is India’s Pioneering DairyFree Ice Cream brand led by Ms Sonal, Director Compassionate Choices Pvt Ltd and CEO White Cub. The entire range of flavours is certified Cholesterol-Free… | ABOUT US
WhiteCub is India’s Pioneering DairyFree Ice Cream brand led by Ms Sonal, Director Compassionate Choices Pvt Ltd and CEO White Cub. The entire range of flavours is certified Cholesterol-Free, TransFat-Free and Gluten-Free.
WhiteCub has also won PETA Vegan Foods Awards over two successive years. At WhiteCub, we believe in ensuring the same lusciousness as that present in icecream while keeping our offerings dairy-free. We are able to do so by replacing dairy milk with plant-based milk.
Currently, the brand has three parlours, serving over twenty flavours, in Delhi NCR. Its FMCG tubs are available in retail stores across Delhi NCR, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. Visit www.whitecub.in | https://medium.com/@whitecub/about-us-e83956344d64 | [] | 2020-12-29 07:03:20.882000+00:00 | ['Ice Cream', 'Dairy Products', 'Vegan'] |
Labors of Love Midwifery Helps Women Achieve the Birth Experience They Desire | Giving birth is a life-changing event, and this requires the decision of choosing the best place that can make the entire pregnancy experience safer, easier, and more convenient. These days most women no longer choose hospitals but the best birthing center to achieve the experience they desire.
Labors of Love Midwifery is one of the most trusted midwifery service providers in Greenville, SC. They offer home births in Greenville and deliver at Labors of Love Birth Center, which is a fully equipped birthing center in Spartanburg. It is fine to explore different options for pregnancy and birth but individuals, particularly women, must keep in mind that the overall experience will be significantly affected by their decisions and choices. It takes effort and time to achieve the best birthing experience that they desire. The Labors of Love Midwifery experience is far different from the typical hospital experience.
One of the best things about committing to this birthing center is the freedom it gives to women. The freedom to choose the place they think would best accommodate and embrace them with comfort, convenience, and safety especially during the most challenging times of their lives. For women seeking to find a midwife Greenville, Labors of Love Midwifery is definitely the place they are looking for.
The Serenity Suite, on the other hand, is noted for its shabby chic decoration which reflects simplicity and comfort while delivering quality. The suite is energetic and warm and includes Sanajet tub that alleviates labor pain. There is no need for the baby to leave his parents’ sight as newborn exams are done here.
About Labors of Love Midwifery:
The Labors of Love Midwifery was established after lots of thoughts and prayers. They feel the need of women for better birthing and maternity care. Upon practicing midwifery and becoming an experienced home birth midwife Greenville, they have decided to establish Labors of Love Midwifery and opened its doors on May 2018 to those looking for a reliable birth center in Greenville.
By establishing Labors of Love Midwifery, they believe that this is one of the best things they can do for women in all the areas that they cover. The Labors of Love Midwifery is committed to providing women with the most convenient options for an ultimate birth experience. For expecting mothers, Labors of Love Midwifery can be of great help in their important journey.
For more information, feel free to check out our Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/birthcenter. For further inquiries and assistance, contact Linda Weaver at 18642850574 or email at [email protected]
SOURCE: MAGIC PR [Link] | https://medium.com/magicpr/labors-of-love-midwifery-helps-women-achieve-the-birth-experience-they-desire-b3795072205f | ['Emily Robinson'] | 2019-03-10 14:31:00.621000+00:00 | ['Birth'] |
The Mandalorian — ‘Chapter 2: The Child’ [1x2] ★★★☆☆ | The Mandalorian — ‘Chapter 2: The Child’ [1x2] ★★★☆☆
Following a premiere that set a sombre tone while delivering occasional bursts of cinematic action, “Chapter 2: The Child” was a more entertaining hour of The Mandalorian. This new Star Wars TV series has been cloaked in so much mystery that I’m not entirely sure what it’s supposed to be, but it seems like each instalment’s going to involve the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) having to overcome various obstacles to complete his mission: the safe transportation of the eponymous ‘Child’ to The Client (Werner Herzog).
There’s still not much else going on here, as the Mandalorian himself remains a total enigma and we’re likely never going to see his face. He looks cool and he does badass things, and that’s all we’re getting right now. This episode at least humanised him a little, as we discover he’s not a coldhearted bastard and continues a nice friendship with moisture farmer Kuiil (Nick Nolte). He may only be protecting The Child because it’s a pay packet, but the season’s natural arc is for the Mandalorian to fall in love with this “baby Yoda” and start to realise the child’s safety means more to him than payment and body armour.
Once again, this story leaned heavily on Star Wars iconography. I guess that’s forgivable, at least in the early going, to get everyone on board and accepting of this show as taking place in the same universe. So now we have the Mandalorian discovering his ship has been stripped for parts by Jawas (the small hooded alien with red eyes from Star Wars: A New Hope), then taken away in their Sandcrawler he fails to board. Instead, after getting some advice from Kuiil, the Mandalorian agrees to trade with the opportunistic Jawas, and he’s sent to retrieve an “Egg’ from a cave containing a giant horned beast.
There were some impressive visuals in this hour, particularly with the horned animal the Mandalorian has to fight with damaged armour and failing weaponry. The premiere didn’t strike me as being entirely beyond the budget of many other modern sci-fi shows, particularly Star Trek: Discovery, but a big fight with a CGI monster that doesn’t look even slightly subpar is impressive work. The sequence with the enormous sandcrawler was also handled well and wouldn’t have looked out of place in one of the movies.
We did learn only one new thing from this hour, however: the Child is definitely the same species as Master Yoda, and it’s likewise one with the Force. And we see the baby instinctively use the Force to help the Mandalorian defeat the beast, by making it levitate for long enough to land a fatal stab to the neck. I assume Yoda’s species are naturally attuned to the Force and the Client wants the child because Force-sensitive folk are hard to come by now. (The Mandalorian takes place after the famous “Order 66” the Emperor issued, which resulted in the near-extinction of the Jedi.)
There’s always a chance the baby will be revealed as the progeny of Yoda himself, and maybe they’re setting him up to return in one of the main Star Wars films one day — where he’d be around 100 years old. But who knows. It’s more likely just another way to layer in more Star Wars iconography. And the Child does look adorable, so Disney will sell lots of plushies next year.
Rick Fumuyiwa directed this episode. He’s a Nigerian-American filmmaker I’m not familiar with, but he came close to making the long-gestating Flash movie a few years ago. I thought he did a great job with “Chapter 2”, particularly the three main action sequences: a fight with some Trandoshan warriors in a cave, the sandcrawler pursuit, and the beast fight.
It’s strange, really, because if this wasn’t a Star Wars TV series I may be criticising how it’s just a string of action set-pieces with amazing production values. The characters (what few there are) don’t seem particularly deep and the narrative’s by-the-numbers, but it’s clearly happy to just offer viewers a weekly escape to the “galaxy far, far away” and luxuriate in the atmosphere of everything. The evocative music (a few melodies are now worming their way into my head), great stunts and action, excellent VFX and sound effects, and the general feel of The Mandalorian is working nicely.
Hopefully, we’re going to get some meat on its bones with “Chapter 3”. | https://dansmediadigest.co.uk/the-mandalorian-chapter-2-the-child-1x2-3bcfd0e612ad | ['Dan Owen'] | 2020-04-20 20:56:14.278000+00:00 | ['Star Wars', 'TV', 'Review', 'The Mandalorian', 'Culture'] |
What you need to know about Ethereum | An overview of earning opportunities, wallets, and cryptocurrency features
Let’s start with the fact that Ethereum is one of the largest platforms with the ability to run decentralized applications — the so-called dApps. With a smart contract system, users can make purchases and exchanges, as well as sell services without any intermediaries involved.
This is precisely its most valuable advantage over the renowned giant Bitcoin. Unlike the Bitcoin network, whose internal cryptocurrency, BTC, is determined by a certain number of coins, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum platform does not have any restrictions on the amount of ETH (Hello Federal Reserve!)
ETH has the second largest market capitalization after Bitcoin, which is actively continuing to grow. In December 2018, ETH was worth $86, and now, in December 2020, the price of the coin has exceeded $600.
What is the reason for this growth? Stability, smart PR, even the very perception of cryptocurrency. Now Ethereum, along with Bitcoin, is breaking records in terms of growth and development, and has long been out of line with other altcoins.
As former Messari analyst and trader Chao Wang says, “Everything happens on Ether.”
One of the main reasons is dApps. The open source code of the platform makes it possible to create various applications on the Blockchain. Now you can find a huge variety of games, exchanges, casinos, affiliate marketing services and trading platforms which bring a flow of investments.
There is also a hypothesis according to which one can see a direct correlation between the value of BTC and the value of ETH. Given that, as according to leading analysts, BTC will inevitably grow, it will automatically pull ETH along with it. However, we can see growth in other altcoins as well.
And, of course, don’t forget about the recent launch of ETH 2.0, with finances actively flowing in it. Users are interested in staking, the profit from which, according to Vitalik Buterin, could potentially range from 2–20% per annum. ETH 2.0 should also solve the scalability issue. If the throughput is 15 transactions per second now, then after the transition, the creators promise the ability to conduct 1000 transactions per second, thus speeding up and reducing the cost of transactions, while attracting more investors and potential projects.
By the way, after the recent growth in the cost of transactions on ETH, many dApps switched to the TRON protocol, but Ethereum is not losing ground. It remains the first platform in terms of transaction volume, and after the launch of ETH 2.0, its further superiority can be predicted.
What attracts users who invest in dApps? Of course, the opportunity to make money. Passive income is the main goal of participants in various applications. Many dApps have a minimum entry threshold of $5 and more.
By fulfilling various conditions of applications, for example, completing quests, casting spells with a pretty witch (LiteBringer), playing dice (SeriousDice), or simply inviting new users (FORSAGE), users accumulate tokens, which are then exchanged for fiat money.
Also, the trick is that the longer the tokens earned by the user are stored in the application, the more they multiply. And if average users can withdraw, say, $100 per week, then real toughies after three months or six months of active work can buy cars and apartments.
The first thing you need to work with ETH is a wallet.
Of course, there are many good wallets with different functions: mobile apps that can be downloaded from the AppStore and Google Play, desktop versions for laptops and PCs, web wallets that work through an extension in the browser.
Based on user experience, we recommend using proven and convenient services:
Coinbase (mobile app)
TokenPocket (both smartphone and desktop versions)
Metamask (browser extension)
In general, ETH wallets are certainly an important and even basic thing for any activity, be it trading on the exchange, DeFi games, or making money on the Internet.
These are the most basic things you need to know about Ether.
Make further research, get inspired, earn, and of course remember that the future belongs to the crypto! | https://medium.com/forsage/what-you-need-to-know-about-ethereum-f0714a3bfeec | [] | 2020-12-10 10:45:27.624000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Smart Contracts', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Business'] |
Make a Resolution and Read These 5 Books in 2021 | Make a Resolution and Read These 5 Books in 2021
5 Books to Read to Become a Pro-Reader Instantly
Photo by Zac Durant on Unsplash
A year filled with unwanted circumstances, and fear has come to an end. Still, I find this year special for me because this year I have truly achieved what I could not in the past years.
Like me, there are many outs there who have achieved so many great things and pursued their passion or explored their creativity this year.
2020 is a year of blessing in disguise.
I have read over 21 books in the year 2020 so far. And there 5 books which I would like to recommend to others who are or want to take a resolution of reading books in the coming year 2021.
I got you, my friends. These five books are thought-provoking, which will nourish your mind and will help you find your better self.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
This book has truly changed my perspective of doing things. It is one of the best books which I’ve read this year.
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Here, the author James Clear has explored and described some practical ways to build your habits, which eventually turned into a system that will help you achieve your goals quickly.
He focuses on topics like;
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behaviour. If you want better results like your idol has achieved, try to focus on their system instead of focusing on their success. Four Laws of Behaviour Change are a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are making it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying.
There are some visual representations in the book which I adored.
Atomic Habits is a life-changing practical guide that you can implement easily into your life to see some changes. James Clear has also explained some prominent examples which are convincing and smart.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
I was totally unaware of this book before reading it, but by the time I crossed the Steve Jobs example of why there are several factors behind his success.
I was completely into it. It took me 3 days to complete this book and I have also listened to the audible version, which is also outstanding.
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Outliers is based on the stories of successful people and it explores the un-explored way which tells us that there are not only passion, hard-work, and goodwill involved behind all these successful billionaires.
But many other things helped them to become who they are today.
I truly liked the 10K hour rule concept, which describes that if you want to be a master in any kind of work. You need to have at least 10,000 hours under your belt to attain that position.
Malcolm is a phenomenal story-teller and his examples are pretty well researched. It keeps you hooked till the end.
There so many insightful research and theories which you have never heard of or even tried to think of. Totally out of the box!
Outliers: The Story of Success, go give it a shot. It’s worth it.
Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
If I have summarised my experience with this book, I would say it is a hell of a fun ride, filled with laughter and learning moments.
It is a love letter to life.
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It is a memoir filled with remembering life experiences from the life of Matthew McConaughey, written by Matthew McConaughey and also narrated by Matthew McConaughey (if you are listening to the audiobook version).
I started off with a book and later shifted to an audiobook version because listening to the enchanting voice of Matthew feels so much energy. It feels like I’m in the moment experiencing those things in front of my eyes.
I love his accent, the way he tells ‘Notes to self’ sections, and all the minute details about his life during Australia and how he landed on the audition of Dazed & Confused, and many more.
“Persist, pivot, or concede. It’s up to us, our choice every time.” — Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey
One thing which I learned from this memoir is to appreciate life as it is. To find greenlights instead of red and yellow.
Highly Recommended.
The Trial by Franz Kafka
It is sad knowing Kafka left this world so early without knowing how talented he is which we all consider now years later. He is the prime example of innate talent.
I have read ‘The Castle’ and recently the first fiction I read this year is ‘The Trial’ which literally blew my mind because it is so complex that I had to see the movie by the same name directed by Orson Welles in 1962 starring Anthony Perkins.
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In its uncomfortable portrayal of a society where people are watched by the secret police and unexpectedly detained, the trial is profoundly thought-provoking, representing the social unrest in Europe during 1914.
I do not want to explain anything in detail because it is worth reading and to know how Kafka raises some questions which are noteworthy.
Reading fiction like this always plays with your mind because it is boring yet challenging to grasp at the start, but it awakens that spark in your mind to learn and explore themes you haven’t discovered.
The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud.
The discovery by Freud that the dream is the medium by which the unconscious can be investigated is arguably the most revolutionary move forward in psychology’s entire history.
This book caught my attention because ‘Dreams’, the word itself, is fascinating and worth exploring.
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Freud discusses some dreaming-thinking literature and his principles are entirely drawn from his own research, but they also draw on other people’s experiences and works in the field which would be unsurprising in itself.
There are also some sections of the book which illogical for our period to believe in. But if you want to understand the psychology of dreaming, Freud’s work is absolutely worth reading.
It is fascinating to look into Freud’s research about dreams and the psychology behind dreaming.
“Dreams are never concerned with trivia.” — Sigmund Freud
So these are my 5 book recommendation, which I want you to read and make a resolution for 2021 to read these five books next year.
I am damn sure that all these books are excellent and will not disappoint in any aspect. Still, everyone has their own taste, but still.
If you got any great recommendations for me please comment down your response below. I am eager to explore more books for the next year.
Keep Reading. | https://medium.com/illumination/make-a-resolution-and-read-these-5-books-in-2021-7d9201cedaf6 | ['Neil S.'] | 2020-12-18 12:21:15.449000+00:00 | ['Mindfulness', 'Books', 'Habits', 'Novel', 'Writing'] |
Covid-19 Interactive Visualization | Visualizing covid-19 data to understand the impact it had on the American population.
The novel corona virus has caused more than 200000 deaths worldwide.
In this post i’m going to walk you through how to build an interactive dashboard of your own using only python tools and api’s and publish it on a provider like binder or heroku.
First off, the raw dataset is available and provided by Johns Hopkins and can be found on their github page. This is focused only on US data but the same can be extended to other countries as well.
Get started by making sure you have python, Jupyter notebook installed and ready to go. I’ll be detailing only a few of the operations performed. Go ahead and try all of it by yourself :) or find the entire project on my GitHub.
You will need to install the following python files in order to perform analysis and visualize your data.
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from IPython.display import Markdown, display
from datetime import datetime as dt
from ipywidgets import interact
import chart_studio.plotly as py
import plotly.graph_objs as go
from plotly.offline import iplot, init_notebook_mode
import cufflinks
from plotly.subplots import make_subplots
cufflinks.go_offline(connected=True)
init_notebook_mode(connected=True)
import dateutil
import plotly.express as px
pandas — To read the data and create subsets of data using dataframes.
matplotlib — Python’s go to visualization library.
datetime — Intuitive library to deal with time series data and works well with dataframes.
ipywidgets — Creating widgets in Jupyter to make the dashboard more interactive.
plotly/cufflinks — Better and interactive visualizations.
Gather the data from the links provided in the git repo.
x1 = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series/time_series_covid19_confirmed_US.csv'
x2 = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series/time_series_covid19_deaths_US.csv'
x3 = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abhim-12/Covid-19/master/population.csv'
x4 = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/abhim-12/Covid-19/master/state-codes.csv'
Use the pandas read.csv() function to read the data into dataframes:
conf = pd.read_csv(x1)
death = pd.read_csv(x2)
pop = pd.read_csv(x3) # US Population data
codes = pd.read_csv(x4) # US State Codes
Use the head() function to get an understanding of what the data contains, the columns, data types etc.
Perform some data cleaning (like renaming columns, dropping) to make it more coherent and presentable. Also remove any unnecessary columns.
del death['Population']
def filt(df):
df.drop(columns=['iso3','code3','Admin2','Country_Region'],axis=1,inplace=True)
df.rename(columns={'Province_State':'State'},inplace=True)
df=df.reset_index()
del df['index']
The first dataframe (z2) we create merges the confirmed cases and deaths frames State-wise. Next we create a few columns to infer based on the data the severity of the situation in each state.
cols = conf.columns.to_list()[-1]
ctemp = conf.groupby('State').sum()[conf.columns[-1]].sort_values(ascending=False).reset_index()
dtemp = death.groupby('State').sum()[death.columns[-1]].sort_values(ascending=False).reset_index()
ctemp = ctemp[['State',conf.columns[-1]]]
dtemp = dtemp[['State',death.columns[-1]]] # State level aggregated data
z2 = pd.merge(ctemp,dtemp,on=['State'],how='inner').merge(temp2,on='State',how='left')
z2.rename(columns={deaths:'Deaths',confirm:'Cases'},inplace=True) z2['CMR'] = (z2['Deaths']/z2['Population'])*100000 # Crude Mortality Rate per 100000
z2['Infected %'] = (z2['Cases']/z2['Population'])*100 # Percentage of population infected z2['Case Fatality Rate'] = (z2['Deaths']/z2['Cases'])*100 # Case Fatality Rate - Ratio of Deaths out of those infected
z2 = z2[['State','Cases','Deaths','Population','Infected %','CMR','Case Fatality Rate']]
Crude Mortality, Case Fatality Rate and %Infected are calculated and i chose to highlight the states where CFR was greater than the average. The result looks something like this (Find more about styling dataframes here).
Styling the data also helps convey information better, using any method you like.
Our first visualization is how the virus has affected the country as a whole, so we do 2 visualizations — 1)A timeline of impact and 2)A choropleth plot
def timeline(Condition):
tempd = cc.groupby('Date').sum().reset_index()
temph = tempd.loc[tempd['PerDay_Confirm']>0].reset_index(drop=True)
if Condition=='Deaths':
title = 'Timeline of Deaths'
color='red'
if Condition=='Cases':
Condition='Confirm'
title = 'Timeline of Cases'
color='orange'
temph.iplot(x='Date',y=Condition,xTitle='Dates',yTitle='Count',title=title,mode='lines+markers',color=color)
interact(timeline, Condition=['Deaths','Cases'])
So the function defined above generates a time series plot of the impact of the virus. The iplot package allows for plotting interactive plots combined with jupyter widgets. The function interact takes as parameter - the function name, and a variable Condition which is a list containing ‘Cases’ and ‘Deaths’. The plot generates a drop down list where the user can switch between Cases and Deaths across time. The plotly package makes our plots interactive showing us the numbers at each data point without any additional code.
Interactive Time series plot of Impact of Covid-19
Another interesting visualization you can do is to animate the plot showing the effect on each state day by day.
def timeline2(Condition):
fig = px.choropleth(tempz,
locations='Code',
color=Condition,
hover_name='State',
locationmode='USA-states',
animation_frame='Date',
scope='usa'
)
fig.update_layout(
title_text = 'Spread of Coronavirus',
title_x = 0.5,
geo=dict(
showframe = False,
showcoastlines = True
)) fig.show()
interact(timeline2,Condition=['Confirm','Deaths'])
Another intermediate data frame i created contains a merged version of the deaths and confirmed cases each day in each State (State-Day Level).
def transform(df,s): #s is a String with 'Confirm' or 'Deaths'
# To dcast the data and get it at a state-date level
temp = df.copy(deep=True)
temp.drop(columns=['UID','iso2','Lat','Long_','FIPS'],inplace=True)
temp = temp.melt(id_vars=['State','Combined_Key'],var_name='Date',value_name=s) # Source data is cumulative, this gets the numbers per day
temp2 = temp.groupby(['Combined_Key'])[s].diff().fillna(0).reset_index()
p = 'PerDay'+'_'+s
temp2.rename(columns={s:p},inplace=True)
temp2 = pd.concat([temp,temp2],axis=1)
del temp2['index']
temp2 = temp2.sort_values(['Combined_Key','Date',s,p]).reset_index(drop=True)
return temp2
The function is called on each individual dataset(conf & death) and the result is merged to create the output as below:
Now you can perform numerous visualization on the above data frame. One such visualization i performed was displaying the Cases or Deaths Per Day in a Province in a State.
zz['Province'] = [s.split(',')[0] for s in zz['Combined_Key']]
province = zz['Province'].unique()
# Plots Cases/Deaths for a Province per Day
def plots2(State,Province,Condition):
a = zz.loc[(zz['Province']==Province) & (zz['State']==State) ]
if Condition.startswith('C'):
Condition = 'PerDay_Confirm'
color = 'orange'
if Condition.startswith('D'):
Condition = 'PerDay_Deaths'
color = 'red'
a = a[a[Condition].gt(0)]
a = a.sort_values('Date',ascending=True)
a.iplot(x='Date',y=Condition,kind='bar',xTitle='Dates',yTitle=Condition.split('_')[1],title=(Condition.split('_')[1] + " in " + Province + ", " + State),color=color)
interact(plots2,State=z2['State'].sort_values(),Province = province,Condition=['Cases','Deaths'])
You can perform numerous similar plots using the examples i have shown. Moving on to how to create a dashboard out of your notebook.
Voila — voila is a python library that works on top of jupyter to transform your notebooks into dashboards. Installing and running voila is fairly straightforward and instructions are provided on the github page.
Running voila from cmd : voila \path\to
otebook
otebook.ipynb — theme=dark
Your interactive will now look something like this :
Voila dashboard
Now that your dashboard is complete time to deploy it. As i said earlier you can use heroku or binder. Both require you to push your data to git (make sure you have git installed).
Heroku provides a cli to push your projects. You can find more details here. The voila documentation provides clear steps to deploy projects.
And “voila!” you’re done. You have created a dashboard entirely in python without requiring external software and a dashboard that can be shared with your peers, colleagues or others. Add more components use the template for future projects as you see fit. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/covid-19-interactive-visualization-b46966b8b63b | ['Abhishek M'] | 2020-07-15 13:54:20.556000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Python', 'Visualization', 'Data Science', 'Dashboard'] |
Yeedi K650 review: This robot vacuum is tough on pet hair | Budget robot vacuums necessarily make concessions, and that’s okay as long as cleaning isn’t compromised. Yeedi understands this. Its no-frills vacuums have performed consistently well in our tests even if they don’t have much, if any, advanced functionality. The Yeedi K650 continues this trend, adding a bigger dustbin and a tangle-free brush option that while not particularly sexy are most certainly welcome.
The K650 has a fairly minimal design, and its white finish is a nice change from the hordes of black botvacs on the market. On top are an Auto clean button and a Wi-Fi indicator. The power and reset buttons are located on the sides, and there’s 800ml dusbtin in back. The vacuum comes with a rolling bristle brush and an alternative silicone rolling brush, and it has a pair of spinning side brushes.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best robot vacuums, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.You can control the K650 with the Yeedi companion app or your voice, via Amazon Alexa, though the latter is limited to simple commands. You’ll need the app either way to connect the K650 to your Wi-Fi network, switch cleaning modes, enable boundaries, and take advantage of other features.
Yeedi The K650 has a maximum suction of 2000Pa.
This is the first vacuum I’ve used with the Yeedi app, and a clutch of one-star reviews in the Google Play store raised concerns about its usability. The seamless setup put those to rest, at least temporarily. I just needed to scan the K650’s QR code and the app prompted me through a handful of steps to connect to my network without a hitch.
[ Further reading: The best robot mops ]The Yeedi K650’s default mode is to clean your entire space until it’s done or its battery runs out. You start a cleaning job by pressing the Auto button on top of the vacuum or in the app. In this mode the vacuum cleans in a random pattern, using its onboard sensors to navigate around furniture, walls, and other obstacles. The app displays the total area cleaned, cleaning duration, and battery level in real time.
The vacuum’s two other modes—Spot and Edge—can be activated from the app. Spot cleans areas of deep dirt in a spiral pattern, Edge mode cleans along walls and corners.
Yeedi The K650’s silicone brush is great for pulling up pet hair without tangles and getting it into the dustbin.
You can adjust the vacuum’s suction power by choosing from four presets in the app: Quiet, Standard, Max, and Max+. Quiet lowers the decibels to whisper levels, which is a small mercy with so many of us working at home. The suction tops out at 2000Pa.
I used the K650 on my downstairs level to see how it fared on medium-pile carpet, hardwood, and vinyl tile. It generally did well cleaning all three, but I quickly learned the secret weapon for cleaning the carpet was swapping out the bristle brush for the silicone one. With a quartet of four-legged family members, pet hair is a constant issue. These tend to get tangled in bristled rollers, requiring me to remove the hair with a cleaning tool or to cut it off with scissors. The silicone roller agitates pet hair as well as the bristle brush, but the hair gets where it belongs—in the dustbin. The K650’s extra-large dustbin meant that I didn’t have to dump it as often as smaller ones, which tufts of pet hair fill pretty quickly.
Being a budget robot vacuum, the Yeedi K650 doesn’t offer much in the way of features and customization. It doesn’t map your floor plan, so it can’t remember where it’s cleaned and where it hasn’t. That sometimes left areas neglected. You can’t do zone cleaning or set virtual boundaries, either. The app includes a toggle for enabling magnetic boundaries, but Yeedi doesn’t provide any magnetic tape. That’s something I missed with the Yeedi K600 and K700 as well).
Yeedi The Yeedi app tracks the cleaning area and duration in real time.
In terms of app functionality, you can schedule cleanings, view cleaning logs, put the Yeedi K650 in Do Not Disturb mode, and track usage stats of the vacuum’s brushes and filter, so you know when to replace them. There’s also a Find My Robot feature that prompts the K650 to say “I’m here,” so you can locate it.
I never encountered any of the connectivity or usability issues mentioned in those app reviews. Still, given the number of them, Yeedi is hopefully investigating.
The Yeedi K650 sells for about $50 more on Amazon than the Yeedi K600. Both are solid, no-frills cleaners; but if you have pets, the K650’s bigger dustbin and tangle-free brush are well worth the extra cash.
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/@traci00878844/yeedi-k650-review-this-robot-vacuum-is-tough-on-pet-hair-5cff7a73401c | [] | 2020-12-24 11:41:03.924000+00:00 | ['Streaming', 'Music', 'Gear', 'Internet'] |
This Is The Year You Start Feeling Again, However Slowly It Happens | This Is The Year You Start Feeling Again, However Slowly It Happens Thought Catalog Follow Feb 4 · 4 min read
When something in your life hurts you, when you get your hopes dashed and dreams broken and plans don’t unfold the way you imagined, you don’t start feeling sad. You start feeling nothing.
What happens to you in your life doesn’t hurt you because it makes you feel bad, it hurts you when it shuts you down. It hurts you when you want to escape the pain so badly, you resist loving, you resist being, you start to deny your joy, too.
You cannot just be sensitized to one part of your life. You cannot allow yourself to feel joy and block off all the rest. No, when you are really living, you have to open up to a deeper, fuller range of experience.
If you love something, you’re going to worry about losing it. If something brings you joy, it’s also going to bring you sadness. If something comes easily, fear will, too.
When we get hurt by something in our lives, and we don’t adequately process that, we end up closing ourselves off to everything. We end up avoiding, ignoring and denying all the good just because we had one hiccup of bad. We end up ruining our lives because one thing tried to ruin us. In trying to shut off pain, we shut off all of our ability to feel hope and joy and patience and calm and inspiration.
Beginning to heal is not just trying to find happiness again. It’s learning to feel again, however slowly it happens. It’s crying in your car for no reason. It’s being grateful for something small. It’s allowing the waves of grief to crash over you. It’s clutching your pillow and wishing that life would bring someone back, while accepting that it can’t. It’s feeling the sunlight on your skin and being happy about it. It’s relaxing into the now. It’s taking a break. It’s knowing there’s nothing to worry about.
It’s learning to feel again — everything, all of it, without limits.
And this is going to be the year that you do it. This is going to be the year that you train yourself to open up to life again, bit by bit. This is going to be the year that you awaken dormant dreams, remember why you started, fall in love with the people already in your life, and bloom where you are planted.
This is going to be the year you remember that you picked the city that you live in for a reason. This is going to be the year that you realize the life you have now was merely a pipe dream for your old self. This is going to be the year you realize how extraordinarily far you have come.
This is going to be the year that you stop letting your past rob you of your future.
This is the year that you stop carrying what happened with you, because the only way the past becomes the future is if we bring it there.
This is going to be the year that you let yourself be happy even if every good thing in your life has dissolved eventually, because not letting the coldness of the world take from you incremental joy is the ultimate reclaiming of your power. This is going to be the year that you let yourself enjoy every vacation, every train ride, every day of work doing what you feel competent and capable of. This is going to be the year you relax onto the couch and read, uninterrupted, the year that you do not let fearful thoughts creep into your mind and govern your life.
Learning to feel again is how we start healing, because it means that we are no longer going to avoid experiencing the goodness in our lives.
In the process, we learn something important. We realize that the faster we welcome tears and that uncomfortable tightness in our chests, the more quickly it passes. We realize that, maybe, the problem is that resisting the natural ebb and flow of life doesn’t make it doesn’t disappear, but instead ensures that it stays within us. The more is stays within us, the more it breeds and deepens and grows, the more it controls us, the longer it remains.
Thinking about the past won’t change it. Worrying about the future won’t make it better. Resisting calmness won’t shield us from chaos. Denying happiness won’t help us avoid pain.
You either love this moment, or you lose it. That’s all.
While it’s true that almost all of your fears are unfounded, it’s also true that not every single thing in your life is going to go your way. When those days come, be grateful, because when we face our fears, we are no longer controlled by them. Even the worst things that could happen can ultimately just show you your own strength.
But this will only happen if you refuse to let one wrong turn dictate the rest of your choices in life. The worst of it all can free you, or it can chain you, and the choice is entirely yours. | https://medium.com/swlh/this-is-the-year-you-start-feeling-again-however-slowly-it-happens-14c1ed54cbcd | ['Thought Catalog'] | 2020-02-12 07:54:16.104000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Emotions', 'Self', 'Feelings', 'Emotional Intelligence'] |
Answering Legal 10 Day Free Trial Breakdown | Watch to find out everything that’s going to happen during your 10 day free trial! Answering Legal fully integrates with your firm, without changing your current infrastructure! Sign up for a no commitment free trial today! www.answeringlegal.com | https://medium.com/answering-legal-inc/answering-legal-10-day-free-trial-breakdown-2f2579b83172 | ['Frank Cordeira Jr.'] | 2016-09-22 13:07:01.343000+00:00 | ['Lawyers', 'Call Center', 'Virtual Assistant', 'Law Firm', 'Attorney'] |
What Two Teenagers Learned From Watching Every Best Picture Oscar Winner | In the past 18 months, two teenage sisters in North Carolina watched a LOT of movies.
Cecilia (16) and Julie (15) Pitts set out to watch all 87 films that won an Oscar for Best Picture as well as every movie on the AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies list.
Here’s what they had to say about the filmmakers, actors, and movies they watched:
The Filmmakers That Made An Impression On Them
Alfred Hitchcock
Director Alfred Hitchcock during production of The Birds (1963)
“I don't think I had seen any of his movies. But now I think he is amazing at what he does. I consider him to be the best of that kind of film style.” — CP
Stanley Kubrick
“You can tell he has this thing for strange stories. A Clockwork Orange was great and I just like the whole milk room scene…that’s a great shot. I love the part where he’s singing while he’s in the tub.
“And 2001: A Space Odyssey. Oh man, the baby in space! And the scene where he goes to that room that is almost like a plain room and then he sees his old self. It’s like, ‘Whoa!’
“I also liked the whole beginning intro with the ape grabbing the bone. It’s like symbolizing a new start of something — and then the bone going in the air. I had seen that in other things before, but I had never really known where it came from. It was cool seeing that from the original thing.” — JP
The Actors That Caught Their Eye
Meryl Streep
“I just think she gets so into character and she does everything just amazingly. She was great in Kramer vs. Kramer and The Deer Hunter. I can't decide which one I liked more. She’s become my favorite actress.” — CP
Dustin Hoffman
“I liked him, but I hadn't really heard of him. But then I saw him in Rain Man, Marathon Man and The Graduate. He acted so good. I also saw him in Midnight Cowboy where he was like, ‘Hey, I'm walking here!’ and I'm like, ‘So that’s where it came from!’” — JP
Vivien Leigh
“I loved how she portrayed the character in A Streetcar Named Desire. I felt she was kind of alright, but you knew she was insane, kind of losing it. Then at the end, all of what you had been thinking, it was confirmed and then you just saw her like: boom, she’s crazy.” — JP
The Movies That Stuck With Them
Sylvester Stallone in Rocky (1976).
Rocky
“This is my favorite movie of all. Its simple story pulled me in from the opening scene. What is amazing is I felt as if it could really happen. It’s like Marty except he is an underdog, you love him, you want him to be in love. The underdog story at its finest.” — CP
“The characters were all likable, even Paulie was harmless. Something that stood out was the music by Bill Conti. We watched the films out of order, but it appears to be the first real use of workout montages, and the music is perfect in those scenes. Rocky was not a really good boxer, but he had heart and just wanted to go the distance. In the end it was more important for him to win the girl, Adrian. They were one of my favorite couples. They were so shy. It was cute.” — JP
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
“Everything is just great in the beginning, everyone is happy, funny scenes (like when Butch fights that giant man). A nice musical interlude with ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head’ (which I had never heard) but then everything, I would say, hilariously, goes wrong.
“The pairing of these two was amazing. It was clear they liked each other in real life (I found out after the movie that they did) so I never feared that one would leave the other. Wanting to get into trouble and adventures? Just like in The Sting, nobody could sell friendship on screen like these two. They were my favorite movie couple.” — JP
Salvatore Corsitto, left, and Marlon Brando in a scene from The Godfather 1972.
The Godfather
“Here Brando isn't a flashy mobster at all. He controls the family, He wants the best for the family. He has given them the American Dream. You can tell the actors looked up to him — and it works.” — CP
On the Waterfront
“This is really the young Brando’s film (we saw this after The Godfather). Watching this I could tell he was so different from the other actors we had seen from films in that era.
“Johnny Friendly (played by Lee J. Cobb) is a good villain, he seems like someone that had been as equally tough as Brando’s Terry Malloy when he was younger.
“But Terry, he is TOUGH… but raises pigeons. He doesn’t seem like he would need a full-time girl, but falls for Edie Doyle (played by Eva Marie Saint). Terry is ultimately vulnerable though, isn't he? The famous scene in the back of the cab… just look at the pain and disappointment on his face. That’s acting.” — CP
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
“Our parents have the box set. One weekend, we watched them along with our grandmother and we were blown away.
“What I liked most in this film is the care it gave to the books and the audience. The director wasn't afraid to put everything on the screen. And more than any other sequel, it ties up all the storylines in a very satisfying way. One of the few scenes I cried at during our project was in this film: when Bilbo and Frodo decided to go away at the end.” — CP
Rain Man
“So many stories in one. A bro-pic. A road picture. A buddy pic. I had seen Dustin Hoffman in a lot of films previous to this, so I was somewhat prepared for his performance, but was not ready for Tom Cruise.
“If Tom’s Charlie character doesn't develop, if we don't empathize with him at a certain point, the story would have just fallen apart. But Cruise comes through. One thing me, my sister and my Dad can always do to laugh, is say the ‘97 X…BAM…The future of Rock and Roll’ line.
“It REALLY annoys our mom.” — CP
Tootsie
Dustin Hoffman from Tootsie (1982).
“Hoffman (as Michael Dorsey) can't keep, then can't get a job because he is a difficult method actor.
“But all the success he wanted opens up when he goes to an audition dressed as a woman, and gets a part in a big time soap opera.
“Dorothy (the female version of Michael) empowers women by being a role model for women, that alone is funny. BUT the scenes where he reveals he is a woman AND the scene where his agent and he argue over his portrayal of a ‘beefsteak tomato’ are hilarious. It’s a smart, funny comedy.” — JP
Some Like It Hot
“I thought Marilyn Monroe was pretty good. I liked her as the girl in Some Like It Hot. I liked the other people in the story too. The two guys were hilarious. The whole plot was super funny.
“The ending, oh my gosh the ending, where it’s the rich guy on the boat and he’s just like, ‘Let’s get married ’ — he says that to Jack Lemmon — and it’s like, ‘I'm a guy’ and he’s like, ‘Nobody’s perfect.’” — JP
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
“This was the last of the Jack Nicholson movies on our list that we watched. And up to then he could be counted on to play really cool characters, that could use his wits to get over on people.
“What I really loved about this movie was that Jack was the one that got hoodwinked. He had no idea what he had gotten himself into. All the scenes with the other patients are funny. When I found out that only he and Billy Bibbit (played by Brad Dourif) were the only involuntary patients, it made me sad. But I felt it made it a better movie because it showed Jack was capable of doing something for someone other than himself as he came to be more of a protector to Billy.
“Billy is one of my favorite characters, thinking of his death makes me sad even now. Billy seems to be pure goodness against Nurse Ratched's (Louise Fletcher) pure evil. I didn’t expect Jack to get lobotomized and mercy killed, but I was happy that he fought Nurse Ratched, for Billy, with all he had, to the end.” — JP
What They Learned From Watching So Many Classic Movies
Story Is What Matters
“If the story’s good or if it looks good, why does it matter if it’s silent, black and white? We'll watch it.” — CP
Movies Enable Connection
“After seeing all of these, I've got some good movie references and some inside jokes now. So I come out of this with a lot of positive things like I can talk about them with other people who have seen them.
“And I'm a kid, so I can talk about this to adults and can have something in common with them. I can appreciate other movies now because I just came out of this with more appreciation of movies.
“I like history, so I do this so I can remember it. Kids my age aren't going to really know some of these movies and so I feel pretty proud of myself knowing something that a lot of others, a lot of my peers, don't know.” — JP | https://medium.com/art-science/what-two-teenagers-learned-from-watching-every-best-picture-oscar-winner-6217311ca0c5 | ['The Academy'] | 2015-09-16 21:54:36.968000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Teenagers', 'Oscars'] |
8 business growth lessons we can all learn from Paylater, Cowrywise and Piggybank. | 8 business growth lessons we can all learn from Paylater, Cowrywise and Piggybank.
Savings and investment apps are gaining momentum. You can apply their business strategies to grow your business too. Wole Ogunlade Feb 22, 2019·4 min read
There are more than 13 savings and investment apps in Nigeria.
These apps make it easy to save and invest money with higher interests than banks. In a recent article, TechPoint published a roundup of leading savings apps in Nigeria.
After reading that article I decided to automate my savings.
But, before making my final selection, I checked out the platform and studied their growth strategy. After my analysis, I started using 3 of the apps.
In this article, my goal is to share with you 8 growth strategies used by some of the apps and how you can adapt those growth strategies to your business.
1. Design your product to solve major issues facing your users.
Before you launch, your first goal is to find out the core problem users want you to solve with the product.
In the case of these apps, the problem is helping people develop savings habit.
As a result, the main product feature created helped users to automate monthly savings and discourage impulse withdrawals.
2. Let your homepage show users what they will get.
When users visit your websites, they really want to know how your product is the solution to their needs. For example, a typical user looking for savings app wants one of few things; (1) how much interest they will earn (2) how secure their savings will be (3) how easy the automation process can be.
Your homepage should make it easy for them to choose you, based on the promises you want them to deliver to you.
Read more juicy details in explosive article.
3. Learn to infuse storytelling into your strategy.
With business storytelling, your goal is to share experiences that resonate with prospective users. I spoke about this at the SME Clinic session of TechPoint Build.
(Hint: I gave away free resources worth $700 to the participants. You can grab it here)
4. Ask for testimonials.
Asking users to share their testimonials is one of the best form of marketing for you. This is because word of mouth is proven to do better than any paid marketing channel.
And the best time to ask for testimonial is when someone just had a good experience with your product or service.
Make sure that prominently display testimonials of satisfied customers on your website.
This makes new customers to be convinced of your offer, especially if they have connections with or can relate with the experiences of the person sharing the testimonial.
Like testimonials, getting endorsements from celebrity, influential personalities and brands give your product a better appeal to target customers.
5. Host events.
While you can hack your growth by attending or speaking at other people’s event, hosting your own event brings your existing users and potential customers together into the same room and makes it easy for you to indoctrinate them.
The setting of the event could be professional or fun. What matters the most is bringing your audience under one roof.
6. Create online community for your niche.
Like physical events, online communities gives your brand the opportunity to moderate discussions that will ultimately lead to new business leads for you.
These community can be built on platforms like Whatsapp group, Slack channels, LinkedIn group, Facebook pages and Twitter.
The best result is achieved when, instead of focusing on your product, the community focuses on interactions that benefit both your customers and your business. Imagine the positive value of a Facebook group that is focused on investing or building savings culture.
This benefits everyone, not just the business.
7. Educate your users.
One of the key engines of hacking growth is educating your users.
Imagine the impact of teaching financial planning to an audience who will use your product to automate what they learnt from the guest financial expert.
This can be done via blog posts, live events or even webinars, podcasts, Facebook live and YouTube videos.
8. Keep in touch.
Your users want to hear from you. Sending out weekly reports and newsletter is part of strategy that connects you with their everyday choices.
Having a strategy to collect emails of potential customers who are yet to purchase offers the best opportunity for you to share your offers until they are ready to buy. That’s why I love newsletters.
Final thoughts.
The time I spent researching these savings app helped me to see the strategies some of them adopted to build trust with their target customers.
You can apply these lessons to your accelerate your business this year. That’s something I can help you with.
You can reach out to me for a free 30 minutes growth session | https://medium.com/@spokentwice/8-business-growth-lessons-we-can-all-learn-from-paylater-cowrywise-and-piggybank-ca51064fcdc6 | ['Wole Ogunlade'] | 2019-02-22 18:45:33.360000+00:00 | ['Nigerian Writing', 'Startup Lessons', 'Marketing', 'Copywriting Tips', 'Growth Strategy'] |
Why California’s Anti-Freelancing Law Is Pivotal for Cryptocurrency | California has essentially declared war on freelancing. A new law essentially makes companies essentially have to convert their independent contractors into full-fledged employees, including providing healthcare and other benefits. This basically means that freelancers such as writers and rideshare drivers just became much more expensive and troublesome to employ if they’re from California. Predictably, the layoffs have already begun. While this is a tragic moment for the untold thousands of worker who just lost their income source, it may help grow the usage of cryptocurrencies for payments.
The legacy financial system is a system of control
Make no mistake, the old financial system’s first concern isn’t in helping you make your life easier. Sure, there have been numerous innovations in the industry over the years that have simplified payments and improved user experience, but on a structural level the system has been designed for maximum control. That’s why we have this push to get rid of freelancers and the gig economy in favor of pushing everyone on the full employee track with health benefits and more. Everyone’s income is much more provable and easy to tax from a single source, the healthcare industry is easier to control when everyone is required to receive mandatory benefits, and, most importantly, employees are more scared of losing their job since more of their life relies on this one source of income.
When you receive all your money via direct deposit from the same entity that provides for your healthcare as an official employee, your life choices become extremely limited. Centralizing your whole life as much as possible is no accident, and the gig economy is the enemy of this. Whatever the alternate excuse presented may be, this is the real reason California cracked down on freelancing.
Peer-to-peer digital cash works without confines
This is a common industry line from the old days, but it bears repeating: be your own bank. A peer-to-peer digital currency can be sent to anyone, anywhere, at any time, without restriction. When you can no longer receive freelancing income from a geography and identity-based financial system, you can still receive digital funds from channels which are not limited to these factors. You can write for a publication that pays you in cryptocurrency without more than an email exchange worth of interaction, or publish your own content for donations of any level or origin. Essentially, all the usual checks and processes behind making financial transactions are not necessary.
In more regulated areas, we see cash-based economies emerge. The challenge with freelancers is that they tend to be remote workers, and as such can’t receive cash from a distance. However, digital cash knows no geography, and provides the most elegant of solutions.
There are still challenges, but earning an income vs. not is good enough motivation
Of course, don’t take this whole discussion to be pure utopian nonsense. I know that challenges still exist. Many companies will still naturally avoid California-based freelancers, even some of those paying in cryptocurrency. Learning how to use, buy, and sell new digital money can prove to have a challenging learning curve, and still may maintain some connections to the legacy financial system. However, when faced with the prospect of simply not making money, learning to receive and spend this crazy digital cyber money thing seems like an attractive option compared with the alternative.
Too many people use fiat currency systems over cryptocurrency. That’s because they still can. When they can’t, and more jurisdictions join California’s war on freelancing, just watch how important mass adoption becomes. | https://medium.com/@DashNews/why-californias-anti-freelancing-law-is-pivotal-for-cryptocurrency-ed3e7127a8b | ['Dash News'] | 2019-12-22 15:57:35.790000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'California', 'Dash', 'Blockchain'] |
Those Who Count the Votes | Moldovan Students in Iași Take Elections and Own Future in Their Hands
December 8 — The Students’ Cultural House (CCS), a Communist-era creamy yellow building, is where school plays and fashion shows happen in Iași, Romania. It’s where you call a taxi to take you home on a night out. It’s where you attend job fairs to find work. But the over 50 people, mostly the elderly, gathered in front of CCS just before dawn on Sunday, November 15, burgundy Moldovan passports in hand, are not here for any of these reasons. They are here to elect the future president of Moldova in the second and final round of the election.
On the first floor of the building, Olga Codreanu, a 21-year old studying Political Science in Iași, originally from Moldova, is giddy with excitement. The clock strikes a quarter to seven and the members of the electoral commission turn on the voting system to check everything is in order. “I want to vote!” Codreanu says right away. She rushes to the voting booth, places the blue stamp on her ballot, pushes the paper inside the transparent empty ballot box, then runs down the stairs, sweeps across the ground floor and tells the gendarmes the people waiting outside should start queuing.
It’s now seven o’clock and the doors open. After they get their temperature checked, as required by Covid-19 prevention measures, people are finally let in. They head up the stairs. It’s time to vote.
But today those who count the votes count just as much as those who vote. After a poorly run first round, which left voters queuing in the cold for as much as three hours, Moldovan students attending university in Iași decided to take organizing the second round in their hands. They made up most of the 13 members of the electoral commission, which oversees the voting process, changed the voting location, ran a social media campaign encouraging Moldovans in Iași to vote, and made sure everything ran smoothly on November 15.
For Moldovan students, this is the day that could change the future of the country they left — as well as their own future. Ever since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Moldova, part of Romania until 1940, has been ridden with poverty, systemic corruption, political instability and demographic decline. The feeling among young people in particular is that there is nothing left for them in Moldova. This election might change the game.
“Not only were we involved in the voting process, but also in changing the destiny of our country,” says Codreanu, who has honey-blonde wavy hair and hazel eyes.
Moldovans now have Maia Sandu on the presidential voting ballot, a 48-year old Harvard-educated politician that vowed to eradicate corruption and bring Moldova closer to Europe. Over 57% voted for Sandu, making her the first female president of Moldova, and against Igor Dodon, Moldova’s former pro-Russian president. One in six votes came from the diaspora, 15% of which from those aged 18–25. For them, Sandu embodies the hope that Moldova could become a country they won’t feel forced to leave — and might even return to.
Codreanu says Bălți, her hometown in Moldova, is a “dying city.” Her mother has emigrated to Rome, Italy. Most young people, just like her, go to study in Romania or further West. “Everyone leaves,” she says.
Moldova’s population shrank by a third in the last 30 years, with an estimated 2.7 million living in the country in 2019. Among those who left are many young people seeking better education opportunities abroad — or trying to escape the Moldovan system.
Out of the over 10.000 Moldovan students enrolled in Romanian universities, the largest part, 1,600, are studying at the “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, the country’s oldest.
Alina Frecauțan is one of them. Originally from Chișinău, the ambitious blue-eyed 21-year old is the leader of the Moldovan students’ society in Iași and the mastermind behind the November 15 elections. Like all young people who leave to study abroad, Frecauțan wanted to get out of her comfort zone. But her home country being Moldova, the poor quality of higher education also played an important part.
“The only situation in which I could see myself studying in Moldova was if I hadn’t gotten accepted abroad,” says Frecauțan, who is currently pursuing a master’s degree in marketing, and has also completed her undergraduate studies in Iași. “Luckily that was not the case.”
Undergraduate and master’s diplomas obtained in Moldova are not recognized anywhere abroad. “Our new president Maia Sandu promised that Moldovan diplomas will start being recognized across Europe from next summer,” Frecauțan said, who remembers Sandu from her stint as Moldova’s Education Minister.
Then, of course, there is the issue of everyday corruption. “There are some universities or some professors who don’t let you pass unless you bribe them,” Frecauțan said. “And I didn’t want to find myself forced to pay to pass an exam for which I would have studied.”
Many think like this, says Petru Negură, a sociologist and professor at the International University of Moldova. Negură himself is abroad at the moment: he is currently in Germany at the Regensburg University on a research fellowship.
The relationship between poor quality education, poverty and depopulation is a two-way bumpy dirt road. “The student population has halved since the end of the 2000s, yet the number of places available in universities has remained the same” Negură said. “This means the selection is non-existent. We take everyone in. So the quality of students is low and the academics are poorly paid.”
“Education, health, infrastructure… everything. Everything must change,” Codreanu says, when asked what are the main issues in Moldova.
And “change” is the best word to describe November 15. Just two weeks ago, ballots were cast in the first round of the presidential election, when the polling station in Iași was located in the tiny Moldovan consulate. People were waiting in lines of 300 for up to three hours on what was a cold, gloomy day. Some gave up and left.
November 15 is surprisingly sunny. Moldovans vote in the large CCS. Over 3,400 cast their ballots, more than twice the first round numbers, yet the maximum waiting time outside is 10 minutes. They take photos, smile and joke around with friends. Even the gendarmes, ensuring social distancing is maintained and wearing dark berets, cheer Moldovans for their enthusiasm.
Part of this is the merit of Frecauțan and the other Moldovan students.
“After the first round, we realized we must do something about the voting conditions,” Frecauțan said. Together with other students, she contacted the Moldovan consulate and started looking for a new location. They also started a social media campaign with posts and videos encouraging people to vote and ensuring them that they won’t freeze in line for three hours again.
On November 15, Frecauțan was one of the 13 members of the electoral commission, which meant she arrived at CCS at 6am, one hour before the polls opened, and left at 2am, once they finished counting the votes. “Even if we were exhausted towards the end of the day, there was still a lot of excitement,” Frecauțan said.
Buzzing around the electoral commission throughout the day were other student volunteers, like Codreanu, who checked the temperature of those entering the polling station and provided constant warm tea refills.
As people were coming in and out to vote, words like “Thank you for changing the voting location!”, “This was so easy!” and “How do you think we’ll knock off Dodon this time?” filled the large first-floor hall of the CCS, where the polling station was set.
And part of this is also the Sandu effect. As Codreanu was posted at the CCS entrance letting voters in, she quickly noticed a pattern. Every third voter or so had something bright yellow on, either a scarf, a hat or a small ribbon.
“That’s how I knew Maia Sandu was going to win,” says Codreanu. Bright yellow is the colour of Maia Sandu’s party PAS, which emerged as an almost grassroot-protest movement against worsening corruption and democratic institutions in the last decade.
“Everyone now has high hopes for Maia Sandu and her party,” says Negură. “She’s a different kind of politician, but there’s always the issue of broken promises.”
Over the years young Moldovans saw their hopes crushed by several pro-democratic governments. In the last ten years, the justice system was severely weakened. And there was, of course, the so-called “theft of the century”. In 2015, it was revealed that $1 billion had vanished from three of Moldova’s largest banks — an eighth of the country’s GDP. Vladimir Plahotniuc, Moldova’s most notorious oligarch, was among those charged with involvement in the bank theft.
This only accelerated the depopulation crisis. Once young people leave, they rarely look back with thoughts of returning. The most recent study showed that only 10% of Moldovans who went to Romania for their studies returned.
Negură says the economic aspect is the most important for those who leave. “If there were a minimum chance for wellbeing in Moldova, people would’ve ignored some failings in the political system, even systemic corruption.”
“The thinking is that, were they to return to Moldova, they’d have to fight for a poorly paid job,” says Negură. “Which is true.”
Whether Maia Sandu will deliver on her promises depends on her party’s ability to call snap elections and change the make-up of the government. “But even the simple fact that Maia Sandu is president gives us a lot of hope,” Negură says.
It’s now past midnight on November 15 and Frecauțan and the other members of the electoral commission are counting the votes. Codreanu left, but keeps messaging the ones still at CCS to see if there’s anything she can help with — and get updates.
They begin with counting the faulty ballots and then move on to the first of the two candidates. One, two, three, four, five…
The question of returning home will be on many’s minds in the days to come. Frecauțan, who is currently employed in a marketing agency in Iași, will see her dream of starting her own business in Chișinău — and return to her beloved parks, as less of a dream than a plan.
Codreanu will fantasize about working for the Moldovan government after finishing a master’s in international relations. Still, she will remain skeptical. She would never return to Moldova without knowing she could make a difference there. And she won’t feel that can happen just yet, as much as she wishes to.
Forty six, forty seven, forty eight, forty nine, fifty votes for Dodon. That’s it. There were 3,404 votes in total, so by now it’s now clear that Maia Sandu has won. But Frecauțan and her 12 colleagues start counting her votes regardless.
One, two, three, four…
“As we were counting the votes, we felt this hope lighting up our souls,” Frecauțan said.
One thousand, one thousand and one, one thousand and two…
“We felt that the age of incompetence is behind us…”
Three thousand four hundred and one, three thousand four hundred and two…
“…and that a better future led by an honest leader awaits us all.”
Three thousand four hundred and three, three thousand four hundred and four votes for Maia Sandu. And they’re done. It is 2am on November 16 and Frecauțan, Codreanu and the other Moldovan students in Iași might have just changed their minds about returning home. The answer is no longer a firm “no”, but a hopeful “maybe.” | https://medium.com/@irina-anghel/those-who-count-the-votes-453ec2f537d0 | ['Irina Anghel'] | 2021-02-08 12:20:35.195000+00:00 | ['Romania', 'Moldova', 'Presidential Election', 'Diaspora', 'Voting'] |
A “Post-it” Vacation | The most interesting place I have ever visited still sticks in my mind like a post-it on a desktop screen. Waiting to be completed yet almost flying away.
I was only sixteen years old when I first felt the hot sand beneath my feet on the beach in Jamaica. It was as if I was floating in a tall glass halfway filled because I was able to see my feet as clear as day while standing waist-deep in the ocean.
Photo by Dalelan Anderson on Unsplash
The waiters were native. It was obvious from their deep accents, beautiful and cultural garments. They smiled and spoke if you insisted.
I know I had been staying on a resort with a commercial and industrial kitchen. But I could tell the food was native to the land as well. That the staff back there knew real people were going to be eating. So with each bite, when lifting my utensil, I could taste the love.
I felt welcomed and embraced.
I did not journal about this vacation. Yet the memory is the post-it that doesn’t fly away. | https://medium.com/@mssheajohnson/a-post-it-vacation-fd1e053f4956 | [] | 2020-12-27 06:47:03.939000+00:00 | ['Short', 'Blurb', 'Thoughts And Feelings', 'Memories'] |
Chasing Casper and Getting Gold | Chasing Casper and Getting Gold
A means to my ideal goal, to a dream beyond!
Image by Guvendemir, from istockphoto
Very recently, I began taking on my wildest dream and chasing it vigorously on a daily basis. It’s been the best time of my life and waking up has never been easier and lighter than before.
What is this dream of mine?
My dream is to make people’s lives just a little bit better.
How?
By building communities, by entertaining and causing laughter, by helping those who remember to forget through belonging and feeling loved and cared for.
My goal for the future is to be able to support myself, and what family I have, through twitch streaming. A lot think it to be unrealistic, and I sort of agree with them because the field has now become so competitive that it’s saturated with thousands and thousands of others trying to do the same thing.
However, there’s one thing that makes me different from those thousands.
What is it?
My intent: I’m not doing this for the money, reputation, or any worldly thing of the same ilk. I’m doing it because I love gaming, I love getting people together, and I absolutely love making people laugh and smile.
It’s been a part of me my entire life. Ever since I was young, I would imitate and parrot my family members perfectly. Mimicking people always came super easy to me, and it also became clear why that is.
It’s because I’m an entertainer by nature. I am a person whose purpose, or part of it at least is to sit down with you and, before having you leave, get you to feel some sort of positive emotion.
Whether that emotion is from a productive conversation, a good joke, or a therapeutic moment is all good to me, and hopefully you! | https://medium.com/be-unique/chasing-casper-1894cd73f675 | ['Selim Selim'] | 2020-12-15 13:08:34.594000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Choices', 'Goals', 'Mindset', 'Dreams'] |
Why We Need To Reinvent Our Friendships And Social Media Habits In 2020 Or Risk Burning Out | Why We Need To Reinvent Our Friendships And Social Media Habits In 2020 Or Risk Burning Out
It’s true what they say. Life comes at you fast in your twenties. You feel like there’s so much to do yet so little time. The pressure to stay ahead of the curve is huge, and so is the responsibility of being an anchor for those around you. Naturally, a positive character will always embrace the challenge; when the tough gets going, they double down and figure out ways to withstand the sometimes overwhelming storms of life.
Yet, in a chaotic world that demands our intense focus and constant energy in the midst of its many distractions, being emotionally invested in everything that’s happening around us is taxing – fighting on so many fronts leaves us vulnerable to exhaustion; and as I sit back and process the events of the past decade for the first time, I realise that we, as a generation, are at a crossroads.
On a personal level, 2019 was a year of growth. It had its highs and its lows, but it was productive. There was one minor problem though – my “busy getting busy” lifestyle was wearing me out. It wasn’t sustainable. I was in desperate need of taking a step back to gather my thoughts and regain my strength.
After all, life is a long game; the challenges that lie ahead are too big for us not to be at our optimum health.
What is ‘millennial burnout’?
With the new year approaching, I was spending some time thinking about the changes I wanted to make in 2020, when I happened to come across an article that caught my attention. It explored a new phenomenon known as ‘millennial burnout’, which explains how a growing number of millennials (22–37 year olds) are suffering from chronic exhaustion – usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration.
Typically, individuals who find themselves constantly having to navigate complex, contradictory and sometimes hostile environments are vulnerable to burnout; given the somewhat constraining and unexpected nature of life nowadays, young people are facing more problematic environments that are becoming more stressful to deal with.
According to experts, factors contributing to this phenomenon include rising social pressures, work-life imbalance, challenging economic conditions, and the birth of a new “hustle” culture that promotes passion and risk-taking over stability.
Beware of toxic people
In addition to what’s already been mentioned, another factor that drains our energy tanks is surrounding ourselves with toxic individuals, otherwise known as ‘energy vampires’, who suck all the positive energy out of us to fuel their relentless hunger for negativity – the intrusive, overly dramatic, overly critical, chronic complainers who always see the glass half empty. Then there’s the insecure narcissists who try to compensate for their lack of emotional resilience and inferiority complex with hostility.
These days, toxic people are everywhere. We cannot always avoid them, but we can certainly limit the time we spend with them.
From my personal experiences and observations, I’ve come to realise that dealing with negative people is a major issue which is keeping many of us paralysed and unable to progress. In recent years, I’ve witnessed how some individuals within my social circles – once very energetic and ambitious characters – lose their passion and positive-approach to life after being worn down by negative environments.
…then there’s social media
Another aspect extremely relevant to this conversation is social media.
A digital media and business enthusiast myself, I cannot deny that social media is the most exciting and influential tool of our generation. That being said, I have long believed that social media is becoming a draining instrument in our lives. And a dangerous one too.
Sure. Staying in touch with our loved ones has never been easier thanks to social media. Growing our businesses has never been easier… showcasing our talents to the world has never been easier… staying up to date with the news has never been easier… expressing our opinions to large audiences has never been easier… yet, with these “benefits” in mind, I find myself asking, To what extent is social media polluting our minds… hearts… hindering our focus levels… the quality of our connections… our sleep… our lives in general? Could our social media addiction lead to dangerous chronic mental conditions that we are still unaware of?
Studies on the negative impacts of social media are becoming more frequent as researchers begin to develop new methods for analyzing the effects of digital technologies on our brains, and while many will argue that criticism of social media is over-exaggerated, I’m personally finding that being more mindful of my social media usage – which includes going off-line completely for periods at a time – is enabling me to limit distractions and declutter my mind to refocus my thoughts and energy on the important stuff.
In a nutshell…
It’s never been easier to get lost in the day-to-day activities and stresses of the external world – people, places, work, information… we have become permanently-connected to our environments. Setting boundaries and healthy coping mechanisms will not only protect us from burning-out, but will ultimately empower us to unlock our potential and take advantage of the countless opportunities we are blessed with in this fascinating period in history. | https://medium.com/@youssef7/why-we-need-to-reinvent-our-friendships-and-social-media-habits-in-2020-or-risk-burning-out-a9fe98839ef7 | ['Youssef El-Manea'] | 2021-04-03 20:37:36.040000+00:00 | ['Pandemic Diaries', 'Millennial Burnout', 'Mental Health', 'Social Media'] |
Black and White | Black and White
“Can I borrow a dime please?”
“Here you go li’l doll!”
Samantha chuckled as she hopped on her toes with the uncontainable joy of renting those pointe shoes.
She pressed the Earth gently against her toes, lifting in a delicate pose, raising arms in an arc as though she was giving a goodbye hug to the Universe.
Backstage, Augustin fondly watched his toddler, repainting the image of days when her baby toes tickled his face.
“She might have just another few months to live in hand but an eternity under her feet.” The proud father wiped tears under his glasses. | https://medium.com/centina-pentina/black-and-white-db62e04f6e12 | ['Deeksha Agrawal'] | 2020-12-15 09:42:35.970000+00:00 | ['Ballerina', 'Microfiction', 'Dance', 'Short Story', 'Centina'] |
Over time, the right people will find you. They’ll present themselves to you, becoming more evident and visible throughout your life journey. The higher power will place the right ones in your path… | Photo by Hassan OUAJBIR via Unsplash
“Everything works itself out in the end. If it didn’t work out, it’s not the end!”
Tina Joy — The Business Guru
Over time, the right people will find you. They’ll present themselves to you, becoming more evident and visible throughout your life journey. The higher power will place the right ones in your path, for you to take notice of and discover.
Don’t worry.
Stress less.
Pay attention.
Believe and you shall receive.
Let life play out in your favor, the way it should! | https://medium.com/mega-mantras/tina-joy-the-business-guru-8323ac458b3 | ['Tina Joy'] | 2020-12-22 02:18:28.906000+00:00 | ['Purpose', 'Believe In Yourself', 'Mega Mantras', 'Monday Motivation', 'Inspiration'] |
How You Can Improve Your Writing With Bubbles and Squares | But what next? Have I launched all my rockets? I didn’t want to keep re-writing the same story. I needed to find other related topics that I thought my growing audience would find interesting. These stories are also in that Q1 wheelhouse. I wanted something for those who were already engaged, but I hoped somewhat different stories, submitted to different publications, would increase my audience. I will continue to write for Q1, but I know it’s not going to be enough.
Q2: What are the other things that I am interested in, passionate about, and have some expertise? How can those topics be enlarged and deepened with a bit of planning and research?
I don’t know what other readers think, but some people write stories they aren’t equipped to write. I don’t mean to sound elitist, but if someone who hasn’t gone beyond Psychology 101, are they qualified to write “5 Easy Ways To Deal With Your Anxiety Disorder,” a listicle that you’ve seen in every magazine in your doctor’s office? For me, that’s a Q4.
Has life ever been so free from nuance and ambiguity that a shortlist of solutions will fix every problem?
I don’t want to waste my time reading those stories, and I don’t want to write them. I don’t mean to imply that only a psychiatrist or therapist is qualified to write about anxiety disorders. If a person wants to write, “How My Anxiety Disorder Ruined My Life and How I Learned to Cope,” I am more apt to read it. I want to dig my teeth into how that personal struggle feels. That can be your Q1.
The beauty of Q2 is that you can have a piece in progress that you tussle with over a more extended period. What can you write that’s different or better than most of what you’ve read? You can think about it and incubate ideas. You can search Google Scholar to see what others have written. When I want to review academic research on physician burnout, for example, I type into my search, “physician burnout site:edu” and then I can retrieve only current research on the topic.
I’m not just gay. I’m an old psychiatrist, and I’ve treated psychiatric disorders for a long time. Here’s a Q2, story I wrote about Depression that brought attention to “old” and “psychiatrist,” and I wrote it slowly:
If I want to amplify my thoughts or see what others think about a subject, I will post a somewhat provocative question on Twitter or Facebook, as I did for my stories about circumcision and being “gay fat.” Waiting for responses takes time, and if you wish to quote someone who responded, it takes even more time to request permission from the person who commented.
I keep a file of half-written stories. I continue to work on them as I collect the supporting information, and allow my thoughts to congeal.
I fertilize these essays on Q2 with small stories from my own life to keep them alive and exciting. It seems to be working because several have been curated, and my audience has expanded beyond the LGBTQ community.
Q3. What has touched your life that you think might resonate with others’ lives?
I think of these as feel-good stories, such as my story about cardinals and angels. The idea came to me while sitting on the deck with my husband drinking our morning coffee. I heard a cardinal sing, and I had a warm feeling about my mother. I shared it with Doug, and I could see he shared my sentiment. Perhaps others might feel it, too, I thought, and when I investigated, I found it was far from unique to us. I had sewn a seed.
I had a similar experience when I was riding my bike and lost control on some mud. You can’t steer in the mud, I thought. My next thought was That’s an interesting metaphor. As I continued my ride, I thought of several more ideas, and I quickly wrote the entire essay when I got home. Although a listicle, it is my listicle, not a reproduction.
Every day we have these human experiences. Capture them and put them in Q3 for when you run short of other things to write. These pieces need to capture your emotion as well as that of your reader. By tagging them in areas in which you don’t usually write, you will attract an even broader audience.
Q4. Check these off your list. You’ll never write them, or if you do, no one will want to read them. | https://medium.com/beingwell/how-you-can-improve-your-writing-with-bubbles-and-squares-10a27fadc249 | ['Loren A Olson Md'] | 2020-08-18 12:15:24.748000+00:00 | ['Creativity', '52 Week Writing Challenge', 'Writing Tips', 'Writer', 'Writing'] |
Four learnings from Ambler’s story to tackle the healthcare sector in France | Mehdi Ben Abroug (CEO), Nicolas Dumont (CPO), Thomas Bournac (CSO) and Julien Déléan (CTO), Ambler’s founders
From hospitals and clinics to the broader French social security system, all French healthcare stakeholders are under constant budgetary pressure, and are struggling to rethink their operations and processes to gain efficiency. These constraints are ultimately putting the quality of patients’ care at stake and causing a certain impoverishment of professional working conditions, as demonstrated by the recent strikes in the emergency sector.
It opens up some huge business opportunities, but several questions then emerge: how to successfully step into the healthcare sector? How can disruptive private players efficiently work with public players? How to satisfy multiple stakeholders with multiple and even somewhat conflicting interests? How to move fast in a so-called slow-moving sector?
Here are 4 learnings from my experience with Ambler, a non-urgent medical transportation platform which has enjoyed early success in the French healthcare sector. My point here is to tackle some possible pre-conceptions on how a start-up should address this challenging market.
Ambler’s story
Today booking an ambulance requires many low value-added tasks from calling several transporters to manually manage the billing. Hospitals and clinics don’t have adequate tools to manage it, resulting in a limited control of that budget (5 billion euros spent in France). Ambler connects medical staff and medical transporters through an interface to book the most appropriate transport means for patients. It strives to be the French reference for non-urgent medical transportation by bringing efficiency and top-notch services for all stakeholders.
I met Ambler’s founders exactly one year ago and invested shortly after in the company, leading their 1.5M€ seed round. At that time, Ambler was just a (brilliant) idea promoted by four ambitious, seasoned and experienced co-founders: Mehdi, Thomas, Nicolas and Julien.
Only one year after the first ride, Ambler has already onboarded 40+ medical facilities on its platform and ensured 15,000+ rides.
Learning #1: Targeting public sector from day one could be a good idea
You may think the public sector and the hyperactive startup world do not speak the same language and are on different timeframes. Well, guess what? You may be right. Public hospitals are often lagging behind when it comes to innovative processes, and their organization is sometimes a veritable maze.
Then, why should you start to address public players when you are not robust yet?
To get access to a large and defendable stronghold on that market benefiting from both growth potential and high entry barriers for your competitors. Public sector can be seen as a strong castle with deep moats surrounding it, this is not easy to enter but once you are in, you won’t be easily removed!
Ambler’s founders didn’t win on their first attempt — getting a deep understanding of the mechanics behind a tender is quite a hard job — but once they figured it out, it became much easier to replicate. And it opened up a large, challenging and sustainable market.
After less than 6 months of execution, Ambler was referenced by hospitals’ central purchasing (UniHA) and was already a step ahead of its competitors in the race to win public market, even more so when considering that each tender won is signed for at least the next 3 years. Today they have 10 public medical facilities and have attracted the attention of high officials to discuss future regulations of medical transportation.
As it takes time to grasp the public sector, you better start targeting it from day one to get access to a large and defensible market, and become the reference with a relevant know-how to scale.
Learning #2: Starting from the bottom to the top in the private sector is often the fastest way
While targeting public hospitals, you have to simultaneously target private hospitals and clinics. Private contracts are often less complex and more accessible for a young startup. To do so, you may tend to look for top management introductions thinking “if I succeed to convince top management with my amazing tech product, I will win a large contract in one shot”. Unfortunately, it often doesn’t work this way in the private medical transportation sector.
Indeed, the private clinics’ market has been consolidating over the past 10 years, but most decisions are still taken at a local level by clinic executives. Those executives are pragmatic: they buy efficiency, transparency and return on investment. But is convincing them everything? No, as for most new tech products, you need to convince every single stakeholder, from the caregiver to the executive, the driver and the patient, that your product will change their processes and organization for the best.
By making no compromise on product and services quality and by listening to healthcare professionals’ pains, Ambler has convinced more than 30 private medical facilities one after another to use its platform without a single contract at a group-level. It has succeeded in building a strong and trust-based relationship with them, and it can now leverage those sponsors to target ten times larger contracts at a group level.
Private medical transportation market requires to start from the very bottom, spends time to understand stakeholders’ needs, and only after will you be able to reach the top faster.
Learning #3: Understanding territoriality and local needs is often decisive
You may be tempted to push for a standardized product supported by a well-oiled sales process. It usually makes a lot of sense to scale fast… yet the healthcare sector may require more local considerations.
French health market is multifaceted, and beyond public and private medical facilities’ differences, healthcare is above all about territoriality. When it comes to medical transportation, for Ambler, standardization doesn’t work.
Firstly, medical transporters have different organization from one area to the other. When there is a wide offer and no dominant players, medical transporters clearly seize how Ambler can bring them more rides and see a true competitive advantage in the features (pooling, billing…), and they’re ready to sign in less than an hour. When the offer is concentrated and dominated by a local giant (often an Economic Interest Grouping), Ambler gathers all the small medical transporters which are not part of the EIG, those who struggle to get enough rides and stay profitable, and altogether they become the largest local player, and often win a public tender with Ambler. Each situation is structurally different and requires adapting sales techniques.
Secondly, Ambler is not a standalone platform: it is integrated in both the transporter’s rides systems (it connects with their planning) and in the healthcare systems (it has access to patient files). And both systems are manifold and old-school. To successfully integrate with them, it’s about change management and patience: you need to understand all their constraints and turn the IT system director into your best friend.
The medical transportation market is not a market you can win from your office in Paris. You often need to be in the field to understand local needs and be able to adapt fast to local constraints.
Learning #4: Demonstrating long term value creation is key
Structurally a marketplace is an intermediary that captures value in exchange for facilitating access to a product or a service. In most cases, the demand or the supply sides of the marketplace agrees to share a part of that value. But in the healthcare sector, which is under strong budget pressure, it doesn’t work this way. You often have to demonstrate your capacity to bring value to every stakeholder (clinics and hospitals, medical transporters and patients) to get accepted.
In order to convince potentially reluctant stakeholders, Ambler has chosen to first focus on how they could create value in an under-optimized and under-financed system before capturing it. They developed a platform that would create value for everyone.
For hospitals and clinics, the platform enables to book the right vehicle for their patient in just a few clicks (it does not require tons of calls to find a transporter anymore), better manage patient flows (medical staff knows exactly when a patient arrives) and have a clear view on their budget to better control it.
For medical transporters, Ambler brings them more rides, optimizes routes and avoids empty rides (vs. only 45% capacity utilization today), and manages invoice payments to make sure they are paid on time.
Finally, for patients, Ambler enables them to easily book their vehicle and have real-time information on their ride in order to have more serenity before and after, and to have high-level services during the trip.
Now that Ambler has started to prove it is creating value, it is defining the most sustainable and fair repartition of that value among stakeholders. Creating and sharing the value is vital for a solution to last and become the reference platform in this market.
Supporting Ambler over this past year helped me to better understand some of the specificities of the healthcare market. It also showed that sometimes you have to overcome your preconceptions and forget about the “classic” recipes in order to succeed.
For Ambler, there is still a long way to go but the company is moving fast to conquer the non-urgent medical transportation market and become the reference in France. And at the end of the day, what a great challenge for young entrepreneurs to contribute to bring efficiency and better service quality to the healthcare market which has too often been left behind by fast-growing startups. I’m looking forward to continuing sharing the path together and seeing Ambler grow. | https://medium.com/partech-ventures-team-publications/ambler-success-story-144d2c38bfb7 | ['Alison Imbert'] | 2019-09-05 13:43:19.478000+00:00 | ['Healthtech', 'Mobility', 'Medical Transportation', 'Healthcare', 'Venture Capital'] |
Apple Silicon | My personal computer is a 2018 13-inch Intel MacBook Pro with 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports, 16GB of RAM, and a 512 GB SSD. I love this computer because it handles tasks I throw at it gracefully.
My personal circumstances, however, have changed in one key way since purchasing that MacBook Pro — I now have my own home office. This means that I value the performance improvements offered by a similarly priced desktop over the versatility provided by a laptop.
With access to an Intel MacBook Pro — which was issued by my company — this laptop is similarly specced to my personal one, meaning that I have less of a need for both.
I’m therefore considering replacing my personal Intel MacBook Pro with a M1 Mac Mini. The model I’m looking at costs £1299 without Apple Care (16GB RAM and 1TB SSD upgrades).
The inevitable next iMac with Apple Silicon brings about further headaches. I’m fond of the 1440p resolution which I would like to enjoy at 2x “retina” density. The idea of a beautiful, colour accurate, 5K display, with Apple Silicon is dream that can become reality any day now.
If I were to re-purchase a similarly specced Intel MacBook Pro to my personal one today, it’ll cost £1799.
I rarely praise Apple for value for money, but the capabilities of Apple Silicon with a price starting at £699? Developing for Apple’s platforms, even as a side project, never looked more enticing. | https://medium.com/@muyiwa/apple-silicon-dbdf8aaaf954 | ['Muyiwa Olu'] | 2020-12-13 12:20:29.240000+00:00 | ['Apple Silicon', 'Mac'] |
Why Leverage Technology to Combat Homelessness? Ample Labs Board of Directors Feature | What does it mean to empower individuals facing homelessness with technology? What is the intersection of technology, human-centered design, and government relations in our work? Here is a look at our journey and the nuances of Ample Labs’ work through the lens of our dedicated Board of Directors.
But first, how did we begin?
Before Ample Labs was an official tech non-profit, it started as a series of focus groups at the Fred Victor Centre. That is where two of our board members met, and our founder CG began her work.
“I met CG at Fred Victor where I was working as the director of fundraising. She was looking to do co-design sessions with our homeless population and introduced me to design thinking. I was so impressed by her passion, I’ve been following her work all these years.” -Dagmar Schroeder, Communications Manager at Stella’s Place and Ample Labs Board of Directors member
“I attended the focus group session hosted by CG and folks at Fred Victor a few years ago. They are incredibly well done! They help people draw out their opinions, thoughts, and feelings in an accessible way. I deeply respect how before there was a product, CG and the team were focused on building with the community and getting feedback from the start.” -Lisa Durnford, Legal Specialist on Ample Labs Board of Directors
That was just the beginning. Over the years, we’ve gotten tremendous support in the form of partnerships and volunteers from the community. Here is a personal and professional volunteering story from the Chair of our board, Franklin Garrigues.
On volunteering with his daughter:
“I volunteered with my 16-year-old daughter in a Chalmers Tour street walk with Ample Labs. We were promoting Chalmers to social service agencies in Toronto. In the end, she said she couldn’t believe there were so many people who are homeless. She realized it’s not just a few neighbourhoods, but everywhere. Most of the time we just don’t look. That’s the reality, it’s everywhere. Us realizing this together was a very real and important moment.”
On leading the TD x Ample partnership:
“I was blown away by the support the TD team had in putting volunteer hours toward Ample Labs. At our first lunch and learn, we had over 150 participants in the call. Over the next six months, we have over 500 volunteers involved. People want to help and use their skill set for good. They are inspired by the vision and CG.”
Our board is full of folks with a variety of backgrounds, ranging from tech to NGOs, finance to government relations! Many have personal stories from working with individuals in need. Keep reading to learn more about the individuals on our board and their diverse insights on tech for homelessness.
Official Q&A with Ample Labs Board of Directors
1. What motivates you to support technology that serves individuals facing homelessness?
Dagmar Schroeder (Fundraising Specialist):
Background: Nonprofit Communications (Marketing Manager at Stella’s Place)
Fun fact: Dagmar loves heights and the outdoors
“When I was working at Fred Victor, many individuals sleeping in the shelter told me they spent hours on the phone seeking help. It’s humiliating to tell someone on the phone about your situation and wait for an hour. If they have a cellphone to call a hotline, why not make the process easier with mobile technology? With Chalmers, it’s anonymous, quick, and real-time. Ample Labs increases the independence and dignity of homeless populations.”
Lisa Durnford (Legal Specialist):
Background: Housing Rights and the LGBTQ+ Tech Community
Fun fact: Lisa’s favourite animal is the penguin
“My experience is in practicing housing law in Toronto legal clinics. I worked closely with individuals facing eviction and experiencing homelessness. It’s disheartening to know that many folks simply don’t know what their rights are and where to get help. This kind of information should be easy for them to find. That’s why I want to support Ample Labs in getting Chalmers and this information to the hands of as many folks as possible.”
Franklin Garrigues (Chair):
Background: Business Strategy and People Management (VP of Digital Channel at TD)
Fun fact: Franklin is an avid camper and goes every summer with his family
“The problem of homelessness isn’t going away. It’s growing and we need more innovative solutions. I met CG after doing a homeless street assessment that opened my eyes. After taking the time to look around and really see people, I realized just how many people are affected in Toronto. The number is even bigger for individuals at risk. The traditional non-profit world isn’t as equipped as it should be in using technology to tackle homelessness, so I saw the opportunity to help.
Ali Asaria (Start-up Expert):
Background: Tech Start-ups and Growth (CEO of Tulip)
Fun fact: Ali likes to make art with computers for fun and has a robot that watercolours.
“I believe technology has the power to change everything in the world. Most of the efforts of technology has been on business enterprises rather than systemic issues. I’m excited to support a team that is applying technology to one of the world’s biggest problems. I believe the dedication of CG and her team is a big reason for Chalmers’ success. I used to work with CG at Tulip, and everybody loved working with her. When she wanted to put her full-time efforts into Ample Labs, we were sad to lose her but supportive of her mission.”
Sugan Mannavarajan (Community Builder):
Background: Policy & Partnerships
Fun Fact: Sugan lived in the Canadian Arctic for 5 years and highly recommends it.
“I’m a strong advocate that cities can capitalize on ‘tech for good’; digital tools can empower inclusive communities and resilient economies. What attracts me to Ample Labs is their approach to scaleable social innovation. Chalmers applies a tech lens to navigate community services in times of distress. With this app, we can give a richer human experience and gain greater insights for evidence based decision making. I believe this digital solution should be the standard for the future of all our cities.”
Andres Perez-Vilarino (Treasurer):
Background: Finance and LGBTQ+ Community (Senior Accountant at EY)
Fun fact: Andres was a part of the University of Waterloo Model G20
“I’ve always been drawn to community involvement especially in LGBTQ+ causes. LGBTQ youth are overrepresented in homelessness which is a problem people don’t know about. People also don’t realize a large part of homelessness is invisible. By the eyes of the public, you’re either homeless or you’re not. We need more solutions geared towards the invisible homeless populations and really understanding their needs, especially with COVID-19 and rent spikes.
Shawn Fulham (Vice-President):
Background: Government Partnerships (Client Development at PwC Products)
Fun fact: Shawn likes to snowboard in Tremblant and kitesurf in Lake Simcoe
“I have always been passionate about working on audacious tech solutions for the greater good. When I caught wind of Ample Labs, I knew this is something I wanted to be a part of! Chalmers is helping some of our most vulnerable populations find and take advantage of life altering resources. The hidden homeless are called hidden for a reason and now municipalities have a way to connect with these groups. I’m incredibly excited to be working with this passionate team and our governments and municipal partners.”
Charles McCarragher (Technology and Commercialization Strategy):
Background: Legal consulting (Vice President at TD)
Fun fact: Charles to loves cook, especially the fresh salmon he catches in Lake Ontario
“It’s an untapped opportunity, and a reflection of change in people and behaviour. Collectively, we’ve become more comfortable interacting with technology and it is natural to engage people in a way they are already comfortable with. Back in undergrad, I was in a public affairs program and became involved in alternative ways of supporting marginalized populations. It’s made me much more aware of the challenges people in society face. Ample Labs is a great blend of technology and social good based on research.”
2. What are some insights you bring to Ample Labs, and what are insights you’ve learned?
Dagmar Schroeder (Fundraising Specialist):
“2020 has been a huge lesson in seeing our blindspots as a society. I’m humbled to be a part of such a dedicated, high caliber board tackling this problem throughout it all. My expertise is in fundraising for nonprofits with a background in supporting low-income families as well as marginalized populations. Because I don’t have any background in technology, it’s fascinating to learn from the technology experts on the board and hear what’s possible. It also blows me away the sophistication of the work the user research team is doing.”
Lisa Durnford (Legal Specialist):
“The way I contribute is with my legal hat on, especially in risk and compliance. Every organization needs to look at risk mitigation for long term strategic planning. One of the most important things I learned is how vital data and accessibility is in order to fuel solutions like Chalmers. The next is the educational campaigns Ample Labs have on folks experiencing homelessness, the stories, stats and user research — it’s all been enlightening!
Franklin Garrigues (Chair):
“As chair of the board, I spend time with CG and the leadership team on their strategy and next steps. In the beginning of the year, there were many questions arising on challenges around how to help our population during COVID-19, as well as how Ample Labs can thrive. Despite those challenges, we are now operating in more cities than before and expanding to the U.S., which we will share more about at the AGM.”
Ali Asaria (Start-up Expert):
“My background is in technological innovation and scaling startups for growth. Chalmers is going well and surpassing expectations, the next phase is to go out there and ask for more support to scale for even greater impact. What CG has taught all of us is that the best software is made when you’re close to the users. Success isn’t just cool technology but listening and talking to the people it serves. ”
Sugan Mannavarajan (Community Builder):
“I look at how we can work with business and community allies in new and dynamic ways. My background has been in federal housing, business, and non-profits but I think of myself as a community builder and a futurist. I build people up and help them network but I don’t identify as just the title of my job in housing policy. I am relatively new to the board and look forward to supporting CG and the team, as well as learning from the journey.”
Andres Perez-Vilarino (Treasurer):
“My role in finance is to make sure we use these numbers to build a path moving forward. I help Ample Labs run sustainably. My background is in Ernst & Young, so the public sector is new to me and I’m learning quite a bit. When I first started, I was surprised to learn how common cell phone use is in homeless populations. People transitioning in or out of homelessness tend to be overlooked but the access to technology can play a key role in finding critical services.”
Shawn Fulham (Government relations):
“I work closely with CG and Todd on strategy with the municipal, provincial, and federal government. With any startup, there’s a threshold you need to pass. Ample Labs is now at a place where we can truly scale for impact, and it’s incredible seeing us go from a passion project to a fully fleshed out team.”
Charles McCarragher (Technology and Commercialization Strategy):
“I’ve shared with the Ample team a diversity of thought around commercialization opportunities. For many traditional non-profits, they rely on crowdfunding and fundraising, but Ample Labs has the opportunity to generate their own revenue by licensing Chalmers that will go back into the mission. Through Ample Labs, I’ve learned about hidden homelessness, and the importance of delivering impact before people cross that bridge of becoming chronically homeless.
3. Where do you see Ample Labs going in the future?
Dagmar Schroeder (Fundraising Specialist):
I would like to see Ample Labs sustainably funded so we can invest in the solution, the employees and impact research. Impact research will help us share what our technology is achieving and what users get out of the service. We are already going international. Once we get charitable status and attract donations, we can do even more. It’s hugely rewarding being a part of the board and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
Lisa Durnford (Legal Specialist):
Chalmers is extremely valuable and needs to be in the hands of more people. I’m here to support getting the message and app out to as many people as possible. I love the approach Ample Labs has taken to educate the wider community, growing our audience and the number of cities that Chalmers is in. All the campaigns in telling the story of hidden homeless individuals, public campaigns with the couch in Yonge and Dundas square are all really important.
Franklin Garrigues (Chair):
The long-term goal is to reduce homelessness. We are helping people on the cusp or new to homelessness and supporting them from going further down the funnel into chronic homelessness. We want to improve mental health and tackle the systemic issues that youth face. Ample Labs is in a good space right now where we’re growing in new cities and the footprint of Chalmers will be even more far-reaching by this time next year. We’re still in our early stage and I’m here to support operations in any way possible.
Ali Asaria (Start-up Expert):
“Prior to Ample, I made the assumption that the problems Chalmers solved were already addressed. Unfortunately, it isn’t. While Ample Labs is expanding, there is still a large population of folks left without support. The next step for us is to continue to scale for impact. Ample Labs is a great example of a nonprofit with a startup mode, and I’d like to prove this model works. More nonprofits and social issues need innovation.
Sugan Mannavarajan (Community Builder):
“To help individuals in distress navigate complex systems is powerful. I want to see Chalmers standardized, adopted across Canada and the impact measured so more leaders understand it’s value. Connecting people in need with services is vital, and I would love to see more community leaders understand the role of technology in social issues.
Andres Perez-Vilarino (Treasurer):
“It’s time for us to grow and expand sustainably. We need to manage growth, but going forward we want to help more people be aware of Chalmers. I think for being out just a year and a half, we’ve had massive success. The plan right now is to expand to new countries and regions, and continue getting the message out to more institutions, services and cities.”
Shawn Fulham (Government relations):
“I would like to see Ample Labs take over Canada. I know we’re in 50% of Ontario and going to the U.S. Seeing Chalmers around the world would be great. The holy grail of where Ample Labs could go is to get recognition from the United Nations or an international organization to champion us. The impact we make is just beginning.”
Charles McCarragher (Technology and Commercialization Strategy):
“Ample Labs is on a good path of growth, working with municipalities and supporting them in their efforts. The challenge we face is to prioritize the efforts into what has the most impact. I help Ample manage those decisions and hopefully provide meaningful advice to support CG and the team. It’s been a challenging time for non-profits in 2020 and the fact that Ample is where it is, I want to acknowledge and congratulate the team.”
Thank you to our dedicated board of directors for supporting our mission!
Our volunteer board brings a wealth of experience and expertise, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. To conclude, here are a few stories and parting thoughts from Sugan Mannavarajan, a community builder and futurist who helped create Canada’s first $56B affordable housing project:
“When I did my first affordable housing project, a 16-year-old with a baby girl came up to me. A politician was doing the ribbon-cutting ceremony, but she said she heard I was doing a lot of the work behind it. She told me she had been living in a crack house and that this initiative has been the only thing that’s given her hope in a long time. I remember her face so clearly and I think about it all the time. It’s the faces that drive my work, not the numbers. I remember meeting another individual, and his story was so impactful. I don’t remember his name but he was clearly educated by the way he spoke. He said he had an MBA from Schulich, and when I asked him how he got to this point in his life, he told me: ‘My brother was having an affair with my wife for the last ten years. When I found out, I became depressed and started hitting the pub. I missed work, lost my job and couldn’t pay my mortgage. Without an address, I can’t get a job. I’m part of the cycle now. This is my community now.’ Everyone spirals down from time to time, and you need someone to help you get out. You need tools, not being told to wait on a call. You might not even know what you need. When you think about someone fleeing domestic violence and understanding what is going on in their head, this is where Ample Labs and Chalmers can make a difference in someone’s experience. What does their experience look like? How do we change that experience?”
For more updates on the Ample Labs journey 👉 sign up for our monthly newsletter!
We are currently hiring! 👉 check out our positions here
Looking for partnership opportunities? 👉 Email [email protected] | https://medium.com/@amplelabs-co/why-leverage-technology-to-combat-homelessness-ample-labs-board-of-directors-feature-a808442a43aa | ['Ample Labs'] | 2020-11-20 17:08:09.279000+00:00 | ['Civictech', 'Tech For Good', 'Tech', 'Homeless', 'Technology'] |
The Iśāvāsya Upanishad | Trisul, Nanda Devi and Himalayan range from Kausani, Uttarakhand - Wikimedia Commons
Pervaded by the dominion [of the Supreme] is all of this which moves in the moving world Having abandoned this, enjoy! Do not be acquisitive! For whose indeed is wealth? [Iśāvāsya Upanishad Verse 1; my own translation]
This is the famous first verse of the Iśā or Iśāvāsya Upanishad. This Upanishad is the last part of the Śukla Yajur Veda Saṃhita B, preserved in both the Kāṇva and Mādhyandīna śākhās. Being part of a Saṃhita, it has a special status. About just the first verse quoted above, Mahatma Gandhi is supposed to have said -
“If all the Upanishads and all the other scriptures happened all of a sudden to be reduced to ashes, and if only the first verse in the Ishopanishad were left in the memory of the Hindus, Hinduism would live forever” [quoted from Eknath Easwaran, ‘The Upanishads’, p.205]
The spirit of renunciation combined with full immersion in the world that is a pervasive characteristic of Hinduism is displayed in this verse. As Eknath Easwaran explains -
“Gandhi was only interpreting this great truth practically when he said, in response to the challenge of a Western journalist who wanted the secret of his life in three words, “Renounce and enjoy!”…” [Eknath Easwaran, ‘The Upanishads’, p.205]
Poetic descriptions and vivid didactic metaphors are a feature of the Upanishads in general, and here too we find them in abundance. The ātman, self or soul, is described as follows -
It moves; it does not move; it is far; it is near It is inside of all this; it is outside of all this [Iśāvāsya Upanishad Verse 5; my own translation]
Light has been invoked as a metaphor for knowledge, wisdom and spiritual realisation since ancient times. In this Upanishad, too, we see both light and darkness used as metaphors in this way, as follows -
They enter darkness who honour ignorance Thy who are addicted to knowledge [enter] into even greater darkness than that. [Iśāvāsya Upanishad Verse 9; my own translation]
As Dr. E Rőer explains about this -
“Vidyā, knowledge, is here lesser knowledge, not the knowledge of absolute Brahman, but of Brahman thought under relative attributes; it is opposed to the highest knowledge, because it is also connected with works.” [Dr. E Rőer, The Twelve Principal Upaniṣads, Vol. I, p.9]
The final verses of the Iśāvāsya Upanishad are considered (by Śaṇkara for example) to be the appropriate final words for a virtuous person at the end of a good life. In these verses, the dying person prays to sun deity Pūṣan to reveal the true reality to their true self and to the fire deity Agni to remember their deeds and the associated karma. | https://medium.com/desiretothink/the-i%C5%9B%C4%81v%C4%81sya-upanishad-b577772c8a7d | ['Peter Sahota'] | 2020-03-29 13:46:18.776000+00:00 | ['Gandhi', 'Sanskrit', 'Hinduism', 'Upanishad', 'Vedas'] |
Bring The Joy of The Past Into The Present | Photo by Laura Fuhrman on Unsplash
Major Benefits of Nostalgia
Feel more connected. The University of Southampton in England is one of the leaders in documenting the impact of nostalgia. Among their findings, they suggest that collective memories make us feel a sense of belonging. Nostalgia gives us our roots and helps us empathize. You begin to understand yourself better.
Looking back also creates more continuity in our lives. We learn how our background influences us today. By exploring your life in the past, you can see where your current experiences blend. As you look back you may discover a deeper meaning in your life. Naturally, we tend to focus on important times and people. This makes it easier to see our overall direction and purpose. As you review parts of your life, you may increase your self-confidence. Those who regularly indulge in nostalgia also report greater self-esteem. This is a great opportunity to reflect on your accomplishments and witness how you thrive through adversity.
Recalling good times is an instant mood booster. Include the conversation with friends and family, and you’ll all be laughing and connecting over past memories sometimes you might have forgotten all about until the moment someone mentions your antics as a teen. By seeing the times you worked through tough emotions or events, you strengthen your coping skills. There are also practical advantages to looking back. If you tend to be nostalgic, you’ll demonstrate greater resiliency.
So, since we cannot literally time travel in a machine, we can gather memories, mementos, and other tidbits of life and close our eyes. We then mentally time travel. The little trips boost the mood and helps us connect with happier times.
“Since nostalgia involves mentally time traveling to personally treasured past experiences, it may allow individuals opportunities to re-experience the pleasant emotions felt during those times. For example, think about a time in which you looked through an old photo album. How did it make you feel?” (Routledge, 2016, p. 44)
Photo by Fiona Feng on Unsplash
Time travel at your fingertips
Advertisers often invoke the past because they know it sells everything from refrigerators to shampoo. You might even try to put nostalgia to work for you. People are more apt to consider what you have to offer if you can connect them with their positive past experiences.
Remember, nostalgia comes to play with our memories. Memories provide meaningful connections, lift your spirits, and strengthen your relationships. Turn on the computer and explore the online world. Ironically, modern technology makes it easier to access our history. You’re only a few keystrokes away from viewing classic TV shows or ordering the movie candy you grew up eating.
Sometimes, once you recall a specific memory, the brain will connect to similar experiences and send you a few other ideas you thought you had forgotten. One of the benefits of remembering is to reminisce with others. If you each out to family and friends they may help you remember and relive the memories of high school, your first prom, or the first kiss. As you view past experiences as enriching you’ll gain perspective.
However, if yesterday looks better than today, you may be troubled by a sense of loss. Recognize the value of the past to get you where you are today, by shifting the mental paradigm. Ty to focus on how everything comes together to make you who you are. Accept good times at face value. Go ahead and glamorize your first car.
One frustration is in acceptance. You may have to process complex events. Even if there were troubles in your childhood, you lost a best friend to death, or your first marriage ended you may still be able to extract some meaning to show you personal growth happened as time moved forward. Even amidst the hard times, there will probably still be fond memories you can look back on. Monitor your mood and reactions. It’s natural to become nostalgic when you feel sad or lonely. Realize that you can access old memories anytime, regardless of your mood.
By all means, to begin collecting memories take pictures. Collect and display photos of the things and people you love. Update your computer wallpaper with a photo from your latest vacation. Hang a string of photos with little lights on it to remind you of the moments in time which mattered. Find ones which reflect you now.
Photo by Andrew Teoh on Unsplash
For instance, in my mother’s wooden box lay all kinds of tokens of life past, and love lived. Photos of her and my father called me to ponder their time together, a long 46 year marriage. I love looking in this special box. It reminds me, that even though life was hard she had great love for my father.
Songs provide a powerful connection to our memories. Have you ever heard a certain song on the radio and been immediately transported back in time? Share your favorite childhood songs with your own children. We all have the favorite songs of the season, and maybe a song sticks perfectly with you and your partner. Reminiscence together! Show your children your childhood toys out of the attic. If you don’t have access to them, look for images or scan used stores. If you no longer own your favorite old board game, look for it at garage sales or shop for it online.
Give the present and future ample attention.
Even as you take a trip down memory lane, it’s still important to attend to what’s currently going on in your life and prepare for your future. We can time travel whenever we want. Obviously we need to be balanced in our life. Looking back to move forward is a powerful tool. We can learn from our past so we do not repeat the same mistakes in the future.
Lay conceptions depict nostalgia as a multifaceted blended emotion involving reflection on, and longing for, a fond and relational past. Far from reflecting the negative view of nostalgia that dominated much of its intellectual history, current lay conceptions return to the Homeric view that nostalgia entails deriving meaning and emotions from fond memories of relationships (Hepper, Ritchie, & Sedikides, & Wildschut, 2012).
Keep a healthy balance when thinking about the past, present, and future. As you go on about your exploration of mental time travel, take a good look at today and relish the gifts of time. We have been given a great expanse to explore, the current life we live, and the pictures we can take which capture special times. Learn from the past, move toward the future, and find nostalgia as a gift.
Spanish philosopher George Santayana is credited with the aphorism, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” while British statesman Winston Churchill wrote, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
~Just a thought by Pamela | https://medium.com/change-your-mind/bring-the-joy-of-the-past-into-the-present-8c31f802a5f8 | ['Pamela J. Nikodem'] | 2020-12-28 14:00:43.694000+00:00 | ['Family', 'Happiness', 'Life', 'Memories', 'Nostalgia'] |
13 Reasons to be Recklessly Entertaining | “A consistently highly creative person is generally irresponsible.” — Theodore Levitt
As you may know, “13 Reasons Why” is a television adaptation of a young adult novel which tells a familiar but disturbing story about any and all bad things that can happen in high school. The story is told to its young impressionable target audience in refreshingly promethean way but, unfortunately, the message is told without an iota of regard for mental fragility of its target audience. In a word, the message is delivered… irresponsibly. And there’s only one reason why “13 Reasons Why” is irresponsible, and that reason is… creativity.
If you will, allow me to digress for a moment, in the form of a circumferential rant on the lack of creativity in Hollywood in order to lay the foundation for why I have such dichotomous feelings about this show. Thank you.
You may have heard that television shows in this era of “TV” are “ground breaking”, “daring”, “original”. But Fuck what you’ve heard, current television, or what ever the hell it has morphed into these days- cable, satellite, on demand streaming video- is entertainment’s graveyard of creativity. In the potential space where ideas for original programming could exist there is a black whole that sucks in previously crafted brilliance from another time and place (e.g. movies, books, graphic novels, older TV shows) and regurgitates, into our present, repurposed substandard, jejune feces that is smeared across TV screens in 10–13, one hour segments (exhibit 1: “Iron Fist”, a horrible show) to further our continual spiral into a television induced brian death. If we are lucky, parts of our passive pursuit of a permanent vegetative state is occasionally enjoyable. And trust me there is no better way to go my friends than to one day gork out permanently while in the midst of a 3 day marathon of previous viewed “Breaking Bad” episodes while priming for the” Better Call Saul” season premier.
But in today’s barren waste land of television dryness, rarely are we lucky enough to be graced with creatively presented content. I guess if you’re a studio why would you take a chance with serving up Grade A prime content to a nation of couch chattel that will eat anything you chef up when it’s so easy for you to feed us boob-tube-slaves chitterlings. I mean, to the un-indentured minded television watcher, at some point, the question begs to be asked, if “television” can’t be original enough to be interesting can it at least be creative enough to be entertaining? Well history and the present state of affairs shows us that the answer is, probably not. Because as we all know there is only one way to make television- unoriginal- and there is only no way to tell a story- with out creativity.
Okay maybe I’m overstating the originality aspect because that may be on the individual because maybe if you’ve lived long enough than maybe you feel you’ve seen it all and maybe you’ll feel you’ve heard it all. But what about creativity, there has to be more than one way to present information. But if you’re a creator of TV content, then a change from the old dogma seems risky. Right? The old linear story line, with the classic camera close-ups, medium, long and arc shots. Why risk changing anything. Hollywood is a business and all business’ typically try to minimize risks. Creativity… Is a risky proposition indeed, this idea of veering from the straight and narrow… the safe and cozy. Because, the further one wonders off the reservation the less one is protected by the security of the familiar. Without security, there is only risk. But we all want our content providers to take risks in order to find and present something that’s fresh and new. Well don’t we? And when they do, take said risks, we congratulate, or we don’t, but we always appreciate. At least I do. But when the studios actually do take a chance, I personally hate to offer harsh words for those who take creative risks. And most especially for those who take the risks and succeed at being entertaining. So, it pains me to criticize a show that I truly enjoyed watching, but I must.
So, back to the show… The delivery of the 13’s schtick is certainly creative AF (from the cinematography to the way the story played with time) but, unfortunately, the impressive delivery dispenses the subject matter in a way that toys with idea of legitimizing the irrational fears of a teenagers and glamorizing the act of suicide to that same young impressionable group that it intends to entertain. The damn show is so entertaining and speaks which such a fluent teenage voice the show’s unintended literal translation, in the language of teenager, is damn near saying, “If your gonna off your self make sure you leave a really imaginative suicide note behind.”
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very good watch and even the hard core teeny-bopper fluff-hater inside me cannot say I wasn’t clamoring for the next episode. But teeny-bopper focused the message most certainly was, and therein lies the problem. Given the subject matter and the fact kids are uber susceptible to common coding, the presentation maybe too kid friendly. Like a Sesame Street episode with Oscar the Grouch snorting Bolivian high grade off of Cookie Monster’s garbage pail and Big Bird making sexually inappropriate comments towards Snuffaluffagus, there are some subject matters that you shouldn’t make appealing to individuals in their formative years. Indeed, when making a show about teen suicide and your target audience is a bunch of teenagers you can’t very well make the idea of suicide seem fashionable, which the makers of the show may have done by making the star, protagonist and “coolest” character on the show spend 13 hours damn near convincingly justifying her own indefensible suicide.
Yeah, Netflix probably should have realized that hormones are powerful ass shit and can turn a young kid’s mind inside out. Couple that with the fact that teenagers are playing a perpetual game of monkey see monkey do, sprinkle in some alcohol and drugs, and you have a highly volatile mixture of self perpetuating sexual and violent aggression, tittering around its critical point in a population of individuals, that are dangerously open to suggestion and just looking for a reason to set some shit off. No, it doesn’t take much to set a 16 year old kid off on a Kurt Cobain-esque downward mental spiral ending in self harm, assault or homicide. And even if we minus the drugs and hormones, just focus on the metal disease angle, in general, if you tell a depressed kid on the edge of suicide (which many teenagers are) that there is a poetic way to take their own life that will leave a lasting impression on everyone whom they ever thought was important, what the fuck do you think that kid is going to do?
This idea that this show took a harum-scarum, although entertaining, approach to presenting this novel is so clear and obvious that I’m sure the makers of this show acknowledged this risk before the director ever said action at take one of the first scene recorded. Which, in itself, seems moderately criminal. But that Hollywood tribe they are surely smart and prepared folks. So I’m sure they have a lawyer briefed and a public response in the chamber waiting in the event that a child takes their life and makes a tape, or video, to creatively explain their motives (just like Hannah)… But I am also equally sure that the makers of the show will embrace the publicity of whatever consequent calamity that may ensue. Because all publicity is good publicity in Hollywood. And maybe, just maybe, the unfortunate sacrifice of one of our innocent, impressionable youth to this emotional contagion will get the 13 folks a second season or, at least, a bump in season 1 DVD sales. And doesn’t that make it all worth it?
It pains me to say this, but Netflix, the show was awesome:) But you suck for making it :( | https://medium.com/m-wheeler-books/13-reasons-to-be-recklessly-entertaining-f1da4bbef297 | ['M. Wheeler Books'] | 2017-05-10 18:51:36.503000+00:00 | ['13 Reasons Why', 'Netflix', 'Television'] |
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