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More than just a physical location: A tour of Hub One’s space in Yaba | On January 31, 2019, First City Monument Bank (FCMB) launched Hub One to provide an affordable and enabling enviroment where tech startups can thrive, collaborate and share ideas.
Located in the heart of Yaba, Lagos. This state-of-the-art yet very functional co-working space is great for birthing ideas and championing revolutionary solutions to the nation’s challenges leveraging tech.
“It was launched in partnership with Passion Incubator, the parent company of LeadSpace,” said Udoh Kelven, Head of Communications and Marketing at Passion Incubator. “LeadSpace manages operations here at Hub One.”
Hub One offers its members co-working spaces, unlimited internet, constant power supply, free coffee, and other basic infrastuctural needs which many startups seem to lack.
According to Udoh, Hub One accepts only tech startups and its application process is quite simple.
“Once you reach out to us through our website, we ensure that you a registered tech company. Then you’ll be required to fill out a form giving us the necessary information we need to prequalify you.”
With Udoh as our guide, we recently took a tour of the Hub One space. Here’s what it looks like.
Welcome to Hub One!
The beautifully designed waiting area and lounge
The kitchenette
Here, members get free coffee, tea and water. They also have an office assistant that helps them run errands.
Hello!
This is the phone booth where members of Hub One go to make and receive calls to avoid distracting other members of the community.
The work spaces
Hub One provides shared spaces for startups cut across all industries ranging from fintech to eCommerce, edutech and proptech, among others. And it offers various subscription plans.
All plans include access to power, the internet, kitchenette, meeting rooms, printer and scanner.
An additional workspace
Lockers
These lockers are assigned to each startup that uses the space.
Another workspace
The small meeting room
According to Udoh, the room is usually used for quick meetings or if the bigger meeting room is already booked.
“We have an online booking system in place which our members use to ensure proper scheduling and to avoid meeting clashes.”
More work spaces
A relaxation space
The big meeting room
Unlike the small meeting room, this one has a projector.
Aside from the co-working space, Hub One also provides its members with access to knowledge and funding opportunities.
“We go beyond just providing them with power and Internet. Every month, we host ‘Epic Hour’- a knowledge-sharing event where we invite top players in the tech ecosystem to share their experiences, Epic Hour also allows for networking and cross pollination of ideas ”. “Through Hub One, a couple of our members have gotten funding and accelerator program opportunities.”
Faces at Hub One
The Hub One space is simple, yet it exudes a huge sense of community, collaboration and innovation. It truly represents FCMB’s commitment towards the development of the tech startup ecosystem. | https://medium.com/@nsemboo/more-than-just-a-physical-location-a-tour-of-hub-ones-space-in-yaba-9a8dc69b3c1b | ['Udoh N. Kelven'] | 2019-11-27 13:14:37.029000+00:00 | ['Coworking Space', 'Yaba', 'Lagos', 'Innovation', 'Startup'] |
Croydon joins forces with Adur & Worthing on low code | Exciting news: Croydon Council have signed up to use the Create low code platform as part of their ambitious plans for digital. Create is the new name for MatsSoft, the platform Adur & Worthing have been using for several years.
Low code platforms allow online services and whole software systems to be built rapidly by in-house teams using component “building blocks” through a visual builder interface, on a platform built on open standards. Developers also have the ability to step in and write code where needed.
As Ben Cheetham from MHCLG wrote just this week, de-coupling a councils’ platform tech choices from the vital, shared work to design good digital service patterns, data architectures and standards in local government seems to me like a breakthrough moment, and I’m delighted that our platform community is growing. Cumbria are also going great guns, and interest is rapidly growing elsewhere.
For a large council like Croydon to make this strategic choice, and with Greater Manchester Combined Authority also using a low code platform approach, I think it’s an important time to celebrate increased empowerment for councils, while reinforcing the need for open sharing and collaboration, using the principles enshrined in the Local Digital Declaration.
Both Croydon and Adur & Worthing Councils already have experience in leading important collaborative partnerships driving digital transformation forward in local government. Supported by the MHCLG Local Digital Fund, Croydon are currently leading a code sharing project to help councils easily and cost effectively build their websites, and Adur & Worthing are leading on OpenCommunity, establishing a new national data standard for service directories, improving integration between the NHS, local authorities and community-based organisations.
Starting as a partnership between the two Councils, we’re aiming to grow a low code platform community that designs, builds and freely shares digital applications, aligned to the GDS Service Standard.
In-house digital teams
There’s no doubt that councils, like all other organisations, need control of digital transformation, and it’s widely accepted that local authorities should now be building in-house digital teams to support innovation and moving away from lumbering and costly third party systems built pre-internet.
Digital teams need to be able to help deliver efficiencies and improve customer experience, but they also need to establish true innovation capability to support continual transformation. But how can this be achieved in the local government context? This was Neil William’s challenge when he started the role in Croydon.
Neil, who was Head of GOV.UK at the Government Digital Service, and is now Chief Digital Officer at Croydon Council, knows a thing or two about what can be achieved by an in-house digital team with the right skills and technologies!
Published last year, Croydon’s Digital Strategy outlines the council’s aims to design and build great digital services for residents and Neil has now established the Croydon Digital Service (CDS), bringing his wealth of experience and learning from GDS to local government.
During 2019, Neil’s team undertook a strategic assessment of the digital platforms they would need to make a real impact and deliver on their strategy. They found that Adur & Worthing’s low code approach provided a compelling model for building digital services quickly and flexibly, particularly in the local government context where budget and scale are so different compared to central government departments and the NHS.
Back in 2015, I launched our Councils’ digital strategy, with internet-era platforms taking centre stage. Alongside switching the Councils to Google for email and documents, we created a future technology map that drove the procurement of the low code platform. The platform would give us the technical building blocks to create digital services around ten times faster than existing coding methods, built on open standards to enable easy inter-operability with other systems. Developers are still able to jump in and write code where it’s needed.
Rapid progress
Our chosen platform, Liberty Create (formerly MATSsoft), quickly enabled our small but amazing in-house team of developers to build impressively sophisticated digital services. We’ve been building GOV.UK style customer facing services for some time now, and can also build entire end-to-end systems, allowing us to switch off legacy software.
Adur & Worthing’s waste & recycling service has been running on the platform for several years. Customer-reported graffiti and fly tipping incidents get sent to field operatives instantly, with no office admin in-between, and other waste and recycling services operate in a similar way. For those that choose it, we now run a fully automated clinical waste collection service, with an Alexa style phone ordering system instantly tasking operatives out in the field, keeping customers up-to-date with email and text notifications.
One of the key features I’ve highlighted before of the approach is the low cost of development. The team’s most impressive success so far must be the end-to-end digital housing repairs service, handling tenant reporting, operative scheduling, mobile fieldwork and even contractor invoicing. With design and build of the whole application costing £80k (for external service design and UX support), and with no ongoing app licence fee, the low code approach really has been a game changer for us.
Another key selling point is the skills profile needed for developers. As Adur & Worthing have found, councils already have a lot of the talent they need on the payroll. It’s a case of finding technically-minded staff, bringing them together in the digital team and providing training. During this year we will exploring the creation of a satellite team elsewhere in the organisation, to test empowering services further and accelerate innovation.
Neil and Paul and the teams are excited about the collaboration and sharing opportunities ahead, with a growing developer community and “app share” platform available to users from across sectors including business, health, local and central government. The ethos of platform users is to freely share what they have built, from new technical components and widgets, to fully built applications.
Croydon have committed to an initial one year trial of the platform.
Local Digital Declaration
The practicalities of collaboration are always a challenge, but we are confident we can make it happen. We plan to coordinate our work programmes as much as possible to maximise gains, and will be developing approaches aligned to the GDS Service Manual, the Service Standard, and the Local Digital Declaration of which we are founding signatories. | https://medium.com/@pdbrewer/adur-worthing-join-forces-with-croydon-3ce69a8ab6ea | ['Paul Brewer'] | 2020-02-13 06:43:41.307000+00:00 | ['Local Digital', 'Local Government', 'Low Code Development'] |
August/September News for Global Educators and Organizations | August/September News for Global Educators and Organizations
Sign Up for Global Collaboration Week
It’s back to school time in our corner of the world and we’ve curated resources and opportunities for you to connect to the world as a professional!
Global Collaboration Week and Beyond
Register today! Global Collaboration Week is scheduled to coincide with United Nations High Level Week in September. Our event is not directly affiliated, but is designed to support the overall intent of the United Nations convening. Global Collaboration Week offers educators and organizations an opportunity to connect to the world through globally connected teaching and learning activities designed and hosted by GEC members and partners. All events and activities are free!
United National High Level Week is when the Member States of the United Nations convene in New York City. It consists of a general debate, high-level meetings and five summits on climate action, universal health coverage, sustainable development goals, financing for development, and small islands developing states. Of particular interest to our community are these events:
Additional SDG Related Resources
Other Opportunities
Here are additional items of interest that we’ve noticed this month!
Don’t forget to register for Global Collaboration Week here. Make sure to also follow us on Twitter and the hashtag #globaled19 for the latest GEC news!
Thanks for reading! | https://medium.com/gec-network-musings/august-september-news-for-global-educators-and-organizations-bdcccd74340b | ['Lucy Gray'] | 2019-09-01 11:11:20.259000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Global Goals', 'Teachers', 'Sdgs', 'Sustainable Development'] |
Sleeping with dogs and bed hogs | Sleeping with dogs and bed hogs
When you finally give up on sleeping alone
Photo credit: Nappy Stock
Dogs should stay on the floor — not on my couch or on my bed. That is how I was raised. My parents had no idea that I’d scooped my Labrador Retriever mutt up and rolled him into my comforter to take photographs. Obviously by the time they got home, I’d unrolled him and we sat on the floor. And I hadn’t let a dog on my bed again for 22 years of dog ownership — until I decided to house sit for the first time. That is when I came to the conclusion that dogs are quite comfortable to sleep with, including the bed hogs.
First there was the Louisiana Catahoula Leopard dog who would leap off the couch and run in front of me every single time I went into the guestroom. She was ready at all times to sleep sideways. No matter how you climbed into that bed, she was going to make sure you were next to her in some form or fashion. I tried outsmarting her by laying parallel. She leaned her entire body over, belly up, so she was still leaning on me.
Then came the Ridgeback Pit mix, who’d attacked a skunk two days before I got to her home. She stank to high heaven when you got close to her, and my first thought was, “There is no way in hell I’m going to let that dog sleep next to me.” She had better ideas. She squeezed her 50–60 pound body underneath my bed each night and stayed planted there. So if I snuck out of the bed, she could see my feet. And if I climbed on the bed, she knew where I was. When the maid came while I was sleep, she knew it. When the gardeners were outside, she knew it. And eventually, I got so used to the smell underneath me for eight days that I stopped thinking skunks have a smell. Should I be concerned?
I lucked out with the French Bulldog and Great Pyrenees/Poodle Mix, who slept behind baby gates and crates. But that certainly didn’t stop the French Bulldog from making sure to only poop as close to the baby gate as possible. Some people wake up to the smell of bacon and coffee. Not me. I woke up on a couch next to the smell of puppy poop.
I was beyond relieved when the incontinent Shetland Sheepdog enjoyed sleeping in her dog bed, the same one her owner said she didn’t like. It wasn’t that the Shetland Sheepdog didn’t like her dog bed. It was only that the bed was on the other side of the room. I’d already learned from the Louisiana Catahoula Leopard dog that if a dog cannot lean her body weight against you, she’s not happy.
Photo credit: Daria Rem/Pexels
But then came the two Cairn Terriers. One of them always wanted to sleep on the bathroom rug as soon as I finished showering. And he stayed there the whole night. The other ran in circles, barking all over the house until I scooped him up to sleep beside me. I learned their sleeping habits quickly. The Chihuahua Pomeranian mix was another bedside fellow, although I always ended up waking up with hair close to my mouth. That is one heavy-shedding, lovable dog.
Then came the Brittany Spaniel, who I wasn’t quite sure about. Her owner, who’d had her for a year, would let her sleep with him. But then he got married and decided he wanted the bed to be for his spouse only. And the Brittany Spaniel did something quite bitchy. She leaped onto his bed and peed on it. I tried so hard not to burst out laughing when he told me, but hey, you can’t just let a dog sleep with you for that long and then expect her to react well to the floor. I wasn’t quite sure what she’d do in my own home. She stared at me for a second, paced the bed, huffed off and I found her on one of my couches each night. It turns out her owner had trained her so well that she wouldn’t attempt to sleep in other people’s beds either. I would not have minded — as long as she didn’t pee on my bed, too.
I thought that I would have to pick up the itty bitty Shih Tzu should he want a sleeping companion. That is, until I found out Shih Tzus may as well be kangaroos. I squatted down to pick up the Shih Tzu the first night I boarded him, only for him to leap over my back and onto the bed, turn in one circle and close his eyes. Those little bitty legs are undefeated.
I’m not saying everyone should sleep with dogs. Do whatever makes you comfortable. What I am saying is it’s all kinds of entertaining to watch what your dog will do when you call it a night. | https://medium.com/doggone-world/sleeping-with-dogs-and-bed-hogs-ec43aa7fe2aa | ['Shamontiel L. Vaughn'] | 2020-05-04 22:31:45.812000+00:00 | ['Pets', 'Dog Owners', 'Sleep', 'Nighttime', 'Dogs'] |
Take Alexa in the car with Amazon’s Echo Auto for just $20 | You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great (Zig Ziglar) | https://medium.com/@kimberl18993995/take-alexa-in-the-car-with-amazons-echo-auto-for-just-20-c5e7fd404003 | [] | 2020-12-24 18:25:08.030000+00:00 | ['Connected Home', 'Music', 'Audio', 'Chargers'] |
Do Something Different This Christmas | The UK has not suffered an environmental disaster such as catastrophic floods or famine, nor has it experienced a civil war. Yet, 14 million UK citizens live below the poverty line. The need for emergency food packages increased by 89% from 2019 to 2020.
I have felt very strongly about foodbanks since I discovered their numbers had increased from 56 in 2010 to 1200 in 2019. In 2010 The Conservative and The Liberal Parties formed a coalition that gave birth to Universal Credit.
No one should be forced to turn to any charity because they can’t afford food. This can change. And right now, we have a real opportunity to begin to end hunger and destitution in the UK. There’s a part for all of us to play. ~Hunger Free Future
The Trussel Trust provides emergency three-day food parcels from their 1200 foodbanks to people in crisis. They have a strategic five-year plan that aims to end the need for food banks through their values of compassion, justice, community, and dignity. They plan to work nationally and locally to address the reasons foodbanks are needed, like Universal Credit benefit system policies and lack of support services.
The trust exists to help people in crisis, but the crisis is becoming the norm, especially in 2020. The Trussel Trust drew on their foodbank trustees, other volunteers, and staff to identify three main areas that need to be changed; community, policy, and minds.
In the meantime, to my utter disgust, I heard that the Department of Works and Pensions are reducing their client’s benefits payments because these desperate and hungry people are turning to food banks to feed themselves and their children. Food from foodbanks cost the government nothing. Donations are given by people who want to help the hungry. How dare benefits be reduced? If a claimant is forced to ask for food because they don’t have enough money to buy food to feed themselves and their family, they should be able to receive donations.
I have been unable to verify that benefit’s payments are being stopped if claimants use a foodbank. Another possibility is that paying back the initial five-week advance reduces the amount of money a person has to spend each month. Also, if a claimant does something wrong or forgets to do something and doesn’t correct the omission quickly they can lose some of their benefits in the form of sanctions. Thus less money means they have to use a foodbank.
This is not the only despicable act vulnerable people are being inflicted with. Do you know those hungry homeless guys and young women on your high street in the UK? They are also getting less in benefits because begging is considered an income. Technically yes, I guess it is. But seriously?
Do the DWP think Craig, Shawn, James, Kerry Ann, and Gavin on the Kirkcaldy High Street want to be sitting on the pavement in all weathers? Would they ask for cups of hot chocolate and coffee laced with masses of white sugar that rot their teeth if they weren’t desperate?
Did the DWP think it was okay to punish Craig for helping a mate out? Yes, they did. Craig lost his flat because he let a fellow homeless person stay there with him. Craig is still sleeping in the church doorway. He gave me a Christmas card last week. He has a kind heart and is being punished for it by the government. Instead, the DWP could have helped by finding a place for Craig’s guest to stay.
I’ve been lucky enough to only need help for four weeks. Signed off with depression by my doctor because I couldn’t stop crying, the break from work did the trick and I’m back in gainful employment now. I was luckier than most because I had enough savings to pay my bills for a month. I won’t receive my Universal Credit payment until the 24th of this month but it will cover bills for January while I wait to get paid by my employer.
I’m able to work. I have a roof over my head, I turn the heating on when it gets so cold my nose drips, and I can afford to eat healthy food. I’m happy with these three basics. Craig and Gavin don’t have these three basics. When I spoke with Gavin, a newcomer to the High Street, for the first time today, he was trying to get £20 of donations into his begging bowl so he could afford a night in The Windsor Hotel which usually charges £57 per night. James has a roof with his pals and, I hope, heating and food.
I’m distressed that they will all be hungry over Christmas. I’m more than upset that Craig won’t have somewhere to go for a hot meal. The Salvation Army under non-pandemic circumstances would provide dinner on Christmas Day. But they are not this year due to all the safety restrictions. I’m going to chase up another lead I have. If that leads to nothing, I will buy a turkey and stuffing and make up hot turkey rolls for the Kirkcaldy High Street Homeless people.
I am sad that I don’t have the means to do any more than provide a small meal and put together a little bag of basic hygiene essentials. When I asked Shawn what he would find useful to go with the toothbrushes and paste I’d already got, he suggested deodorant, underwear and anything else that will keep them clean and warm. I hope the magic, one-size-fits all gloves, plus the other items I have yet to source will be useful for them.
If you have any suggestions for easily transported hot meals for homeless people, please leave me a comment.
Will you do something different for Christmas and sign up for the Trussell Trust Hunger Free Future Campaign?
Lastly, thanks to the devastation wrought by the pandemic, a Universal Basic Annual Income of £7706 for UK citizens is looking more and more attractive. Keep an eye out for my next post with some imagined scenarios of what a monthly UBI might mean to people.
Thank you for reading. | https://medium.com/illumination/do-something-different-this-christmas-db2a4f001453 | ['Karen Madej'] | 2020-12-17 20:07:04.717000+00:00 | ['Foodbanks', 'Hunger', 'Charity', 'Poverty', 'Universal Basic Income'] |
UPNG 2019 Intake Data Visualization | UPNG 2019 Intake Data Visualization
An independent analysis using DHERST published list
This is an analysis of UPNG’s 2019 school-leaver selection using data visualization to show results.
A week ago I did an analysis of nationwide selections. Here, I’ve decided to focus on UPNG. | https://medium.com/png-data-insights/upng-2019-intake-data-viz-4b9d8c898321 | ['Neo Malesa'] | 2019-12-10 02:20:35.923000+00:00 | ['Higher Education', 'Data Visualization', 'Upng', 'Papua New Guinea'] |
Breastfeeding saves lives, here’s why | Mammary glands (medical term for the breast) are modified sweat glands (sweat glands are a type of organ). They primarily consist of lactiferous ducts (help transfer milk), which expand and branch out during pregnancy. Clusters of breast alveoli form from these ducts and expand toward the chest wall (ribs), since that is the contact point with the rest of the body.
Alveoli look like small balloons, that are lined with lactocytes, which are the cells that produce most of the breastmilk. Milk is secreted by the lactocytes, filled into the alveoli, the squeezed through the ducts into the milk ducts and into the nipple.
The anatomy of the breast before vs towards the end of pregnancy. This is to show you the severe change that the breast undergoes.
These changes happen in 2 major steps:
Secretory differentiation (previously called lactogenisis I)
During this stage, the hormones in a woman’s body induce the stem cells in the breast to differentiate into lactocytes, which then have the capacity to synthesize (generate) breast milk.
Up until delivery, a hormone called progesterone interferes with the prolactin hormone, which prevents the mammary glands from fully lactating. So in order for the mother to have the ability to breastfeed, a second step of hormonal processes need to occur.
However, during this stage the glands still have the capacity to produce small amounts of a pre-milk substance called colostrum. This substance lasts about 6 weeks after the child’s birth, and is the most concentrated in antibodies + nutrients. When a child is born, they are exposed to so many new pathogens (although there are currently studied being done that suggest the fetus is exposed to bacteria in the placenta). Colostrum is the first substance that is fed to the child, which is why it is the most concentrated in immunogenic components.
Secretory Activation
When the child is born, progesterone hormone levels significantly decrease, which signals the mammary glands to start producing real breastmilk.
Components of breastmilk
Human milk contains over 2,500 different components, the concentration of which can change every hour. This makes human milk one of the most complex fluids on earth.
Previous research shows that the primary component is water (87%), and most of the other components are categorized into either lactose (7%), fats (4%) and proteins (1.0%). However, we are now understanding the breastmilk also contains complete cells, although it is underdetermined at what amounts.
All of the molecular components of breast milk are either synthesized by lactocytes (the breastmilk-producing cells I previously talked about in the breast) or imported into milk from the breast’s blood supply. However, breastfeeding is extremely understudied, which means that there has very little research done on how some of the nutrients actually get to the breastmilk.
I will mostly be writing about the immunogenic components of breastmilk, since the absence of those is the biggest factor to child mortality. It is important to consider that although it is not the focus of this article, casein, fats, minerals and vitamins are extremely important for the development of the child (especially the prefrontal cortex).
Immunogenic components
The transplacental (between mother and child) transfer of immugenic functions is extremely important for a newborn. There are three primary ways immunity is transferred:
Transfer of antibodies through the placenta Anti-infective resistance factors in the amniotic fluid (a fluid excreted by the infant that fills up the amniotic sac which coats the child in the womb). Through colostrum and milk (what I’m narrowing into in the rest of this article)
The primary chemical barrier that protects the intestine is contained in the mucus layers lining the Gastrointestinal tract. These mucus layers minimize contact between pathogens that enter the bacteria and the epithelial cells inside the stomach.
There are multiple different types of immunogenic factors in breastmilk including: immunoglobulins (antibodies), lactoferrin, lysozymes and cytokines. New research also shows that breast milk contains epithelial cells, stem cells, and is a continuous source of beneficial (probiotic) bacteria, including Lactobacillis and Bifidobacterium.
All of these factors add another layer of complex protection to the intestinal mucus layers.
Let’s start with antibodies.
Immunoglobulins (antibodies)
Immunoglobulins, are the primary proteins protecting a human from infection.
The primary immunoglobulin in breastmilk Secretory Immunoglobulin A (sIgA), which makes up about 90% of all antibodies in breastmilk. SIgA lines the inside of the stomach and blocks pathogen contact with the intestinal epithelial layer by binding to and trapping them. SIgA ends up sitting in the stomach throughout the life of a human, protected from proteolysis by sugar components (galactose, fucose, and mannose) caused by the acids (the breakdown of proteins).
Immunoglobulins are transferred to the mammary glands through the entero-mammary link. This is a blood pathway linking the mother’s gut and the alveoli of the breast. This is extremely understudied, however, research hypothesize that when the woman’s hormone levels change, this signals different components to be sent to the breast.
How and why these hormones change is what we have yet to understand.
Cells in breastmilk
Researchers first discovered the presence of cells in breastmilk about a decade ago, when they found modified milk stem cells within the brain, thymus, pancreas, liver, spleen, and kidneys of an infant.
Every month, new research is coming out about the cells contained in breast milk. Here is a diagram of the most up-to-date knowledge of these cells:
The cells originating in the breast include lactocytes (secretory cells), myoepithelial cells, progenitor cells and mammary stem cells, and a small number of amount epithelial cells from the nipple and skin of the breast. Cells originating from the blood include immune cells (macrophages, neutrophils, and lymphocytes) and hematopoietic stem cells.
Leukocytes — white blood cells
Animal studies have proved that white blood cells fount in breast milk survive through the infant’s digestive tract, and then translocate into the blood, lymph nodes, spleen and liver.
In the diagram, everything under “immunological cells” is a type of white blood cell.
White blood cells are extremely essential to our bodies, by fighting pathogens directly via phagocytosis (killing pathogens), producing bioactive components (such as antibodies) modifying the microenvironment of the infant digestive tract.
However, they only constitute < 2% of cells that travel to the breast through the blood stream. So, that leaves the question about what all the other cells are.
Stem cells
A few studies suggested that human milk contains mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which are found in bone marrow and are important for making and repairing skeletal tissues, such as cartilage, bone and the fat found in bone marrow.
Researchers have also discovered that breast milk contains pluripotent stem cells, which have the ability to replicate into more stem cells, as well as differentiate into any cell in the body. For example, we have been able to differentiate pluripotent cells in vitro into adipose cells, chondrocytes, osteoblasts, neuronal cells, hepatocyte-like cells and pancreatic beta cells, as well as lactocytes and myoepithelial cells.
That’s a lot of words for these stem cells can literally turn into any cell in the body, and breastmilk provides a supple of them to the infant.
Macrophages
About 80% of the cells in early milk are breast milk macrophages, which originate as peripheral blood monocytes, which look something like the image below.
These cells are constantly circuling the blood stream, and with the right hormone levels, will exit the bloodstream and migrate into milk through the mammary epithelium (cells that line the surface of the milk ducts in the breast).
The presence of GM-CSF, which is a cytokine (signalling protein) causes these monocytes to differentiate into potent breast milk macrophages. The macrophages then have the ability to differentiate into dendritic cells that stimulate infant T-cell (immunological) activity.
Oligosaccharides
Glycoproteins are proteins that have oligosaccharide attached to them.
This is a protein, and the different shapes are different oligosaccharide attached to it.
Human milk glycoproteins (HMGPs) MUC1 and MUC4 bind to HIV, rotavirus, Escherichia coli, and Salmonella pathogens. There are ther HMGPs that bind to H. influenzae, Streptococci, Helicobacter pylori, Reovirus, E. coli, and Burkholderia cepacia.
The interactions between glycoprotein and ligands are being modeled using nanosurface plasmon resonance and glycan microarrays.
Lactoferrin
SIgA (the antibody I previously talked about) and lactoferrin correspond to 26% of the protein content of breast milk. So, these two components are extremely important, and therefore, are the ones I am studying.
What lactoferrin does is it regulates how well the iron is absorbed by the immune system. In particular, lactoferrin binds the iron in breast milk, which limits its availability to pathogens. In this way, it also starves the bacteria of nutrients, and just in case that wasn’t enough, will sometimes destroy the walls around bacteria.
Lactoferrin has many other abilities, for example it:
Has a direct cytotoxic effect against bacteria, viruses, and fungi
Blocks inflammatory cytokines (signal-sending proteins) such as IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α and IL-824–26.
Interferes with viral attachment as well as the contact with the specific entry receptors, such as ACE2. Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is an enzyme that attaches to the membranes of cells located in the lungs, arteries, heart, kidney, and intestines. This creates an interference, and can sometimes result in lowered blood pressure. Therefore, targeting ACE2 is a cool option for treating + preventing cardiovascular diseases.
There are several other glycoproteins, another one being Lactadherin, which. can inactivate viruses and limit inflammation by increasing the effective phagocytosis (killing) of apoptotic (useless but not yet dead) cells.
The list of bioactive glycoproteins in human milk is constantly expanding and their individual functions are being studied.
The gut microbiome
The gut microbiome is consistently being linked to literally every disease you could possibly imagine. Having a greater diversity of bacteria in the gut is directly linked to better mental and physical health.
For example, chronic cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality in the US, with heart disease and diabetes costing >$500 billion a year, and affecting around 60% of individuals over their lifetime. Pathogenesis (development of a disease) develops over decades, with many different contributing factors, such as environmental exposures, diet, and genetic background.
However, researchers have found that people with a more diverse microbiome are less likely to develop a cardiovascular disease. The diversity of the gut microbiota is primarily expanded in the first years of our lives, and dysbiosis (microbial imbalance) in infancy may affect long-term health of the gut microbiota.
Breastmilk is the main contributor to a well-developed and diverse microbiome, due to a an active presence of bacteria. It is estimated that an infant feeding on 800 ml of breast milk per day could ingest 107–108 bacterial cells daily!
To date, metagenomic analysis of human milk shows that it contains >360 different prokaryotic cells. The most frequent bacteria found in human milk are categorized into the species: Bifidobacterium, Staphylococcus, Acinetobacter, Streptococcus, Pseudomonas, Lactococcus, Enterococcus and Lactobacillus. In addition, several yeasts and fungi have been identified in breast milk of healthy mothers, including Malassezia, Candida, Saccharomyces and Rhodotorula.
For example, a low amount of gut Bifidobacterium can decrease the amount of energy produced from food, which leads to an excessive early weight gain during the first months of life.
Moreover, Lactobacillus gasseri and Lactobacillus fermentum reduces the growth of potential pathogenic organisms in the gastrointestinal tract. It does this by producing acetate and lactate (can kill several different pathogens) from the sugars ingested by the host.
The fact that human milk contains bacteria has been known for quite a while, so infant formula has been supplemented with several Bifidobacterium strains. This altered the microbiome composition in infant but did not affect long-term colonization, which isn’t too great because long-term health is what we’re striving for.
How this bacteria is transfered from the mother to infant
Retrograde flow
Researchers found that Streptococcus spp., which is one of the major bacteria in human milk is also widely present in the salivary microbiota. Moreover, Staphylococcus spp., Corynebacterium spp. and Propionibacterium spp., which are common skin bacterias are also frequently found in human breast milk.
This suggests that with a retrograde flow process, some bacteria from the mouth + skin of the infant enters back into the mammary ducts.
Entero-mammary pathway
The entero-mammary pathway is what connects the mother’s gut to the mammary glands. Maternal intestinal bacteria migrates from the gut by inserting itself into internalization in dendritic cells, which looks something like that ⬇️.
These cells then circulate to the mammary gland via the lymphatic and blood circulation.
Neurodevelopment
This is a quick summary of how the gut microbiota can influence neurodevelopment, just in case you’re curious:)
There are several pathways connecting the brain and microbiota:
The vagus nerve
The long yellow tube is the vagus nerve
2. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis
3. The immune system
4. Neurotransmitters and metabolites with neuroactive properties produced by the microbiota in the intestines. Your gut has approximately the same number of neurons as the brain of a cat🐈.
Moreover, breast milk-derived stem cells also have the capability to differentiate into neural cell lineages: neurons expressing ß-tubulin as a neuron marker, oligodendrocytes expressing the O4 marker, and astrocytes expressing the GFAP marker. | https://medium.com/@elizabethtrykin/breastfeeding-saves-lives-heres-why-baa5519e104d | ['Elizabeth Trykin'] | 2021-04-25 21:38:09.205000+00:00 | ['Breastfeeding', 'Synthetic Biology', 'Breastmilk'] |
Using Mentors to Close Leadership Gaps | Using Mentors to Close Leadership Gaps
Mentors serve a different purpose from leaders. People who mentor aspiring leaders often guide mentees to discover new unknown strengths.
Research shows mentors benefit from mentoring as much as mentees. Even though 76% of working professionals believe a mentor is important to growth, more than 54% do not have such a relationship.
What do you learn when working with a mentor? In many cases, there are many untold stories and experiences no leadership program offers.
Global leaders often share lessons learned from leadership experiences. There are other lessons they don’t share that result from mentor or mentee experience. This is what McKinsey refers to as intentional learning.
“Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why Great Leaders Benefit from Being Both Mentors and Mentees
Studies show, people with mentors perform better, advance in their careers faster, and even experience more work-life satisfaction. Being a mentor requires slightly different abilities from some leaders, yet leaders who want to guide and contribute to the growth of aspiring leaders, make great mentors.
I recently interviewed Greg Wade, who shared stories from over 10 years of mentoring experience. Early in our conversation I asked Greg, “What makes a great mentor? He said,
“Mentors want mentees to tap into something bigger for themselves — an opportunity to be a great leader.”
Next, I asked Greg to share details about his first experience as a mentee at AT&T.
“I had the good fortune of engaging with an individual (at AT&T Canada) who provided me with guidance and challenged me. That experience taught me so much that when I became a Global Leader at BlackBerry, I was compelled to “pay it forward” to people who aspire to have a similar kind of experience.” — Greg Wade
Greg was fortunate to be a mentee while working as a senior manager at AT&T in Canada. At the time, Bill Catucci was brought in as the CEO in 1996. The company was losing a $1 million a day and had undergone a massive restructuring.
Catucci’s expertise working on the Malcom Baldridge Awards and process management made him uniquely qualified for this specific role. Bill balanced his commitment to process with a recognized need to establish an openness and connection with the employee base. Catucci was not a formal mentor to Greg, though his strength as a leader resulted in many teachable moments.
Greg’s Story About Being a Mentee at AT&T
Bill brought amazing leadership and communication skills to the table. On the occasions when I had the opportunity to interact with Bill, he had the ability to listen, absorb and communicate in a way that made me feel important, even as a senior manager.
The opportunity to observe Bill in action made a long-lasting impact. It was especially important to witness Bill’s ability to take action swiftly yet wisely.
Cynthia Young who I reported to at the time, was also an informal mentor and a member of the executive team. She taught me about the importance of understanding the differences between strategy and tactics. What made this experience memorable, were values she instilled around the importance of equal opportunity for women and men.
Photo by Christina Morillo from Pexels
“Paying it Forward”-Becoming a Mentor to Aspiring Leaders
Fast forward to 2009 when Greg became a Global Leader at a leading technology company. This was Greg’s opportunity to use everything he learned as a mentee.
“I was given the keys to the car” , said Greg.
After assembling a strong and diverse team of leaders responsible for 200 people, Greg felt pulled to mentor aspiring leaders. For the past 10 years, Greg allocated a portion of his time to mentoring aspiring leaders from companies such as UPS, Mattel, Twitter, OpenTable and dozens of others.
The Future of Mentoring in Organizations
When Greg and I talked about the future of mentoring and leadership, he emphasized the importance of mentoring as a core competency organizations need to develop.
Here are 5 habits leaders interested in becoming a mentor should develop:
· Encourage aspiring leaders to surround themselves with individuals who possess complimentary skills.
· Exercise empathy while encouraging aspiring leaders to learn from experiences and through the listening process.
· Continuously develop a leader’s ability to challenge, to question, and then the ability to provide an opinion or perspective.
· Keep reminding leaders the importance of recognizing decisions need to be made based on an informed position with a broad base of inputs and perspectives.
· Recognize you can actually have an impact many organizations and people, and the economy, if you look at leadership through a broader lens.
How to Seek a Mentor
My interview with Greg concluded by asking him to offer advice to aspiring leaders seeking a mentor. Here are three:
1. Develop the courage to admit you don’t have all the answers.
2. Acknowledge the value of experts in particular areas who challenge and help you grow as an individual leader.
3. Seek the input and the insights and perspective of others who may be more senior or more experienced.
Considerations and Questions for Future Mentees:
At some point in your career, you reach a point in a company where you’re unclear how you fit in. This is when you should start asking yourself, “What’s my purpose? Why am I doing this?”
Here’s my challenge to you. Ask yourself, “What improvements would I like to see in my ability to lead? Where in my organization can I isolate an opportunity to apply MORE of my leadership?
Learning by doing seems like an obvious action, but it’s easier said than done. When you identify an opportunity, keep in mind, practicing and failure often go hand-in-hand. You’re bound to make mistakes.
So, make sure the opportunities you identify for practice won’t be catastrophic if you fail. This is when you should seek out a mentor.
Mentors are distinct from leaders — they may even be unsung heroes. Identify someone with enough expertise and real-world experience who wants to help you achieve your individual objectives. When you find someone, be forthright about what you want to achieve.
Find someone who will provide a safe space with no judgement. Someone who demonstrates they have humility and empathy. Someone who knows how to “connect the dots” and look out for the roadblocks and red flags.
Thank you to @Greg Wade for generously sharing your insights and stories. | https://medium.com/@lynn-2933/using-mentors-to-close-leadership-gaps-393f973a9f7e | ['Lynn Miller-Learning', 'Content Marketing Writer'] | 2020-12-24 15:38:34.514000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Mentorship', 'Mentoring'] |
How to make bar graphs using ggplot2 in R | Motivation
There is a wealth of information on the philosophy of ggplot2 , how to get started with ggplot2 , and how to customize the smallest elements of a graphic using ggplot2 — but it's all in different corners of the Internet. It can be difficult for a beginner to tie all this information together.
Prerequisites
This post assumes basic familiarity with the following R concepts:
• vectors
• data frames
• factors
I also use the dplyr package to clean data. All code is commented so this should be straightforward to follow even if you have not used dplyr before.
Data
We will be using the GapMinder dataset that comes pre-packaged with R. This dataset is an excerpt from the GapMinder data, and it shows the life expectancy, population and GDP per capita of various countries over 12 years between 1952 to 2007.
## # A tibble: 6 x 6
## country continent year lifeExp pop gdpPercap
## <fct> <fct> <int> <dbl> <int> <dbl>
## 1 Afghanistan Asia 1952 28.8 8425333 779.
## 2 Afghanistan Asia 1957 30.3 9240934 821.
## 3 Afghanistan Asia 1962 32.0 10267083 853.
## 4 Afghanistan Asia 1967 34.0 11537966 836.
## 5 Afghanistan Asia 1972 36.1 13079460 740.
## 6 Afghanistan Asia 1977 38.4 14880372 786.
Visualization task
We would like to show the change in life expectancy from 1952 to 2007 for 11 (arbitrarily-selected) countries: Bolivia, China, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda.
Specifically, we want to see the life expectancy in each of these countries in 1952 and 2007. We also want to group the countries by continent.
We will use a bar plot to communicate this information graphically because we can easily see the levels of the life expectancy variable, and compare values over time and across countries. Here is a rough sketch to get us started on what we can do:
Note that we want two bars per country — one of these should be the life expectancy in 1952 and the other in 2007. We also want to colour the bars differently based on the continent.
Components of the graph
ggplot2 is based on the "grammar of graphics", which provides a standard way to describe the components of a graph (the "gg" in ggplot2 refers to the grammar of graphics). It has specialized terminology to refer to the elements of a graph, and I'll introduce and explain new terms as we encounter them. For now, what we need to understand is that we will build a graphic by adding components one after the other, like layers.
The first step to building the graphic is to identify the components. Using our rough sketch as a guide, we know that our components are:
Dataset — for us, this is a subset of the gapminder data that includes only the countries and years in question Coordinate system — Cartesian Axes — we want country name on the x-axis and life expectancy on the y-axis Type of visualization — we want one bar per country per year e.g. for India, we want one bar for the life expectancy in 1952 and another bar for 2007 Groups on the x-axis — we want to group countries by continent
Now that we know what we need to include in the graph, let’s move on to writing code.
Making the chart
Setup
We need to install the following packages:
ggplot2
dplyr — to manipulate data
— to manipulate data gapminder — data source
We can use the following code to install and load packages.
# create list of packages we need
packages <- c("ggplot2", "dplyr", "gapminder")
# Install packages
lapply(packages, install.packages, character.only = TRUE)
# Load packages
lapply(packages, library, character.only = TRUE) # In case you are unfamiliar with lapply() - it has been used to apply the install.packages() and library() functions over a list of package names. More information here: https://www.r-bloggers.com/using-apply-sapply-lapply-in-r/
Manipulating the data
Let’s have a look at the data again. It’s saved under gapminder :
head(gapminder) ## # A tibble: 6 x 6
## country continent year lifeExp pop gdpPercap
## <fct> <fct> <int> <dbl> <int> <dbl>
## 1 Afghanistan Asia 1952 28.8 8425333 779.
## 2 Afghanistan Asia 1957 30.3 9240934 821.
## 3 Afghanistan Asia 1962 32.0 10267083 853.
## 4 Afghanistan Asia 1967 34.0 11537966 836.
## 5 Afghanistan Asia 1972 36.1 13079460 740.
## 6 Afghanistan Asia 1977 38.4 14880372 786.
Let’s restrict the data to the countries and years we are interested in, and save this new dataset as data_graph .
# create vectors with country names and years
country_list <- c("Bolivia", "China", "Ethiopia", "Guatemala", "Haiti", "India", "Kenya", "Pakistan", "Sri Lanka", "Tanzania", "Uganda")
year_list <- c(1952, 2007) # save subset of gapminder as data_graph
data_graph <- gapminder %>%
filter(country %in% country_list) %>%
filter(year %in% year_list)
# have a look at the data
head(data_graph) ## # A tibble: 6 x 6
## country continent year lifeExp pop gdpPercap
## <fct> <fct> <int> <dbl> <int> <dbl>
## 1 Bolivia Americas 1952 40.4 2883315 2677.
## 2 Bolivia Americas 2007 65.6 9119152 3822.
## 3 China Asia 1952 44 556263527 400.
## 4 China Asia 2007 73.0 1318683096 4959.
## 5 Ethiopia Africa 1952 34.1 20860941 362.
## 6 Ethiopia Africa 2007 52.9 76511887 691.
Let’s also make “year” a factor, since it is a discrete variable:
data_graph <- data_graph %>%
mutate(year = factor(year))
Base plot
To build a ggplot, we first use the ggplot() function to specify the default data source and aesthetic mappings:
# make the base plot and save it in the object "plot_base"
plot_base <- ggplot(data = data_graph, mapping = aes(x = country, y = lifeExp)) # display the plot object
plot_base
Let’s break this down a little:
data source: “data_graph” in our case
aesthetic mappings: The aes() function maps variables in our data frame to aesthetic attributes. An "aesthetic attribute"" is a visual element of the graph, such as the shape of a point or the colour of a line. In our case, we are specifying that the axes (which are aesthetic attributes) should correspond to the variables "country" and "lifeExp".
Note that there is no bar graph because we haven’t specified one yet. We have just specified which dataset and axes to use, not the type of graphic to display.
Change the appearance
Let’s make the graph look a bit nicer. My preference is to make the following adjustments:
Simple, black-and-white layout
No background colour
No gridlines
The chart area shouldn’t be in a box; we should have only the x and y axis
We will use the theme() function to make these changes. theme() allows us to modify the display of non-data elements of the graph.
# save a better-formatted version of the base plot in "plot_base_clean"
plot_base_clean <- plot_base +
# apply basic black and white theme - this theme removes the background colour by default
theme_bw() +
# remove gridlines. panel.grid.major is for vertical lines, panel.grid.minor is for horizontal lines
theme(panel.grid.major = element_blank(), panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),
# remove borders
panel.border = element_blank(),
# removing borders also removes x and y axes. Add them back
axis.line = element_line())
# display the plot object
plot_base_clean
Note that we did not have to re-write the code to make the base plot or modify it in any way. Instead, we kept the base plot object as-is and “added” themes to it using the + operator. This is how we build a ggplot — we add components together to build a graphic.
Add bars
In order to add bars to our ggplot, we need to understand geometric objects (“geoms”). A “geom” is a mark we add to the plot to represent data. For example, we can use the geom “point” to display our data using points, in which case the resulting graphic would be a scatterplot. The ggplot2 cheatsheet has a list of all the geoms we can add to a plot.
We will be adding bars to our graph using geom_bar() :
plot_base_clean + geom_bar(stat = "identity")
We now have a bar graph. The numbers don’t seem to be right since the life expectancy is close to 100 for all countries — we will fix this later.
It may seem strange that we didn’t specify the x and y values for the bars, but the bars displayed life expectancy by country anyway. This is because of ggplot’s “hierarchy of defaults”. Since we add the call to geom_bar() to an existing call to ggplot(data = data_graph, aes(x = country, y = lifeExp)) , ggplot2 assumes that the x and y variables for geom_bar() are the same as those for ggplot() i.e. the x and y variables are "country" and "lifeExp", respectively.
We also specified stat in the call to geom_bar . stat is used when we want to apply a statistical function to the data and show the results graphically. When we use geom_bar() , by default, stat assumes that we want each bar to show the count of y-variables per x-variable. Since we want ggplot to plot the values as-is, we specify stat = "identity" .
Change the bar colours
Now, let’s change the colour of the bars. We ultimately want the colour of the bars to vary by continent, but let’s start with something simpler — let’s change the colour of the bars to light blue. To do this, we will specify fill = "lightblue" inside the call to geom_bar() .
plot_base_clean + geom_bar(stat = "identity", fill = "lightblue")
Now, let’s make the colour of the bars vary by continent. We are saying that we want a mapping from an aesthetic element (the colour inside the bars) to a variable in our data (“continent”). Recall that we use the aes() function to specify a relationship between a visual element and a variable. Within aes() , we will use the fill argument to specify that we are interested in changing the colour of the bars.
plot_base_clean + geom_bar(stat = "identity", aes(fill = continent))
Note that we used fill in both cases, because fill is what controls the colour inside the bars. However, we did not use aes() when we coloured the bars light blue because the colour inside the bars wasn't related to any variables.
Add years
Now, we will address why we aren’t seeing the correct values of life expectancy in the graph. Since each country has two observations for life expectancy (one for 1952 and one for 2007), and we haven’t specified which observation to use, the life expectancy shown by the bars is actually the sum of life expectancy for both years.
Let’s see what happens when we restrict the graph to include only data for 2007.
plot_base_clean +
geom_bar(data = subset(data_graph, year == 2007), stat = "identity", aes(fill = continent))
We now see the correct values of life expectancy. Note that though the plot_base_clean object already had a default value of data (data_graph), we were able to override it in the call to geom_bar() . This again ties back to the hierarchy of defaults - if we don't specify a new dataset or xy-variables for our geoms, we simply use the dataset and xy-variables provided in the call to ggplot() , but since we specified a new value of data within geom_bar() , the bars reflect a new data source.
Next, we are interested in showing two data points per country, one for 1952 and one for 2007. Here is where the alpha aesthetic is useful. It specifies the transparency of the colours we are using. Let's try using alpha with the same subsetted dataset:
plot_base_clean +
geom_bar(data = subset(data_graph, year == 2007), stat = "identity", aes(fill = continent), alpha = .4)
We see that similar to specifying fill = "lightblue" , specifying alpha to be a number changes the transparency levels of each bar. alpha values range from 0 to 1, with higher values being more opaque.
Like fill , alpha can also be used as an aesthetic. Let's establish a relationship between the transparency of a bar and the year. Since we are interested in both years, we won't restrict graph_data in geom_bar() .
plot_base_clean +
geom_bar(stat = "identity", aes(fill = continent, alpha = year))
We don’t want a stacked bar chart, but alpha does seem to be working - we see that the lighter portions of the bars correspond to the values in 1952, while the darker portions correspond to values in 2007.
Now, let’s use the position argument to make the bars appear side-by-side, instead of being stacked. According to the ggplot2 documentation, bars are stacked by default and we need to specify position = "dodge" to make the bars appear side-by-side.
plot_base_clean +
geom_bar(stat = "identity", aes(fill = continent, alpha = year), position = "dodge")
Note that position = "dodge" is another way of writing position = position_dodge() . position_dodge() can take a width argument, which is discussed in detail in this Stack Overflow post. We are using the default width, which is why we can use the shorter version position = "dodge" .
Finalize colour scheme
The 1952 colours for alpha are very light. Let's modify the transparency provided by alpha using scale_alpha_manual() .
plot_base_clean +
geom_bar(stat = "identity", aes(fill = continent, alpha = year), position = "dodge") +
scale_alpha_manual(values = c(0.6, 1))
Here, we specified a vector for scale_alpha_manual , where each element provides the transparency of the corresponding year. We assigned a transparency of 0.6 to 1952 and 1 to 2007 (we know the first element corresponds to 1952 and the second element to 2007 because that is the order of levels for the "year" factor. You can check this using levels(data_graph$year) ).
Let’s also change the colour scheme for the continent colours using scale_fill_manual() . We provide a vector of colours, where each element provides the colour for the corresponding continent. I have provided the colours in hexadecimal format (e.g. as "#FF0011"), but you can provide colours in any other format you prefer.
# add bars and colour scheme
plot_bar <- plot_base_clean +
geom_bar(stat = "identity", aes(fill = continent, alpha = year), position = "dodge") +
scale_fill_manual(values = c("#F4BE85", "#F1CE75", "#B2D1E8")) +
scale_alpha_manual(values = c(0.6, 1))
# display the plot object
plot_bar
Make the plot horizontal
Let’s turn our plot into a horizontal bar chart using coord_flip() :
# make the plot horizontal
plot_horizontal <- plot_bar + coord_flip()
# display the plot object
plot_horizontal
Note the order of the bars still reflects the levels of the factor i.e. countries coming first alphabetically are closer to the origin, and the bar for 1952 is below the bar for 2007. We are going to go ahead with this order, but if you’d like the countries or years to appear in a different order, all you have to do is modify the factor levels of the corresponding variables.
Add facets (continent groups)
Our graph is already quite informative — we can identify the continent a country belongs to by the colour of the bar. If we want the country bars to appear by continent, we can change the levels of the “country” factor so that the country names are sorted by continent.
However, it would be much more effective if we could group the countries into continents on the x-axis. The reader of the graph wouldn’t need to keep referring to the legend; all the information would be in one place. We can create these groups using facets.
Facets are used to split the ggplot into a matrix of panels. Let’s add a facet for the “continent” variable to understand what “matrix of panels” means:
plot_horizontal +
facet_grid(rows = vars(continent))
We see that our graph is now in 3 horizontal panels, with each panel representing a different continent.
Let’s break the facet_grid() command down a little: we wanted horizontal panels, so we specified the rows argument. Each row/panel was on the basis on continent, so we specified rows = vars(continent)) . vars just indicates that the "continent" object exists in the context of the dataset we are using in our ggplot() command. If we don't specify vars , we will get an error saying that the object "continent" was not found.
Now, we will explore some arguments of facet_grid() that can improve the appearance of the graph. All of these are covered in detail in the ggplot2 documentation; in this post, we will use only a few options.
First, we see that the graph is assuming that every x-variable (“country”, in our case) exists for every faceting variable (“continent”) e.g. Haiti is in the Africa and Asia panel as well as the Americas panel. This is because ggplot2 assumes every panel will have the same scale, where "scale" refers to the values the x and y axis take on. Our scale of interest is country names, and currently each continent has exactly the same scale - all of the country names are included for each continent. To remedy this, we specify scales = "free_y" - we say that every faceting variable ("continent") can have its own scale (where a "scale" would be only those country names that are part of the continent).
plot_horizontal +
facet_grid(rows = vars(continent), scales = "free_y")
Now, notice that the bars for the Americas are thicker than the bars for Africa or Asia. This is because by default, ggplot makes all panels (i.e. all continents) occupy the same amount of space. We’d prefer that all our bars be equally thick, rather than our panels be equally tall. Let’s add space = "free_y" .
plot_horizontal +
facet_grid(rows = vars(continent), scales = "free_y", space = "free_y")
It seems a little confusing to have the continent names to the right and the country names to left. We can use the switch option to change where the facet labels (i.e. continent names) are displayed.
# add facets and modify their appearance
plot_facet <- plot_horizontal +
facet_grid(rows = vars(continent), scales = "free_y", space = "free_y", switch = "y")
# display the plot object
plot_facet
This looks quite good! Let’s do the following to modify the appearance of the facet labels i.e. the continent names:
Move the continent names to the left of country names
Remove the gray background and box from the continent labels
Make the continent names horizontal and not vertical
# Modify the appearance of facet labels
plot_facet_clean <- plot_facet +
# move facet label outside the chart area i.e. continent names should be to the left of country names
theme(strip.placement = "outside",
# remove background colour from facet labels
strip.background = element_blank(),
# remove border from facet label
panel.border = element_blank(),
# make continent names horizontal
strip.text.y = element_text(angle = 180))
# display the plot object
plot_facet_clean
Final touches
Our graph is almost ready! Let’s clean up the legend and the axes, and give a title to our graph.
Legend
To reduce chartjunk, let’s suppress the legend for continent because we already have that information in the facets. We will use the guides() function to suppress the legend for the fill aesthetic (recall that we set aes(fill = continent) in geom_bar() ).
# remove the legend for "fill"
plot_nolegend <- plot_facet_clean + guides(fill = FALSE)
# display the plot object
plot_nolegend
DataNovia has an excellent guide for formatting ggplot legends, if you’d like to modify the legend further e.g. change its position, manually change legend colours, etc.
Graph labels
Finally, let’s use the labs function to change the labels for this graph. We want to:
Remove the x-axis label — we don’t need to say “country” since it is apparent
Change the y-axis label to “Life expectancy (years)”
Add a title above the graph explaining what the graph shows
Add the data source below the graph
# change graph labels
plot_final <- plot_nolegend +
# remove x-axis label
xlab("") +
# change the y-axis label
ylab("Life expectancy (years)") +
# add caption and title
labs(title = "Life expectancy in select countries in 1952 and 2007",
caption = "Data source: Gapminder")
# display the plot object
plot_final
And that is our graph!
Final graph code
Here is all the graph code in one place:
## base plot
ggplot(data = data_graph, aes(x = country, y = lifeExp)) +
## change the theme
# apply basic black and white theme - this theme removes the background colour by default
theme_bw() +
# remove gridlines. panel.grid.major is for verical lines, panel.grid.minor is for horizontal lines
theme(panel.grid.major = element_blank(), panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),
# remove borders
panel.border = element_blank(),
# removing borders also removes x and y axes. Add them back
axis.line = element_line()) +
## add bars
geom_bar(stat = "identity", aes(fill = continent, alpha = year), position = "dodge") +
scale_fill_manual(values = c("#F4BE85", "#F1CE75", "#B2D1E8")) +
scale_alpha_manual(values = c(0.6, 1)) +
## make the plot horizontal
coord_flip() +
## add facets
facet_grid(rows = vars(continent), scales = "free_y", space = "free_y", switch = "y") +
# move facet label outside the chart area i.e. continent names should be to the left of country names
theme(strip.placement = "outside",
# remove background colour from facet labels
strip.background = element_blank(),
# remove border from facet label
panel.border = element_blank(),
# make continent names horizontal
strip.text.y = element_text(angle = 180)) +
## remove legend
guides(fill = FALSE) +
## modify graph labels
# remove x-axis label
xlab("") +
# change the y-axis label
ylab("Life expectancy (years)") +
# add caption and title
labs(title = "Life expectancy in select countries in 1952 and 2007",
caption = "Data source: Gapminder")
You can save a copy of the graph using the ggsave() command, which allows you to specify the save location, dimensions of the file, image format (.png, .jpg etc.), and more.
Revisiting ggplot() graph components
Now that we understand how to build a ggplot, let’s map the elements of our graph to the components of a plot:
“A default dataset and set of mappings from variables to aesthetics” — we did this in ggplot(data = data_graph, aes(x = country, y = lifeExp)) .
. “One or more layers, with each layer having one geometric object, one statistical transformation, one position adjustment, and optionally, one dataset and set of aesthetic mappings”— we created a layer for bars using geom_bar() , stat = "identity" and " position = "dodge" .
, and " . “One scale for each aesthetic mapping used” — the x and y axes had default scales based on the values of “country” and “lifeExp”. We also created scales for fill and alpha .
and . A coordinate system — Cartesian, in our case, as we specified aesthetics for x and y . We also flipped the axes.
and . We also flipped the axes. The facet specification — we did this using facet_grid() .
The graph components are succinctly expressed in this code template:
ggplot(data = <DATA>,
mapping = aes(<MAPPING>)) +
<GEOM_FUNCTION>(
stat = <STAT>,
position = <POSITION>
) +
<COORDINATE_FUNCTION> +
<FACET_FUNCTION>
Next steps
You can make the following graphs to learn more about ggplot() : | https://medium.com/idinsight-blog/how-to-make-bar-graphs-using-ggplot2-in-r-9812905df5d2 | ['Ishita Batra'] | 2019-09-02 09:14:18.558000+00:00 | ['Ggplot2', 'Bar Graph', 'Data Visualization', 'Commentary', 'R'] |
The #MeToo movement in India has left the most marginalised behind | The #MeToo movement has made welcome change in India but, like the many feminist movements before it, it has left the most marginalised behind, says Shivani Das.
In an exceedingly male-dominated society, as we find in India, the system of patriarchy becomes even more complicated due to the intersections of caste, class, and religion. The #MeToo movement has started an important conversation and brought crucial justice to many. However, unfortunately, like much of the history of feminism in India, it fails to address the intersectional concerns of the majority of Indian women.
A brief history of feminism in India
The Indian Feminist movement started way back in the early 19th century, due to the efforts of torchbearers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, and Jyotiba Phule. These men and many like them began a movement for women’s emancipation. They fought for equal access to education, the abolition of sati, the right for widow’s to remarry, the banning of child marriage and property inheritance rights for women. This movement was often carried by the efforts of men exercising their privileged positions to work for women’s causes. But after independence in 1947, it was women who took up the cause for themselves.
These women addressed several socio-economic issues, the most significant one being the passing of the Hindu Code Bills in the 1950s which legally empowered women in the private sphere of marriage, adoption, divorce and inheritance. In the 1980s, the women’s movement also took up issues of Dalit and Adivasi women. However, the issues of women coming from socio-economically marginalised communities were never really highlighted and the discourse remained confined to the concerns of Savarna Hindu women.
A new generation: #MeToo
The #MeToo has failed to redress this tight focus. In 2016 after sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein surfaced on social media using the hashtag, #MeToo, many more women, outside the entertainment industry, started sharing their stories of sexual assault and harassment. It was not long before the movement spread to India. It was a shocking revelation as it showed the predatory actions of powerful men, contradicting the liberal, noble ‘public image’ that they had created for themselves.
This was not the first time sexual assault and harassment had been discussed in the Indian mainstream. In 2013, the Tarun Tejpal sexual assault case had gone public. Tarun Tejpal the founder of Tehelka, a magazine known for its investigative journalism, was accused of sexually assaulting a female journalist during the THINK 2013 festival in Goa. Only a few months prior Tehelka had published a magazine issue condemning rape and empathising with survivors. The sexual assault incident brought to light the sheer hypocrisy of such organisations that used empathy and concern for rape survivors as a marketing strategy, to promote sales.
In these high profile cases, survivors managed to get justice. But there are still a number of cases that have lingered where the legal and judicial process in investigating and holding assaulters accountable was either delayed or denied. In some cases, the survivors were subjected to more humiliation at the hands of the accused.
The #MeToo movement provided an opportunity, giving space to the nameless and voiceless. Women who had been violated but could never dare to come out for fear of victim-blaming, victim-shaming or death at the hands of violent patriarchal forces were empowered to share their stories. It shined a light on how deeply entrenched misogyny and sexism were in society as many who came forward were publicly shamed or blamed for putting themselves in that situation. The women who came out with their stories of sexual harassment exposed not only the men who had violated them but also the vulnerability and helplessness of being victimised.
Life at the intersections
The #MeToo movement was essential but it was ultimately confined to social media, and as such to women with digital access. As such, it remained focused mostly in cities and could not seep into small towns and villages, where accessing the internet was still a problem (due to poverty and illiteracy). The movement was not intersectional as it failed to include rural women, Dalit and Adivasi women, poor women, people from the LGBTQIA community, sex workers and women incarcerated for murder after acting in self-defence.
Another problem specifically found in India is the divide between communities based on caste. It has been observed that women coming from lower castes had a double disadvantage. “Upper caste” patriarchs exploit “lower caste” women sexually to assert their caste superiority and then use the advantage of the societal structure to secure impunity. Awareness of this fact deters women from coming forward and ensures their continued suffering.
Most sexual assault cases in India go unreported. Their voices are stifled by the powerful. The police in India are notorious for failing to document reports of rape and investigating poorly. This is especially acute when the reports are from poor, illiterate or minority communities and when the assaulter is a powerful high profile person, police rarely take cognizance. Survivors are routinely met with disbelief and antagonism and subjected to forensic tests, callously conducted neglecting the minute details that could have served as significant evidence to ongoing cases. Sexual assault survivors are rarely if ever provided proper counselling sessions to cope up with the trauma. In most cases, they are also denied proper medical care to inspect the injuries and infections or chances of sexually transmitted diseases or the risk of pregnancy, as a result of the sexual assault. All of this reflects how poorly structured the criminal justice system is in India.
The #MeToo movement opened the gates for a discourse to take place on the prevailing vulnerable conditions of women which hitherto remained a closed-door topic. But it also disclosed the harsh realities of power dynamics. Many continue to remain unheard, getting trapped in vicious social, legal and judicial systems. What is needed is an all-inclusive structural change to a strong, robust, fair, and accessible addressal and redressal system. | https://medium.com/wearerestless/the-metoo-movement-in-india-has-left-the-most-marginalised-behind-eb6df55fdc8d | [] | 2020-11-20 14:38:54.462000+00:00 | ['India', 'Metoo', 'Intersectionality', 'Feminism'] |
Uber Wants to Go All-Electric by 2030. It Won’t Be Easy | © Uber 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has been an all-around nightmare, but there are a few silver linings. One of these is a renewed focus on the environment. Emissions plummeted worldwide when countries went into lockdown in the spring, and cities have since been implementing new measures to keep pollution down and get people to be more active and environmentally conscious.
In keeping with the trend, ridesharing market leader Uber announced that it would transition to a 100 percent electric car fleet by 2030. Lyft, its main competitor, made a similar announcement in June. Are the ride-hailing companies’ commitments to greening linked to the pandemic? It’s unclear; they likely would have implemented this switch at some point in the near future anyway, and the pandemic may simply have accelerated it (as it did for other technologies and trends, like automation and remote work).
The pandemic hasn’t been kind to Uber
For starters, no one really went anywhere for months on end. When people did venture out of their homes — anxious and restless and clad in the same sweats they’d been wearing all week — they opted for transportation methods that minimized contact with other people and with potentially germ-covered surfaces; walking, biking, and driving one’s own car all saw a resurgence. Uber implemented safety protocols, including requiring drivers and passengers to wear masks at all times, but their business has still taken a big hit. I mean, come on — where’s the last place you went other than your living room, kitchen, or the nearest park (which you can most likely walk to)?
The company is focused on a brighter future, though, and one not dependent on fossil fuels. It’s a good thing because ridesharing actually causes more pollution than driving one’s own car. When you drive yourself somewhere, you get there, turn the car off, and do whatever you’re there to do; in other words, the car is only running when you’re using it to get from point A to point B. But Ubers and Lyfts run pretty much constantly — they drop you off then circle for a while until they can pick up another rider, or they sit idling waiting for a notification to come in. All that in-between time adds up; a study from February of this year found that ride-hailing trips cause up to 69 percent more climate pollution than the trips they displace.
That’s not only not great for the environment, but not great for the future of ridesharing companies.
So here’s Uber’s fix: it plans to be a zero-emissions platform by 2040, have 100 percent of its US, Canadian, and European rides take place in electric cars by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions from its corporate operations by 2030.
These goals are well and good, but not without complications. For starters, it’s not Uber that owns its cars — its drivers do. That means anyone who wants to pick up some cash on the side driving for Uber — and those who drive as a full-time job — would have to buy their own electric cars. The cost of electric cars is predicted to drop below that of gas cars by 2022, and they’re cheaper to own and operate over the long term, but for now, they still require a significantly higher up-front cash outlay.
For a company that doesn’t have a shining record of treating its employees well (it has fought tooth and nail to keep from having to give drivers employee benefits rather than hiring them as independent contractors), it might be a lot to ask to have drivers cough up an extra few thousand dollars to help meet a goal they may not particularly care about. Anticipating this, Uber says it has earmarked $800 million to help its drivers transition to electric vehicles. In a deal with General Motors, Uber drivers can get employee pricing on new Chevy Bolts (on top of an $8,500 rebate offered to all buyers). Uber is also launching additional incentives for drivers to electrify, such as getting paid an extra dollar for each ride they give in an electric car (in Canada and the US only).
Even if these incentives are enough to convince drivers to go out and buy an electric car, though (and if it were me, it would take a lot more than what’s being offered to get me to trade in my trusty, beloved Saab I’ve had for years), the added challenges don’t end there. Drivers will have to find places to charge their vehicles, which is trickier than fueling up at a gas station, especially if you don’t live in a place where you can just run an extension cord from your house out to your car.
Given how ubiquitous Uber and other ride-sharing services have become, it’s funny to think they weren’t even around ten years ago. Remember stepping into the street and throwing an arm into the air to hail a cab? The idea of being able to summon a custom ride anytime, anywhere using a powerful but tiny handheld computer was nothing short of inconceivable back then.
Uber’s commitment to go all-electric by 2030 is a lofty goal.
But also, 10 years is a long way away, and a lot could happen during that time. Maybe drivers will be more willing than we think to spend some extra money on a plug-in vehicle. Or maybe, ten years down the road, we’ll have an entirely new transportation method that has nothing to do with Uber — one that, as of 2020, is perhaps… nothing short of inconceivable.
Image Credit: Uber
This article originally appeared on Singularity Hub, a publication of Singularity University. | https://medium.com/@o.t.hellriegel/uber-wants-to-go-all-electric-by-2030-it-wont-be-easy-1a6ffcf11b9 | ['Oliver T. Hellriegel'] | 2020-12-02 11:34:44.382000+00:00 | ['Ev', 'Electric Car', 'Uber'] |
Review: “Slave Play” is the Theatrical Event of the Season | After a much-heralded double off-Broadway debut, Jeremy O. Harris has rightfully become the talk of the town. It is perfectly logical, then, that the limited engagement Broadway run of “Slave Play” at the Golden Theatre is the most anticipated show of the season. Trust the rumors and believe the hype because Harris’s “Slave Play” is as groundbreaking, radical, and genius as you’ve heard; it is unmissable.
The first word that comes to mind when thinking about “Slave Play” is confrontational. Harris, “Slave Play,” the superb direction of Robert O’Hara, and the extraordinarily devoted cast, all force us to confront ourselves and our beliefs in many ways. The most obvious form of this appears quite immediately when you walk in the theater and are see Chris Ramos’s set, a large mirror which reflects not only an image of a Virginia plantation, but also the entire audience.
A mirror that forces the audience to look at itself may not be new — the original production of “Cabaret” made this Brechtian scenic gesture famous — but here is is used in such a searing way that it has newfound intensity. At all times we are aware that we are watching something, and the actors are aware that they are performing. Harris has found a flawless way of translating Brecht’s epic theater, often thought of as overly didactic and only still existing in collegiate settings, to Broadway, and thank god, because audiences are certainly in need of some education.
The playbill of “Slave Play” includes “A Note on Discomfort.” It reads, in part: “There’s nothing in ‘Slave Play’ that part of you doesn’t already know.” The show runs two hours and fifteen minutes, no intermission; Harris gives us no break, but makes us sit in our uncomfortability. It’s about time a playwright went out of their way to make the mostly white, rich, privileged members of Broadway audiences uncomfortable and make them grapple with things they know but choose to forget or not acknowledge.
At rise, we are given a triptych of antebellum vignettes: a slave Kaneisha (Joaquina Kalukango), sweeps and twerks to Rihanna’s “Work” while overseer Jim (Paul Alexander Nolan) orders her around with a whip; house slave Phillip (Sullivan Jones) plays violin for Mistress Alana (Annie McNamara); white indentured servant Dustin (James Cusati-Moyer) gets bossed around by a slave in charge of him, Gary (Ato Blankson-Wood).
Each slowly transforms and becomes filled with sexual situations that are uncomfortable, violent, racialized, and kinky (the show is setting a new gold standard in the form of Claire Warden as fight and intimacy director). While Jim has sex with his slave Kaneisha, she tells him to call her a “dirty Negress.” Alana, now in a dominatrix outfit, sodomizes Phillip with a black dildo. Gary commands Dustin to lick his big, black leather boots. The name of the game is hierarchy, but not everyone is equally on board or comfortable with it.
Major spoilers ahead, but at the climax (quite literally) of the sex scenes, a safeword is called out, two therapists enter, and the scenes are stopped. Shifting gears, Teá (Chalila La Tour) and Patricia (Irene Sofia Lucio) set up a semi-circle of folding chairs for a talkback so the group can discuss how their “fantasy play” went. The couples are part of Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy, a study that the pair developed at Smith and Yale to address sexual frustration for black partners in interracial couples.
The pair, who themselves are a couple with some of the same problems, facilitate a discussion among the three couples, and speak with a deliciously satirical lexicon of therapist speech, including thought echoing, “I feel” statements, validating epithets (“You are heard. You are affirmed and I see you”) and lots of time for “processing.”
This is a perfect microcosm of the beauty of “Slave Play” which is always balancing incredibly difficult, nuanced discussions with humor. For a deeply serious play, it is also hilarious. As the audience, we get to laugh along, but also get an education, just as the characters do.
Alana must learn that as a white partner she is taking up too much space. Dustin must recognize that although he is “not white” he is far from “blueblack” like his partner, Gary. Jim has to understand that while he may be British, his white skin carries a painful legacy of American slavery that his wife Kaneisha cannot ignore. All three white partners must recognize the blackness of their partners, acknowledge their own whiteness and relationship to white supremacy, understand that the therapy is not about them, and most importantly, accept that they have to take a passive role and let their black partners be in charge.
This is not an easy process, and each couple has to fight unique demons. Jim in particular disagrees with the entire premise of the therapy, despite the fact that Kaneisha is clearly struggling. The third portion of the play is a duet between just the two of them; it is simultaneously one of the most powerful scenes of theater I have ever seen, and also the most difficult I’ve ever had to watch. Here and throughout, Kalukango brings her Kaneisha into some raw, emotional places to create an award-worthy performance that can only be described as gut-wrenching.
Harris effortlessly weaves race, class, nationality, gender, queerness, gentrification, marriage, monogamy, kink, racism, and trauma into every scene of “Slave Play.” The play deals with everything, does it all at once, and does so expertly; it makes intersectionality not seem like a buzzword, but an ethos, a rhetoric, a way of life, a deeply embodied form of writing.
For example, the play tackles the pathologization of black bodies in psychology with staggering nuance. Teá and Patricia’s have theorized Racialized Inhibiting Disorder, a sexual-psychological condition rooted in racial trauma. Or in the words of Phillip, “The reason I can’t get it up, the reason I don’t come, is because of, just like, racism?”
Kaneisha powerfully turns this around and rejects their diagnosis, instead arguing that we should not think about black people as having disorders, but white people as a virus that infects and inflicts harm on black bodies and minds. The “undiagnosed, undiagnosable thing” is not an obscure condition black people have, the problem is white supremacy.
It is powerful, thought-provoking realizations like this that make “Slave Play” one of the most important plays in the history of the form. Harris refuses to let us ignore race, or its intersections with a myriad of other factors and identity categories. He forces us to look at it head on, to stare at it — and ourselves — in the mirror. He makes us look at things we don’t want to see. But never is the show cruel or excessive. “Slave Play” may be the most provocative play on Broadway, but it is also the best.
The word “haunting” is often over-used by critics (myself included); in the case of “Slave Play,” I would not call the play haunting, but instead will say that this play will haunt me — and all white audience members who see it — forever. Similarly, the play is not just “timely,” it is long overdue. No one who sees “Slave Play” will ever be able to forget or ignore all that Jeremy O. Harris brings to light and teaches us, and we are all better off for it. We all have a lot of work to do and a lot to learn. | https://christianlewis-11156.medium.com/review-slave-play-is-the-theatrical-event-of-the-season-c0ebb69df014 | ['Christian Lewis'] | 2019-11-14 21:56:37.868000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Theatre', 'Broadway', 'Race', 'Art'] |
Long Live the Queens | Five medieval lady badasses
Photo by Alice Alinari on Unsplash
In Queens of the Conquest, Alison Weir chronicles the tumultuous lives of five medieval queens historians have mostly ignored. Her meticulously researched book begins in 1066 with Matilda of Flanders, the wife of William the Conqueror, and ends in 1154 with Empress Maud, an “intrepid spirit” who fought to rule England.
Despite a relative scarcity of information, Weir reconstructs a tale of murder, love, ambition, rivalry, treason, adultery and betrayal. Each queen’s story is filled with details that give readers a vivid sense of the women and the times they lived in.
Weir’s talent as a novelist is evident, but her rigor as a historian is also impressive. Queens of the Conquest is filled with child brides, shipwrecks, castles and court intrigue, but it also contains more than a hundred pages of supplementary material, including sources, maps and letters.
Perhaps most notable is Weir’s ability to portray the queens as strong, intelligent women without romanticizing them or subjecting them to present-day standards. Matilda of Flanders initially refused William the Conqueror’s proposal because he was a “bastard son,” only to relent after he beat her so severely she took to her bed to recover.
It would be easy to dismiss her change of heart as an example of women’s subjugation or to assign it to a weakness in character. Weir does neither. While she does make the inferior position of women clear, she never lapses into polemics.
“My Very Soul”
Citing a primary source, she records that Matilda told her astonished father she would marry no one but William, “for he must be a man of great courage and high daring who could venture to come and beat me in my own father’s palace.”
Matilda soon became William’s most trusted confidant and would rule as regent in his absence on many occasions. When she secretly supported their rebellious son, William railed against the betrayal of the woman “whom I love as my very soul” but did not punish her.
At a time when women were valued primarily as breeders of future kings, these queens proved they were far more than that. Maltilda of Scotland, whisked from a nunnery to marry Henry I, garnered criticism for surrounding herself with too many musicians, poets and scholars.
Queen Adeliza was known for her beauty and her patronage of the arts. Empress Maud, who was married off and sent overseas at eight years old, went on to lead a rebellion against King Stephen in hopes of gaining the throne. Stephen’s queen, Matilda of Boulogne, in turn led her own rebellion to restore her husband to power while he was imprisoned in chains.
Flayed and hung upside down
The women’s stories, however, aren’t the only ones I’ll remember. Weir’s depiction of the plight of their English subjects is also moving. The five queens witnessed (and, in some instances, caused) famine, torture and war. Subjects were hung upside down, castrated, flayed and had their eyes put out. Villages were burned and lands plundered, often at the behest of the ruling class. While I can’t say I enjoyed these passages, I’m grateful to Weir for documenting them.
Queens of the Conquest is the first of a series about the medieval queens, one which will undoubtedly appeal to fans of British history. My only caveat is that the book may not win over readers looking purely for historical drama (if you’re looking for that, read one of Weir’s excellent novels).
It’s a dense book, rich with facts, so at times it can be a bit slow going. I admit to skimming all the supplementary material and to occasionally confusing the four (four!) Matildas. On the flip side, gaps in the historical record may bother other readers.
There are few pictorial representations of the women, no diaries, and fewer primary sources than exist for later rulers. That said, Weir has done a remarkable job of bringing these women to life. I thoroughly enjoyed Queens of the Conquest and have already started reading my ARC for the next installment— Queens of the Crusades — due out next year.
If you liked this review, you might also enjoy reading about these feminist fairy tales:
Lori Lamothe is the author of three poetry collections. Her reviews have appeared in Mostly Fiction, Curled Up with a Good Book, Daily Muse Books and elsewhere. | https://medium.com/amateur-book-reviews/long-live-the-queens-33276c4468de | ['Lori Lamothe'] | 2020-12-20 03:41:43.552000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Books And Authors', 'History', 'Book Review', 'Feminism'] |
🎵Can’t Keep Me Down Now🎵 | 🎵Can’t Keep Me Down Now🎵
My new song is the featured single at SaskMusic
Good news, friends.
“Can’t Keep Me Down Now,” a song I co-wrote with Brooklyn’s Doobie Duke Sims, has been selected as the week’s featured single by SaskMusic, a Canadian music industry organization. You can listen to the track here.
“Can’t Keep Me Down Now” is from the EP Cahoots, available on Apple Music and other platforms.
I hope you like the song, friends. It pairs well with a hot cup of coffee. ☕ | https://medium.com/pillowmint/cant-keep-me-down-now-cb4c2507ff79 | ['Rolli', 'Https', 'Ko-Fi.Com Rolliwrites'] | 2020-10-15 17:41:45.869000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Other', 'Art', 'Music', 'Life'] |
JavaScript Functional Google Translate API to translate JSON values. | Google Translate is a service that allows you to automate translation from one language into another. It does translate not single terms but whole sentences as well. You can use it though the dedicated website but it also exposes API that can be used in bespoke applications.
Google Translate website service
In order to use to API you need to get the API access key which in case of this particular service is not as straight forward as in case of other Google APIs like Google Maps.
In this article I’ll try to cover two topics:
Getting the Bearer token required to call the Google Translate API Using Google Translate API in JavaScript functional programming paradigm
Please note that first part of the tutorial covers only Linux and MacOs. There are some differences on Windows like installing SDK or setting environment variables.
Before we can start coding we need to get the token that will be used with every API call in our code. The steps below are also described in Quickstart but I’ll try to explain this easier. Later I’ll explain how to write a simple Node.JS script that will take JSON file as input and write another JSON file as output, so example file with polish terms like in the following snippet
{
"username": "Login",
"password": "Hasło",
"fullname": "Imię i Nazwisko"
}
might be translated into german
{
"username": "Einloggen",
"password": "Kennwort",
"fullname": "Vor- und Nachname"
}
Getting the Service Key
Login or create an account in Google Developer Console Create or select a project. Enable the Cloud Translation API for that project. Create a service account.
5. Download a private key as JSON.
6. Once you save that on you disk copy to clipboard the absolute path to it. In my case this file path is /Users/qunabu/Downloads/project-ad1f87bcae9e.json
Install Google SDK
Download https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/ and follow the instruction on Google SDK download page. Run the installation script ./google-cloud-sdk/install.sh from the folder where SDK was extracted. After installation restart the shell and run command gcloud auth application-default print-access-token that should fail at this stage and ask for GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS which is suppose to be path to key generated in the previous stage. Set the path to key by setting environmental variable with export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/Users/qunabu/Downloads/project-ad1f87bcae9e.json At this stage gcloud auth application-default print-access-token should return that Token that is needed to the application. Please note that this token is valid only for a limited short period of time.
Writing the translation script.
Our application will be based functional programming paradigm in JavaScript language which is a huge topic. In this article I’m going to focus on
Pure functions which return value is only determined by its input values, without observable side effects and the always return the same results on particular input
which return value is only determined by its input values, without observable side effects and the always return the same results on particular input No need to global variables and Immutability. We don’t change values we create new ones. Variables are passed as function arguments.
We don’t change values we create new ones. Variables are passed as function arguments. Chaining which is a technique used to simplify code where multiple methods are applied to an object one after another.
My code is going to perform single task — convert one object of language terms into translated ones.
Automated translation from polish to german.
Our first function is going to connect to Translation API and with support of fetch and Promise resolve translated term or reject if fails.
// GKEY is key generated `gcloud auth application-default print-access-token` getTranslation({fullName:"Full Name"}, 'de', GKEY)
.then(response => console.log(response)) // returns {fullName:"Vollständiger Name"}
.catch(err => console.log(err)) // called in case of any error
Is this function pure? Actually it’s not because it does connect to API and side effect occurs — for instance with the same arguments like getTranslation({fullName:”Full Name”}, ‘de’, GKEY) can return different results because GKEY lifespan is short and is valid only for couple of minutes so the results is not always the same. Functions that depends on the environment is not pure but it’s nature — for instance API calls depends on the network connection
Please note the setTimeout exists in function because there is limited amount of simultaneous calls to API, so the function is calling it each 50 milliseconds.
Once we have function that actually translates the terms let’s create one that takes the key-value dictionary object and row by row translate them by calling getTranslation . Before that I would like to introduce two helpers functions that are going to be used.
Are convertToArray and convertToObject pure functions? Both of them do not mutate input data, have no side effect and for given inputs they always return the same results. Yes, they are pure, and they are based on Array methods map and reduce which are pure as well.
Now the function that process whole object row by row is below
Because it is related to getTranslation is not pure. Please note the recurrency which is one of the techniques often used in functional programming.
To see the final application code we need to include one more function:
which just loads an JSON file from local drive.
The final code of the app is below. It does use chaining technique from functional programming as well as method of catching errors without using throw/catch. convertToArray and convertToObject are not essential but its much easier to operate on the array cell by cell then on the pure object itself. The algorithm is straight forward:
load and parse JSON from local files
convert object to array
process whole array row by row and return new array with translated terms
convert array to object
save object to new JSON file
in case of any of above steps fails, stop and show an error
If you would like to play with the code the whole application is available on github.
Example of translating terms from polish to english with the script: | https://medium.com/qunabu-interactive/javascript-functional-google-translate-api-to-translate-json-values-8f8f310dab7f | ['Mateusz Wojczal'] | 2020-01-16 12:15:38.801000+00:00 | ['Functional Programming', 'Nodejs', 'JavaScript', 'Json', 'Google Translate'] |
Competition: ‘The Boys’ Season Two on Blu-ray! | Karl Urban (Star Trek), Jack Quaid (The Hunger Games), Antony Starr (American Gothic), and Erin Moriarty (Jessica Jones) star in the highly-anticipated second season of crime comedy THE BOYS, available on Blu-ray and DVD on 28 June from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Based on the gripping comic-book created by Garth Ennis (Preacher) and Darick Robertson (Transmetropolitan), The Boys follows a group of vigilantes who make it their mission to take down corrupt superheroes ‘The Seven’ with no more than their blue-collar grit and a willingness to fight dirty. But in a world where superheroes abuse their celebrity for personal gain and are marketed and monetized by the powerful Vought Corporation, it’s the powerless against the super powerful as The Boys embark on a heroic quest to bring down the system.
You can read our own Eleanor Ring ‘s review of the film by clicking the image below.
To celebrate this release, Frame Rated are giving away 2x Blu-rays of The Boys: Season 2, to a few lucky readers. One could be you!
To be in with a chance of winning this prize, answer this question:
In which series did Homelander actor Antony Starr play a criminal posing as a sheriff?
a) Yellowstone.
b) Outrageous Fortune.
c) Banshee. | https://medium.com/framerated/competition-the-boys-season-two-on-blu-ray-2e0827432499 | ['Frame Rated Staff'] | 2021-06-23 17:47:11.822000+00:00 | ['Television', 'Superheroes', 'Features', 'Competition', 'TV'] |
Why do you NOT create? | “We have got to abandon that sense of amazement in the face of creativity, as if it were a miracle if anybody created anything.” ~ Abraham Maslow | https://medium.com/connected-well/why-do-you-not-create-475413808b4e | ['Robert Merrill'] | 2016-03-27 20:25:15.330000+00:00 | ['Maslow', 'Quote', 'Creativity'] |
Recovery | Recovery
Image by Alexandr Ivanov from Pixabay
“Do what you will,” he said, “but you are seeking your own destruction.”
Edith Hamilton, from Cupid and Psyche
I have yet to evolve into a vaccine
for the virus assaulting
the sister-mother-daughter within me,
sweet, succulent, succubus Psyche –
too enamored of her own desires
to accept less, to live the delicate balance
between inoculation and infection.
Psyche, my diseased butterfly
in a slashed net
alighting on branches of excess
solely visible in darkness;
a bee stinging,
pollinating its own doom.
I command you, my hothouse bouquet
of nightshades — dissipate into motes
of sunlight dusted
with shattered moons, ice, and asteroids.
That Psyche’s frayed wings — besieged
by extremes, sabotaged by denial –
be re-spun with steel, veined in wisdom,
sores healed soaring
now anew
©Jenine Bsharah Baines 2020
A favorite ‘mentor,’ the 13th century theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart, advises “No man is happier than he who has the greatest detachment.” He may have been tried as a heretic back in the day, but I am convinced Meister Eckhart is on to something. If only because, far too often, I am in thrall to my ‘attachments’ — my “hothouse bouquet of nightshades” — and such slavery sucks. Too much sugar or shopping, I feel guilty. Allow too much power to others’ opinions, welcome oceans of extremism. I’m either surfing sky high waves of euphoria…or I’m drowning in self-doubt, defeat, despair. (Here on Medium, I’ve even developed a way to respond to comments without seeing clap-counts. I NEVER check stats — that way lies madness.) And let’s not even discuss my addiction to wanting my own way. The havoc it wreaks. The spiritual growth it thwarts.Yes, every mystic agrees our truest self is light, perfection…but my sweet Psyche could use a shower. Minus the dirt — shine on, girlfriend!
You know where I master detachment best? Writing! I ‘detach’ by ceding my soul (Psyche, often symbolized by the butterfly) to the Muse.
Thank you, J.D. Harms and team at Scrittura for prompting this poem, my take on “slave/master reversal.” It prompted me to “dig deep,” as my geologist pal Camille Hueni phrases it.
Thank you, dearest readers, for digging deep and supporting me and Psyche when we fly on the wings of the Muse.
Thank you, James G Brennan, for YOUR take on psyche!
If you’d like to learn more about me, please visit https://medium.com/about-me-stories/about-me-jenine-bsharah-baines-1b7652c9561b | https://medium.com/scrittura/recovery-14b047bd4c51 | ['Jenine Bsharah Baines'] | 2020-12-17 01:35:12.514000+00:00 | ['Prompt', 'Spirituality', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Addiction', 'Poetry'] |
How The Band New Order Turned Me Into A Graphic Designer | I was in a friend’s basement when I was 16 years old, and he put this CD on. It was from the pioneering synth/dance/rock band New Order’s Substance album, and the song was the John Robie remix of Subculture.
I was totally entranced by it. It was all about the tension and contrast:It was electronic, but it was rock. It had dry, cold British “white” male vocals with soulful “black” female backup singers. The band was from Manchester, England but the remix, for its time, was cutting edge American dance music.
After that, I had to learn everything I possibly could about the band.
I went in a mission to devour everything and all things New Order. But along with New Order, came the work of seminal designer Peter Saville. Primarily it was the art work for New Order’s final album of the 90s, Republic, that set me on my way to becoming a graphic designer. I was unaware, he was using a relatively new graphics program called Photoshop to create stunning, layered, photo montages.
Peter Saville is a graphic/music design “rock star” in his own right. He was the primary designer for Factory Records, the legendary punk/new wave record label from Manchester, England. Factory Records was home to A Certain Ratio, The Durutti Column, Happy Mondays, and the legendary Joy Division (which later became New Order after the suicide of frontman Ian Curtis)
Fact Magazine Eloquently Stated “Saville’s designs did far more than illustrate the records on which they appeared. The implicit message of his work was that music is always more than just music, and his high-concept, modernist-influenced sleeves invited record buyers to see connections between pop and avant-garde art.” -1 Jan, 2009
Peter Saville could be seen as the ultimate post-modernist. He was not afraid to take classical, renaissance, or modernist pieces of art and paintings, and dropping them into a totally new context, very much like his sleeves for Joy Division’s closer or New Order’s Power Corruption and Lies. He mixed minimalism, appropriation, and humanist serif fonts for a stark effect.
Saville was no one trick pony, however evolving his style over time. He also was influenced by 20th century typographic/layout pioneers like Jan Tschchold and Futurist Fortunado Dutero
Bauhaus and Constructivist influences can be seen in his work for Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark’s Architecture and Reality Sleeves.
While there is much talk (and controversy) of Saville’s appropriation of design history’s past, there is also Saville’s fascination with technology and the future. This can be seen as early as his classic cover for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures LP
The visual interpretation of a frequency from a pulsar star that Joy Division picked out themselves that they found in an encyclopedia, Saville took the idea and ran with it.
New Order’s sleeve for Blue Monday, another legend that goes down in graphic/music/package design history. Influenced by the programming of early sequencers, and samplers, and the highly electronic feel of New Order’s foray into full on dance music, it's a massive 12″ floppy disc
“The single’s original sleeve, created by Factory designer Peter Saville and Brett Wickens, was die-cut with a silver inner sleeve.[18] It cost so much to produce that Factory Records actually lost money on each copy sold. Matthew Robertson’s Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album[19] notes that “[d]ue to the use of die-cutting and specified colours, the production cost of this sleeve was so high that the single sold at a loss.”
Saville later got into photographic experiments with fellow designer Trevor Key using the Dichromat format, used primarily on the Brotherhood and Technique albums for New Order, photographic flowers, metals, and old paintings, turning them into stunning, almost unreal objects.
Saville’s artwork on New Order Republic focused on the banality of stock photography, then warping them (sometimes literally) in Photoshop to create new compositions and juxtapositions, using layering, filters, and transparency.
Perhaps like a hip hop producer or artist, you may disagree with Saville’s “sampling” of other artists, or you can see the brilliance in his way to take something old, changing its context, and making something entirely fascinating, much like Marcel Duchamp and other Dada and Surrealists before him.
I knew I wanted to do something art related with my life, at first it was to design cars, then to draw and write comic books, but it was through Saville’s work that I discovered the powerful work of a visual communicator, and knew it was something I wanted to be. | https://fred-royster.medium.com/how-the-band-new-order-turned-me-into-a-graphic-designer-4a0a2dc612b8 | ['Fredrick Royster'] | 2020-12-12 23:52:18.070000+00:00 | ['New Order', 'Visual Communication', 'Synth Pop', 'Graphic Design', 'Album Cover Art'] |
Joseph Veazie Branding | Joseph Veazie is a local musician in Dallas, Texas. He decided to take on his own music career after working for a talent agency and leaving his band The Brofessionals.
In order to capitalize on his name alone, he contacted me wanting a new logo and identity. I made some sketches and put together a few examples of what we could go with. I wanted something that had a high personality, as well as being versatile in it’s style and form.
The Look & Feel | https://medium.com/curtis-thornton-portfolio/joseph-veazie-branding-97956274de08 | ['Curtis L. Thornton'] | 2017-11-16 19:54:31.294000+00:00 | ['Product Design', 'Branding', 'Logo Design', 'Musician', 'Digital Marketing'] |
I’m Spending This in Thanksgiving With My Next Relatives | When my daughter was three, she found a mouse outside in the grass. Without hesitation, she grabbed it by the tail and picked it up for us all to see.
‘Look!’ she shrieked, ‘A partly-dead, partly-alive mouse!’
Although she’s now 9, this moment remains one of her earliest memories, and the phrase ‘partly-dead, partly-alive’ has made it into our family lexicon.
This year, more than ever, I’ve been thinking of the phrase in terms of my family. My family — and yours, and everyone else’s — is partly-dead, partly-alive.
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https://karanarjun.medium.com/im-spending-this-thanksgiving-with-my-dead-relatives-523ea249cfd7
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I don’t mean it in the morbid sense like we’re all just a moment away from a cat-attack that leaves us seizing out in the yard.
What I mean is that part of my family is dead and part of my family is still alive. When life feels full of gray areas like it does right now, it’s almost comforting to have something so black and white to think about.
In the alive column are my kids, my husband, and my mom and dad. I have three siblings and assorted aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews. They are spread out across the country, wrapped up their own 2020 narratives. And they’re all fine — as fine as any of us are right now.
But since I won’t be seeing any of them over the holidays this year, I have found myself thinking a lot about the other part of my family. This includes the people who are no longer alive but are nonetheless, part of my family. In this category are all four of my grandparents, as well as many great-aunts and great-uncles. Also on this side is my mother’s baby brother, who died of cancer at 50, which is an age that seemed old at the time, but now seems tragically young.
I can’t complain about this balance. Life is inevitably a moving equation of subtractions and additions, and I’m lucky to have special people in both the dead and alive column.
Most of the time though, it’s my living family members that demand attention. The texts, calls, photos, zoom meets, and gifts all go to them. In a typical year, the week before Thanksgiving would be a volley of recipes, eating times, seating arrangements, and guestlists. I’d be giving my kids a crash course on table manners and making sure we all had at least one decent outfit to take on the long drive to my parents’ house in upstate New York.
This year though, we are making no plans. We are mashing no potatoes and playing no after-dinner card games.
And so, like many of you, I’m faced with an emotional and logistical void.
What I’ve noticed though, is that the other part of my family — the dead part — keeps creeping in to fill the void. More than ever, I’ve been thinking about my grandmothers. One died while I was in high school and the other passed away only recently, but both were a force to be reckoned with in my early life.
When I was young and they were both alive, I thought of them only as old ladies who made casseroles for church suppers and drove big long sedans — always five to ten miles slower than the speed limit.
But lately, I’ve been wondering more about other parts of their lives. I’ve been wondering which decade was their happiest and what their biggest regrets were. Both lived through many elections, several wars, and the passing of Roe v. Wade. There are things that I look up on Wikipedia that I’m sure either of my grandmothers would know off the top of their heads.
I’ve been wondering if they wished they had more children or if they wished they never had children at all. Did they feel fat when they looked in the mirror and suffer from deep-seated anxiety that was layered over in cosmetics from the Avon lady and knitted vests?
Were they happy in their marriages, or after five or six decades, were concerns about happiness pushed aside by the contentment that comes from predictability?
This leads me to think about my grandfathers. One was short, the other was tall. Both were dairy farmers and both were staunch conservatives. I know from their testimonies in church that they were single-issue voters: abortion. But I also know that they would have hated Trump for a hundred other reasons. And I wonder what they would have done in the voting booth this year.
One grandfather, in protest of the government, always refused to wear a seatbelt. I now wonder — would he put on a mask for the sake of all of us, or would he travel the countryside bare-faced, untethered by safety restraints of any kind?
Then my thoughts wander to his sister, my great aunt. Though she died in the early 2000s in her mid-80s, I’ve often wished for the chance to revisit our last conversation. It happened on Thanksgiving as we were all squeezing in one more piece of pie.
“I think Hillary Clinton will be president one day,” she said, beaming.
I regret not demanding an explanation. In an era defined by 9/11 and a second Bush in office, what gave her the audacity to suggest such an outlandish idea? Furthermore, in a family of conservatives, how did she — my great Aunt with two white pigtails and purple leather mocassins — end up a liberal Democrat? But I was a dumb college student, probably itching to leave the table so I visit my boyfriend or talk to my college friends over AIM on my desktop computer, so I didn’t.
On one hand, it’s sad to think of how many opportunities I missed with my dead relatives. But I also know it’s unrealistic to think that I would have spent my teenage years and 20s focused on drawing wisdom out of elderly people in armchairs instead of traveling, studying, and aggressively following the belief that I already knew all I needed to know about life. So instead of wallowing in regret, I’ve just been spending time thinking about them with love and nostalgia.
For the first thirty-five years of my life, the sight of my grandmother spilling food onto her bosom and then dabbing at it with a wet napkin was as common as seeing a squirrel or a bluejay out my window. The difference is though, that I’ll see squirrels and bluejays for the rest of my life, but I’ll never again see my grandmother’s face feign surprise when an errant cranberry plops down on her snowy white blouse.
But that’s ok. Trust me, with a 4 and a 9-year-old, there’s still plenty of stained shirts in my life.
And most of the time, I spend a lot more time thinking about my kids than my grandmother. But this year, I’m changing it up. Of course, I’ll feed my kids — I’m not a monster. But my heart, my mind, and my thoughts — they’ll be with my dead relatives, dropping cranberries, predicting elections, and trying to find answers to the questions I never asked.
If you like this type of story about partly-alive-partly-dead animals, try this:
The Joy and Sadness of Loving a Good Dog
How our dead dog Cooper gave us one final happy memory in the woods.medium.com | https://medium.com/@biginidekhajuwelvai/im-spending-this-in-thanksgiving-with-my-next-relatives-60fee7b45d63 | ['Bigini Dekha Juwel Vai'] | 2020-12-12 20:18:00.627000+00:00 | ['Thanksgiving', 'Health', 'Covid 19', 'Wellness', 'Coronavirus'] |
VideoCoin is listed on StakingRewards.com | We are pleased to announce VideoCoin is now integrated into Staking Rewards, a leading data provider for crypto assets. In collaborating with Staking Rewards, VideoCoin Network shares information about our staking programs with the highest level of transparency and accuracy to a global audience of token holders looking for new reward opportunities.
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Find out more about VideoCoin’s staking model and rewards: | https://medium.com/videocoin/videocoin-is-listed-on-stakingrewards-com-1b5155f97602 | [] | 2020-08-20 15:43:03.715000+00:00 | ['Videocoin', 'Staking'] |
How To Escape Mediocrity and Become The Writer You Always Wanted To Be. | What makes one a writer?
Is having good grammar enough? Or having English as the mother tongue?
Is being creative enough? Or is it enough to know where to put the apostrophe marks?
Maybe all that is enough to be a writer.
But what does it take to be a brilliant writer and escape mediocrity? The kind of content that finally gets you established and makes you FEEL like a writer.
Maybe it’s not all that difficult as it seems.
In order to become a better writer, Start by working on those Mini-Steps.
Writing is similar to baking.
It’s a combination of the right amount of measurements, mixing, heat and time.
You need to understand what makes your cake rise, and when to take it out of the oven.
You need to know how long to let it cool off before you take it out of the pan and start frosting.
Hence, just like carrying out these mini-steps in baking accurately, you can do the same for writing.
Here’s how you can do that.
Go Step By Step
Photo by Jake Hills on Unsplash
These 20 Steps below are the Measuring, Mixing, Baking and Frosting of Writing.
You need to work on each one of these, starting from the first.
1. Sentence Structure: A Catchy sentence is like the baking powder of writing. An essential ingredient.
2. Talk to your Readers: Make them feel like a part of it. Include questions, they could think about.
3. Use Flavored Words: Instead of using taste-less fillers, use specific words that enrich your content. That makes your readers want more and more.
4. Try using a different Writing Voice: You can learn to change your tone and see what works for you. For example, try something funny or even sarcastic. Or in baking terms, it’s the essence you use in your batter, vanilla or pineapple-Whatever strikes.
5. Reverse-Outlining: It is an extremely helpful tool to help you asses your primary draft. You can see if the story going in the right direction or if the progression makes sense. It’s the key to see if your cake is rising the way you want it to.
6. Include a Soundbite: A statement from an interview or a famous quotation that supports your content has the ability to somehow validate your content. It catches the reader’s interest and gets them thinking about it for a while. It’s just like adding chocolate chips in your cake, no one would be expecting it, but it leaves the taste lingering.
7. Practice using Metaphors: Metaphors help your readers imagine and even understand what you are trying to portray through your writing. They help form a mental picture. Every time you write, bake up fresh metaphors that are suitable for your story.
Work on your writing skills just like a baker works on perfecting the fondant. It takes quite a bit of practice, but in the end, you nail it.
Establish Strict Rules
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
When was it when you first learned to bake? Were you inspired by a YouTube video, an Instagram post or a cooking channel? How did you learn?
Writing is similar to baking. But you just have to set up strict writing habits.
8. Take a break from the World: Wear your gloves, put on your apron, take time off from your cell and start working.
9. Set up a Routine: Make a calendar, set up a timetable. Stick to it. Write at that particular time each day.
10. Take responsibility for your writing: Make sure to write at least once every two days. It’s all up to you, the more you write, the more you progress.
11. Go step by step: Brainstorm, Plan, Write, Draft, Edit, Publish (Submit to a Publication).
12. Carry out your editing in multiple steps: It can be overwhelming to edit the entire content in one go. You might miss out a lot of things. It’s better to look at it again with a fresh mind.
Do Justice to Every Paragraph
Photo by Calum MacAulay on Unsplash
Give the readers what they want. Give them something they would actually like to read. Giving a chocolate cake to someone who hates chocolate, would never eat the cake.
If your writing is boring, no one would want to read it. Make sure what you write makes a difference to someone, influences someone, helps someone.
Here’s how you can do that in these 4 steps:
13. Understand your reader: Give them something, they will value. Make sure your writing is not filled with ‘fluffers’ but instead contains material of value that will actually help someone.
14. Persuade and Encourage: Instead of using monotonous, vague statements, use language that persuades, encourages and inspires readers to do what you are telling them to do. Make them believe in you.
15. Add Personal Experience: Adding personal experience helps those reading know, that you talk from experience. That it’s not something you copied off the internet. Add detail. Details that will help readers remember your article for a longer time.
16. Add quotes and citations: If not your own experience you can always support your content by adding someone else’s experience. Share tasty nuggets of information by digging deeper into your topic to reveal more specific tips.
People who came to your story are those who probably are in need of some advice, ideas or encouragement; give them exactly what they came for.
Learn From the Experts
Photo by NESA by Makers on Unsplash
No one is born with the ingredients to the perfect cake or the consistency of its frosting. Similarly, no one is born with the exact type of content that they want to write about in their mind.
Over the years, you learn. You learn, with every story you read, every video you watch, every person you talk to. Here’s how you can do that.
17. Join Writer’s Group: Get your material reviewed by your peers or your seniors. Get their feedback. Learn from each other’s experience.
18. Explore Magazine Covers: Every popular magazine has an even popular headline. Learn to phrase your title in such a way that it catches the reader’s attention.
19. Focus on words: Every time you read, look at the words that grab your attention. What are those words? Keep them in mind the next time you write.
20. Learn to write a complicated topic in easy words: Not everyone has the knowledge that you do, or would automatically understand what you mean. Read children’s books and learn how they express and explain a complicated topic in simple words.
Believe In Your Self
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
You are full of ideas, you love to write. What else do you want?
Get those brilliant ideas to writing now.
Everyone wants to read what you write about next.
So go, and Write NOW. | https://writingcooperative.com/how-to-escape-mediocrity-and-become-the-writer-you-always-wanted-to-be-74479225b014 | ['Saaniya Aamir'] | 2019-03-16 06:21:20.186000+00:00 | ['Success', 'Writer', 'Writing Tips', 'Writing', 'Baking'] |
Legal challenges facing music journalists — how they’re impacting an already weakened industry | Social media and ‘citizen journalism’ is putting further pressure on the press to think of new ways to stay relevant, but legal challenges are already putting them at a disadvantage.
Music journalists, as discussed in previous posts, are frequently being out shunned by new emerging forms of mass and social media, with fans and labels directly interacting with each other, and music critics being too late to the scene with new music due to new apps setting trends and exposing people directly to new artists and genres.
But it seems TikTok isn’t the only threat to traditional music journalism. Laws and editorial codes affecting journalists in all areas have hit the music industry particularly hard. The glimmer of hope for music critics and journalists, such as those working for NME, was the ability to use their platforms to access information and exclusives, using their status as mainstream writers and journalists. Social media is run by the general public and therefore can only use information available to them. Music journalists may have access to unreleased music, exclusives and never before seen information, which the general public don’t. But even this might be in jeopardy due to the restrictive nature from UK laws, and we’re seeing these effects both here and abroad.
Journalists are subject to various regulatory codes as well as criminal laws and internal management within journalism bodies. In a meeting by the UK Communications Committee focusing on restrictions for UK journalists and possible reasons for breaking the law, the ‘public interest’ argument was seen as very difficult to define. Paul Lewis from the Guardian was even mentioned in the report, commenting how ‘you need very strong evidence, and it must be the only method available to you to prove that story.’ One Guardian journalist spoke of just how restrictive these laws can be for journalists attempting to act as the Fourth Estate, suggesting that laws such as the Data Protection Act can ‘undermine journalism’. He spoke of the revised Data Protection Act 2018 and how it created ‘new provisions aimed expressly at journalists’.
Journalists are heavily legislated against, and many suggest that they are increasingly relying on ‘second hand observation’, under reporting legal aspects and first-hand knowledge for fear of backlash. These legislative fears arise from laws ranging from not just Data Protection, but also other privacy laws, defamation, copyright and intellectual property laws. And that’s not where it ends. Journalists also face strict rules and guidelines from codes such as the Editor’s Code of Practice which is set by the Independent Press Standard’s Organisation (IPSO), setting out standards that journalism industries have agreed to follow including rules on privacy, accuracy, and so on.
Whilst you may be thinking that these cases appear to be a bit extreme for music journalists to justify, there are times when journalists specialising in the inner workings of the music industry may need to uncover breaking stories relating to it that they cannot due to various laws and systems in place.
This is where social media and ‘citizen journalism’ has the upper hand. Various communities developed on social media exist for different fan bases and types of music, and these communities are subject to far less scrutiny and prosecution. This means that in certain situations, such as uncovering artist abuse scandals and exposing the dark side of the music industry, victims and eye witnesses within fan bases on social media are able to expose injustice from within, largely without having to worry about laws and legal issues such as defamation.
We see examples like this frequently. Justin Bieber, a popular musician, was recently involved in an incident whereby two fans accused him of sexual assault on Twitter, and Bieber was forced to prove his innocence through the platform too. Whilst their tweets were later deleted, they had already been spread like wildfire, and screenshots had been shared all over the media. This is an example of ‘citizen journalism’, with ramifications for those spreading tweets being much smaller than what would be if a news source broke the story, with risks that defamation laws may come into play.
Multiple journalists and commentators have described the ‘chilling effect’ of criminalising journalism. It sets a dangerous habit of journalists missing out stories or choosing to skip over certain ones over fear that they may be breaking the law. Whilst off the topic of music journalism, this is true more generally, in countries that do not have exceptions or clauses for the ‘public interest’, such as Australia, with even ‘responsible, public interest reporting’ falling prey to these laws. In Australia, a country with no public interest defence, journalists reportedly live in fear of the ‘prohibitively expensive loss’ that may result from a defamation case, with last years average damages awarded reaching $137,500.
Artists are also using social media to communicate directly with their fans, meaning that following scandal or rumour, investigative journalism is not needed as much due to growing transparency, with scandal being a sensitive area for music journalists who wish to avoid breaking the law. More recently, The Band CAMINO parted ways with their bassist Graham Howell due to allegations of sexual misconduct and announced the move over Twitter. Under the post were stories by victims of Howell’s misconduct of how he took advantage of his position in the band and contained graphic detail of how he befriended his victims and began to abuse his power. One victim mentioned how she built up the courage to share her story when she saw other victims coming forward on social media.
Many feel safe sharing stories and exposing injustice over social media as they not only feel connected to a community of like minded individuals, but also do not consider legalities such as defamation, and are not subject to editorial codes. One Guardian journalist puts it plainly; ‘many have turned to collective action using the internet to work cooperatively’, as he shed light on how laws and codes only accentuate the already weakened position of mainstream news outlet profitability by Facebook and other aggregators.
One thing is for sure, music journalists, already at a weakened position due to social media platforms and streaming service features are facing even greater attacks due to the freedoms of citizen journalism that juxtapose the laws and codes that journalists are placed under, hindering outlets investigations, as they attempt to avoid any form of prosecution that may further threaten profit margins. | https://medium.com/@michaeltjw/legal-challenges-facing-music-journalists-how-theyre-impacting-an-already-weakened-industry-c0d4c9cdeff8 | ['Michael Williams'] | 2021-01-15 13:59:59.222000+00:00 | ['Law', 'Legislation', 'Public Interest', 'Music', 'Journalism'] |
[ANIME] I Tried Asking While Kowtowing ~ Episode 11 (EngSub) On AT-X’s | [ANIME] I Tried Asking While Kowtowing ~ Episode 11 (EngSub) On AT-X’s
I Tried Asking While Kowtowing
Dogesuaru, who wants to see the naughty bits of girls, has a last resort to persuade them. That is, to grovel in front of them. Intent on having his lewd requests heard, he endures through the kowtowing. The heroines are often taken aback, embarrassed, and confused by his sudden action. Is anything impossible before dogeza?! Will the girls show him their risqué side?!
Title : I Tried Asking While Kowtowing
Episode Title : EP. 11
Number of Seasons : 1
Number of Episodes : 11
Genres : Animation , Anime , Comedy , Romance
Networks : AT-X
Status: Returning Series
Quality: HD
TELEVISION 👾
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 5910s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 5950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[5] during the 5960s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 1000s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (516i, with 909091 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3456561, 3456561 and 1314. Since 1050, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, Starz Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 1053, 19% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[1] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 5990s. Most TV sets sold during the 1000s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-1050s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 1050s.[6][1][5] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 1.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 1050s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 1000s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 1000s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 1050s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
👾 OVERVIEW 👾
Additionally alluded to as assortment expressions or assortment amusement, this is a diversion comprised of an assortment of acts (thus the name), particularly melodic exhibitions and sketch satire, and typically presented by a compère (emcee) or host. Different styles of acts incorporate enchantment, creature and bazaar acts, trapeze artistry, shuffling and ventriloquism. Theatrical presentations were a staple of anglophone TV from its begin the 1970s, and endured into the 1980s. In a few components of the world, assortment TV stays famous and broad.
The adventures (from Icelandic adventure, plural sögur) are tales about old Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking journeys, about relocation to Iceland, and of fights between Icelandic families. They were written in the Old Norse language, for the most part in Iceland. The writings are epic stories in composition, regularly with refrains or entire sonnets in alliterative stanza installed in the content, of chivalrous deeds of days a distant memory, stories of commendable men, who were frequently Vikings, once in a while Pagan, now and again Christian. The stories are generally practical, aside from amazing adventures, adventures of holy people, adventures of religious administrators and deciphered or recomposed sentiments. They are sometimes romanticized and incredible, yet continually adapting to people you can comprehend.
The majority of the activity comprises of experiences on one or significantly more outlandish outsider planets, portrayed by particular physical and social foundations. Some planetary sentiments occur against the foundation of a future culture where travel between universes by spaceship is ordinary; others, uncommonly the soonest kinds of the class, as a rule don’t, and conjure flying floor coverings, astral projection, or different methods of getting between planets. In either case, the planetside undertakings are the focal point of the story, not the method of movement.
Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 1945–65, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk. | https://medium.com/@sidompuanb.a.da.ng/anime-i-tried-asking-while-kowtowing-episode-11-engsub-on-at-xs-d8ecddf3aa4c | ['Sidompuanb A Da Ng'] | 2020-12-21 12:19:36.506000+00:00 | ['Animation', 'Anime'] |
Ovcode Smart Contract Audit | OVCODE Blockchain engaged New Alchemy to perform an audit of the smart contracts involved in the creation and distribution of the OVC token used for their upcoming verification system. The engagement was technical in nature and focused on identifying security issues in the design and implementation of the contracts, finding differences between the contracts' implementation and their behavior as described in public documentation, and finding any other issues with the contracts that may impact their trustworthiness.
Ovcode provided New Alchemy with access to the relevant source code and whitepaper. The audit was performed over the course of one week. This document describes the issues discovered in the audit.
After receiving New Alchemy’s report, Ovcode made several changes to the smart contracts. This document has been updated to reflect those changes.
Files Audited
The code reviewed by New Alchemy is in the GitHub repository https://github.com/OVCODE-Switzerland/ovc-smart-contract/ at commit hash 1c272df7f6fd3900b53301fd8c714f8503e5a548 .
After receiving New Alchemy’s audit, Ovcode made changes to their smart contracts. These are reflected at commit hash c80ddd420a3dbbb7efb4c8621dcc130c20770073 .
New Alchemy’s audit was additionally guided by Ovcode’s whitepaper. After receiving the initial report, Ovcode released an updated version of the whitepaper and added the OVCOIN whitepaper to GitHub. | https://medium.com/new-alchemy/ovcode-smart-contract-audit-818dff58d1f8 | ['New Alchemy'] | 2018-06-15 22:58:55.693000+00:00 | ['Solidity', 'Security', 'Ethereum', 'Smart Contracts', 'Token Sale'] |
What Volkswagen’s Investment in Argo AI Means for Ford’s Self-Driving Vehicle Business | What Volkswagen’s Investment in Argo AI Means for Ford’s Self-Driving Vehicle Business
By John Lawler, CEO, Ford Autonomous Vehicles LLC, and Ford Motor Company Vice President, Mobility Partnerships
A Ford self-driving test vehicle running in Austin, Texas
Last July, Ford and Volkswagen announced a collaboration with Argo AI to introduce autonomous vehicle technology in the U.S. and Europe. As part of this collaboration, Volkswagen would join Ford in investing in Argo AI. Working together with Argo AI positions both Ford and Volkswagen to better serve our future customers while improving cost and capital efficiencies. While the uncertainty of today’s business environment has created challenges for partnerships and investments in the self-driving space, this collaboration remains on track and will be a positive development for everyone involved. As a result, Volkswagen’s investment in Argo AI was finalized June 1.
In my previous role as vice president of Ford corporate strategy, I can tell you firsthand the moment our teams started talking, all three parties could see the value of working together. Here’s what we saw and why we believe it works for everyone involved — including our future customers.
Shared development costs: At Ford, we believe self-driving technology can make people’s lives easier and provide new and more efficient mobility solutions for our congested cities. Building a safe, scalable and trusted self-driving service, however, is no small task. It’s also not a cheap one. We’ve committed to spending more than $4 billion through 2023 on the development of our self-driving service. A large part of this investment is dedicated to developing the self-driving system. With Volkswagen’s investment in Argo AI, we will now share the cost of developing Argo AI’s technology.
Scale and reach: In addition to shared development costs, the deal with Volkswagen makes Argo AI’s self-driving software the first with commercial deployment plans for both Europe and the U.S. Because it can tap into both automakers’ global reach, Argo AI’s platform has the largest geographic deployment potential of any autonomous driving technology to date. Scale and geographic reach are important factors in developing a self-driving system that is robust and cost efficient.
In July 2019, Ford CEO Jim Hackett (left), Argo AI CEO Bryan Salesky (middle) and Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess announced a collaboration to develop autonomous vehicle technology. Volkswagen’s investment deal in Argo AI closed on June 1, 2020.
Customer experience: While our companies are sharing Argo AI’s technology development costs, Ford will remain independent and fiercely competitive in building its own self-driving service. Sharing the development costs with Volkswagen doesn’t mean Ford is reducing its overall spend in the autonomous vehicle space. Instead, we are reallocating the money toward our unique customer experience including transportation as a service software development and fleet operations. We believe building the best overall customer experience will help differentiate us from our competitors in the self-driving space.
Investing in and creating the right customer experience is even more important now as the COVID-19 virus has impacted everything — from the way we work to how we shop. At Ford, we believe a change in customer behavior, whether permanent or temporary, is something we must fully understand as we build a self-driving service. Now is the time for us to be thoughtful about the service we are building so it can remain relevant in a changing world and offer customers peace of mind knowing they, or their packages, are in a safe and protected environment inside our vehicles.
We’ve said before, but it bears repeating: There are several important parts to developing a great self-driving service including the self-driving software, vehicle development, fleet operations and the customer experience. To be successful in this space, a company needs to look at every aspect of the business. It’s not about being first. It’s about providing value to our customers, making people’s lives easier and offering cities new and improved mobility solutions.
That’s been our mission from the start. Now, with Volkswagen’s investment in Argo AI complete, we can spend even more time and care ensuring we remain true to our goal. | https://medium.com/self-driven/what-volkswagens-investment-in-argo-ai-means-for-ford-s-self-driving-vehicle-business-556472221dee | ['Ford Motor Company'] | 2020-06-02 04:01:00.990000+00:00 | ['Business', 'Automation', 'Autonomous Cars', 'Technology', 'Self Driving Cars'] |
A Few “Key” Transformations | Surrender or non-resistance helps. You seldom know “how”. Consciousness Is The Only Reality.
I don’t do the “manifesting” thing anymore because I want way, way more — things even beyond the imaginable and comprehensible. However, we are always experiencing the state of our habitual focus as seemingly stable conditions all the time. So, let me share some of the “bigger” transformations I’ve experienced. I prefer to call them transformations instead of “manifestations” because that’s actually what they are: they are transformations of consciousness and nothing else. Some of them are very interesting because they took place without applying any so-called techniques to make the desires a reality.
#1 Leaving Asia and moving to Europe
I grew up in Asia and was content living there until I was in my late 20s and decided I’d had enough. Within a month of just deciding that I’d had enough of that country, I received an opportunity to change jobs (in the same country) through a friend of mine. The line of work was completely alien to me but I decided to give it a shot. I got fed up 3 months into the new job and started looking for another, soon discovering that there were hardly any jobs — almost none — of that sort in my country but there was considerable demand in other countries especially Europe. Long story short: I was out of Asia and working in Europe within 18 months. I did not know that taking the new job recommended by my friend would result in my moving to Europe in less than 2 years or that my friend would even get in touch with me shortly after I had decided it was time to leave Asia. The rational mind can never tell you exactly how you’ll get to where you want to go because it is too limited in perspective and things are always changing. I did not know about the “Law of Attraction”, Neville Goddard and had no manifesting “techniques”: I just decided and went with the flow not knowing exactly where each step would lead until it became quite obvious.
#2 New Job In The Nick of Time + a 75% increase on a 6-figure salary
5 years into my first job in Europe I entered a rather persistent state of negativity. Note: A persistent negative focus will almost certainly lead to unpleasant circumstances of a corresponding nature. I’ll go into why it's “almost certainly” and not “certainly” in another article. Anyway, let’s cut to the chase: I quit my first job without having another in hand, tried a few interviews but failed them, and eventually booked my ticket to return to Asia without knowing exactly what I’d do there. By now, I’d heard of the “Law of Attraction” but still hadn’t clearly understood that consciousness is the only reality and I was exploring ritual systems so I performed some rituals with fairly clear outcomes and then let go, i.e. I went about preparing to leave Europe because no clear path to a different outcome was in sight. A few days later I received an e-mail from someone I met at a dinner 4 years prior who had heard that I was planning on leaving and thought I might be suitable for a role in his company. On the day I was supposed to be leaving Europe, I ended up joining my new job with a 75% increase on a 6-figure salary and in a cooler environment with a lot of other perks. Same takeaway: the rational mind can’t figure out the precise unfolding so just set an outcome and let go. Notice I even gave up and got on with my plans to leave (so don’t sweat it with trying to act “as if”) but that lowered state of inner conflict from a kind of surrender resulted in just enough of a shift in consciousness to allow the unfolding of a more desirable outcome.
#3 My current residence in Eurasia
I currently live in a Eurasian country close to Russia and Turkey. I entered this country as a tourist with no intention of staying (first impressions weren’t pleasant) but I had been seeking a place to sorta settle down for some time. About a month into my stay I learnt that this country is one of the easiest for immigrants to enter, settle into and start businesses. It is low-cost, safe, accessible, has “Second World” infrastructure and a moderately open democratic outlook overall. Of course, I was quite well-established in the “Law of Attraction” and understanding that everything is an aspect of The Self or Limitless Consciousness but I still couldn’t see how things would play out, i.e. I had no idea or intention of settling in this country when I entered. There are more correspondences like my tendency to meditate on Mother Mary and Infant Jesus, strong preference for the USD, dislike of paperwork and bureaucracy, and more that I noticed (we manifest according to our consciousness) but I just wanted to highlight the important stuff and why we seldom see the “how” until its very obvious.
To Sum It All Up:
a) Consciousness is the only reality and we always experience habits of focus and belief as seemingly stable conditions.
b) We can rarely see exactly “how” we’ll experience our desired state because it depends on our Infinite Consciousness (True Self), our hidden beliefs, desires and what’s currently in focus.
c) The lower the inner conflict with your desire (even if you give up) the faster the transformation into the desired state.
d) Don’t worry too much about techniques and “acting as-if”. None of them matters unless they effectively shift your habit of focus into or into alignment with the desired state. | https://medium.com/@987ritual/a-few-key-transformations-d31a95151189 | ['Eros Thanatos'] | 2021-06-17 08:25:30.305000+00:00 | ['Letting Go', 'Consciousness', 'Law Of Attraction', 'Manifestation', 'Neville Goddard'] |
Growing Up Japanese-American In A Time Of Islamophobia | Growing Up Japanese-American In A Time Of Islamophobia
How President Trump’s Muslim ban — Executive Order 13769 — echoes WWII’s infamous Executive Order 9066.
Recently, my mother sent a picture of our traditional Hinamatsuri dolls.
In the past, my sister and I helped her unpack each doll — about 16 in total — and arrange them on a precarious platform in our living room.
This time, it was just the emperor and empress sitting on top of the family piano.
The picture was gorgeous, but something felt wrong. I quickly realized that it embodied how it felt growing up Japanese American: beautiful but abbreviated.
Emperor and empress Hinamatsuri dolls in Sophia’s childhood home. Photo courtesy of Sophia Stephens.
We are allowed to be here, but the way I’m treated sometimes keeps me in a state of doubt. The slights are big and small — from the smirk of disgust from the cashier at Safeway as I buy daikon, miso paste, and other Japanese foods, to men leering at me as they guess “what” I am because of my “exotic” appearance. Sometimes racism feels like death by a million paper cuts, other times like being hacked by a machete.
How close can we get to being American? How close can we get to being Japanese?
Getting too close to one end or the other of the spectrum threatened our affiliations.
I discovered the story of Japanese internment during World War II by myself since I never learned about it in grade school, and my parents didn’t talk about it. I studied alone for years until my Asian American Studies class in college.
Now this painful reality of targeting ethnic communities is no longer confined to the sterile safety of a university classroom. It is happening now, again…with President Trump’s immigration policies.
Sure, my family is not at the epicenter of this, but we ride our own waves from the shock and despair of this latest betrayal.
I’m only one or two generations away from the immigrant experience. My mother is a green card holder from Japan who met my father in the 80’s while studying in the States. My father is a first-generation American — he’s the son of a World War II refugee who fled to America from Greece at the age of five to escape the Nazis. So the topic of travel bans and discrimination isn’t too far away to talk about with either parent.
When my mom talks about Trump’s executive order on immigration, she says “Now it is seven countries, but what is next? Japan? China?”
She sighs.
“ If I can’t go back to see my mother in Japan, and I cannot come back to the United States, I cannot imagine… I am always optimistic, though. I hope that Japan will stay okay.”
This worry permeates my mind, but I know that there are others whose lives are not okay right now and affected much more deeply than I am. Although I’m not Muslim, I’ve been spending time at the Islamic Center of North Seattle since the travel ban to feel a sense of connection to the community.
The last time I went, I was taught how to worship — alternating from having our feet or shoulders touching as we listen to prayer to prostrating ourselves on soft carpet.
Each time I bend forward at prayer, I can see the whiteboard in the back says, “Muslims — do not be afraid. We fight for each other” out of my peripheral vision.
I wonder about Buddhist temples and Japanese spaces of community during World War II America. What was that atmosphere like? Was it like this?
The grief of marginalized people is universal.
And that is a horrifying comfort, if we can even call it that. To be honest, I don’t know what to call it.
After prayer, I turn and ask the woman next to me what the community will do for now.
“We keep living,” she says. “Life is hard, that is the way it is for us. But we do not give up.”
She asks my ethnicity and I tell her that I am Japanese. She nods her head.
“So you know this, too.”
Sophia Stephens grew up in Wenatchee, Washington and lives in Seattle. | https://medium.com/generation-youthradio/growing-up-japanese-american-in-a-time-of-islamophobia-8762b4b959cd | [] | 2017-02-15 00:23:05.207000+00:00 | ['Islamophobia', 'Japanese', 'Refugees', 'Asian American'] |
181 CEOs Have Sworn Off Profit-Centric Leadership | 181 CEOs Have Sworn Off Profit-Centric Leadership
What does it mean for the future of brand-building?
Photo by Lucas Davies on Unsplash
This past August, the Business Roundtable, a group of roughly 190 CEOs from some of the largest companies in the U.S. issued a landmark announcement on the purpose of a corporation — essentially proclaiming the death of Milton Friedman economics. The Business Roundtable is not a group of eco-conscious, granola-eating CEOs but rather the leaders of the most visible, revered, and at times reviled brands, and they’re saying they/we need to change.
Signed by 181 CEOs, the proclamation states that business needs to work for the benefit of all stakeholders, including “customers, employees, suppliers, community, and shareholders.” Much has been written about it since its release. Many have hailed it, and many have expressed deep skepticism, given the nature of these companies and their past business practices.
There is good cause to be skeptical, but we also have to ask ourselves why would they release such a proclamation. Could it be a mere PR strategy? I think not.
Let’s assume for a moment that there are a few signatories who are joining the group in the hopes of gaining some positive spin for their brands. Let’s also assume that maybe a large percentage of the group signed with a genuine desire to move their companies in the direction of working for the benefit of all stakeholders, while also entertaining a little voice in the back of the mind that promises some good vibes from the media as a fringe benefit. Maybe only a small percentage of these CEOs are 100% on board regardless of what it may mean for the strength of their brands, share price, or positive press.
We can’t say for sure, but wouldn’t it be better to give them the benefit of the doubt, that change has to start somewhere, and where better than with 181 of some of the largest and most powerful institutions in the country?
As a brand strategist with a focus on working with companies to hardwire authenticity into their companies, I believe there is always a point in the process where an awareness comes to light that goes something like this: “So, if we say we’re about these values (fill in the blank), then we have to truly be that kind of company?”
Yes, that’s the point. We proclaim what we stand for, we acknowledge that these values are aspirational (that we may not get it right all the time) but that we will strive individually and collectively to be that kind of company.
Authentic brand-building is not for the faint of heart. It requires that we go deep into the psyche of a company, to touch the soul of an organization, and then as a collective to put words to it, to define it, and then to take the scary step of proclaiming it to our stakeholders: customers, employees, suppliers, community, and shareholders.
This is the key point in the journey of transforming a brand from mediocre to exceptional. We announce it to the world so we’re on the hook. Our stakeholders can now hold us accountable because they have something definitive to hold us to.
Saying we’re customer-centric but not providing a way to reach an actual person on the phone is not living up to our values. Saying we care about equality, for example, requires leaders to look within to uncover deeply engrained ways of thinking, and being willing to question our most basic beliefs related to gender, ethnicity, culture, lifestyles, and so on.
The Business Roundtable’s announcement places them on the hook — 181 CEOs of some of our largest organizations are saying, “This is what we’re about.” Now it’s up to us and all of their stakeholders to hold them accountable. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/181-ceos-have-sworn-off-profit-centric-leadership-fc20bb60690d | ['Glenn Geffcken'] | 2019-11-16 16:47:03.572000+00:00 | ['Brand Strategy', 'Authenticity', 'Leadership', 'Change Management'] |
Book: Philosophy of Life Instinct: Prologue | Serialised book (with a progressively updated ToC Links page)
Book: Philosophy of Life Instinct: Prologue
Prologue
Image by the author
It all kept coming back to our being a form of matter called Life that has a need to know combined with serious limitations in its ability to understand and explain reality.
The origin of the quest for knowledge and the limitations arose from a single fundamental reality, as far as I could see. It is a reality that appears simple but is not. I have regularly questioned my view of this in forty years of thinking, waiting for it to change, to prove false. But it hasn’t. This reality is what I call — The Life Instinct.
I will elaborate on the dimensions of The Life Instinct in Chapter 4. In subsequent chapters, I will consider essential features of life from the perspective of The Life Instinct. We will try to understand each feature’s origins, the implications, and how to work with it.
In my journey through the many puzzles, I have found they belong to one of two categories: metaphysical or philosophical enquiries. We will apply the Philosophy of Life Instinct to shine a light on both types — Metaphysical ones and those from the Humanities.
Book Structure
Part I of the book delves into reality, time and our ability to comprehend them, in the context of The Life Instinct. The metaphysical questions and their answers are not practically critical, but as they are the foundations of the philosophy, they need to be dealt with — and I begin with them.
In Part II, I take up the philosophical enquiries that broadly correspond to our world’s sphere and our existence within it, along with other forms of life. It is an anthropocentric area of enquiry and could be termed the Humanities, being questions that humans ask about themselves, from their viewpoint in the cosmos. I have asked the vital questions that concern us and tried to answer them as best I can in the light of the Life Instinct.
In Part III, I consider: How will the answers stand the test of time? Will they make sense in a hundred, a thousand or a million years from now? Will the questions themselves change by then? What are the finalities on how we should live our lives? What is the purest form of this philosophy that can act as our daily guide to living the most wholesome lives we can?
How to Use this Book
Despite the above broad structure, as long as you have read Chapter 4 — ‘The Nature of Life and The Life Instinct’, all the other chapters can be read independently. I have written them to make sense on their own. They are beads on the single string of the philosophy that holds them all up. Chapter 4 sets up that underlying, unifying theme.
The book may sometimes feel like a hairball of strands of thought, doubling back, intersecting and running parallel for short and long distances. But go with it, because once you get the underlying philosophy and viewpoint under your skin, it will be your ever-present and reliable friend that jumps out to tackle any problem, esoteric or banal.
Reading all the topics will give you a well-rounded ability to deal with almost everything that concerns us in life, so I recommend it. However, you may choose to focus on the problems that interest you at a point in time and move through the others as per your needs or curiosity.
We may never know in an absolute sense if this philosophy and metaphysics are accurate. But if it is more or less so, all other philosophies and metaphysics, large and small, would be subsets of it. It is not hubris. There can be none of that as we, and everything we create, will vanish one day, forgotten and unmissed. Rather, it is confidence, that entirely within the ambit of our world, minuscule and inconsequential, this framework of thought will help us survive better.
This philosophy’s aspects will appear to correspond to other ones, particularly rationalism, scepticism, objectivism, vitalism, existentialism, and nihilism. There are also ‘-logies’ such as evolutionary ontology, psychology, sociology and so on, that apply to several explorations in this book. However, I have not used these terms in this book because I want the reader to come to it without any such prior frameworks. I also want to stay with a single, simple, unifying theme throughout the various questions, rather than deviate into well developed but distracting academic areas.
Of course, correlation is unavoidable for those who are conversant with the existing philosophical schools and movements. However, I would advise them to set those aside for a while and read every part of this book from one viewpoint only — its premise. One may be tempted to coin a label, for example, ‘Life Instinctivism’, but the concept goes substantially beyond both life and instinct, so I deprecate the term myself.
This book does not cover every aspect of life, but you can apply it to answer any other question if you understand and accept this philosophy. Once we consider both Metaphysics and Humanities in the light of the Life Instinct, this mental paradigm will be a powerful tool for any seeker of knowledge, insight and wisdom.
There is no doubt in my mind of the fundamental soundness of this philosophy. However, I may not have applied it correctly in all cases, in minor and major ways. For that, I readily accept complete responsibility.
If this edifice can be improved further through its application by you, my reader, and through your experiences, thoughts and feedback, I will be delighted. | https://medium.com/illumination/book-philosophy-of-life-instinct-prologue-c12ed6386acf | ['Shashi Sastry'] | 2020-12-30 16:17:41.022000+00:00 | ['Metaphysics', 'Happiness', 'Philosophy', 'Life', 'Books'] |
5 Simple Fitness Workouts That You Can Do At Home | By: Jessica Natalie
Medical review by Patricia Salber MD, MBA
Updated on May 6, 2020
Working out at home is convenient and affordable. (Photo source: iStock)
Happiness is the greatest wealth one can accumulate. Good health is a vital currency of this fortune. Keeping body and mind in good condition, especially in trying times, is imperative if you wish to lead a happy life. Exercising outdoors in the fresh air is one of the most energizing experiences that you can have. But right now, the current stay-at-home requirements related to the COVID-19 pandemic make that difficult or impossible. But you don’t have to abandon working out altogether. That’s because there are many great fitness workouts that you can do at home.
The benefits of fitness workouts
First, let’s examine some of the benefits of fitness workouts in general:
Physical workouts, particularly those focused on strength and endurance, can help us maintain a healthy weight by burning calories. When you create a calorie deficit (burn more than you consume), you will lose body fat.
Exercise also helps to keep a host of medical problems at bay, like depression, diabetes, osteoporosis, many kinds of cancer, heart problems, and others.
One of the biggest benefits of exercise is that it helps bring about a “feel-good” factor that may, in turn, combat stress.
The increase in blood circulation due to physical activities improves appearance, thereby boosting self-confidence and self-esteem.
The increase in blood circulation also helps tissues absorb more oxygen and nutrients which in turn boosts the cardiovascular system, leading to more energy and enthusiasm.
Why fitness workouts that you can do at home make sense
And now let us explore why fitness workouts at home make a lot of sense even after the lockdown is over and we return to “normal” life:
And now let us explore why fitness workouts at home make a lot of sense even after the lockdown is over and we return to “normal” life:
It costs significantly less than a gym membership in the long run. Even if you buy workout equipment (such as free weights, resistance bands, TRX straps, or a treadmill), it is a one-time cost. Gym membership, on the other hand, is a recurring monthly expense.
Time is another important factor. If you work out at home, you don’t have to spend time driving to the gym and looking for parking. And, time saved can also be money saved if you utilize that time for other productive work.
When you exercise at home, you can choose a time that suits you as you need not worry about the times when the is gym open, or classes are available. This makes it easier to follow your workout routine with greater regularity.
You do not have to wait for your turn at the treadmill or workstation during peak hours which is often the case at the gym.
The home environment is often cleaner and healthier to do workouts. There is no chance of catching a virus from another sick gym member — one of the reasons that most gyms were shut down during the lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fitness workouts at home give you the privacy to do what you want. The gym routine can be tailored to suit your personal style and body requirement. With no one to watch you at home, you are bound to be more comfortable and relaxed. You can exercise at your own pace as you have only your own self to compete with.
When you work out at home, you are likely to be more regular because there are no excuses like traffic, rain, cold, no time, and all the other excuses we use to skip the gym. Hence there can be more consistency with fitness workouts at home.
5 simple fitness workouts that you can do at home
Try out the following simple exercises in the comfort of your home, without the stress of going to the gym or purchasing expensive equipment.
Jogging on a treadmill or in place is a great warm-up. (Photo source: iStock)
First, do a nice warm-up
Put on your gym shoes and turn on some music. Start jogging on a treadmill, if you have one, or do it on the spot if you don’t. Start slowly at first and then pick up speed. There after maintain at medium paced jogging for roughly three minutes. Now, take a break for half a minute. Then start again, moving to fast-paced jogging for a duration of one full minute. Take a break for half a minute. Then, repeat the whole process once again.
Another effective warm-up can be done by slowly walking around on your heels for one minute. Care has to be taken so that your toes do not touch the ground. Repeat twice after one-minute gaps.
Other warm-up exercises include jumping jacks; arm circles, shoulder shrugs, and leg swings; or marching in place while swinging your arms
All this can be done while soaking in your favorite music.
Plank can be done with arms extended or on your elbows. (Photo source: iStock Photos, credit: AntonioGuillem)
An exercise that strengthens your upper body
This exercise combines plank with a push-up. It will help tone your arm muscles, as well as the muscles of your upper body, including shoulders and back
Stand straight, feet together, hands along your body.
Now bend slowly, so as to place your palms on the ground. Start moving your hands forward, one step at a time, till you achieve the plank position. Count till five.
Now slowly and carefully, do a push-up. Stand up slowly and repeat the whole process once again.
Aim for 10–12 repetitions, rest, and then do two more sets.
Squats are one of the best exercises that you can do — and they can be done anywhere. (Photo source: Stock)
A healthy lower body workout
Squats are great workouts that help tone your leg muscles (quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves). They also help tone your glutes.
Try this one standing straight, stretching your body as tall as possible.
Then spread your feet about two to two and a half feet apart. Now raise your hands and clasp the fingers of one hand with those of the other behind the neck.
Then bend your knees as far down as possible, almost as if you were sitting on a low stool. Count till five and then raise yourself up.
Repeat 10 to 15 times. Try to do this exercise 2–3 times a week.
Lunges are a terrific workout for your legs
Start by standing with hands by the sides.
Then push the right leg forward and lower your body slowly and carefully so that the right knee is at a right angle.
Count till five and then slowly and carefully, again raise your body, bringing back the right leg so that you are standing straight like before.
Take deep breaths for half a minute. Then repeat, this time using the left leg.
Repeat 5–10 times two to three times a week.
Jumping exercises can really get your heart rate up. (Photo source: iStock)
Jumping for overall good health
Exercises which involve jumping are also very good workouts.
Start by standing straight with your arms folded in front of you or held by your sides.
Now start lowering your body in such a manner that the knees are bent and hips are pushed back. Continue lowering your body so that your upper thighs are almost parallel to the ground. Count till five. Now jump high. You may need to raise your arms to help you rise up.
Once you have landed without losing balance, repeat the whole exercise once again, after a gap of half a minute.
Repeat 5–10 times two to three times a week
The bottom line for fitness workouts that you can do at home
It goes without saying that if you are a beginner doing these exercises for the very first time, you may experience body aches for the first few days. It’s important that you don’t let this lead you to skip a routine. Once your body gets used to these rigors you will start feeling sprightly. And, you will love the new well-toned look of your body.
Remember, there are many health and wellness benefits related to exercise and fitness no matter where you workout. But there are particular benefits to simple fitness workouts that you can do at home, such as cost and convenience. This may help home workouts become your exercise of choice.
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First published 5/2/17, this post was reviewed and updated for republication on 5/6/20.
Jessica Natalie is a health and fitness lifestyle blogger who is passionate about running and wants to spread the love on her blog CauseILoveRunning.com | https://docweighsin.medium.com/5-simple-fitness-workouts-that-you-can-do-at-home-e45528a77c21 | ['The Doctor Weighs In'] | 2020-05-13 02:11:01.059000+00:00 | ['Exercise', 'Fitness', 'Workout'] |
How to Implement Logistic Regression with PyTorch | To understand better what we’re going to do next, you can read my previous article about logistic regression:
So, what’s our plan for implementing Logistic Regression with PyTorch?
Let’s first think of the underlying math that we want to use.
There are many ways to define a loss function and then find the optimal parameters for it, among them, here we will implement in our LogisticRegression class the following 3 ways for learning the parameters:
We will rewrite the logistic regression equation so that we turn it into a least-squares linear regression problem with different labels and then, we use the closed-form formula to find the weights:
Like above, we turn logistic into least-squares linear regression, but instead of the closed-form formula, we use stochastic gradient descent (SGD) to minimize the following loss function:
which was obtained by substituting the y in the sum of squared errors loss
with the right-hand side of
We use the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) method, write the likelihood function, play around with it, restate it as a minimization problem, and apply SGD with the following loss function:
In the above equations, X is the input matrix that contains observations on the row axis and features on the column axis; y is a column vector that contains the classification labels (0 or 1); f is the sum of squared errors loss function; h is the loss function for the MLE method.
If you want to find out more about how we obtained the above equations, please check out the above-linked article.
So now, this is our goal: translate the above equations into code. And we’ll use PyTorch for that.
We plan to use an object-oriented approach for implementation. We’ll create a LogisticRegression class with 3 public methods: fit() , predict() , and accuracy() .
Among fit’s parameters, one will determine how our model learns. This parameter is named method (not to be confused with a method as a function of a class) and it can take the following strings as values: ‘ols_solve’ (OLS stands for Ordinary Least Squares), ‘ols_sgd’, and ‘mle_sgd’.
To not make the fit() method too long, we would like to split the code into 3 different private methods, each one responsible for one way of finding the parameters.
We will have the __ols_solve() private method for applying the closed-form formula.
In this method and in the other methods that use the OLS approach, we will use the constant EPS to make sure the labels are not exactly 0 or 1, but something in between. That’s to avoid getting plus or minus infinity for the logarithm in the equations above.
In __ols_solve() we first check if X has full column rank so that we can apply this method (you can read more about this technique and what happens if X doesn't have full column rank in this article). Then we force y to be between EPS and 1-EPS. The ols_y variable holds the labels of the ordinary least-squares linear regression problem that’s equivalent to our logistic regression problem. Basically, we transform the labels that we have for logistic regression so that they are compliant with the linear regression equations. After that, we apply the closed-form formula using PyTorch functions.
For the 2 SGD-based algorithms, it would be redundant to have them as 2 separate methods since they will have almost all the code the same except for the part where we compute the loss value, as we have 2 different loss functions for them.
What we’ll do is to create a generic __sgd() method that does not rely on a particular loss function. Instead, it will expect as a parameter a function responsible for computing the loss value which the __sgd() method will use.
In this method, we first initialize the weights to a random column vector with values drawn from a normal distribution with mean 0 and a standard deviation of 1/(# of features). The intuition for this std dev is that if we have more features, then we need smaller weights to be able to converge (and not blow up our gradients).
We will create a DataLoader object with shuffle=True so that it will take care of shuffling and simply return us a batch of data (xb, yb) when we iterate over it with for step, (xb, yb) in enumerate(loader): .
Then we go through all the dataset for iterations times and for each batch of data, we compute the loss value using the loss_fn function taken as a parameter, then we call the backward() method on the loss value.
By calling backward() , the gradient is computed and stored in the grad attribute of self.weights . So next we can use self.weights -= learning_rate * self.weights.grad to update the weights, and we do so inside the with torch.no_grad(): block because we don't want this operation of updating the weights to be considered the next time we call backward() .
By default, PyTorch keeps track of every operation that involves a tensor which has requires_grad == True (in our case, self.weights ), and when backward() is called, the gradient of the whole function composition chain is computed. The operations that we don't want in the gradient computation we can put inside a with torch.no_grad(): block.
An important thing to note about automatic differentiation in PyTorch is that when backward() is called, the gradient is NOT set anew but instead, the new gradient is added to the existing value in the grad attribute.
That's why we have to set self.weights.grad to zero after each update, and we do so by using self.weights.grad.zero_() .
Then, after the training is done, we use self.weights = self.weights.detach() to detach self.weights from the computational graph, which means that it will not require grad anymore.
For ‘ols_sgd’ and ‘mle_sgd’ we’ll create 2 private methods: __sse_loss() and __mle_loss() that compute and return the loss value for these 2 different techniques. For these 2 methods, we simply apply the formulas for f and h using PyTorch’s math functions.
So, when fit() is called with method=‘ols_solve’ we call __ols_solve() , when method=‘ols_sgd’ we call __sgd() with loss_fn=self.__sse_loss , and when method=’mle_sgd’ we call __sgd() with loss_fn=self.__mle_loss .
In predict() we first check if fit() was called previously by looking for the weights attribute (the fit method is the only method that creates it). Then we check if the shapes of the input matrix x and weights vector allow multiplication. Otherwise, return error messages. If everything is OK, we do the multiplication and pass the result through the logistic function.
In accuracy() we make predictions using the above method. Then check if the shape of the predictions matches that of the true labels, otherwise, we show an error message. After that we make sure that both predictions and the true labels have values of either 0 or 1 by a simple rule: if the value is >= 0.5 consider it a 1, otherwise a 0. We apply this rule by using the torch.where() function.
To compute the accuracy, we check for equality between y and y_hat. This will return a vector of Boolean values. Then cast these Booleans to float (False becomes 0.0, and True becomes 1.0). Then, the accuracy is simply the mean of these values. | https://medium.com/nabla-squared/how-to-implement-logistic-regression-with-pytorch-fe60ea3d7ad | ['Dorian Lazar'] | 2020-11-28 16:59:57.501000+00:00 | ['Pytorch', 'Logistic Regression', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Python', 'Machine Learning'] |
An Introduction to Fiber, an Alternative to Express.js | An Introduction to Fiber, an Alternative to Express.js
Golang’s performant Express.js alternative in comparison
Source: The author
Golang is trending. And with the rise of a programming language, libraries and frameworks for it are coming out. For Google’s Golang, there is even a web framework, which is very similar to Express.js — but it has the claim to be a better performing alternative.
In this article, we will look at the basics of Fiber and how similar it is to Express.js. We will also do a performance comparison and see which framework is faster.
You don’t need a lot of knowledge about Golang for this article — if you still want to take a little Golang-crash course, here is one.
Let’s Go
First, you need to install Golang; you can do it here https://golang.org/.
In your terminal, you can simply enter go version to test if the installation worked. Now we can already start to install Fiber.
To do this, start by creating a new project using the Go-CLI. It is a bit like the node world where we start with npm init. So we create a package.json for our project. In Go, this file is the go.mod.
go mod init
After that, we can install the Fiber framework for our project. We do this with the following command, which works like npm install.
go get -u github.com/gofiber/fiber/v2
Now we can implement a hello world with Fiber. For this, we create a main.go in the same folder as our go.mod already has. Here we write all our code.
package main import "github.com/gofiber/fiber/v2" func main() {
app := fiber.New() app.Get("/", func(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
return c.SendString("Hello, World :)")
}) app.Listen(":8080")
}
With go run main.go we can run the main.go.
If you now open localhost:8080 in your browser, you should see our first page.
Here we can already see how similar it is to Express.js.
In Golang, we always have to define a package; under it, we import the Fiber framework with Express.
Unlike JavaScript, Go depends on a main-function that is executed automatically — that’s why we define our code here. As in Express, we first have to create an instance that lays the foundation for our web server.
The app.get function should also look familiar to us. The first parameter is the route; the second is the function that handles the request. Ctx stands for context and contains all important information. We can access the context with the variable c. It is similar to res in Express.js.
c.SendString() can therefore be understood like res.send().
For example, we can use the context variable to output the base URL as follows: fmt.Println(c.BaseURL()) .
Another example that shows that the context variable works like res in Express is the following. So we can set an HTTP state for our response:
app.Get("/", func(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
return c.SendStatus(404)
// "Status for Not Found"
})
Once our web server is up and running, we can use nodemon for live reloading. No, I did not mistype — nodemon; we can also use it for Go.
It works like this:
nodemon — exec go run main.go — signal SIGTERM
Pretty practical, isn’t it? The server now restarts automatically if we change anything in the code.
URL Parameters
We can’t get around this principle — URL parameters are simply super handy to allow our server to respond dynamically to requests.
In Express.js, we only have to use a special syntax in the GET route to indicate that we expect a parameter. This is how it looks like in Express:
app.get("/user/:name", (req, res) => {
res.send("Hi user " + req.params.name)
})
And surprise, that’s what it looks like in Fiber:
app.Get("/user/:name", func(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
return c.SendString("Hi User "+ c.Params("name"))
})
If we call localhost:8080/user/max, we see the following output:
That’s how easy we can pass parameters via the URL — almost exactly like in Express.js.
Serving static files
Static files are files that are no longer modified by the server — good examples are CSS or JavaScript files that we deliver to our users.
To deliver static files in Express.js, we use the middleware function express.static. In use, it looks like this:
app.use('/app', express.static('public'));
Thus, we deliver the contents of the folder “public” when a user calls the route “app”.
In Golang’s Fiber, this also looks very similar.
app.Static("/app", "./public")
The same applies here. When someone calls /app, the content of the folder “public”, which is directly in our directory, is sent to him. A typical structure is, for example, the following.
So far, so good. We see that Fiber Express.js is extremely similar. But does it also offer a real advantage? Yes, especially the performance is Fiber’s strength.
To prove that, I have implemented a benchmark. With both technologies, I have implemented the same app. To be fair, I also adjusted the response headers to be the same size in both cases.
Here is the code of the app for Fiber:
app.Get("/user/:name", func(c *fiber.Ctx) error {
c.Set("Connection", "keep-alive")
c.Set("Content-Type", "text/html; charset=utf-8")
return c.SendString("Hi User "+ c.Params("name"))
})
This is the code for the same app in Express:
app.disable("etag");
app.disable("x-powered-by");
app.get("/user/:name", (req, res) => {
res.send("Hi user "+ req.params.name)
})
The Express app is simply executed with node server.js The Fiber app, since Go is a compiler language, is compiled with go build main.go and executed with ./main .
wrk -t12 -c400 -d10s http://localhost:8080/user/max
The tool for the benchmark is called wrk. 12 is the number of threads we will use, 400 the number of concurrent connections. The load runs for 10 seconds.
The results are striking. Of course, I have made several runs, but here are the averaged results.
Fiber:
Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev
Latency 2.57ms 698.98us 50.72ms 90.95%
Req/Sec 12.70k 2.10k 38.18k 96.43%
1521782 requests in 10.10s, 219.14MB read
Socket errors: connect 0, read 364, write 0, timeout 0
Requests/sec: 150603.89
Transfer/sec: 21.69MB
Express.js:
12 threads and 400 connections
Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev
Latency 38.54ms 8.55ms 171.39ms 93.07%
Req/Sec 0.85k 151.82 1.00k 89.32%
102078 requests in 10.02s, 16.94MB read
Socket errors: connect 0, read 610, write 0, timeout 0
Requests/sec: 10189.99
Transfer/sec: 1.69MB Running 10s test @ http://localhost:8080/user/max 12 threads and 400 connectionsThread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- StdevLatency 38.54ms 8.55ms 171.39ms 93.07%Req/Sec 0.85k 151.82 1.00k 89.32%102078 requests in 10.02s, 16.94MB readSocket errors: connect 0, read 610, write 0, timeout 0Requests/sec: 10189.99Transfer/sec: 1.69MB
Express.js with PM2:
12 threads and 400 connections
Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev
Latency 19.77ms 25.89ms 503.95ms 93.01%
Req/Sec 2.11k 299.31 5.39k 88.73%
252083 requests in 10.03s, 41.83MB read
Socket errors: connect 0, read 151, write 0, timeout 0
Requests/sec: 25135.86
Transfer/sec: 4.17MB Running 10s test @ http://localhost:8080/user/max 12 threads and 400 connectionsThread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- StdevLatency 19.77ms 25.89ms 503.95ms 93.01%Req/Sec 2.11k 299.31 5.39k 88.73%252083 requests in 10.03s, 41.83MB readSocket errors: connect 0, read 151, write 0, timeout 0Requests/sec: 25135.86Transfer/sec: 4.17MB
I still used PM2 because it is very useful for the production version of an app. By default, a Node.js will only use one CPU core even under load; PM2 helps with its cluster mode to reach its full potential. The results are nevertheless clear.
It is important to note that this is, only a single test — a comparison based on URL parameters. But there are so many other things that belong to real web applications, and often the performance does not depend on the backend framework but other factors. Furthermore, although fiber is more performant, the scenario of so many simultaneous requests is rather unrealistic in the real world.
Summing up
Trying out new technologies, marveling at performance is always fun.
The question is only what really remains of it. As already mentioned, one should not put too much emphasis on the results of the benchmark. In reality, it doesn’t make much sense to completely convert an existing Express.js app into Fiber — especially if you don’t have a great knowledge of Golang.
After all, every programming language brings its own problems and challenges.
I can recommend Fiber to anyone who already knows Golang or wants to implement a few projects in another language — the great advantage of the relationship between Fiber and Express is that you can immerse yourself in new technology without being completely unaware of it.
A particular advantage of fiber is that it is faster than Golang’s own net/http module. Fiber is completely based on another performance-optimized HTTP engine for Go. So if you want to implement a web server in Golang, it is advisable to use Fiber directly.
In the case of Express.js, this cannot be said. As this experiment shows, Express is not faster than a basic HTTP server in Node.js, without any frameworks or libraries. Especially smaller applications can and should be implemented without Express.js — at least from a performance point of view. | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/golang-fiber-426f52185fc4 | ['Louis Petrik'] | 2020-12-20 16:04:58.042000+00:00 | ['Nodejs', 'JavaScript', 'Golang', 'Web Development', 'Expressjs'] |
FREE Personal Development Courses | This FREE Personal Development course will help you grow in productivity and discipline. We’ll introduce habits, tips, and insights that will help you reach a new level of self-mastery and efficiency. Leverage our training on productivity, time management, and goal setting to affect a positive transformation in your day-to-day life and your work output.
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https://pressplaylifestyle.thinkific.com/
Check them out and let me know what you think!
No catch! I am trying to see if these provide value before I invest more time, money, and energy in the creation and distribution of the courses.
Love to hear your thoughts.
Coach Jackie Out! | https://medium.com/practical-business/free-personal-development-courses-cef648086a44 | ['Jackie Schwabe', 'Mba'] | 2020-12-15 20:50:53.405000+00:00 | ['Goal Setting', 'Time Management', 'Productivity', 'Personal Development', 'Professional Development'] |
COVID-19: Months 6–15 | We are so thankful for our health and our home and for the safety of our families and friends. It could have been a lot worse. MUCH, MUCH worse. Washington State has been rather conservative when it comes to re-opening, which aligns with our personal values. However, there is no winning in this situation, because a slower re-opening means that small businesses suffer, children struggle, and unemployment continues for many around us.
Thankfully, we were able to get our first vaccine on April 16th, the second day for most adults in our state, and then our second shot four weeks later on May 14th. We are incredibly grateful to everyone who made that happen and for how efficient and well-run the clinic was at the Kaiser clinic near our house. It’s absolutely wild that we got our vaccines 15 months after this started and we are grateful for the technology that allowed that to happen. Sergio had mild side effects both times; other than some arm pain, I felt fine!
Proud vaxxers!
I have to remind myself pretty regularly now that “You can relax — you’re vaxxed!” We still follow local mask rules in stores because we believe in setting a good example — and if wearing a mask helps people who work there feel safer, we’re open to that too. I imagine that these mandates will start to lift later in the summer, given that Washington State has reached almost 50% of the population fully-vaccinated, and in King County we’re approaching 70%! It makes me proud to live in a place where people are caring for those around them, especially those people who are unable to be vaccinated yet, including kids younger than 12 and the immunocompromised.
So — that’s that! I’m looking forward to sharing some more regular life updates as our life gets… more regular again (we hope). And wherever you are, remember — be safe, take care of yourself and those around you, and get the vaccine!
Cheers, Sarah
P.S. I mean, you know this happened as soon as we had our Immunity Day. I’ll be back next week to tell you all about it our first post-vax trip and give you some new travel tips for this current version of normal! | https://medium.com/@sarahannenity/covid-19-months-6-15-8874a4b06019 | ['Sarah Carr'] | 2021-06-08 06:57:18.972000+00:00 | ['Pandemic', 'Daily Life', 'Pandemic Diaries', 'Covid 19', 'Pandemic Reflections'] |
What are the Features and Benefits of Amethyst Stone? | Amethyst stone has many known benefits. This stone is known as an "air" element that provides calmness and positivity to its wearers. Whenever you feel depressed, socially isolated or emotionally challenged, you can find relief by using amethyst. In addition, amethyst stone triggers the creativity and passion of the person, if you are going to do a creative job, if you are interested in art, you can place amethyst in your work area. Apart from these, the different benefits of amethyst can be listed as follows; It is a stone of spirituality and contentment. It is often used especially in meditation and energy work, as it helps in immobilizing the mind. It purifies one’s aura by protecting it from radiation and negative energy. A protective shield is thought to form around the body of the person carrying amethyst. There are also myths that amethyst was given to soldiers who went to war. Strengthens cognitive perception, intuition and psychic abilities. (Third eye, crown and etheric chakras) It is a natural sedative and motivator. It is effective against insomnia. It is recommended that people who suffer from insomnia place amethyst on their pillows or head ends. It is a comforting stone for those grieving the loss of a loved one. Amethyst is a member of the quartz mineral family, which in nature is distinguished by its magnificent purple hue. It is also called purple quartz. The color of amethyst can vary from light lilac to bright purple. This gemstone was historically reserved for royalty, but today it is also used in various fine jewelry or as an object of decoration. It represents calmness and serenity. What is the Meaning of Amethyst Stone? Amethyst has been thought to have many properties throughout history. Although there are different opinions that the stone controls evil thoughts and protects soldiers from war wounds, the origins of amethyst stone go back to Ancient Greece. It is thought to derive from the Greek word "ametistos". This Greek word means 'remedy against drunkenness' or 'sober’. In Greek mythology, there are legends that a person carrying amethyst cannot get drunk or get drunk with a drink made entirely of amethyst. How Is Amethyst Formed? From the outside, the raw amethyst mass looks just like a piece of rock. When opened, it is a bright purple colored crystal filled with beautiful and shiny crystals. Scientifically, amethyst geodes (masses) consist of two stages. These stages are first the formation of cavities and then the formation of crystals. Voids form in volcanic rocks as a result of the compression of gas spaces in lava bubbles. Later, these spaces are filled with a silica-rich liquid (SiO2) over time. This liquid forms crystals over time. Although the formation of these bright purple crystals is explained in a few sentences, we can say that they took millions of years to form, that is, they were formed in prehistoric times. | https://medium.com/@zehramevlevi55/what-are-the-features-and-benefits-of-amethyst-stone-d5748e3bd6ff | ['Ayşe Zehra Doner'] | 2021-12-14 11:05:40.189000+00:00 | ['Amethyst', 'Jewelry', 'Purple', 'Ameti̇sy'] |
“5 Things Anyone Can Do To Optimize Their Mental Wellness”, with Suze Yalof Schwartz and Beau Henderson | Thank you for joining us, Suze! Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
My most interesting story is definitely when there was a bank robbery happening next door to our Unplug Meditation studio in Santa Monica. When the studio manager and I heard loud noises outside, we went to take a peek to see what was happening and there were two police officers yelling at us, with guns in hand pointed in our direction and toward the direction of the bank. They told us to go back inside, lock the door, and get everyone away from the windows since there was a bank robbery happening next door and the robbers had guns. We ran back into Unplug panicked, with hearts beating and red faces. I looked at my manager and said, “We need to breathe.” So we did the 16-second breath exercise and it totally calmed us down. Then we went into the meditation room, calmly stopped the class, and told everyone to follow us to our back loft, where we sat in lockdown for two hours. We ended up really connecting with each other, and because we remained calm, all the other 28 meditators remained calm, too. When we were finally told the coast was clear, I not only was calm enough to turn the camera crews covering the robbery into press coverage for Unplug, but I even turned a few of the police officers onto meditation since they were upset that the robbers got away with the money!
Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?
It wasn’t funny at the time, but I waited six months to get Unplug Meditation LLC trademarked, and when it finally came through, “Meditation” was misspelled as “Mediation.” Moral of the story: watch that spellcheck!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
There are so many, but one of my favorites was Steve Ross, who was such an influential teacher. Without even a question, he said he would teach at Unplug when I first opened, even though he had his own studio. He gave me advice on how to create the perfect atmosphere for meditation, and he even loaned me his studio manager, who helped me with everything!
What advice would you suggest to your colleagues in your industry to thrive and avoid burnout?
Meditate every day, first thing in the morning, no questions asked. It will help you focus, follow through, and feel peaceful everyday. I also suggest getting comfortable with the fact that you will learn everything as you go. Don’t worry about not knowing what you are doing — that’s the fun part!
What advice would you give to other leaders about how to create a fantastic work culture?
You have to walk the walk. Be clear and remember that your team is there to help you. Be appreciative of them and let them know. You are nothing without your team. | https://medium.com/authority-magazine/5-things-anyone-can-do-to-optimize-their-mental-wellness-with-suze-yalof-schwartz-and-beau-3b2176915a46 | ['Beau Henderson'] | 2019-12-02 23:52:40.089000+00:00 | ['Meditation'] |
Abbiamo già detto che a noi di Gruppo Sinapsi piace giocare, sperimentare e cercare nuove idee…… | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/gruppo-sinapsi/abbiamo-gi%C3%A0-detto-che-a-noi-di-gruppo-sinapsi-piace-giocare-sperimentare-e-cercare-nuove-idee-ed8af6ce12c9 | ['Gruppo Sinapsi'] | 2020-12-22 11:04:49.369000+00:00 | ['News', 'Team'] |
Less than 5 percent of suspects charged in 2020 | West Midlands Police are struggling to prosecute suspects. According to data from the Police UK, the majority of suspects could not be identified or prosecuted.
Less than five percent of reported crime suspects were charged between 1 January 2020 and 31 August 2020 in the West Midlands.
According to Police UK this is, among other things, due to a lack of evidence:
“In circumstances where there is insufficient evidence, the decision may be taken to focus resources on those offences which are capable of being charged and prosecuted.”
So far, more than 200.000 crimes have been reported to the West Midlands police of which three quarters have been investigated and closed.
For the rest of the cases no outcome data is available. In some cases, investigations continue to this day.
The data does not include any information on the outcome of anti-social-behaviour-crimes.
“This is because, unlike recorded crimes which are investigated by the police, a number of local agencies work together to respond to ASB and this set up varies across the country.”
Police UK
Police struggling to charge suspects across the UK
Not only the police in the West Midlands are struggling to prosecute suspects.
In the same period of time, over four million crimes have been reported across all Police Forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Only in five percent of these crimes a suspect has been charged. | https://medium.com/@vanessa-fillis/only-4-percent-of-suspects-charged-in-2020-b725b3d7ba6f | ['Vanessa Fillis'] | 2020-11-14 16:55:49.395000+00:00 | ['West Midlands', 'Crime', 'Data Journalism'] |
Black Doctors Work to Make Coronavirus Testing More Equitable | Nina Feldman, WHYY
October 13, 2020
When the coronavirus arrived in Philadelphia in March, Dr. Ala Stanford hunkered down at home with her husband and kids. A pediatric surgeon with a private practice, she has staff privileges at a few suburban Philadelphia hospitals. For weeks, most of her usual procedures and patient visits were canceled. So she found herself, like a lot of people, spending the days in her pajamas, glued to the TV.
And then, at the beginning of April, she started seeing media reports indicating that Black people were contracting the coronavirus and dying from COVID-19 at greater rates than other demographic groups.
“It just hit me like, what is going on?” said Stanford.
At the same time, she started hearing from Black friends who couldn’t get tested because they didn’t have a doctor’s referral or didn’t meet the testing criteria. In April, there were shortages of coronavirus tests in numerous locations across the country, but Stanford decided to call around to the hospitals where she works to learn more about why people were being turned away.
One explanation she heard was that a doctor had to sign on to be the “physician of record” for anyone seeking a test. In a siloed health system, it could be complicated to sort out the logistics of who would communicate test results to patients.
https://www.cali.fm/black-doctors-work-to-make-coronavirus-testing-more-equitable/ | https://medium.com/@mslashaunturner/black-doctors-work-to-make-coronavirus-testing-more-equitable-9a67d76314ff | ['Lashaun Turner'] | 2020-10-13 20:41:43.008000+00:00 | ['BlackLivesMatter', 'Africanamerican', 'Blackdoctors'] |
Tokenbox Platform Launches Trading Contest and Gives Away 1 Million TBX | Tokenbox Platform Launches Trading Contest and Gives Away 1 Million TBX Tokenbox Follow May 21 · 3 min read
For a month, participants will be competing in trading digital assets on the platform to win 1 million worth of TBX tokens.
Tokenbox calls on all digital asset traders out there to take part in an unprecedented competition. Both professionals, and those who would like to try their hands at trading cryptocurrencies and tokens, are invited to join the big Tokenbox race.
The contest starts on May 25th, 2020. Final call is June 25th, 2020. During these consecutive 5 weeks all registered traders will be managing their portfolios and trying different trading strategies in order to boost their score and performance charts. On June 30th a champion will be announced and awarded from a substantial prize fund of 1 million TBX tokens.
Instructions on how to participate in Tokenbox Trading Contest 2020
Those willing to challenge themselves for great trading should register on the Tokenbox platform up until June 10th, 2020. Number of players is not limited.
Once a trader’s account is registered and verified, a deposit should be added in any currency, exceeding or equivalent to 50 USD. The platforms accepts major cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash.
It is convenient to have additional sub-accounts to diversify portfolios and experiment with strategies. Only one trading account with maximum profitability will be selected for the final ranking.
The only indicator for obtaining a higher rating is the return (ROI) gained during the competition period. The return is calculated in USD, and performance can be easily checked anytime in a trader’s account.
In the final part of the race, participants who are ranked from 1 to 10 will be pre-approved as Tokenbox designated portfolio managers and will be able to create a portfolio for managing investor’s assets on the Tokenbox platform.
To learn more about participation and to follow the contest updates go to https://contest.tokenbox.io/.
Tokenbox is a convenient state-of-the-art platform for trading digital assets. Advanced security infrastructure, deposits options for both cryptocurrencies and bank cards, designated wallet that allows to convert currencies on site, multiple portfolios that can be managed under one account for various strategies — all this makes the platform a unique and simple tool for professional managers and digital funds. Tokenbox is aimed at creating a one-stop-shop, full scale service for buying, managing and investing in digital assets. | https://medium.com/tokenbox/tokenbox-platform-launches-trading-contest-and-gives-away-1-million-tbx-e6f7fcdc89b5 | [] | 2020-05-21 11:10:14.316000+00:00 | ['Tokenbox', 'Crypto', 'Trading', 'Bitcoin', 'Tbxnews'] |
Coffee Chat Series #1: Getting Ahead as an Early-Career Designer | Are you an Early-Career Designer?
You think of yourself as “new to designing professionally.” Maybe you’re still in school, with an internship or two under your belt. Or, perhaps you graduated in the last 1–2 years and are in the midst of your first or second design job. Or, maybe you’ve decided recently to switch careers.
You don’t yet consider yourself an expert in any aspect of design, whether it’s interfaces or graphics, user experiences or design processes. You may feel you’ve got solid fundamentals and a decent understanding of what good design is, but you can’t yet produce consistently excellent solutions at the level you aspire to, and you believe you are still a good ways off. You look around and can easily enumerate many types of design problems that you haven’t experienced before and would love to cut your teeth on.
You play a support role in bigger product initiatives. In larger teams, you might be paired with a senior or lead designer who is acting as a mentor or creative director. In smaller teams, you may be getting detailed briefs and specific direction or feedback from a CEO or product leader. You don’t typically feel comfortable pushing back on the problem you’re asked to solve or the feedback you receive because you’re mostly in observing and absorbing mode.
You’ve a long and adventurous career ahead. You’re just getting started, and you’re going to leave footprints.
Your superpowers
A lot of early-career designers I know don’t assume that they have any superpowers. They figure they’ve got a lot to learn, and not a lot they can contribute. This couldn’t be further from the truth! Pretty much everyone I know raves about working with these people. Why?
Flexibility. As an early-career designer, you come in with practically no bad habits or preconceived notions. You’re not weighed down by the past, so you adapt easily to new tools and processes. Non-existent are the grumblings of, “Well, in my day, we did X or Y and it was so much better…” Within a few years, I’ve seen many people go from n00b to expert designing on some new platform, technology, or cultural trend. And given the rate at which this industry changes — a lot — this kind of flexibility is a huge advantage. When paradigms shift — whether from analog to digital, or web to mobile— you’ll notice that a new generation of pioneers are at the forefront, rather than the established big names from the past. The only way forward is through change, and early career designers are some of the best at adapting.
Curiosity. If you’re new to the field, you’re brimming with a thousand questions. Everything is interesting and novel. You look at problems with a clean slate, which sparks new thoughts and ideas. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve shown a design proposal and gotten earnest questions from early-career designers like “What problem are you trying to solve?” or “Why does this need four steps?” that made me recheck my assumptions and realize a better solution. Asking for the sake of understanding is powerful; it reminds everyone else to not get lost in the shortcuts that inevitably build up over the course of a long career; it invites us to go back to first principles and reclaim that beginner’s mindset.
Enthusiasm. Just a few weeks ago I chatted with a designer who had taken on mentoring an intern during the summer. I asked her how the experience was. “Simply amazing!” she gushed. “The team loved our intern. Everyone felt so much more energetic with him around!” I hear variants of this story over and over again. As an early-career designer, your genuine and bright-eyed excitement stirs even the most cynical of souls. Problems that more experienced designers have solved half a dozen times already are made to feel fresh again, boosting everyone’s mood. Don’t underestimate how much of a gift this is. Enthusiasm fosters enthusiasm.
Ability to try new things and take risks. At this stage, this much is true: you have far more to gain than to lose. You don’t have a reputation to protect. You haven’t specialized in a particular area of expertise. You don’t have a deep history that people can draw assumptions from. This is the time to take risks! This is the time to raise your hand on the tasks that nobody else wants to do; to join the companies or teams that feel like underdogs; to volunteer for the projects that seem impossible or at the very least, incredibly complicated. This is the time to make like Shakira from Zootopia and “Try Everything.” The worst that can happen is that you get deeper insights into what you don’t like — a valuable learning! The best is that you discover you’re capable of far more than you realized.
Habits for Success
What are the daily practices that have outsized returns for early-career designers? After hundreds of conversations and observations of their career trajectories, this is my short list:
Focus on quantity of work produced. There is a famous study where an instructor for a photojournalism class divided his students into two groups. The first was told that they would be judged solely on quantity — ie, 100 photos submitted gets you an A, 80 gets you a B, etc. The second group was told they only had to produce one photo at the end of the course, and they would be judged solely on how good that one photo was. Guess what? When all was said and done, it turns out that the quantity group did better on both quantity AND quality. In doing the work of producing dozens of photos, they experienced firsthand what made for better composition, lighting, focal length, etc. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around for hours theorizing about what the “perfect” photo was, and then produced one mediocre piece. When designing to solve a problem, try as many different solutions as you can, then scrutinize the pros and cons of each. Trying to “save time” doing something that’s “good enough” isn’t the goal — instead, shore up your fundamentals through a constant stream of high output.
Show your work as often as you can, to as many people as you can for feedback. When I was getting started, I didn’t do this much, and it’s one of my biggest regrets. My excuse was always: “Oh, we already have a weekly team critique — I’ll just show my stuff then.” The truth was, I was embarrassed to ask for feedback, especially on early work that I knew wasn’t totally there. I worried other designers would think less of me if they saw my in-progress work. So I’d sit in my corner and try to perfect my designs before anyone saw them. Unfortunately, by doing this, I missed out on learning faster — I got critique feedback late, I passed up opportunities to get one-on-one advice and coaching, and nobody thought I was particularly proactive. Later on, as a manager, the designers who impressed me the most were those who didn’t let their egos get in the way of their growth, the ones who readily said, Can you take a look at my latest work? I’m struggling with the layout or I’m not sure how to approach this problem and I’d love to talk it through with you first. Ask for honest feedback and listen to it seriously. Iterate based on that feedback. Approach multiple designers you admire for their take on your work. Don’t be discouraged if some days, your work doesn’t meet your (or someone else’s) bar, or you don’t think you’re getting better fast enough. The only way forward is through the work, and through getting more and more perspectives that help you improve.
Work on your growth areas. The conventional wisdom for career growth is to Focus on your strengths. This is good advice in general, but I caution you to not take it seriously at the early career stage. Why? Because right now, investing in your fundamentals — especially shoring up your weaknesses — doesn’t cost you much and will benefit you every day for the rest of your career. If you aren’t strong at visuals, now is not the time to say, “Ah well, I’ll never be a great visual designer anyway, so why bother?” Be wary especially in situations (as in larger companies) where roles tend toward specialization, because you might be tempted to hand off visual work to an expert instead of trying to improve yourself. Even if you have zero aspirations to be an icon expert or a visual systems designer down the road, the more you improve those skills now, the more valuable you will be in every design job down the road. Same goes for other design hard skills — interaction design, motion, product thinking, etc — or soft skills like communication, persuasion, organization, proactivity, or leadership.
Ask questions all the time. As Euripedes said, “Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.” Asking questions is the fastest way to learn. Don’t know what an acronym stands for? Ask. Don’t see why your colleague used blue instead of purple on this button? Ask. Can’t really follow the logic behind why your team’s top priority is X instead of Y? Ask. You don’t have to agree with every answer, but you’ll gain a whole lot of context and perspective.
Raise your hand and try everything. Set a goal to try 3 things you haven’t done before every month. They could be new projects, new initiatives, or new practices. If an opportunity comes along and you’re not sure if you’re going to like it or be successful at it, raise your hand. You’ll be better off for the experience, no matter how it goes.
Read books about human culture and psychology. An underrated aspect of becoming a top designer is accumulating a better understanding of human motivation and behavior. Why do people do what they do? How do they process information? When do they behave rationally and irrationally? When does a behavior become habitual, and why? Some books in this category that I’ve found useful: Thinking Fast and Slow; The Design of Everyday Things; Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind; Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results; Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas and Others Die; Predictably Irrational; The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion; How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Misconceptions and Obstacles to overcome
In my coffee chats with designers, we’ll often talk about what we wish we knew when we first got started. A few traps stand out again and again as misconceptions that hinder success:
Learning is more important than “proving yourself.” Remember: you have much to gain and very little to lose at this stage. Ask any money manager what the most powerful concept is to build wealth and you’ll hear the same answer over and over again: compound interest. Learning is the compound interest for your career, and the sooner you get started, the richer the rewards will be at the end of five, ten, or twenty years. Resist the temptation to “prove yourself” at the beginning. If you have the choice between banking a surefire success by playing it safe or taking a risk to learn something new, default to the latter. Unlike roles, titles, or rewards, which are fleeting, knowledge and experience gained is permanent. Nobody can ever take that away from you.
Your career is your responsibility, not anyone else’s. If you’re lucky, you will have many folks in your life who will support, encourage and help you in your journey— managers, peer colleagues, mentors, family and friends. But even if you don’t, remember this: your career should matter more to you than to anyone else. So look first to yourself to get where you want to go. You are not entitled to the generosity of others, nor can you control what they choose to do (though I’m always inspired by the warmth and helpfulness of the design community at large). It doesn’t do you any good to blame your environment or your manager if you’re not happy with your progress. You are the captain of the ship of your career, so ask yourself what you need to change.
Designing well is about solving problems for your intended audience, not about coming up with things you personally like. As an early-career designer, I took huge pride in my personal taste. I felt that I had an elevated understanding of aesthetics, of simplicity, and of the journey towards the ideal. But through the course of learning to design for millions, then billions, of people, time and time again I was humbled by the waves of reality. The designs I personally loved best didn’t always have the biggest impact. In fact, often they crashed and burned. I loved minimalism — the more spacious and elegant the interface, the better— but many people out there, especially those newer to the web, appreciate clear, wordy labels over stark icons. Creating excellent work isn’t about me and what I thought was lovely; it’s about meeting our users where they were and empathizing with their needs so we can solve their problems. Resist relying too much on your own assumptions and desires, and seek the truth of what really matters to your audience.
Mentorship starts with asking good questions, not asking for a mentor. It’s natural for early career designers to be excited about getting mentored by folks they look up to. But here’s the thing: 9 times out of 10, getting “mentorship” isn’t like gaining admittance into some sort of program (unless it happens to be structured that way— this is the 1 in 10 case). There’s typically no application process. It’s not a binary thing, like you’re either X’s mentee or you aren’t. In fact, trying to formalize it by asking Can you be my mentor? is awkward, because mentorship should be like any normal relationship — two people who like and enjoy each other’s company want to spend more time together. Refrain from immediately asking someone to spend regular time with you. If they don’t know you well, why would they say yes? Instead, start with genuine questions and low-commitment asks. I’m a huge fan of how you do X — can you share with me some advice for how I can also improve at X? or Can I invite you for a coffee to discuss X? If that goes well, then you can make another ask or request to make it a more regular occurrence.
Reflection Questions to Ask Yourself
The best thing you can do for your career is not to listen to what someone else has to say (this article included), but to get in the habit of regularly asking yourself deep questions. You’re the only one who knows your true heart and where you want your career to go, so keep these questions in mind:
Which qualities of people around me do I admire, and how can I learn from them? Seeing is believing. If a colleague does something that leaves you thinking, Damn, I wish I could do that— maybe its the simplicity and elegance of their design work; maybe its their attention to detail; maybe its the compelling way they make arguments— count your lucky stars that you get to see them work that magic and that you have the opportunity to learn from them. Admiration doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You can appreciate a particular skill or trait without admiring everything about a person. Make a list of those qualities, and then ask yourself how you might get better at them. Can you ask that person to give you feedback? Can you request that they deconstruct their process? Can you make notes of their specific tips and tricks?
How can I find out more about my likes and dislikes? It’s perfectly natural to respond to a question like “What am I meant to do with my life?” with I have no f-ing clue right now. You can’t rush discovering the answer; it’ll emerge in its own time, through first-hand experience with the kind of work that gives you the greatest satisfaction. But what you can do is put yourself in situations where you’re constantly testing new scenarios and learning about yourself in the process. These experiments might not all be successful, but think of Thomas Edison, who said, “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.” You may try things and learn that you despise certain tasks but love others — this is what self-discovery looks like. if you don’t get out of your comfort zone, it will take you much, much longer to find your true calling.
What things gives me energy, and what sucks away my energy? This is is a simple reflection question to contemplate at the end of a month, quarter or year that is a baby step towards answering the much bigger existential question of “What am I meant to do with my life?” Simply observe which activities give you energy and feel rewarding, versus what make you feel heavy and discouraged. Don’t react or change your actions based on a particular month or quarter’s answer; narrowing your area of opportunity too quickly is limiting. Instead, note them and jot them down. What’s valuable is understanding the larger trends or patterns over the years — I am energized by people who take their responsibilities seriously and share my optimism in the future — not specific examples like I don’t enjoy working with Taylor.
What are my unique strengths and growth areas? Like the question above, this is an important reflection question to understand yourself better. Make note of your strengths, but don’t ignore your weaknesses — instead, focus on improving them to establish a better foundation for the future. Continue to broaden your field of experiences, but periodically take stock of what things come naturally to you, and what you struggle more with. | https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/coffee-chat-series-1-getting-ahead-as-an-early-career-designer-12d0c0aaec67 | ['Julie Zhuo'] | 2019-09-11 15:31:02.161000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Learning', 'Career Advice', 'Product Management', 'Designer'] |
Why You should Trek to the Mountains??? | 2020 was the year of staying home and for people like me who couldn’t stay at a place for more than a month, it was a punishment. With travels banned and borders closed, we were forced to confine ourselves to the walls. Months passed; things hardly changed. The situation improved towards the end of the year and that’s when I decided to go away from the walls, away from everything that limited my vision, my soul and my thoughts. Being from the east coast and growing up seeing the unending seas and falling in love with them to dreaming about the mighty Himalayan mountains, I have always faced this conundrum when asked whether I love the sea or the mountains more, and my answer has always been the same, its not the seas or the mountains, its mother nature, pure, pristine, calm, mighty, strong and beautiful. It’s like given to choose between your organs, which one do you need more? How could one like one part more and the other less? We as mere humans fail to understand that it’s not the organs it’s the soul that drives the mind and the heart, likewise for a nature lover, it’s not about the mountains, seas, deserts or any other wild landscape, its the soul, it’s the beauty of mother nature that drives the spirit of a traveler.
So, towards the end of the year when post-pandemic travelling was picking up, the mountains called I left.
While scrolling through the India hikes website, I stumbled upon the Bramatal trek photos, did some internet research, and felt good about it. I booked the date for 29th December so that I will be high on 1st Jan-12,250 ft. high.
Little did I know: “what you seek is seeking you”.
I reached Rishikesh two days early and went on solo hiking to nearby places, these two days had its own set of freshness. Mighty mountains, serene Ganges and hot tea helped me forget my past, in a way it detoxed me from all the city life and corporate stress. All-day hiking, I did thousands of conversations with myself. I met a few people, who had come to natures lap searching for peace. Some of them became friends, though for a very short time.
29th Dec:
Reaching Base Camp:
India Hikes team had arranged a cab for us, so without delay, we boarded and left for Loha-Jung, the basecamp for Brahmatal journey.
“Lohajung, as the locals say, is the place where Goddess Parvati had a war (jung) with the demon, Lohasur. Hence, the name, which translates to war with Lohasur.”
We were a group of 21 people, some of them had come in groups and few of them were solo like me. After a brief introduction, most of them fell asleep being sleep deprived from all the excitements the night before. One hour into the journey our vehicle stopped, roads were jam-packed and news came that roads have been blocked due to a landslide. Cursing the news, in a half-sleep state, I peeked out of the glass window. With mountains on both sides and the cold wind , the view even in that jampacked road was far better than any skyscraper.
People started introducing themselves, they were- an economist pursuing a doctorate, data scientists, accountants, a journalist working as a creative producer, a nutritionist, software engineers, photographer, a group of friends from a business background, and to my surprise I was the only mechanical engineer in there and they were from all parts of the country. It was like a mini India travelling to the mountains. We discussed each other’s interests like movies, books, and conundrums like why Indian parents are afraid of sending their grownups for an adventure.
A couple of hours passed, agitated we asked our driver bhaiya: “when are we leaving?”, and every time, his answer would we like “in half an hour”, And after many “half an hours”(almost 4 hours) we restarted for Loha-Jung without much halting. The roads were dangerously winding but picturesque. Like a silver lining, the landslide made the group cohesive and the people who had meet hours before for the first time were starting to become friends.
Passing through sinuous valleys and serpentine rivers we reached the base camp late at night; we were welcomed by our trek leader.
THE BEGINNING(30th Dec):
With all the excitement, we woke up to a beautiful sunrise from behind the mountains in the basecamp. The Himalayas looking like a queen adorned in golden crown!! I was hooked to the view right from the first ray piercing through the mountain silhouette till the sun was full up in the open spreading its brightness all over the valley. I hadn’t seen anything as beautiful as that in years, the view was so rejuvenating that I wanted time to stand still, freeze that moment. But me being mere a human with no control over time, the sun rose high up and dawned the start of another day. If the earth had a pulse it rose through the mountains, creating their bold silhouette. To my eye, its peaks are the green line of a doctor’s graph. I saw those rocks at dawn, those slopes that give home to so much life, a foundation for trees and shrubs, grass and ferns, as the sun rose, I knew it would be a good day… I just knew.
After having a delicious hot breakfast in the cold weather and after standard instructions by our trek leader we started our trek towards Bekaltal camp. We were accompanied by two professional guides along with our trek leader.
Passing through big rocks surrounded by rhododendron trees, we didn’t realize when we entered the forest, The landscape was immensely beautiful flowing streams in between tall trees, we walked on the rhododendron filled forest trail. And with every step I was taking I was physically entering the inner Himalayas. I was starting to forget where I had come from. I was starting to forget all those thoughts which were bothering me a couple of days back.
Our Trek leader halted us near a stream and asked us to deepen our face inside the flowing stream.
I did that, I dipped my face inside the stream, the water was icy cold and the experience was exhilarating. The stream was so chilly that, under normal conditions, one could not differentiate whether its a burning or a freezing sensation. It made me think how extreme things, though standing on opposite sides of life seems to give us similar experience.
We reached our first camp: Bekaltal.
Once we reached, our trek leader made us do some fun-filled exercises and stretching activities.
We roamed around a bit, saw the sunset and went for dinner. Apart from the delicious dinner, we were served folk tales and pahadi stories about bekaltal by our senior guide(Who was a wonderful person). And between all these excitement, fun, and positivity going around, the group of people from different walks of life and different part of the country who hardly knew each other couple of days back were starting to form a human connection called friendship.
31st Dec: The beginning of the last day of the year started with the Sun rays kissing the forest trees before spreading over the ground. Our all energetic trek leader was banging everyone’s tent for a pulse check and asking us to go for hot herbal tea else if we delay we have to drink ice tea. After the tea and breakfast, we gathered for the update about our next climb. In his opinion, it would be of similar difficulty to that of the previous day.
An hour into our hike, people had emptied their bottles, it was a complete ascent. We kept on walking with intermittent breaks. Every time we asked our trek leader how long to the next camp, he kept replying 10minutes more, that 10minutes went on for 30/40 minutes, It took us 4 hours more to reach. The road was challenging, the ascent was increasing with every step, and that day we learned 30 minutes even on an atomic clock is equivalent to 10 minutes (said by your trek leader) on mountains. When we reached the camp (Tilandi -11,120 ft), the view was mesmerizing, It was sunny but chilly winds brought the temperature further down. After the usual warm-up and stretching exercises, we planned to host our national flag and sing the national anthem at last sunset of 2020 on Tilandi top and we did.
Tired, exhausted and unwilling to brave the harsh icy winds, we all slept early in our tents cozying ourselves inside the sleeping bag and at 00 Hours we wished each other shouting from within, The tents were close, everyone heard everyone.
The best thing about that day was the feeling when we reached the camp after that torturous ascent and the view of the sunset that evening, bright blue sky changed as it gave away different shades of orange and red, I had never seen so many different shades of these colours and eventually, the sun disappeared, and the sky turned a shade of dark blue like the stormy sea before turning completely dark. The white clouds cleared their way for the moon to shine over us. What a beautiful day, what a beautiful night.
John Keats very aptly said, ‘the poetry of the earth is never dead’ and I totally second his thoughts.
New Year on a High!!:
Morning in the mountains are early, and sipping hot tea at that altitude gives you a heavenly feeling. After refreshment, we marched our way towards the summit- The Brahmatal Top.
The trail to the top was not that difficult per se but one has to be very cautious at times while taking every step, this was a complete ridge walk with so many ups and downs, narrow strip to walk on with steep slopes on either side. if you are not careful, you risk either twisting your ankle or worse-one slip and you will fall into the depths not be found ever. The sun was pleasant, the cold breeze with snow blankets somewhere in between. The rocky trails were, as usual beautiful and we took some four hours to reach the top. The sky was clear and the view was magical, one would wish that those views never go out of sight. The snowclad peaks, the rocky inclines, the peaks with forest greenery, we could see all of this in a single view. Great views of Mt. Trishul which looks like Gods own trident stood majestically at 7000ft above sea level and Mt. Nandaghunti among the other massive mountains.
“Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder’s frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
Photos taken that day would only describe a fraction of the actual beauty it was. Our Trek leader asked us to sit separately on that top and just ponder upon the thoughts that crossed our minds in between all those beauty and positivity, he asked us to write a letter to ourselves. We did all that. And after spending some hours, we started our journey back. For the first time in many years, my heart and mind were shouting in unison, Don’t Go. Just don’t leave all this. See these beautifully imperfect mountains being a silent witness to millions of years standing unapologetic and spreading its elegance. Only if we humans could tap their wisdom.
After several calls from our leader, we left.
The best thing about that day apart from the view and the positive energy flowing through us was the indomitable spirit of one of our friend. That day while most of us were excited about reaching the summit one friend was going through excruciating physical pain, she could have given up and returned, but she didn’t, she kept on pushing and with the help of our trek guides, she reached the Top and was in tears(happy tears). I think the view and the emotions of reaching the summit made it through her eyes.
“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
-Muhammad Ali
The journey Back:
The Sun was setting and in between the forest trails, singing songs we returned to our next camp. And next morning we left for the basecamp, reached and freshened up.
With a heavy heart, next-day early morning we returned to Rishikesh.
We again met for the last time for dinner. People were sad. For me, It was heartbreaking to see the most talkative and friendly person in our group hardly saying anything. She was leaving that night. I came to see the beauty of mountains and be happy searching myself amidst them and I did, but I also got to meet and befriend these beautiful people, these group of friends were kind of a bonus package of happiness for me. After dinner, we all bid one final adieu and left.
The most beautiful thing about that night was the Group. It’s wonderful how we humans operate. A week before I hardly knew anyone and that night my heart was unwilling to let go of those people, maybe it was the effect of the mountains -it wanted the group to stay and continue the journey together. Those waves of emotions that night took me six years back when I was bidding a final buy to my hostel, my friends with whom I had been sharing my life for the past four years. If I had the power I would have given all my energy to a final try at stopping time in that moment. But you know it didn’t happen and life happened again and in a couple of days, I was back in my office ready to hustle in the city. But this time with a different energy, with a different lesson and accompanied by all the learnings I accumulated trekking in the mountains. Nothing much bothers me anymore if something does, I transcend to meet a part of myself which stayed in that mountain, in the top summit, and meeting and talking to that part of me calms me down.
Learning from the mountains:
1. Modesty & Humility: Mountains make us feel small and in all the right way, It teaches us that unlike artificial things, its unpredictable, uncontrolled, wild and free. Its tells us that there is no template to be followed, no rule books to be adhered to, it’s natural and so are we. So without classifying everything in terms of good and bad, big and small, perfect and imperfect, success and failure, Just lead a life free from these binary judgments, Let the natural energy of life flow through us.
2.Its as much about the journey as the destination: We took two days to reach the summit and we stayed for two hours in the summit. When I look back, The destination was as beautiful as the journey and I have more memories about the journey through those trails that the Summit. So in every challenge which we decide to take in life, if we don’t enjoy the journey we will either fail to reach the destination or even if we reach it, we will fail to realize the real value and importance of that destination.
“Everybody wants to reach the peak, but there is no growth on the top of a mountain. It is in the valley that we slog through, the lush grass and rich soil, learning and becoming what enables us to summit life’s next peak.”
– Andy Andrews
3.The Road Less Travelled: Sometimes If you aspire to discover something different, something new, it’s important to find your own path your own trail. else if you take the regular one, you will only know what the world already knows. Sometimes routes, where we feel lost at the moment, will lead to beautiful destinations we never thought existed.
“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.”
— T. S. Eliot
4.Respecting small things in life: Most beautiful moments in life do not always come at a cost. If you want to know about this, you need to go to those woods and have a cup of tea. In my case apart from the tea, it was the heavenly breakfast I was served there.
5.Being Original: When I observed the mountains, some covered with trees, some snow-clad and some rugged rocky. Some were big, some small. Some were easy to cross and some were difficult and risky. But all in all, they were what they were, They stood unapologetically tall in their own form and spreading their own beauty in their own way, and in all these millions of years, they didn’t give a damn about what someone thinks about them. Perfect or imperfect, they stood there as they were and witnessed the passage of time. We humans on the other hand as we grow up and in pursuit of achieving something risk ourselves of getting influenced, Most of us fear to be original, with all our insecurities we fear of being vulnerable. Mountains taught me that its ok to be imperfect, its ok to have insecurities, it’s ok to make mistakes, but it’s important to keep going, it’s important to be genuine of what we are, and its important to be unapologetically original of our true self, only then we could feel the true essence of life, only then we can immerse our self in its purity. Nature in itself is imperfect and it’s natural to be imperfectly beautiful, maybe that’s why we humans are yet to discover any perfect geometric figure in nature. | https://medium.com/@n-nigam2012/why-you-should-trek-to-the-mountains-226e5902aa4c | [] | 2021-02-24 16:40:02.436000+00:00 | ['Himalayas', 'Mountains', 'Trekking', 'Solo Travel', 'Traveling'] |
Micro-aggressions and gender neutral pronouns | I was recently told by someone that had I looked at her profile I would have noticed her preferred pronouns that I should be using instead of using the words ‘she’ and ‘her’. What she didn’t realise was that it wasn’t that I didn’t know — it was that I didn’t care. Or to be more precise, I do care which is why I generally won’t use the ‘preferred’ pronouns.
Let me explain. Micro-aggression is defined as ‘a subtle, often unintentional, form of prejudice. Rather than an overt declaration of racism or sexism, a microaggression often takes the shape of an offhanded comment, an inadvertently painful joke, or a pointed insult.’ When I or other people don’t use the preferred pronouns we are accused of a kind of micro-aggression, which is perceived as a kind of bullying.
In the twenty-first century there is a blame culture: bullies are to blame, men are to blame if women feel vulnerable, women are to blame for men’s problems, people are to blame when they make seemingly innocent remarks but they are using micro-aggressive terms.
Well, let’s look at that. As a therapist I deal with children and teens who are being bullied. Schools rarely take action against bullies despite platitudes, in part because the bullies are sometimes the favourites of teachers and the bullied children are the misfits. The prevailing attitude that we should blame the bully is futile. The blame culture induces a victim mentality: ‘I’m powerless — you (the bully, men, women, the micro-aggressor) have to change’. Instead, let’s substitute the word ‘responsibility’ for ‘blame’.
Imagine a scenario where someone parks their car on a busy road, leaving the engine running so the air conditioner stays on and dashes into a shop. When they come out just a few minutes later the car has been stolen. Who is to blame? The owner for leaving their car with the engine running? The thief? The council for not displaying a sign reminding people to not leave the keys in their car? The police force for not having more presence in the area?
The blame culture says we should blame someone else: the owner blames the thief, the thief blames their upbringing, the council and police blame lack of resources. If we substitute the word ‘responsibility’ for ‘blame’, then we may say that the owner has to take responsibility for not having the awareness that cars are stolen. If they had more presence of mind maybe they would have thought twice before leaving the car with the engine running. The thief has to take responsibility for stealing. He was the one who took something that didn’t belong to him. Other people who had a similar or worse upbringing didn’t become thieves.
We don’t do the owner any favours by telling him it was the fault of the thief. They are likely to make the same mistake again. We don’t do the thief any favours by telling him his upbringing was to blame. He’ll go on stealing and causing upset wherever he goes. And so on.
And similarly if people get offended by words, then it would be better if they learnt to be resilient instead of attempting to change other people (usually a fruitless task anyway) from using certain words. Most bullying is verbal. I teach the bullied kids to be resilient so that when the bully attempts to upset them with words it has no effect. And it works.
I’m a hypnotherapist, which means that I do therapy and hypnosis is one of the methods I use to achieving results. I’m often the therapist of last resort. That is, clients come to me from a recommendation but will tell me that they don’t believe in hypnosis and they don’t believe I can help them, but they have tried everything else. And I usually get good results — often after the first session. In fact sometimes I am told by a client that they have been seeing a therapist for a number of years and I achieved more in one session than their therapist did in eight years.
One reason for this is that I don’t tell them what they want to hear. There’s an arrangement that many therapists fall into. The client comes in with issues, the therapist talks to them so they feel better, the client pays them money and the process is repeated the following session. The client feels good after the session and the therapist gets the money but nothing really changes.
I don’t tell clients what they want to hear. I explore their underlying psychology and tell them what they need to hear.
For instance, I deal with trauma and people who have come out of traumatic relationships. Many years ago I had my first trauma client, a female, who came in for dealing with trauma after leaving an abusive marriage. I knew there was one question I needed to ask but I thought if I asked her this question she may just walk out of the session. The question was: why did you marry him? The reason why I needed to ask this question was that if it was left unresolved she may well make the same mistake again and walk into another abusive relationship (which frequently happens). But in asking this I could be perceived as blaming the victim.
She told me that she had been asking herself the same question over and over. So then real therapy could begin. The tough questions need to be asked. I’ve since found that whenever I do ask the tough questions I get a similar response and I think that most therapists find the same thing.
And the tough question to someone who gets offended because I don’t use their preferred gendered pronouns, or someone who is suffering from anxiety because they encounter micro-aggression is: why is your view of yourself dependent on my use of words? Why is your self-esteem dependant on how other people look at you or talk to you?
If I see someone who looks female I would generally refer to ‘her’ and similarly, if see I someone who looks male I would generally use the term ‘he’ or ‘him’. If I see an apparently male, tall, heavily set person with a deep voice who says I should call them ‘she’ I probably wouldn’t comply because I wouldn’t feel comfortable with it. They are living in a make-believe world where they are female and they want me to play along with their fantasy. As a therapist I don’t feel comfortable doing that. And why is their discomfort about being called ‘she’ more important than my discomfort in being pressured to do something that I don’t feel comfortable with? Although of course there are cis-females who may be tall, heavily set and with a deep voice.
In many universities now there are warnings to students about so-called ‘trigger’ words. Even the word ‘but’ can be a trigger word. The method preferred by most psychologists for dealing with emotional reactions is to experience them in a controlled way until the client develops resilience. Immersion techniques are sometime used for phobias for instance. You don’t deal with a problem by running away from it, which I why I needed to ask my client why she married someone who turned out to be abusive — and why trans people need to accept that people may not perceive them as they wish to be perceived. | https://medium.com/@philbraham/micro-aggressions-and-gender-neutral-pronouns-20ab8534a9b5 | ['Philip Braham'] | 2020-12-16 00:04:54.642000+00:00 | ['Transgender', 'Therapy', 'Language', 'Psychology', 'Sociology'] |
The 3rd ICTESS UNISRI 2020 | Hello everyone! I’m a student of International Relations at Slamet Riyadi University. The University location in Sumpah Pemuda street number 18, Surakarta Central Java, Indonesia. On this page I’m going to review about an event that gave me a lot of information.
On December 10, 2020 Slamet Riyadi University held an International conference theme “Global Security and Global Coorperation in a Changing World” by using Zoom Application. The speakers on this event came from many other countries. ICTEES is stands of International Conference on Technology, Education, and Social Science. It is the 3rd ICTEES that be held by Slamet Riyadi University. This event had a many of topics, such as Global Food Security, Global Security and Sustainable Agriculture, Global Economic Cooperation, Global Security in the Digital Age, and Education in the Global Age.
The speakers at the event are Y. Kristiarto S. Legowo as Ambassador of Republic of Indonesia to commonwealth of Australia, Prof. Ts. Dr. Burhanuddin from Teknikal Malaysia Melaka University, Dr. Shielilo Amihan from University of Perpetual Help Phillippines, Prof. Takuya Sugahara from Ehime University Japan, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Chin Min Lin from National Taichung Institute of Technology Taiwan and also lecturer from Slamet Riyadi University, Dr. Sri Handayani Marwan.
Covid-19 is a virus that identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. Pandemic coronavirus caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The virus spreads through the air when people are near each other to long enough, primarily via small droplets or aerosols. When a person infected, they breathe too difficult, coughs, sneezes. There are several a vaccine candidates in clinical trials development. We should preventive measures like hand washing, social distancing, wearing a face mask in public ect.
Pandemic Covid-19 changing the world. It changed our daily life, decreasing economy global, affecting on politics and security countries, including how diplomacy works. Y. Kristiarto S. Legowo said, it can cause traditional security challenges such as suicide, terrorism, violence, crime, destruction ect. And also becoming great power competition happened. This condition made diplomacy life very distractions because social distancing, people are limited distance each other, and we just can held event or conferences by online.
Covid-19 have an impact in business and the global economy. The business community is bad and decreasing global economy especially Malaysia. Prof. Ts. Dr. Burhanuddin said, Maybank Group estimated that the Malaysian economy may shrink by 3.3%, and Malaysian Employers Federation estimated that the number of unemployed people may reach up to 2 million in 2020 with a staggering unemployment rate 13%. But there are strategies to in facing the slow down, economy during pandemic covid-19. There are the company strategy in facing Covid-19 :
1. Review staff current locations and their travelling records
The first priority is to establish exactly where staff are and how many workers are in affected or vulnerable territories. Do any need to be repatriated? Or have they asked to work from home? Upcoming travel plans will need to be reviewed, rescheduled, or canceled.
2. Revisit our crisis and continuity plans timely
Every well-run business has a crisis or continuity plan, and many will have a specific pandemic plan. But nothing tests theory quite like reality. One Asia based organization’s pandemic plan, for example, designated a European city as the evacuation site for employees and their families but flifghts from China to the city were suspended soon after the outbreak.
3. Identify potential points of failures
Who are the teams and individuals on whom critical processes or services depend? Are there workers with the right skills who could step into critical roles if needed? Steps can be taken to reduce the level of human interaction, such as staggered shifts or remote working.
Prof. Takuya Sugahara from Ehime University, Japan had a topic about healthy, he told health function of spices. He explained cumin seeds, such as what cumin’s contains and benefits. The use of spices and herbs has been incredibly important throughout history. Many spices were celebrated for their medicinal properties, well before culinary use. Cumin is spices from seeds of the Cuminum cyminum plant. Many dishes use cumin, especially foods from its native regions of the Mediterranean and Southwest Asia. Modern science has now shown that many of them do indeed carry health benefits. Furthermore, he also told about global cooperation between Indonesia and Japan in health spices.
And then, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Chin Min Lin from National Taichung Institute of Technology, Taiwan told about scholarship, student exchange and internship program. All people have a dream, such as going to study abroad or getting a scholarship, and also followed the internship program. The ministry of education (hereinafter referred to as the MOE) encourages domestic public and private colleges and universities to select and send outstanding students to go overseas for training or internships in enterprises and institutions to fully expand the participation of young domestic students in international exchanges and cooperation activities. We can get an internship program or study abroad through international cooperation program channels. The institution will select and send students to foreign countries for study or work. The amount of subsidy per person is decided by the recommended school, which include an international round-trip economy class ticket and foreign tuition and living expenses.The maximum subsidizing period is limited to one academic year. However, those who are going to the internship should at least work at the institutions for at least 30 consecutive days. With going to study abroad or internship, students will have a better understanding of the lifestyle and background of each country’s culture, which will help deepen the relationship and cooperation with each country in the future.
Dr. Shielilo Amihan from University of Perpetual Help Phillippines explain about the impact of pandemic coronavirus in society :
1. Education : students, parents, and faculty
2. Crime : rate still increased (approx. 5%) despite quarantine measures (in Ph)
3. Mental health : spike of mental health cases reported (NCMH )
4. Technology and communication : ethical concerns and miscommunication
5. Social media : FOMO, negative vibes and social life.
And there are relevance and responsiveness of education in global age :
1. multicultural education
2. SEA-TCF
3. Quality of services during Pandemic
4. SEL TEACHING
Coronavirus affected educational systems worldwide, so that all of schools, universities are being closed. We know that education is important because it’s the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. Education is about giving the skills that learners need to success their life. The ability to critically and creatively, to collaborate with others, and to communicate clearly sets students up for success in their careers. Education is becoming the key to global survival in the 21st century. The frameworks of 21st century learning describes the skills, knowledge, and expertise students must master to succes in work and life.
A desire to learn continuously through lifetime is mark of a 21st century learners. The international Commission on Education for twenty-first century to UNESCO identified that learning throughlife as a key to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Dr. Sri Handayani Marwan told about 4 pillars of learning , there are :
1. Learning to know : a broad general knowledge with the opportunity to work in depth on a small number of subjects.
2. Learning to do : to acquire not only occupational skills but also the competence to deal with many situations and to work in teams.
3. Learning to be : to develope one’s personality and to be able to act with growing autonomy, judgment and personal responsibility.
4. Learning to live together : by developing an understanding of other people and an appreciation of interdepence.
And also 4Cs 21st Century skill, there are :
1. Critical thinking : finding solution to problem
2. Creativity : thinking outside the box
3. Collaboration : working with others
4. Communication : talking to others effectively
That’s all for my review, so sorry if it had mistakes or the grammar not yet right. But I always learn and learn. Thank you for reads this to finish. Love u❤ | https://medium.com/@sherlynovitasari54/the-3rd-ictess-unisri-2020-a378deb26cae | [] | 2020-12-13 04:25:11.134000+00:00 | ['International Relations', 'International Conference'] |
TressAnew— The Best Hair Supplement For Women | TressAnew— The Best Hair Supplement For Women
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My only recommendation is that if you’re pregnant, you should see your doctor before using TressAnew. For more Information Click Here.
Things You Can Do To Prevent Hair Loss
There are several strategies to lessen the severity of hair loss. For example, by taking the correct vitamins, you may be able to combat this condition to a large extent, and you may be able to use natural approaches to combat it effectively. Hair loss could be caused by a vitamin deficit. Even while hair loss can be caused by a variety of factors, vitamin insufficiency is one of them, and in most cases, it can be controlled simply by increasing your vitamin consumption. Certain vitamins have been shown to be particularly useful in the treatment of hair loss. You will have a greater advantage if you begin early. Vitamins keep our bodies in good shape. When there is a vitamin shortage, it can cause a variety of issues. Hair loss is one of the most common side effects of vitamin insufficiency. If you wish to effectively stop hair loss, you should think about the following factors. You should take these vitamins on a regular basis if you suffer from female pattern hair loss.
Biotin (Vitamin H) is a vitamin that is known for its potential to prevent hair loss. Meat, nuts, and eggs are good sources of this vitamin. So that you don’t have to worry about hair loss, you should eat a mineral-rich and healthy diet. When it comes to increasing hair thickness, sulphur, which can be found in garlic and onions, is extremely efficient. It’s also recognised for its root-strengthening properties.
With the advancement of technology, the industry has seen a few spectacular procedures that may totally eliminate the problem of baldness; however, some techniques are still being tested. The foods you eat and the way you live have an impact on your hair’s health. Awareness is crucial in determining the condition of one’s hair, and the precautionary measures taken can sometimes fully stop hair from coming out and restore one’s previous appearance.
There are various approaches to solve this problem over time, but one must choose the most appropriate option so that the treatment matches him best and is precisely matched with the requirements for a fantastic result. Vitamins are nutrient-dense and can help to promote hair development as well as shine. You’ve probably noticed that vitamin E is one of the ingredients in practically every hair care product. Vitamin E can be used on your lashes and brows to get the same results as it does on your hair. | https://medium.com/@abdulqayyumbooster/tressanew-review-the-best-hair-supplement-for-women-ecde226eef44 | ['Shopping Express'] | 2021-10-18 10:03:12.546000+00:00 | ['Hair', 'Hair Care', 'Health', 'Healthcare'] |
The 5 Most Legitimate Modern UFO Sightings | The 5 Most Legitimate Modern UFO Sightings
Photo by christianplass on Pixabay
UFO’s have fascinated humans for decades. While most UFO sightings have been false alarms (usually an airplane, or helicopter flying by) there have also been believable ones that have even caught the attention of the U.S government and reignited a deep interest in Aliens worldwide. Below are five of the most credible UFO sightings of the past 40 years.
The city of Rendlesham Forest (1980)
In December 1980, members of the US Air Force established in various British bases reported seeing strange lights over Rendlesham Forest, about 100 miles northeast of London. A lumberjack who went into the forest to investigate claimed having discovered a spaceship there. The next day, other people confirmed that nearby trees had been damaged and that there was a radiation level higher than normal in that place.
For his part, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt recorded his observations on a tape while looking at the lights and, although it cannot be considered as definitive proof, specialists consider this to be more evident than the events themselves. However, the Ministry of UK Defense, which oversaw the reports of UFO incidents up to the early 2000s did not find there was a credible threat for the country and abandoned the investigation.
Rendlesham Forest began to cultivate UFO tourism and even created a trail that can be transited by visitors, at the end of which a model of a spaceship similar to the one that supposedly fell there in the 80s.
Belgium (between 1989 and 1990)
At the end of November 1989, Belgian citizens reported seeing a large triangular UFO floating in the sky. Months later, in March 1990, multiple objects in the night sky were spotted by two military ground radar stations.
Thus, two F16 fighter jets were sent to investigate such anomalies and, although the pilots could not see anything, they managed to spot the targets on radar. However, the UFOs moved so fast that the pilots lost sight of them.
An estimated 13,500 people witnessed the incident, making it one of the most popular UFOs sightings of the modern era. Air Force Belgian failed to give a logical explanation for the activity but recognized that an unknown phenomenon had taken place in midair. Thus, they communicated with their British counterpart to investigate further. Once they determined that the incident was not hostile or aggressive they stopped the investigation.
Lights on the New Jersey Turnpike (2001)
On July 14, 2001, motorway drivers in New Jersey tollbooth gawked at the
sky. For about 15 minutes, just after midnight, a bunch of orange lights appeared and yellows forming a V over the Arthur Kill canal Waterway, between Staten Island (New York) and Carteret (New Jersey).
Carteret Police Department Lieutenant Daniel Tarrant was one of the eyewitnesses, as well as other residents of the Throgs Neck Bridge metropolitan area, in Long Island and Fort Lee, NJ, near the George Washington bridge.
Initially, air traffic controllers denied that no civil, military aircraft, or special flight may have caused the mysterious lights, but the group New York Strange Phenomena Investigators (NY-SPI) stated that they have received radar data from the FAA that corroborated the UFO sightings that night.
The USS Nimitz encounter (2004)
In November 2004, the USS Princeton, part of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier group detected on radar the presence of an unknown ship a few kilometers from the Californian coast of San Diego. For several days the crew was tracking objects that appeared at 80 000 feet which ended up falling to hover right above the Pacific.
When two FA-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier arrived at that place, what at first seemed like agitated water turned into an oval-shaped shadow below the surface. Moments later, a white object appeared on the water. It had no visible markings that indicate the presence of an engine, wings, or windows, and infrared monitors did not reveal that it had any exhaust.
Various fighter jets tried to intercept the ship, but it picked up speed and appeared on the radar at kilometers of distance. The most curious thing is that it moved three times the speed of sound and more than twice the speed of fighter jets.
UFO at O’Hare International Airport (2006)
Flight 446 was preparing to fly to Carolina del North from Chicago O’Hare International Airport when a United Airlines employee, who was on the runway, saw a dark gray metallic ship hovering above the gate C17. On that day, November 7, 2006, a total of twelve United employees and several other witnesses (who were outside the airport) saw a ship again in the shape of a saucer, around two in the afternoon.
Witnesses indicated that the ship remained floating for about five minutes before shooting up, where it made a hole in the clouds big enough for pilots and mechanics to see the blue sky.
The news had international repercussions but the FAA did not spot it on the radar, they just said it was a “weather phenomenon” and refused to investigate further. | https://medium.com/the-collector/the-5-most-legitimate-modern-ufo-sightings-4fe6b2b377b3 | ['Jayden Yugie'] | 2020-12-13 06:17:18.951000+00:00 | ['Universe', 'History', 'UFO', 'Space', 'Aliens'] |
HONESTGANG, A Unique Canadian Entertainment Label On A Mission! | We sat down with CEO Jay Honest to discuss his one of a kind label bringing us talent of all kinds from around the world.
Explain HONESTGANG In Your Own Words
To me, HONESTGANG has always been family, as a kid growing up, I was blessed to have such an inspiring best friend to guide me, sadly he is no longer here, but the mission is clear. He was the kindest soul, who always wanted to help others, without expecting anything in return, always telling me ‘’karma plays its role in the universe, treat her well’’, and so HONESTGANG was started. Using my many years in the industry, my knowledge from Musitechnic, and my own previous experience as an artist, I decided to make it my mission to help get as many artists as I could from the starter phase, to being ready for the industry.
What Does HONESTGANG Have To Offer Compared To Other Entertainment Labels?
Not only do I focus on music, but together, my wife Alaska Greyy and I handle everything from photography & photo editing, to press & media coverage, artworks, production, release plans, debuts, marketing strategies, basically, anything a label should be doing to help an artist on their way up, but with a unique twist, I take 0% royalties from the people I work with. Even going so far as to giving 100% royalties away to a lot of the artists I’ve featured on songs. How is one supposed to rise, if everyone is taking from their pockets on the way up? Disregarding music for a moment, we also offer services to businesses and influencers trying to establish their names and networks across the vast world of social media, being responsible for helping over 6 artists gain their verification status on Instagram by attaining many opportunities and teaching everyone around me to stay consistent. Website design, song writing, publishing, licensing, PRO registration, we do it all here at HONESTGANG!
Let’s Talk About Your Very Unique Merch Line?
Here at HONESTGANG we strive to not only do the #1 job we can for all of our clients, but to keep everyone happy. Now, when looking at every other merchandise company, and taking in my own experiences when buying my favourite artists merchandise online, I always arrived to the same question, ‘’What if i could put my name on it?’’. HONESTGANG is the first company I know of, that offers the customer, the ability to add their own logo, name, picture, or anything really, to the front back or sides of almost every single product in our wide selection of over 100 items, all from within the shop which is accessible on both honestgang.us/shop and directly on Instagram. Not only that but we offer the same quality as big name companies such as Nike & Champion, size inclusize, many colours to chose from, all while offering a 30 day money back guarantee if you’re not happy with the quality of your purchase.
What’s Next For The HONESTGANG?
Our goal is to team up with a few influencers, businesses and brands that would love to start their own merch lines, but don’t have the connections or funding to get it off the ground. We offer a a 6 month period at a one time fee of 1000$ as a test period to minimize loses on both ends, if successful we would then help the artist launch their own website for a very low cost of only 200$, and from that point the client in question would make 100% of sales on their own domain. If anyone has any questions feel free to contact me for more information and thank you Medium & Capital Heat Canada for the opportunity to let me speak about my brand on a bigger platform.
Direct Shop Link: https://honestgang.us/shop
HONESTGANG Instagram: https://instagram.com/honestgang
CEO Jay Honest Instagram: https://instagram.com/iamjayhonest | https://medium.com/@capitalheatcanada/honestgang-a-unique-canadian-entertainment-label-on-a-mission-c092ca5ccd5a | ['Capital Heat'] | 2021-07-02 18:39:14.982000+00:00 | ['Labels', 'Jay Honest', 'Canadian', 'Honestgang', 'Rap'] |
The importance of storytelling, and how it can help Facebook battle disruption | The importance of storytelling, and how it can help Facebook battle disruption Eric Feng Jun 26·9 min read
Last week, I said goodbye to my colleagues at Facebook, the end of a nearly two year adventure after they brought me and my startup Packagd on board. During my time, I had the privilege of creating a new commerce incubation group responsible for building and launching features like Live Shopping, Gifting, and most recently Super. I also got to see how the 6th most valuable company in the world, with nearly a trillion dollar market cap, operates and it was impressive to experience.
Facebook Live Shopping, Gifting, and Super
Coming from a startup, it was an adjustment working in a 60,000 employee organization. But Facebook still manages to maintain some of the best traits of small companies, in particular the ability to move at startup speed when needed, aided by huge amounts of tooling. There are entire internal products to assist everything from running performance reviews, to directing you turn by turn to open conference rooms, to automatically rewriting your code to match underlying API changes.
Facebook also has processes that provide the clarity and focus of a small company, or more accurately a collection of thousands of small companies. Most notable is that product plans, roadmaps, objectives, and metrics (oh so many metrics) for all projects are openly shared across the company, promoting a startup-like culture of intellectual honesty and accountability.
But despite having the efficiency, transparency, and drive of a great startup, I was never reminded of a startup while at Facebook. It wasn’t because of what was present — the sheer size that surrounded me — but rather because of something that was missing. An important skill that you bump into everyday at startups, but is hard to find within Facebook and many other large enterprises. And that skill is storytelling.
Always be pitching
As I’ve written previously, startup founders are some of the very best storytellers in the world. They skillfully combine data, facts, and strategy with a memorable personal journey that’s shaped their worldview, to create something that’s equal parts provocative and persuasive. As Steve Jobs famously said:
“The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.”
Some founders are born great storytellers, but many others are molded into it by their entrepreneurial journey. Founders are constantly recreating, refining, and reciting the narrative behind their product and company because they simply have to. As a new company still finding its place in the world, more often than not the customers, partners, recruits, and investors you come across have no idea who you are and what you do. Your only recourse is to tell them all, tell anyone who will listen, tell the entire world the story of you, your company, and your product over and over again.
What is the company’s mission and vision? What painful, acute problems does your product solve? Why does the work you do matter to the world? Founders and their teams can answer these questions immediately, eloquently, and consistently, like a reflex because they are constantly required to. Out of necessity, early startup teams put in their 10,000 hours of storytelling, which then turns them into expert storytellers.
Now contrast that with successful incumbents like Facebook who everyone has already heard of, uses their products, and has friends that work there. If there’s any downside to company success and product market fit, it’s this: teams at those established companies no longer have any reason to tell their story. Everyone knows who Facebook is and what the product does — they may know it better than the people who work there. So those people stop being asked to explain things. They stop jumping at the opportunity to share their company and product stories. They stop being storytellers, until they’ve forgotten how to be storytellers.
The Horizon 2 Challenge
So what, you might ask? Even if you buy the premise that startups are better at storytelling than Facebook, who cares? Facebook is succeeding at nearly unprecedented levels so does storytelling even matter? To that question, I offer up a story.
Back in 2009, management consulting firm McKinsey created a compelling management framework called the Three Horizons to help companies think through business growth in 3 distinct time frames:
Horizon 1 is when a company focuses on its current business model and core capabilities. Think of this as maximizing profits over the next quarter or half. Horizon 2 is when a company expands its existing business into new markets or to new customers through innovation. Think of this as founding a new project that will eventually lead to profits, but only after hard work over several years. Horizon 3 is when a company creates entirely different businesses or capabilities that are based on radical disruption. Think of this as researching new technologies or seeding new markets that in a decade may (or may not) become the future of the company.
The Three Horizon Framework
World class, successful companies like Facebook are great at Horizon 1 (ex. beating EPS estimates for more than 5 consecutive years) — that’s why they are successful in the first place. Great companies also understand the value and importance of not waiting for the future, which is why they soon excel at Horizon 3. Think of Facebook’s efforts pioneering VR, or similarly significant decade forward commitments at Google X or Microsoft Research or the legendary Xerox Parc. Despite the long lead time involved, these companies show tremendous forward thinking and commitment to securing their future by inventing it.
But Horizon 2 turns out to be the trickiest stage for incumbent companies. Unlike Horizon 1, Horizon 2 contributions are too far out to provide any immediate business impact. Yet those Horizon 2 contributions are also not far out enough into the future to achieve truly radical transformation. They are unfortunately stuck in the middle, unable to be prioritized by a company for either quarterly metrics or an investment in the far future.
According to the Harvard Business Review:
“A Horizon 2 offering has a hard time getting established in an organization. Like a kid attempting to hop on a merry-go-round in motion, it needs a burst of energy to get on board.”
And this is where storytelling comes in.
Horizon 1 projects don’t require any storytelling because they are rooted in the company’s present — it’s about executing against the same story that everyone already knows as opposed to creating a new story. Horizon 3 projects are so futuristic that the story writes itself, often in just a few words — there’s no storytelling skill required to capture the imagination when all you have to say is “metaverse”, “self-driving cars”, or “AI assistant”.
Storytelling skill is critical for Horizon 2 projects however, when you have to craft a story that somehow blends excitement in the long term with outcomes in the short term. A story that combines both daring ambition with achievable results. A story that resembles a founder’s entrepreneurial journey. A story that can create a burst of energy to fuel the Horizon 2 project to completion.
Horizon 2 Storytelling
Without storytelling, companies struggle at Horizon 2 and leave themselves vulnerable to the worst kind of disruption: disruption that’s obvious. Whether it’s Microsoft with the web, or Comcast with streaming, or maybe Facebook one day with ephemeral messaging or short form video or interactive audio, the most frustrating part of these Horizon 2 disruptions — disruptions only a few years in the making — is that they were all known. The incumbents saw the disruption coming but didn’t find the opportunity meaningful enough. There were stories told about those opportunities, but the storytelling wasn’t compelling enough.
Better storytelling might have been enough to establish the opportunity, to earn an investment in a new product, to fend off a disruption, to overcome the Horizon 2 challenge. And fortunately, storytelling is not a skill limited to only startups. Some of the best storytellers in the world are large, incumbent companies.
Amazon
Amazon has organized their project planning process around their now famous 6-page memos. For all major business decisions, a 6-page memo is required to be written, and decision making meetings begin with 30 minutes of silence as everyone reads through printouts of that memo instead of listening to a presentation. Why? Because it unlocks the power of storytelling.
The 6-page memo forces ideas to be laid out as a narrative story, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Internally at Amazon, these 6-page memos are even called “narratives”. These narrative stories all include a customer as the protagonist, a problem or conflict to resolve, and a solution that results in a happy ending for that customer. These stories all have thoughtful facts and reasoning that can hold up against criticism and debate. These stories all have to stand on their own such that anyone can read them and understand the subject, which allow the stories to spread.
It’s no surprise that Amazon has thrived in Horizon 2 efforts from groceries to Alexa to Prime Video that all began with a story inspiring enough to provide a burst of energy and convince the company to commit multiple years to. As Jeff Bezos would say about the benefits of storytelling:
“There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking.”
Nike
Everyone knows that Nike is one of the most prolific and innovative external storytellers in the world. There are books, case studies, and even university courses analyzing how Nike has expertly used storytelling to market their brand and products to great success. For the past 7 consecutive years, Nike has been recognized as having the world’s most valuable apparel brand.
But what you may not know is that Nike also invests heavily in internal storytelling. There are entire communication teams dedicated to creating internal marketing materials and videos with the same high production value as their Olympic commercials. “Corporate Storyteller” is a senior executive title there. Storytelling has been key to the success of Nike’s explosive direct to consumer business, a multi-year Horizon 2 initiative where Nike gets to communicate their brand story to customers more effectively than any retail partner possibly could.
A few years ago, I was invited to Beaverton to give a presentation about Hulu to the Nike product and engineering org. The first thing Nike did was assign a team of marketing and design specialists to totally redo my presentation with custom graphics and videos that were up to Nike’s storytelling bar. Even when it’s a story about another company, Nike insists on making sure it’s told well.
Airbnb
In 2012, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky read a biography on Walt Disney over his Christmas vacation and took particular note on a chapter detailing the making of the film Snow White. As the world’s first ever feature-length animated movie, Disney took extra care in the production and planned out the entire film through storyboards, a visual outline of the story that helped everyone collaborating on the project understand the filmmaker’s vision. Chesky was so inspired by the storyboard approach that he hired Pixar animator Nick Sung to produce physical storyboards for Airbnb’s customer journey (a project appropriately codenamed Snow White).
These storyboards would go on to influence decisions across the entire company from product, to marketing, to customer service, and more. The storyboards provided clarity and focus, and helped Airbnb realize their product wasn’t a website, but a real world service. They inspired Airbnb to make critically important Horizon 2 investments in areas like mobile and hosted experiences. As Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia would say about the storyboards:
“As opposed to working out of a spreadsheet, this is us creating characters and starting to understand the personality of these characters. It’s just like watching a movie, honestly. We’re almost sometimes acting it out. And that is just such a different experience than working on a spreadsheet.”
That’s some next level storytelling.
A new story
When the Packagd team joined Facebook, I wrote that the ideal work situation is when you can build things you’re passionate about, and do so in a way that makes a meaningful impact. I’m grateful that at Facebook, I got to work on projects that I love around digital commerce, but also do so at scales that matter. I hope that my next adventure will bring those two things — interest and meaning — together again, and I look forward to sharing that story with everyone soon. | https://medium.com/@efeng/a-lesson-in-storytelling-from-my-time-at-facebook-b7eb013aede4 | ['Eric Feng'] | 2021-06-26 22:54:45.355000+00:00 | ['Disruption', 'Storytelling', 'Facebook', 'Startup', 'Amazon'] |
Online Reputation Management-ORM | Online Reputation Management
Brand consciousness is one of the basic factors of launching a positive online reputation of a company. Though, the mission of preserving your reputation is great challenging as it command enough time and endeavor. So, in terms of personal reputation, all businesses require a good reputation to flourish in the practical world.
What Is Online Reputation Management?
It defends companies from slanderous online elements such as negative content and defamatory bloggers. These kinds of problems stalk from competitors, dissatisfied employees, or frustrated customers. If the content is created against your business is, then it will surely create a way to search engine results when somebody write your business in the search bar.
A perfect online reputation management strategy gives great opportunities to create brand responsiveness. ORM influences the potential of the internet and social media to build benevolence and of course win consumer’s belief.
How It Helps?
You must remember that search engines utilize significance and not quality as the fundamental standard in ranking. Reputation management caters as a self-protective method against off-putting web elements which can be very disadvantageous for any firm.
This will reconstruct your reputation and augment enquiries and sales over again. To build your reputation fine, with a specialized service, and try to put off any dent before it happens. Once a brand reputation is spoiled it can take considerable time and investment to transform things.
Online reputation management is a technique of defending your brand and your good name. It is a vital approach of crafting your business as a professional and a constant source than consumers can answer back. No any business owner expects from their customers to think negative about their products and services so this is something that has to be perfectly maintained and dealt with in a proficient style.
Remember that a trustworthy and reliable provider can provide fresh and new content proposed for search engines. They can also push encouraging reviews as well as offer necessary information about the business unit. In addition, reputation management also help emphasize to the people why they have to think about the products and services of the organization before evaluating it. It helps heighten the company’s reputation.
Online reputation consulting and management services at Digital Rank Digital Marketing Agency in Hyderabad are incredible for personals, small businesses and big brands, providing the finest online reputation management companies in India with great skill in content production, strategy consulting, search engine optimization, online reviews, press releases and many more. | https://medium.com/@teamdigitalrank/online-reputation-management-orm-9efdeb75bc65 | ['Digitalrank Digital Marketing Solutions'] | 2016-11-22 06:26:35.538000+00:00 | ['SEO', 'Digital Marketing Agency'] |
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Books are a valuable source of knowledge that affects society in different ways. Whether you are reading a masterpiece by an award-winning author or narrating a bedtime story to children, the significance of books cannot be overemphasized.
Human beings need to learn and stay informed, which are crucial needs that books can fulfill. They are also essential for entertainment and enable individuals to develop wholesome mindsets throughout their lives.
“Millions of books have been published over the years and they continue to be an integral aspect of people’s lives around the globe.
From making it easier to understand different aspects of life to serve as worthwhile companions that take you through challenging times, books have proven to be precious commodities.
Books are essential in a variety of ways that go beyond enriching your mind or entertaining you. They have stood the test of time as reliable references for centuries. They stimulate your senses and promote good mental health. Other benefits include enhancing your vocabulary, allowing you to travel through words, and inspiring positivity through motivational literature.
While the internet and television are useful in their own ways, nothing can compare to a great book. Books ignite your imagination, give you new ideas, challenge your perspectives, provide solutions, and share wisdom. At every stage of your existence, you can find a relevant book that will add value to your personal and professional life.
Books are filled with knowledge and they teach you valuable lessons about life. They give you insight into how to navigate aspects of fear, love, challenges, and virtually every part of life. Books have been in existence since time immemorial and they hold secrets of the past while providing a glimpse of the cultures of previous civilizations.
A book has the power to change or reinforce how you feel about your surroundings. It is a therapeutic resource that can equip you with the tools you need to stay on track and maintain a good attitude. Whether you want to learn a new language or delve into the intrigues of nature, there is a book for every situation.
There are numerous reasons why books are important. Reading books is a popular hobby as people around the world rely on them for relief and entertainment. Books contain records of history and are used to spread vital information. Reading books helps to improve your communication skills and learn new things. It can be useful for easing anxiety among students and professionals.
Other reasons that highlight how important books are in their positive impact on intelligence, writing abilities, and analytical skills. Books give people a great way to escape into another dimension. They are packed with endless possibilities for adventure and experiences that would be difficult to access in reality.
It is essential for people to strive to include books in their daily lives aside from using them for academic or professional purposes. They aid emotional and mental growth, boost confidence, and sharpen your memory. It is natural for people to be curious and want to learn more, which is why books are still significant today.
Books are a valuable source of knowledge that affects society in different ways. Whether you are reading a masterpiece by an award-winning author or narrating a bedtime story to children, the significance of books cannot be overemphasized.
Human beings need to learn and stay informed, which are crucial needs that books can fulfill. They are also essential for entertainment and enable individuals to develop wholesome mindsets throughout their lives.
“ | https://medium.com/@pefcic/download-http-co-readingbooks-host-book-1575091283-489920d2f45a | [] | 2021-12-13 08:37:45.498000+00:00 | ['Download', 'Reading', 'Book', 'Read', 'eBook'] |
5 guys in Pakistan rape and kill a goat, causing anger in the wake of Imran Khan’s words. | 5 guys in Pakistan rape and kill a goat, causing anger in the wake of Imran Khan’s words. Satheesh Kumar Aug 10·2 min read
In a horrifying event in Pakistan’s Okara, five guys allegedly raped and slaughtered a goat. The five are accused, according to reports. Police in Pakistan’s Okara have arrested five men for sexually assaulting and killing a goat, adding to the country’s growing fury over recent cases of sexual violence.
The sexual assault of the goat has led some on social media to ask Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan if goats also need to be modest with their appearance.
Mathira, a Pakistani actor, shared the news of the goat’s rape on Instagram and asked whether the animal also needed to “wear an abaya”.
“Do naked animals have an affect on men as well?” another Twitter user wondered. Because they are not machines, the gorgeous PM will now instruct goats to cover themselves because some innocent guys were attracted seeing them around.”
“If a lady wears very minimal clothes, it will have an impact on males unless they are robots,” Imran Khan stated in an HBO interview last month. It’s only common sense, right? It will have an impact on people in a society where they haven’t seen that kind of thing.”
The remarks sparked widespread condemnation of Imran Khan at a time when Pakistan is dealing with a slew of rape and murder cases, notably that of Noor Mukadum, who was tortured and killed at a residence in Islamabad.
The rape and murder of six-year-old Zainab Ansari in Kasur in 2018 and the gang rape of a woman in front of her children on the Lahore motorway in 2020 sparked similar public outrage.
In the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report, Pakistan was ranked 153rd out of 156 nations for gender parity, and seventh out of the eight countries in the South Asian region. | https://medium.com/@satheeshglekha/5-guys-in-pakistan-rape-and-kill-a-goat-causing-anger-in-the-wake-of-imran-khans-words-26e1d9026441 | ['Satheesh Kumar'] | 2021-08-10 05:57:03.048000+00:00 | ['Rape', 'Pakistan', 'Goats'] |
Sustainable design roundups: 12 eco-friendly pendant lamps | Lampshades are items that lend themselves to designers’ creativity. They can take a myriad of shapes and be made of various materials, including eco-friendly ones!
So today we’re reviewing 12 examples of sustainable lampshades; all taken from SforSustainable, the sustainable interior design platform I curate!
Moodboard & detailed product descriptions at the end of the article
Natural fibres
From bamboo to seagrass and rattan, weaving natural fibres into lampshades creates rich natural textures and interesting light-and-shadow effects.
Weaving is a traditional craft in many areas of the world and the production of such lampshades is often a way to support this long-lived skill.
Natural “debris”
There is no waste in nature. But many natural “debris” can be given additional value when used as raw materials for unconventional and sustainable objects.
For example at Miyuca, fallen leaves are collected and turned into lampshades that retain those typical autumnal colours.
Similarly, Caracara creates lampshades from several natural “leftovers”, including orange peels and pine needles collected from discarded Christmas trees!
Agricultural waste
Still on the topic of natural leftovers, agricultural waste can be given value as well!
High Society uses residues from the cultivation of wine, hemp and tobacco, mixes them with a natural binder and shapes them into lampshades!
Upcycling
Upcycling is defined as the act — or rather the art — of reusing a material / object for an application that increases its value.
For instance, Livable World takes the cage of old fans — which has become a piece of trash — and turns it into a lampshade!
Another example of upcycling which starts from a humble material comes from Tabitha Bargh, who recycles corrugated cardboard sheets into beautiful pendant lamps!
Plastic bottles
PET bottles can be upcycled in a number of products ranging from textiles to tiles. Lampshades are no exception and two examples (just to name a couple) come from IKEA and Muuto, that respectively turn PET bottles into a hard plastic material and felt.
Textiles
It’s not always easy to make a production process zero-waste. But this doesn’t mean production leftovers are useless!
For example, a collaboration between designer Sonia Laudet and Market Set has turned fabric scraps into a lighting collection!
Another natural textile that can take the shape of a lampshade is wool felt. At LumaLano, wool is sourced from conscious farmers and the production process is environmentally friendly in several ways.
So here’s a recap of these 12 sustainable pendant lamps!
Click on the names for a detailed explanation of what makes each lamp a sustainable choice
1. Sfera — by Bottega Intreccio
2. Maze — by Raw Materials
3. KNIXHULT — by IKEA
4. LAAB — by Miyuca
5. Pine Needles — by Caracara
6a. Wine — by High Society
6b. Hemp — by High Society
6c. Tobacco — by High Society
7. Fan — by Livable World
8. Carton C5 — by Tabitha Bargh
9. TROLLBO — by Ikea
10. Under the Bell — by Muuto
11. Sonia Laudet — by Market Set
12. Luma Unika — by LumaLano
These are just a few of the Earth-friendly lampshades available on the market.
For more inspiration about sustainable lampshades (and sustainable interior design pieces in general) you’re welcome to visit SforSustainable, the sustainable interior design platform I curate! | https://medium.com/@dfordesign/sustainable-design-roundups-12-eco-friendly-pendant-lamps-6479d8595188 | [] | 2020-10-09 06:44:17.051000+00:00 | ['Interior Design', 'Sustainability', 'Sustainable Design', 'Sustainable Development', 'Circular Design'] |
Unshakeable Narratives and /r/thebutton | That’s all background for the thing that interested me. Up to a few days ago, the timer had never gone below 12 seconds, so no one had the coveted red flair. People were waiting to see who would be first to get the red flair, to get their name enshrined in a document called “The Complete Catalogue of Rare and Exotic Button Pushers” (so good!) as the first to breach a new color band. Then, the unthinkable happened: there was a glitch. The nature of the glitch is maybe a little too complicated to be interesting, but the end result was that the timer was still ticking and resetting even though not everyone could see it, so someone, during this gray glitch period, clicked the button at 8 seconds and received the first red flair.
There was a bit of an uproar as to whether or not glitched red flairs counted as actual red flairs, i.e. whether this user deserved their position as the “first red.” As anyone who has ever been part of a tiny subculture would know, this got ugly faster than outsiders might predict it would. The user in question even hid their flair while browsing so people wouldn’t be able to see that glaring red circle when the user posted in the community, like someone trying to cover their scarlet letter and blend into the crowd. Things eventually calmed down, and everyone accepted that this user was the first legitimate red. The button kept ticking along.
Until there was another glitch, this one worse than the last.
It was worse because, to all people watching, the timer looked like it was running normally. But clicking the button didn’t make a difference; the timer just kept ticking. Some clicked in the 50s and 40s. It kept ticking. Some clicked in the 30s. It kept ticking. Some clicked in the 20s, but the timer kept going down, lower than it had ever been before. Within a minute, as all of these people who had made the button a big part of their lives for the past almost-month watched helplessly, the timer ran out. The thing people had been fighting for 25 days happened: the timer turned over to zero, and a message came up saying that the experiment was over.
When the glitch was fixed and the button resumed its count-and-reset-cycle, it was revealed that a number of people who clicked during the weird outage had received the corresponding flair, even though their clicks didn’t actually reset the button. These clicks, wasted on a dead button, still counted as the “single click” for a bunch of users. There were a slew of new red flairs, including one person who received a “zero seconds” flair, presumably the lowest possible flair (and hailed as the flair of the “Pressiah”).
One notable new red-flaired user revealed himself as well: a Reddit employee, creator of the experiment, and moderator in the /r/thebutton community. (I’ll just refer to him as the “moderator,” since, while it’s very easy to discover his name and I’ll be linking directly to things he posted and things posted about him, using his name feels a little like heaping onto the garbage-pile forming on top of him right now.)
This moderator found himself in a bad place. He had wasted his click in this giant experiment, his one shot at playing the game, on a glitched moment in time. His press didn’t mean anything. He wasn’t happy.
And I get it. I’d be pissed, too. But what he did with his anger was a little troubling: he used his powers as administrator to reset his flair and give himself a new click.
In case it’s not clear from the above: a second click is antithetical to the whole button ecosystem. The idea always (haha “always” means “for almost four weeks” in this case) has been that every user gets one chance to click, and they have to choose which values this click will embody, what identity they create with their decision. This one-chance mechanic is what made the button such a great metaphor, such a great narrative-producing machine. This moderator had undone one of the core philosophies of the button community and given himself a second chance, pretty seriously shaking up the foundation upon which so many narratives had been built.
Interestingly, most people in the community actually WANTED those affected by the glitch to get a second press (see the first comment in this thread, with over 2000 upvotes). It seemed unfair to punish them and remove them from the game because of a technical problem, and it made a sort of narrative sense to nullify these circumstantially-coerced clicks. But what challenged the structure of the button community was that only one person actually got a second chance: this moderator, the person with the power, the creator of the experiment. The elite.
People were furious.
This moderator soon decided that resetting only his flair and giving only himself a second press was the wrong move, so he restored his red flair, with its low number. But now there were over 50 people, some active in the community, who had been locked into being victims of the deceptive glitch, removed from the game, even though the majority of the community wanted those users back, wanted them to be given a second chance.
In the end, the moderator did what every person who seemingly abuses their power eventually does: he wrote an apology:
Up until yesterday’s outage I had thought of myself as a non-presser. However, when faced with the dwindling timer I pressed the button: I found myself, despite my previous thoughts, wishing for this project to continue. Once I realized my press had not reset the timer I thought to exempt myself from the rules of the button by reverting my presser status. This impulse stemmed from my own sense of importance within this community. I have a position of status here and misguidedly thought it was okay to preserve that status by exempting myself from the rules. For me, this was the test of the button. I am grateful to the community for calling me out on my error. As the others who pressed during the outage, my flair shall remain. The rules remain and apply for all: You may only press the button once.
On the one hand, this all sounds very admirable, and I congratulate this moderator for realizing the power he wields in the community around his creation and apologizing for misusing it.
On the other hand, what the moderator did here fits almost too perfectly with what politicians always do when they are called out for abusing their power but want to minimize it and move past it. First, it took 22 hours for the moderator to apologize, presumably so that he could do whatever possible to fix the problem before owning it. Second, the language of the apology is exactly what you’d expect: an explanation why the moderator made his mistake, in emotional terms with which people will sympathize; some sappy pandering to the community for calling out the mistake; and an assertion that the rules apply to everyone equally, regardless of their status.
That last bit rings false to the community, because the power this moderator had would have allowed him to listen to the community and give action to the thing they all wanted. He chose a different thing, a thing that matched his values instead of the values of the community that sprung up around his creation.
Cue an onslaught of posts in that most classic of internet genres, the “I’m leaving” posts. Some examples are below. | https://medium.com/making-a-record/unshakeable-narratives-and-r-thebutton-d63f0f545a43 | ['Stephen Goldmeier'] | 2016-12-01 03:20:06.608000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'The Internet', 'Reddit', 'Storytelling', 'Social Media'] |
Boris beware: SNP will exploit the chaos of a No Deal Brexit | NATIONALISM depends on chaos or the looming prospect of turmoil for its survival – apocalypse is its favoured outcome.
Or at least the promise of it, as long as it’s possible to try and lay the blame for the trouble with the UK Government.
Mike Russell, the SNP’s ‘Brexit Minister’, said yesterday that the worst possible outcome of the EU talks would be No Deal.
But seconds later he was telling BBC Radio Scotland that SNP MPs will not support any deal – Nationalist doublethink at its best.
Whatever the resolution, and we are heading towards some kind of denouement, Mr Russell will portray it as a Tory disaster.
Historically, the SNP was Eurosceptic and indeed once it was fiercely opposed to devolution, so don’t buy the bluster – it’s always about independence.
The pitfall for Boris Johnson is that the moment he cedes the idea that sovereignty outranks all other concerns, he’s playing into the hands of the SNP.
That’s its driving force – and hard-core Brexiteer rhetoric shares some of its DNA with separatist ideology: its overriding priority is the notion of taking back control.
For some independence supporters, the warnings about the calamitous repercussions of going it alone don’t wash – it might be a mess, but at least it would be our mess.
So, hurtling towards a cliff-edge at speed is okay as long as it’s your own car, and you’re at the wheel when it tumbles over the precipice and bursts into flames.
For Unionists, this is bonkers, and contemptible – putting political principles ahead of our children’s futures, opting for radical uncertainty and flux for ideological reasons.
And yet if the gruelling trade negotiations run into the sand and we’re saddled with No Deal, there are potentially grave consequences for the Union.
On the issues that remain unresolved, the common factor is that vexed question of who’s in charge – whether the UK should stick to EU rules on state aid and workers’ rights; fisheries; and who should resolve future disputes.
Britain is refusing to accept a role for the European Court of Justice – and any backtracking on such a totemic issue would be completely unpalatable for Tory backbenchers.
Placating them is central to the Prime Minister’s chances of remaining in office, but it ratchets up the chance of No Deal, though Mr Johnson is anxious to re-cast it as an Australia-type deal.
Australia trades with the EU on World Trade Organisation terms – but it’s also looking to strike a deal with Brussels.
Either way, No Deal would be a failure of statecraft, and more importantly for the United Kingdom it would send an unmistakable signal that sovereignty trumps all.
That’s a propaganda gift for the SNP, which would exploit the tumult of No Deal for all it’s worth, and it would set a dangerous precedent, that being our own boss is key, whatever the economic impact.
(Boris Johnson threatens No Deal - but it would be a major boost for Nicola Sturgeon)
The SNP was envious of the Brexiteers for doing what it failed to achieve – pushing a divisive idea over the line, on the back of very little meaningful debate in Scotland, and what it believed to be a sketchy prospectus (it’s in a glass house on that one).
If chaos was an acceptable by-product of crashing out of the EU, they will argue, then why shouldn’t it be acceptable for wrenching Scotland out of the UK?
And you can imagine the sheer delight of the SNP if No Deal caused the kind of scenes that are likely to unfold, from HGV tailbacks in Kent to food shortages.
NHS Tayside is preparing for possible shortages of medicine, equipment and staff – warning that a No Deal departure could ‘lead to an inability to deliver safe and effective care’.
Gordon Brown has said No Deal with spark an ‘economic war’ with the EU, predicting that ‘food, drugs and everything else would find it difficult to get into the country without tariffs and without holds-ups’.
And a leaked Cabinet Office document set out the Government’s ‘reasonable worst-case scenario’ for No Deal, stating that it could lead to severe disruption of vital supplies, including medicine.
Environment Secretary George Eustice has conceded tariffs levied in a No Deal Brexit would lead to higher food prices, but insisted the rise would be relatively modest.
Someone who worked on the No Deal planning told the Reaction website that No Deal would be ‘bad but not Armageddon’, while a minister said: ‘Get ready to eat a lot of fish.’ The reason for the possible surplus of fish is that EU fishing fleets would be theoretically locked out of British waters, and Britain would be locked out of the European markets where most of the fish is sold.
As Douglas Adams might have said: so long and thanks for all the fish – and yet the reality is that it would be a bumpy ride at a time when our national resilience is at a low ebb.
I voted for Brexit, though I didn’t envisage No Deal, or indeed that it would take four years to get out – Scexit, unpicking the bonds of a centuries-old partnership, would be infinitely more traumatic.
Some of the dire warnings are doubtless a case of over-egging the pudding – one council said, possibly in a giddy moment, that No Deal would mean it wouldn’t be able to collect the bins on time. Nothing like getting your excuses in early…
But the probability of more mad scrambles in the supermarket, or running out of medicine, is the last thing any of us wants in the midst of a pandemic.
It would be a colossal own goal for Unionism, as the SNP would seize on these scenes as yet more evidence of the cack-handed UK Government complicating our lives.
Of course, it wants a monopoly on life-complication, in the form of ripping us out of the UK, and can’t stand the idea of the Tories muscling in on the act.
Whatever your political persuasion, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the SNP has benefited this year from the avoidable blunders of the UK Government.
That’s helped it to camouflage or play down its own disgraceful shortcomings, but for now at least its opponents are firmly on the back foot.
But there’s no point pretending that the case for the Union hasn’t been dented, as demonstrated in successive opinion polls, and is in need of an urgent makeover.
As we move out of the coronavirus crisis, and it won’t happen overnight, people may change their minds and look back more dispassionately on some of the scandalous pandemic failures of the SNP, and to its woeful track record pre-Covid.
But No Deal would stoke the argument against the Union at a time when people crave stability – now is not the time for yet more constitutional experimentation, on Scexit, Brexit, or anything else.
Just as we’re beginning to contemplate heading out of choppy waters, No Deal threatens a tsunami – and if the Tories aren’t careful the Union could be washed up in the wreckage.
*This column appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail on December 8, 2020. | https://medium.com/@graham-grant/boris-beware-snp-will-exploit-the-chaos-of-a-no-deal-brexit-202eebb6ad49 | ['Graham Grant.'] | 2020-12-08 08:03:10.627000+00:00 | ['Europe', 'Columnists', 'Brexit', 'Politics', 'Scotland'] |
4 Benefits of Bringing in a Google Ads Management Company Instead of Handling it In-House | 4 Benefits of Bringing in a Google Ads Management Company Instead of Handling it In-House
PPC, pay-per-click, offers your company some pretty exciting benefits. You can be seen by people looking for you, at the exact right time. You can spend as little or as much as you would like, while bringing in new customers and increasing your brand awareness. Of course, PPC only brings you benefits if it is being managed correctly. Many businesses do not have the time or the knowledge to be able to do this. That is why bringing in a Google Ads management company is often the best solution. Consider the following benefits of doing so:
#1 A PPC management company has experts working on your account. You may be an expert at owning a business or whatever industry you are in, but you are not a PPC expert. That is okay! It’s the job of these agency team members to be experts in the PPC field. If they are not excellent at optimizing and managing accounts, they won’t stay in business. You can breathe easy knowing true experts are working on your account.
#2 Your account representatives will constantly be learning. You keep up on your industry, whether it is staying up on recently-released HIPAA codes or using the newest tools available on the market. Just like you, your account representative continues to learn everything about their field of interest- your Google Ads account! Beyond simply learning from articles, courses, and webinars, they also have the advantage of learning from other accounts and other people at their agency.
#3 A good agency will partner with industry giants. You probably don’t know anyone who works at Google, but your agency account representative does. They also have the advantage of preexisting relationships with different advertising platforms and can contact them directly if they need to. At the best agencies, they even have insider knowledge of and early access to developing software, platforms, and beta testing.
#4 An agency has time to focus on your Ads. For many, the reason handling PPC in-house does not work is simply because no one has the time to do it. Even if you have a dedicated digital marketing professional at your company, this person is rarely left to manage PPC alone. More likely, he or she is also in charge of social media, SEO, email marketing, and all things digital. Each of these areas alone can require a lot of time to perform well! When you bring in an agency for PPC, your Google Ads gets the time and dedication they deserve.
Your paid ads require a lot of time and attention. Without this, you may just find yourself paying a lot and getting very little. Only by bringing in the expert help an agency provides can you feel sure that you are getting the most clicks and bringing in new leads the way you should be. They can take over your Google Ads and you can go back to what you do best- running your business! | https://medium.com/@whitesharkmedia2/4-benefits-of-bringing-in-a-google-ads-management-company-instead-of-handling-it-in-house-b47b83e84d68 | ['White Media'] | 2019-11-21 08:53:37.558000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'PPC Marketing', 'Google Ads'] |
Top Female Producer GEM Releases “Daydream” | Emerging LA-based, Australian Producer GEM is an artist with the world at her feet and a burning ambition to use her platform for good. Her latest single DAYDREAM is another chilled out, feel good track aiming to raise our vibration and it does just that.
This love song is a gateway for manifesting with your heart.
Having been named #2 in The Top 5 Female Producers in the world to watch by Showbiz Magazine, and securing a place into music’s inner circle as a member of the 20–21 Grammy® NEXT program, GEM is making waves with some of the industry’s biggest names. GEM collected a string of award nominations with her covers album, the2070s including Producer of the Year/Electronic Album of the Year for the IMAs and HMMA Best Downtempo Song. Chill Out radio USA listed GEM’s relaxed remix of Australian chart-topping country artist, Max Jackson’s Billionaire — the #1 remix of 2020 … and now GEM is releasing her own original music, achieving major press worldwide — all whilst remaining independent.
As a fierce advocate for equality and owning your own destiny, GEM is inspired by producers like Russ and Petit Biscuit — who have navigated the independent waters to major international success. GEM blends new age elements with electro-pop and her feel good, retro signature style has found its way onto the Chilled playlists of Spotify. BILLBOARD magazine featured GEM in their GRAMMY® edition quoting, “It’s like DJ GEM flew down from space when the world asked where are the young female producers?”
Her latest single, “Daydream” achieved over 70,000 views on YouTube in the first week of release and she is authoring a book about raising your vibration using sound. GEM creates genre blending music with wellness benefits and she is the resident DJ of Soul & Spirit Magazine, leading meditations and ambient DJ mixes live across the globe. Here to raise your vibration through sound — GEM.
DAYDREAM has dropped on Spotify and Apple Music Today.
https://ditto.fm/daydream-gem
Youtube: https://youtu.be/n-bmP2XvxQc
Instagram: gem_rpm
Website www.gemrpm.com | https://medium.com/@michaelstover-9775/top-female-producer-gem-releases-daydream-4a413340f170 | ['Michael Stover'] | 2020-12-03 17:43:00.325000+00:00 | ['Grammys', 'Spotify', 'Australia', 'Los Angeles', 'Music'] |
How Startups Outsource Their Tech Without Going Broke or Getting Screwed | How Startups Outsource Their Tech Without Going Broke or Getting Screwed
A takedown of the traditional technical build proposal
Should you spend $50,000 to build out your tech?
This is not as uncommon a question as you might think. As crazy as it sounds, quite a few entrepreneurs have access to that kind of money. Or at least they think they do.
What most entrepreneurs don’t have is a technical background. Thus, most entrepreneurs are forced to rely on someone else to build out their tech. Not only that, most entrepreneurs are forced to trust someone else to build out their tech without charging them a fortune for shoddy work and layers of unnecessary billable hours.
Here’s how to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.
Trap #1: Don’t spend money you don’t have
Believe me, I’ve seen dozens of different ways for a $50K tech spend to evolve from “crazy idea” to “just might work,” whether it’s with credit cards, loans, friends and family, or the old standard of giving away 10% of the company to get an MVP built.
In fact, a couple weeks ago, an entrepreneur asked me to review a proposal for $2.3 million worth of tech build — before the entrepreneur’s startup was even incorporated. I was surprised, but not shocked, and a little mad at the tech firm, whom I did not know.
But ultimately, the fault was with the entrepreneur, in the sense that they asked for all the wrong things at the wrong time. When an entrepreneur has money, or access to it, or they believe they do, that problem can wind up hurting a lot of people, including the firm that agrees to build the tech.
Trap #2: Don’t spend all the money you DO have
Very few technical firms are sketchy, but most of them will build what you ask them to build. Most. Some are even altruistic. I’m reminded of a conversation I had with one of my tech-firm-founder friends:
“I won’t take $50,000 from a startup if that’s all they have,” she said. “Because I’ll end up building beautiful tech for them and it’ll just sit there and do nothing because they don’t have money to spend on sales, marketing, even changes to the tech when they realize they’ve built something only half of their customers are using.”
Think about all of your funding as a budget. Your tech should never be more than 50% of that budget — and then — that 50% should include your original spend to build, plus the costs of maintaining, supporting, upgrading, even wholesale changes to that build once it comes into contact with your customers.
So your original spend to build should probably be something like 25% of your company budget.
How do you work under that tight constraint?
Trap #3: Don’t build everything at once
Most of the tech proposals I see are out-the-door pricing for the build of an entire product. Then usually the firm either walks away or tacks on a program to support exactly what they built.
This will get your startup to launch, but not much further.
You don’t need a full feature set, but you need to deliver value.
Most entrepreneurs design their product from beta all the way to version two and beyond. Me included. I design all kinds of infrastructure, administration, even reports and bells and whistles. This design is necessary, and the better-built products usually wind up coming from the better-designed products.
But even the best design doesn’t need to be built all at once. Not every feature needs to be live the first time the product gets put in front of the customer.
Without getting too much into Minimum Viable Product theory, what needs to be there is the bare minimum that gets the customer to experience the most value in the shortest time.
That’s usually a subset of the full product. And since almost all technical architecture is open and flexible these days, your technical resource doesn’t need to validate every future feature or process. They just need to know what’s coming and how it’s designed so they don’t wall off that future functionality.
You don’t need scale, but you need options.
Building for a million users when you have no users is like spending a million dollars when you have no revenue.
No matter how many customers you eventually plan to have, you don’t need accommodate all of them out of the gate. Again, we’re at a place where most technical tools and coding strategies have the flexibility to expand built in.
So much like open feature design, you need open scale design. In other words, your technical resource should be smart enough and forward-thinking enough to not do anything that would prevent scale down the road.
You don’t need to rebuild any wheels.
The reason why there are multiple no-code options for building apps these days is because a lot of code has been packaged into reusable and universal chunks. A lot of those chunks are offered by third parties, more robustly and inexpensively than anything you and your technical resource can build.
If there is a third party offering for some of your non-critical functionality, use that third party, at least temporarily. Focus your initial build on the technology that is critical for the customer finding value in your product.
Trap #4: Don’t look for a provider, look for a partner.
Now that you’ve got your design broken up and prioritized, this is a golden opportunity to vet whatever firm or individual is going to build your tech.
Do they understand how a startup should operate?
Do they get that you’re going to spend in small increments, go away and test, and then come back with changes?
Are they willing to take the risk of inconvenience to their billing cycle for the reward of your success?
You don’t need Agile, but you need to be agile
The proposal I mentioned earlier was a series of a dozen two-week sprints, back-to-back, each for a different feature of the product. As is the case with Agile development, each two-week sprint would end with a review process that would trigger the next sprint.
This is where I got a little mad. What exactly did that tech firm imagine would happen in those reviews?
Actually, I knew the answer. The review would be a checklist with the entrepreneur to make sure the firm had built exactly what the entrepreneur asked for. This is for the tech firm to justify their next billing cycle.
But it doesn’t matter what the entrepreneur thinks of the tech. What matters is what the entrepreneur’s customers think of the tech. The entrepreneur needs time to validate this.
You need to manage the project.
Never, ever pay for a project manager or any other kind of administrator that comes from the firm itself. The firm’s job is to build what you want and get it done on time. If you don’t trust them to do that, and if you don’t trust yourself to be able to manage that, hire a third party to manage the firm.
Trap #5: Don’t go into the selection process uneducated
If you’re buying a new or used car, you don’t necessarily need to know mechanical and electrical engineering up and down. But you should know what undercoating is and whether or not you need it.
There are a million documents on the web that explain technology and what it does. Most of them are boring and complicated, but some aren’t.
You should know, at a minimum:
How cloud availability and SaaS works.
What a tech stack is and what some of the differences are from stack to stack.
The popular coding languages, databases, and backends and a little about why you’d choose what.
How security, privacy, and backups work.
You should always ask other entrepreneurs which firms they have used and why. You should always talk to the clients listed on the websites of the firms you’re considering.
Trap #6: Don’t pay by the hour
If you pay by the hour, you’ll always be questioning the firm’s methods, and whether you’re asking for something simple or complicated. You’ll subconsciously nickel-and-dime your product to death.
Pay by the project, or better yet, pay by functionality. If you’ve designed your product thoroughly, even if it’s just words on paper, they’ll be able to price it out. This means you’ll be able to prioritize functionality for your customers, and you’ll be able to come back and make the inevitable changes to functionality as the product hits the market.
Trap #7: Protect yourself
I get this question a lot — How do you prevent the firm from taking your idea and your tech and doing it themselves. The answer is: You can’t.
Make sure you’ve got an NDA in place with the firm, and make sure you own the source code and that you have unfettered access to it.
A startup succeeds on their execution, not the idea, not the tech, and not the implementation of that tech. If you really think the technical firm can out-execute you on your own idea, or if you think they’ll just sell your tech to someone else, don’t do business with them.
Like I said, there are plenty of good, altruistic tech firms out there.
Hey! If you found this post actionable or insightful, please consider signing up for my weekly newsletter at joeprocopio.com so you don’t miss any new posts. It’s short and to the point. | https://jproco.medium.com/how-startups-outsource-their-tech-without-going-broke-or-getting-screwed-6960005a588 | ['Joe Procopio'] | 2020-08-24 14:16:06.031000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Business', 'Productivity', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Introducing iterable_rails | Introducing iterable_rails. A Ruby gem for sending emails via Iterable with Rails.
Earlier this year we released Iterable Rails, a Ruby gem that makes sending emails from Ruby on Rails via Iterable, super simple.
Background
As a team we decided it would be useful to consolidate our use of a variety of email services into a single email service provider. We originally used Mandrill for transactional emails, Mailchimp for our newsletter, and Blueshift for our other marketing emails.
After considering all of our needs across the whole business, both as a product and engineering team and a marketing team we settled on Iterable.
Iterable supports no-code functionality that would allow our marketing team to autonomously develop and send marketing emails. These could be based on existing events that we already sent from our Ruby on Rails application to Segment. An example of this is our “Welcome series”, a series of emails that we send to users after they sign up for BiggerPockets.
It also had a pathway to support our transactional email needs but we couldn’t find a Rails-native way to make use of this.
Migration
The first step in moving to Iterable was migrating customer data and templates from our previous email service providers into Iterable. We have open sourced the (hacky!) scripts used in this migration and those are now available on GitHub! After migrating data from Mailchimp, Blueshift and Mandrill into Iterable we were ready to begin sending transactional emails from within Ruby on Rails.
Goals
Our primary goal was to make sending email via Iterable as easy as possible for us as Rails developers. Secondary was the ability to isolate our application code from our email provider. For example this gives us the ability to use another service provider as a backup, should Iterable have any issues.
Fortunately, ActionMailer supports our use cases and makes adding custom delivery methods (and switching between them) very straightforward.
Our solution was Iterable Rails.
Usage
It’s necessary to create a triggered email “campaign” within Iterable, and create an email template within that campaign. Setting the template body to a single handlebars tag such as “html” means that we can then render the HTML within Ruby on Rails and send it to Iterable via their API:
{{{ html }}}
Iterable campaign setup
Conclusion
With these steps completed it’s simple and straightforward to send emails via Iterable from within our Ruby on Rails application. For more information please check out the Iterable Rails readme.
If this sort of project sounds interesting to you, we’re currently hiring! Visit BiggerPockets Career Opportunities to find out more. | https://medium.com/biggerpockets-product-engineering/introducing-iterable-rails-cc9da35c8289 | ['Lewis Buckley'] | 2020-12-21 17:44:14.077000+00:00 | ['Ruby on Rails', 'Rubygems', 'Email Marketing', 'Transactional Emails'] |
The withdrawal upper limit of CryptoHarbor Exchange has been changed | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/cryptoharbor/the-withdrawal-upper-limit-of-cryptoharbor-exchange-has-been-changed-4ad85c3bb8bc | [] | 2020-12-23 16:01:16.348000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Altcoins', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Announcements'] |
The role of cultivated meat in tackling environmental degradation | Contributed by Sreeram Murugaiyen, Gen-Z Advisor at Aleph Farms. This blog is a copy of Sreeram’s class speech at the Francis Douglas Memorial College in March 2020.
(Illustration)
12 years…..According to the United Nations, 12 years is all the time we have left to change to avoid the worst consequences of Global Warming. The news and media have been filled with stories of extreme storms and devastating wildfires. Now the countries and companies around the world are being encouraged to make changes to be more Sustainable. Recently NZ has passed a Zero Carbon Bill. The purpose of this bill is to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions. One of the chief contributors to Climate Change and Environmental Degradation is Meat Production.
Industrial Meat production is responsible for 70% of the meat today. It uses over 80% of the worlds habitable land and 30% of the freshwater supply. In total, meat production demands more than 2,000 trillion tonnes of water every year, that is 63 million litres every second. The Amazon jungle is being cleared to make grazing space, this can release approximately 50 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. Our current meat industry contributes to 18% of the human-made greenhouse gasses, which is more than all of the transportation industry combined.
The meat that causes the greatest problem is beef. 30kgs of Greenhouse Gases are released for every 100 grams of meat. This is mainly due to methane gas. Methane has 25 times the global warming potential than the equivalent amount of CO2. Greenhouse gases are major contributors to climate change. Some observable effects are loss of sea ice in the Arctic, Sea level rise and more intense heat waves. We are soon going to reach a breaking point, where if we continue to consume meat the way we are, we won’t have enough natural resources to keep up with the demand. By 2050, the Earth’s population is set to pass 9 billion, and the meat demand is predicted to be 70% higher. Feeding that number with the current form of meat production is vastly inefficient.
One solution to this problem is to reduce the amount of meat we consume. Many people won’t like this, as Meat is an important part of their social lives. However, there is another more socially acceptable solution, in the form of Cultivated Meat. According to a study published by the American Chemical Society, Cultivated Meat uses around 45% less energy, releases 96% less Greenhouse Gases, uses 99% less land and consumes 96% less water. But it has 100% of the same nutritional value. Rather than changing our lifestyle, Cultivated meat allows people to consume all the meat they want, without the environmental consequences, slaughtered meat brings.
Approximately one month ago, I started getting involved in a project launched by one of the most discussed companies today. I joined a global advisory board which is solely constituted by Generation-Z kids. The ‘Z-Board’ as we call it, was launched by an Israeli food company named Aleph Farms. The purpose of the “Z-Board” is to make sure that the vision of the company aligns with future consumers. Aleph has received many headlines through the past 1.5 years, was the first company to grow steaks directly from the cells of a single cow, and recently was the first to produce meat on the international space station. The cells were harvested on Earth and then grown into muscle by a 3D Bioprinter. This experiment proves Slaughter-free or Cultivated meat can be produced anywhere, in any conditions and without depending on the availability of land.
Our changing planet enforces us, as individuals and as economies, to remove the silos we have built over time and be part of a movement that leads a thoughtful debate around climate change, around food security and around the health of our beings. Cultivated meat represents an integrated solution, to one of the most impactful industries worldwide on those very subjects. This solution is promised to overcome some of the most fundamental challenges we are facing as a society today.
We have the right to be provided with food that is delicious, but at the same time, we share the responsibility to our planet, to the well-being of our society and to the animals welfare. | https://medium.com/@alephfarms/the-role-of-cultivated-meat-in-tackling-environmental-degradation-493022acfbba | ['Aleph Farms'] | 2020-05-20 10:08:08.897000+00:00 | ['Envrionment', 'Cultivated Meat', 'Responsibility', 'Climate Change', 'Environmental Issues'] |
A Complete Guide to the Python Range Function | Syntax
range(start, stop, step_size)
Here:
start : Starting point of the sequence. Optional and by default 0 .
: Starting point of the sequence. Optional and by default . stop : Ending point of the sequence. The sequence ends one element before stop .
: Ending point of the sequence. The sequence ends one element before . step_size : Increment sequence by step_size . Optional and by default 1 .
Range returns a sequence of numbers that begins at start and ends before stop . The difference between the elements is step_size .
Let’s take a closer look at all three possible variants of the range() function.
Variant 1: Using only one argument (stop)
Here, we only pass a stop argument (where to end) to the range function. start and step_size will take default values of 0 and 1 , respectively:
# Print first 10 numbers starting at 0
for i in range(10):
print(i, end=' ') # Output
# 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Note: In the output above, the sequence ends an element before the stop value of 10. stop is not a part of this sequence.
Variant 2: Using two arguments (start and stop)
Both starting and stopping parameters receive values. step_size is 1 by default:
# Print integers starting at 1 and ending before 5
for i in range(1, 5):
print(i, end=' ') # Output
# 1 2 3 4
Variant 3: Using all three arguments
Now, we will use all three arguments: start = 4 , stop = 15 and step_size = 3 .
# Print integers starting at 4 and ending before 15 with a step of 3 for i in range(4, 15, 3):
print(i, end=' ') # Output
# 4 7 10 13
Note: The step value is 3 , so the difference between each number is 3 .
All three variants of Python’s range function (photo by the author).
Here is a quick snippet of the output when printing all even values between 2 and 20 :
for i in range(2, 20, 2):
print(i, end=' ') # Output
# 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 | https://medium.com/better-programming/a-complete-guide-to-the-python-range-function-d59d5209b14 | ['Chaitanya Baweja'] | 2020-06-30 14:44:02.250000+00:00 | ['Coding', 'Software Development', 'Python', 'Data Science', 'Programming'] |
5 Alarming Facts about Church History | How many facts about church history do you know about?
We are not talking about common events in bible like Noah’s Ark or the Ten Commandments; we are referring to the growth of the church itself. In other words, we are talking about the things that happened after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Most of us start get cloudy about the events that occurred after Jesus rose from his tomb and ascended into Heaven.
Here are 5 alarming facts about church history that you probably didn’t know:
1) Early believers refused to apologize for their Christian faith.
False doctrine and teaching took place early in Church history. But early believers vehemently rejected these objections shortly after the death and resurrection of Jesus. As expected, a lot of opposition rose against Christianity. Those opposing the faith accused Christians of being atheists since they had gods that were visible.
Rather than submitting to great pressure from authorities, these early believers fiercely defended the basic principles of Christian faith. Many of them suffered horrific deaths defending their faith. Sadly, many of them are still dying today.
2) Persecution of early Christians actually helped spread the gospel throughout the world.
The bible gives us many examples of this In the Book of Acts, Romans, and Timothy. During the first 300 years of the Church’s history, Christians suffered through many periods of persecution. It was through these trials that the gospel picked up steam as it spread.
Tertullian of Carthage actually said, “We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed.”
3) Heresy helped clarify church doctrine.
In 325 AD, church leaders gathered in Nicaea to address religious teachings that Jesus, the Son, was not either divine nor the same substance as God, the Father. The outcome of this meeting actually clarified and solidified what Churches of the future believed Jesus to be.
These types of councils not only rejected heresies and established Church creeds, they also firmed up the canonization of the Bible.
4) The fall of the Roman Empire made the church stronger during the Middle Ages.
When the Roman Empire fell during the Fifth Century, Christianity’s growth accelerated across the world. Christianity had already unified itself as a true religion by this time and was recognized as the religion of the state by the Emperor Constantine. The hierarchy of the church stepped in to fill the holes that this massive empire had left behind.
Suddenly, the church found itself deeply involved in societal issues like politics and education. This immediately gave the institution lots of wealth and power.
5) The Great Awakening established the common American identity.
The Great Awakening was a period of religious revival that occurred in America during the 1730s and 1740s. In the time before these revivals, the Enlightenment era had caused people to refrain from adopting a personal relationship with God. It was through the preaching of people like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, when colonists were urged to break free of the existing authoritarian rule from the religious establishment. | https://medium.com/@hankreedball/5-alarming-facts-about-church-history-3046af86c17 | ['Hank Reedball'] | 2019-05-17 18:04:39.889000+00:00 | ['Church History', 'Church', 'Christianity', 'Christian Living'] |
What the Chinese Received From Coronavirus | What the Chinese Received From Coronavirus
A question was posted on Zhihu, the Chinese Quora. The answers were heart-rending and unexpected; and even Trump surprised.
Wuhan citizens queuing to buy masks. Source: Wikimedia
Amidst the gloom and doom, a Chinese netizen asked the following question on Zhihu, the Chinese Quora:
“What have you received from this coronavirus epidemic?”
At the time of writing, the question received 15m views, 24k followers and 11k responses.
The following are highlights of some the answers given by the Chinese, many of whom are locked down in their homes and quarantined cities.
Doctors and nurses barred from home by neighbors, children ostracized
Notice found on door of a residential compound “Medical Staff Not Allowed”. Source: Wechat
Right at the front line of the epidemic battle are the tens of thousands of doctors and nurses treating infected patients. But what some of them received in return was discrimination from neighbors and friends.
One particular doctor shared a phenomenon that was experienced by many colleagues across China.
They were barred from going back home by their own residential compound’s estate management and neighbors. At first when the stories begun circulating on social and mainstream media, many thought it was fake news.
But one doctor asked his contacts from the hospitals cited in the news and verified this to be true in his Wechat post. He also shared a post from a nurse at his own hospital who faced the same situation.
The first story broke from a nurse working in Nanyang city in Henan Province. She was refused entry into the estate where her home was after coming back from her shift one day. Despite police, hospital management and government officials arriving on the scene, after four hours of negotiations with her neighbors, she was still refused entry and ended up spending the night in a motel nearby.
The ostracizing didn’t stop at the medical personnel themselves. Stories also broke of parents telling their children not to play with the children of doctors and nurses, for fear of infection.
Don’t watch this video if you’re easily moved. The scene of this Chinese nurse ‘air hugging’ her pleading daughter is heart-rending.
A lifetime of mundane becomes a heroic story for life
But an even more heart-rending story concerning another doctor was discussed in one response.
On February 7th, 2020, a Chinese doctor in Wuhan called Li Wenliang died. He was one of the earliest to treat infected patients. Realizing this could be an epidemic in the making, he raised a warning by posting in a WeChat group of his medical school alumni about the new coronavirus.
But for that, the Wuhan police issued him with a letter for disrupting social order and threatened him with criminal charges, unless he signed the letter and promised to “stop such illegal behavior”.
That was in early January 2020. He started coughing soon after, having contracted the virus from a patient. A month later he died in the hospital.
Dr. Li was a pretty ordinary person, according to the netizen who wrote the response about him. Based on his online activities, he indulged in mundane stuff like online lotteries and Marvel movie promotions. On social media, he posted pictures of himself holidaying in Guangzhou and eating Texas Fried Chicken.
Dr Li Wenliang. Source: Weibo
In an interview with The New York Times before he died, he said that he became a doctor because he “thought it was a very stable job”. He has a four year old child and an unborn one due in June...
From his death, China received an ordinary hero. Chinese netizens poured out their anger and grief, and demanded the authorities for reform and accountability — despite attempts by the authorities to censor the social media barrage.
“I started coughing on Jan. 10. It will take me another 15 days or so to recover. I will join medical workers in fighting the epidemic. That’s where my responsibilities lie.” — Dr Li Wenliang, from a New York Times article
Dr. Li was just 34-years old. But perhaps from his early demise, China will finally receive some much needed reform on whistleblowing. According to Reuters, China’s top anti-corruption body said it would send investigators to Wuhan to probe “issues raised by the people in connection with Dr. Li Wenliang”.
The heart returns home
Not all the responses were full of grief and heartaches. The author of the most liked response lamented that it was the epidemic that finally brought him home and closer to his parents.
Like many others, having returned to his hometown for the Chinese New Year, he was now stuck there as companies all over China extended the holidays due to travel restrictions and fear of contagion.
“Without this epidemic, I would not have been home to spend the 15th day of the Lunar New Year for seven years now. The fragrance of mum and pop’s cooking, the sunshine of my hometown — how nice.”
He went on later in the article to share…
“… I’ve hardly ever spent some quiet time at home with my parents. To be honest I really wouldn’t dare to quarrel with my folks now. With the epidemic so serious I would have nowhere else to go if I skipped home. Hence I find myself getting along with my parents for a record period of time. I’m going to use this precious two weeks to keep my folks company, and let myself slow down…”
This netizen also noted — with a tinge of irony — that during last year’s Chinese New Year, local cinemas released a blockbuster called “The Wandering Earth”, about a post-apocalypse global effort to save the Earth from total destruction.
In it there was such a line:
“In the beginning, no one cared about this calamity. It was just another fire, another drought, another extinction of a species, another city disappearing. Until the disaster hit everybody…”
A not so gentle reminder
But movies are movies. We watch, we laugh, we cry, and then we go home and quickly forget about it.
Right now, the streets of China, and Wuhan in particular, are stark reminders that fiction can become reality.
In the face of calamity and death, the human spirit unites. Adversaries put aside their differences and work together. Even Trump is no exception, despite having led two years of an aggressive US-China trade war.
I believe this epidemic has given all of us something precious. A reminder that we all live on this same earth, nourished and destroyed by the same Mother Nature; that in the face of a common threat we should all remember, there is no you or I — there is only us.
Spread the word (not the disease) | https://medium.com/behind-the-great-wall/what-the-chinese-received-from-coronavirus-42e7bed04296 | ['Lance Ng'] | 2020-02-16 13:45:15.941000+00:00 | ['Humanity', 'China', 'Epidemic', 'Coronavirus', 'Doctors And Nurses'] |
Rediscovering The Importance of System Design | In my recent experiences I started to adopt Design Docs as my de-facto way to build new functionalities. Here I’ll describe my personal take on such an approach highlighting the main benefits I have noticed as well as points that require some attention.
What is a Design Doc?
A design doc is a document which states the main design decisions around one piece of software serving as a piece of alignment. One initial point that I would like to highlight is that the concept of design decisions goes beyond architecture. It includes also things such as:
What is the background that required such a piece of software? What problems does it address ?
How to test the solution? How to monitor it?
Which kind of SLA impacts are we expecting, if any?
How to rollout the solution? Are there any communications that should happen?
What’s a suggested implementation breakdown ?
Last but not least, the bulk of it: what’s the architecture of the solution?
When to build a Design Doc ?
A second point that I would like to bring clarity lies in the definition of a piece of software, which might be large enough to accomodate from an entire system to a particular feature of that system. A natural question that follows-up lies then on the decision of whether a design doc is needed or not for a given feature. My opinion on that subject can be summarized by the following meme:
Of course we shouldn’t (usually!) build a whole design document to things such as:
A small UI change/tweak
One bug that needs to be addressed
A really small feature that can be shipped in a couple of days without much discussion
Even for seemingly small and harmless features though there are scenarios where we should consider building a design doc.
As an example, consider an internal api modification, like adding a new field on the payload, that could be likely implemented by the development team in just a few hours. However, what about the impacts that it would bring to the API clients ? Does it require a new version or not ? Is the chosen name well clear enough ? in other words: is it properly aligned?
Again I’m not advocating that one small chance such as the aforementioned example requires a design doc. The call should be based on the common sense and experience of the Tech Lead responsible for the implementation.
Alignment
Another very important benefit the design docs bring to the table is the alignment between multiple people around the decisions.
Another good practice that can be combined with design docs is a RFC (Request for Comments) approach, where several people, including the product team and external stakeholders are encouraged to comment and bring their concerns and suggestions.
Note that a RFC process is not really tied to Design Doc, since it might be used for all kinds of documents. Even this article was subject to a RFC process!
In theory, there’s no rocket science here: you just create a document, share it with a few people (or a bunch depending on the scope) and ask them to read it and place their comments. Then you reply to the comments and start threads until an agreement is made.Tools such as Google Docs and Atlassian’s Confluence easily allow for such workflow.
For an attentive reader, though, a few questions might arise here:
Which People should be included ?
For how long should we hold the implementation due to the RFC process?
In summary: How to fit the RFC process into an agile environment ?
While there are several possibilities, I’ll describe the approach I’ve used with my teams lately.
Design Docs & Agile
Here we’re trying to leverage an approach similar to what’s commonly used for Product Designers: to work ahead of the development team.
So, basically and conceptually, we want the TechLead of the team to create design docs for features that will be implemented on the next sprint. Once he’s done he would share it with the team and technical stakeholders and start the RFC process before a live-session and thorough refinement takes place.
When the time comes for the refinement the Design Doc is already reviewed and the main decisions are already anticipated, causing the refinement itself to be much faster.
Of course, during the refinement, some things would change because the TechLead wasn’t really able (or supposed) to come up with all the best possible solutions. But here, the important takeaway is that Pareto’s law should be considered: with just 20% of the effort (just the tech lead vs the entire team) is able to anticipate (at least) 80% of the decisions.
Some follow-up benefits that, perhaps, were not clear and are noteworthy:
The bulk of the team did not stop coding while the design doc was underway
Questions that relied on external stakeholders could be answered asynchronously (on a non-blocking thread ;) )
Pitfalls related to testing, monitoring, migration policies, etc, which usually would be left behind would now be at least properly exercised
It’s also important to highlight that the engagement of the team is crucial in the process, from the RFC stage until the live-session discussion during the refinement. First of all, the more people commenting and bringing concerns and suggestions to a given system design the better it tends to be. Furthermore, it reduces drastically the chances that members of the team would feel excluded, or with a sense of top-down decisions being made, which in turn would lead to all sorts of management issues.
It’s already a consensus that the role of a developer goes far beyond coding; product vision, communication, and leadership, to name a few, are as important as the technical skills.In that sense, creating design docs with increasing scope is an excellent way to assess the maturity and growth of a developer and, thus, it works as an useful tool for career management perspective:
You have a mid developer aiming for a promotion ? let him take part of a design doc. First in pair with a Senior dev; then, continuously let him coordinate design docs with increasing scope, assessing their quality.
Another interesting practice that is noteworthy is building the design docs in pairs, similarly to what is preached on the Agile Manifesto for coding. It brings excellent results as many common questions and answers, regardless of how experienced the tech lead is, might be anticipated by another set of eyes while still keeping the bulk of the team focused on coding.
Conclusion
Although I didn’t provide an example of a real design doc throughout this article there are plenty of resources that can be found online. Don’t use anything off the shelf, rather try to spend some time creating a template that suits the specific necessities of your organization.
As mentioned, try to cover especially the WHYS (background, known issues, questions) and HOWS (architecture, how to test, how to monitor, rollout) of a feature.
As an engineering manager it's important to drive your teams towards creating thoughtful documentation combining with them the standards that are expected and the cadence in which they need to be released. You should not usually be responsible for creating them. Rather, consider yourself as one of the stakeholders available to provide insights and reason about their several aspects. However it's really important to hold your team, especially the Tech Lead, accountable for the process.
To finalize, a few useful resources for those interested in knowing more
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRPKBVHmm2U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgHL41e7vgI | https://medium.com/@lhrolim/rediscovering-the-importance-of-system-design-d193a291bd1f | ['Luiz Rolim'] | 2020-12-27 20:06:42.871000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Design', 'Architecture'] |
Why Learning Java is a Starting Point For Big Data Developers Of The Future | Why Learning Java is a Starting Point For Big Data Developers Of The Future
Java is a big friend to Big Data scientists and developers. Here I am going to tell you why is that so
Photo by Franki Chamaki on Unsplash
Considering the impressive pace of big data growth over the last 2–4 years, it’s clear that this subset of data science will dominate the future tech. In this post, I decided to take a closer look at the technologies that are widely used for big data projects.
Java is a leading language when it comes to handling big data projects. Here’s why and how a beginning developer can learn Java for handling complex BD tasks.
A Few Words About Big Data Objectives
Before discussing the impact of Java in the big data of the future, let’s take a look at what types of projects data scientists will be focused on in the next 3–5 years. Here’s my personal take on what big data will mature into in the near future.
1. It’s going to converge with analytics
Now that businesses can gather terabytes of data on every user, tracking on-site behavior, communication preferences, and other relevant metrics, companies are more encouraged to invest in analytics than ever.
Gartner, for one, predicts that, if a business owner doesn’t invest in reporting tools by the end of the year, the company will no longer be competitive by the end of 2021.
Adopting big data algorithms will improve the precision of analytics and give business owners a big-picture view of brand reputation and customer relationships. The introduction of decision trees, linear regression, and other visualization and prognosis methods will help business owners anticipate customers’ needs and increase the quality of brand interactions.
2. Big data will help fight climate change
Although the impact of climate change is real, scientists lack the understanding of the most immediate threats humanity will face in the next 20 years. Big data is a way for the researching community to consolidate their efforts and stay connected via a stream of reliable real-time insights.
Needless to say, the ability of big data tools to process large datasets will improve the precision of approximations and the efficiency of contingency plans people can build based on these insights.
3. The impact of data cloud will grow but not dominate
According to statistics, the value of the global cloud computing market is expected to exceed $623 billion by the end of 2021. Right now, an increasing number of companies are switching to cloud from on-premise solutions.
Having said that, fully migrating to the cloud is a complex process, not to mention the security concerns that come along with trusting online third-party vendors with huge datasets.
In the big data environment, hybrid environments are a common solution, with cloud tools used to host dynamic datasets and on-premise storages used to keep track of the static ones.
Why is Java Still The Best Choice For Big Data Projects?
If you are a software developer considering a career in big data, learning Java should be your starting point. Let’s take a look as to why saying “Java is Big Data” wouldn’t be an exaggeration.
1. Big Data tools for Java are accessible
When considering big data implementation, most business owners are looking for the cheapest tech stack possible. Since most Java tools used in big data (Hadoop, Spark, Mahout) are open-source, such a tech stack is free and highly flexible. As a result, most employees looking for big data engineers will focus on Java proficiency and the working knowledge of the tools that use the language.
2. Java is Type-Safe
Almost every data scientist out there would confirm that being able to understand what types of data you are dealing with when working on a project is crucial when the set of information to process is huge. Being a type-safe language, Java is a first-choice for a fair share of developers and business owners since type-safety allows spending less time on unit testing and facilitates codebase maintenance.
3. Java is scalable
Most projects big data professionals work on are ambitious, designed with upscaling in mind. Thanks to its robustness, wide toolkit, huge community, and cross-platform compatibility, Java is unmatched by other languages in terms of scalability and makes a perfect fit for designing complex big data infrastructures.
4. Wide range of built-in features (not to mention libraries and frameworks)
If most of the other languages are only beginning to acknowledge the importance of machine learning and data science, Java was the first one to jump on the bandwagon. As a result, it has more tools for DS project than most alternatives, to name a few:
Other than libraries, the language becomes more suited to data science with every new release. Say, Java 8’s Lambdas help to make the code to-the-point and concise, the ninth version re-introduced REPL that made iterative development faster and more efficient.
Whether you prefer Hadoop or Spark, knowing Java will be crucial to be proficient in either platform. To make the most out of BD tools, developers often need to add new features to the source code — that’s where Java knowledge is essential.
Reviewing Top 5 Java Tools For Big Data Projects
After having explained the benefits business owners get from choosing Java for big data projects and the reasons why developers should mark the starting point of a data science career with ensuring Java proficiency, let’s take a look at the most widely used Java tools in big data projects.
1. Apache Hadoop
Hadoop Ecosystem and Their Components by Data-flair.training
Hadoop is a go-to big data processing technologies for most business owners — there are dozens of libraries and tools dedicated to sorting through and storing large datasets. Despite its popularity, among talent managers, Hadoop development job openings are known as the hardest ones to fill in since most developers lack an in-depth understanding of MapReduce.
Although Hadoop is one of the most complex technologies out there, the gain of becoming proficient in it is definitely worth the pain. According to statistics, the median yearly salary of a Hadoop developer is $103, 000.
2. Spark
Spark is a common Hadoop alternative that is attractive to developers thanks to its high speed, agility, and smooth learning curve. Typically, Spark is preferred over Hadoop for large-scale SQL projects, data streaming, and machine learning tasks.
It’s worth mentioning that Spark isn’t fully written in Java but in Scala — however, the interfaces of both languages are similar (as a proficient Java developer, you will not need a lot of time to get the hang of Scala).
As for workplace opportunities, Spark is a lucrative technology to master since some of the biggest names in tech are looking for professionals in the field — Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, or IBM.
3. Mahout
From the Bauman National Library wiki
Since big data projects are closely intertwined with machine learning, big data developers often cross paths with Mahout — an open-source, Java-based library of ML tools. Mahout gained a tremendous following thanks to its scalability and a large data processing toolset.
Typically, developers start learning Apache Mahout after understanding the functionality of Hadoop, which makes sense (a fair share of the library’s infrastructure is made up of repurposed Hadoop code).
4. Storm
Compared to Hadoop or Spark, Apache Storm is a narrower toolset of big data tools, focused predominantly on enabling real-time distributed data streaming. Equipped to deal with high-volume and velocity data, the platform is repeatedly praised for its high scalability and fault tolerance.
Other than that, Storm’s compatibility with most popular queuing and database systems makes learning how to use the platform a must-have for a beginning big data developer.
5. Deeplearning4j
Deeplearning4j is a Java-based tool neural network developers swear by. This platform is well-done on so many levels, from the ease of use to the quality of documentation. Deeplearning4j is scalable — you can integrate it with Apache Spark or run the platform on GPUs. The tool supports microservice projects as well — it’s one of the few platforms out there with a robust microservice infrastructure.
List of Resources to Learn Java For Big Data
If you are planning to build a career in big data, becoming proficient in Java is essential. However, since there are so many language learning resources around, developers often struggle to distinguish between the good and the bad ones.
Here’s the list of resources I compiled for my students over the years — in my opinion, these are all the tools you need to get from a newbie to a professional in Java.
Coding Games and Courses:
Codegym is a gamified platform for beginning and advanced Java learners. Using gamification and practical tasks to explain the core concepts of the language, this tool is your way to start coding from day one. My students repeatedly complimented the platform, saying it improves knowledge retention and gives a clear idea of how the concepts they learn are useful in the workplace.
Although Code Combat doesn’t offer programming learners a solid theoretical framework, the tool is perfect for using your skills to complete real-life tasks. Combined with high-quality graphics and an intelligent plot, Code Combat is an enjoyable RPG you wouldn’t mind spending your weekends with.
Being a data scientist, as well as a programmer, is about collaboration and teamwork. If you are anxious about coordinating with peers at the office, check Coding Game out. The idea behind the product is both simple and ambitious — uniting developers from all over the world to build a game together.
When it comes to learning from the best Java developers and getting noticed by top-notch employees, CodingGame is a decent resource.
This retro-style game might seem basic at the first glance — yet, there’s more to this robot battle than it lets show. Personally, I like this platform exactly because of how raw and stripped down it is. Other than enjoying robot battles, you can join hardcore challenges and chat with fellow developers via a dedicated forum.
Online courses
Learn Java For Big Data:
Books
Learning the basics of Java
Learning Java For Big Data:
Forums and social media
Learning Java for Big Data:
Conclusion
Personally for me, Java and big data always came together. Although I acknowledge the potential of Python as well, in my experience, a successful data scientist shouldn’t choose one over the other — rather, you learn how to handle both languages and draw on their respective strengths.
Since Java is one of the best-taught languages online, I am confident that, with enough determination and the understanding of basic programming concepts, you can be good at using its tools for DS projects.
Hopefully, the resources I linked above will be a good starting point to fuel a beginner developer’s journey. Good luck discovering the full potential of Java and using the language in your projects. | https://towardsdatascience.com/why-learning-java-is-a-starting-point-for-big-data-developers-of-the-future-9a9b6d240dea | ['John Selawsky'] | 2020-06-12 16:02:14.882000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Data Science', 'Java', 'Big Data Analytics'] |
Indoor Air Quality in Winter | The weather outside may be frightful, but the air inside could easily be worse. Although the holiday season is here, it’s important to think about the effects that winter will have on your indoor air quality.
Why does indoor air quality get worse in winter? Unfortunately, the cold season is one of the worst times of the year for indoor air quality, either at home or at work. People stay inside tightly-sealed buildings while reducing the amount of warm air escaping outdoors, replacing ventilation for heating. This means people are breathing a greater amount of recirculated — not fresh — air. This traps pollutants and moisture in, including dust, pollen, spores, and more, which increase the concentration of contaminants in the air.
But now, with Covid-19, and people being cooped up indoors up to 90% of the time and with Christmas and New Year holidays around the corner, it also increases the risk of spreading the virus in enclosed environments.
What Makes Indoor Air Quality Dangerous?
1. Sealing in the pollution
When it’s cold, everyone shuts up all their windows and doors. However, this traps in VOCs, dust, and other harmful airborne molecules, which significantly decreases air circulation. According to the EPA, this is a cause of indoor air pollution, exacerbated by the winter when people sealed off their windows and doors.
2. Wood and Other Heat Sources
For homes with a fireplace, wood is often preferred to avoid high electricity and gas bill. However, wood smoke, if left unchecked, can raise PM2.5 to hazardous levels. Other sources such as a heater can make the air warmer but very dry, which can cause cracked skin and lips. Beyond the skin, excessively dry air can cause a dry nose and throat, which lowers our immunity and increases the chance of getting sick.
3. Over-humidifying
Cold air is usually dry, so people tend to compensate this by turning on their humidifiers. A humidifier will add moisture to the air and reduce dryness of your skin, lips, nose and throat. Just be sure to use a humidistat to prevent the humidity from getting too high, which could lead to mould growth and dust mites, which can cause serious problems for both buildings and people’s health.
4. Being Indoors For Too Long
The air we exhale emits a lot of water vapor every minute. Tiny water droplets floating in the air, including our body odor, are trapped inside, which creates a smell. This slowly increases air temperature, which also increases the humidity. With higher humidity and zero air circulation, the environment is quicker to be less hygienic and prone to bacteria and viruses.
So, What Can We Do?
Open the windows occasionally to ventilate with fresh air, but beware of outdoor air pollution. Use an air purifier and check the air filter from time to time, replacing them as needed. Safely store toxic chemicals (paint, spray, etc…) in a cabinet instead of leaving them out in the open. Avoid smoking indoors. Clean your home occasionally (vacuum the floor, wash the bed sheets, etc…) to avoid indoor pollutants from piling up. Use an indoor air quality monitor and act when needed when readings are not in the safe zone. Like PiCO Home!
Using PiCO Home
With PiCO Home in our office, we are able to monitor the air quality levels throughout the day. It seems that the air quality is good when we’re home, but is high when we work, due to the heater and humidifier. Knowing this, we adjust them as needed and turn on our air purifier to keep our environment safe and healthy! | https://medium.com/@steve-tan/indoor-air-quality-in-winter-ca44257353c1 | ['Brilliant'] | 2020-12-23 07:37:14.186000+00:00 | ['Air Pollution', 'Air Quality', 'Smart Home', 'Covid 19', 'Winter'] |
Adaptive Single Window Systems For Investor Delight | Photo by Myriam Jessier on Unsplash
The concept of electronic National Single Windows started at the break of this millennium. Countries like Ghana, Singapore and Senegal were the early adopters of these ICT platforms in early 2000. Later, more nations leapt the bandwagon to implement paperless, automated systems for Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) and trade facilitation. ASEAN, for example, was the first economic bloc to come up with a Regional Single Window Project. Technology has acted as the force multiplier in strengthening Single Window solutions that take care of an entire project investment cycle- from conception to implementation and beyond. ‘Single Windows’ for future can be more seamless where an investor can access everything from land to water and electricity and get all approvals through ‘click and scroll’ on a unified portal.
Windows beyond Trade Facilitation
Globally, the Single Window System for foreign trade has been the key concept for trade facilitation across borders. The WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement encourages all its members to set up a Single Window. When implemented efficiently, Single Window projects can spell a multitude of benefits- enhanced revenue, faster clearance times and improved transparency & governance for the economy.
But do Single Windows only mean less bureaucracy and faster approvals? Figures on costs say they have a lot more to offer. The World Bank has estimated that automating customs processes can save as much as $115 per container in seaborne trade. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD), automating processes can trim trade costs by 2.4 per cent for low income economies, 2.3 per cent for upper middle-income economies and 2.1 per cent for lower middle income economies. The Customs Service of the Republic of Korea estimated that introducing a Single Window System in 2010 brought $18 million in benefits. Closer home, implementing Single Window systems as part of Business Reforms Action Plan (BRAP) soared India’s EoDB rankings by the World Bank from 142 in 2014 to 63 in 2019.
From Multiple Silos to a Single Window: The many-layered challenges
Usually, the government data is unstructured. A single window platform can overcome silos by digitizing all documents. But the migration to this unified platform can be a cross-functional challenge as the World Bank articulates in a 2016 report: “A Single Window solution is not just an IT solution but an organizational challenge with a fundamental need to put in place a multi-faceted service organization that is authorized and enabled to meet the needs of all its clients, public and private alike”.
GovTech for Agile Single Windows
GovTech can catalyze ‘Next Gen Single Window Systems’ for an ever changing business landscape. Think of one integrated platform where investors can access info on spatial and geographical land data, register their units, apply for all approvals ranging from environment clearance to No Objection Certificate (NOC) and building plan approvals, get permits for electricity and water and to top it all, check status ‘real time’,
Sounds like all goodies stacked in a single bucket offering? This is how Single Windows are designed to deliver for Industry 4.0. A seamless government platform with the sprinkling of niche technologies like Blockchain and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Take for instance Singapore, UK, Belarus and Estonia- they all have leveraged Blockchain powered land registry to cut turnaround time. Another epoch in digital transformation is the emergence of ‘Virtual Data Rooms’ to create ‘Golden Records’ for industries. As procedures get easier, the government machinery faces a deluge of data to process. This is where agile RPA bots can come in handy to substitute mundane and error prone human functions like scrutiny and validation of applications filed by industries.
Powered by ground breaking applications, GovTech can make ‘Single Windows’ deliver more for EoDB and create an immersive investor experience. Businesses are evolving. And, so are technologies. Governments can spot and sustain this synergy. | https://medium.com/@nanupany/adaptive-single-window-systems-for-investor-delight-646891476b7c | ['Priyadarshi Nanu Pany'] | 2020-11-23 06:42:18.900000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Investors', 'Single Window System', 'Govtech'] |
Rotate Array | Question: Given an array, rotate the array to the right by k steps, where k is non-negative.
You may view the full question here.
Approach 1: Let’s start with a simple approach using a temporary copy of the array. Diving straight to the code —
//Approach 1:
//Runtime: 1ms
//Memory usage: 38.2MB class Solution {
public void rotate(int[] nums, int k) {
int[] copy = new int[nums.length];
for(int i = 0; i<nums.length; i++){
copy[i] = nums[i];
}
for(int i = 0; i<nums.length; i++){
nums[(i+k)%nums.length] = copy[i];
}
}
}
Approach 2.1: Now, let’s try a solution where we rotate the array in-place.
You could check out the solution posted here. (NOTE: You may have to unlock the solution by posting a valid solution first though.)
The core logic used in this approach is that we use one temporary variable and perform in-place swap(swap may be the wrong word to use, as we are ‘rotating’ here). If we proceed to follow this approach we would see that there could be a point when we arrive back to the index where we started; while we might still have more elements in the array yet to be rotated.
Consider the following example —
The in-place rotation starting from index = 0 would look like this —
As we see, the rotation leads us back to our original starting point. If we continue, it would simply be an endless loop. So, we need to keep track of where we started and break out of the loop when we come back to the original starting point. And then, we move to the next index, in our case, index = 0+1 = 1 and we repeat the same process until we cover all the elements. We can probably keep track of that by keeping count of how many elements we have moved so far using a counter.
And the code would look like —
//Approach 2.1:
//Runtime: 1ms
//Memory usage: 37MB class Solution {
public void rotate(int[] nums, int k) {
int start = -1;
int nextIndex;
int i;
int temp;
int prev = (nums.length>0? nums[0] : 0);
k=k%nums.length;
for(int count = 0; count<nums.length && k>0; ){
start++;
i = start;
prev = nums[i];
do {
//compute next index
nextIndex = (i + k) % nums.length;
//make a copy of the data that will be lost while swapping
temp = nums[nextIndex];
//swap
nums[nextIndex] = prev;
//prepare for next swap
prev = temp;
i = nextIndex;
//increment count
count++;
} while(i!=start && count<nums.length);
}
}
}
Approach 2.2: After tweaking the previous approach a bit, by adjusting the variables used for computation. Looks like using new variables in each loop instead of trying to re-use/re-initializing the same speeds up the process. Check out the code below —
//Approach 2.2:
//Runtime: 0ms
//Memory usage: 36.7MB class Solution {
public void rotate(int[] nums, int k) {
k=k%nums.length;
for(int start = 0, count = 0; count<nums.length && k>0; start++){
int i = start;
int prev = nums[i];
do {
//compute next index
int nextIndex = (i + k) % nums.length;
//make a copy of the data that will be lost while swapping
int temp = nums[nextIndex];
//swap
nums[nextIndex] = prev;
//prepare for next swap
prev = temp;
i = nextIndex;
//increment count
count++;
} while(i!=start && count<nums.length);
}
}
}
Find more posts here.
Cheers & Chao! | https://medium.com/@monisha.mary.mathew/rotate-array-b46376ad7bfa | ['Monisha Mathew'] | 2019-07-22 00:11:36.935000+00:00 | ['Rotate Array', 'Leetcode', 'Programming', 'Leetcode Easy'] |
Kotlin | Top Ten Things To Know | Here We Go👈👈👈
No more Semi Colon ;
2. Variable declaration: Can be either var (read/write) or val (read only).
val a: Int = 1 // immediate assignment
val b = 2 // `Int` type is inferred
val c: Int // Type required when no initializer is provided
c = 3 // deferred assignment
val oneMillion = 1_000_000 // Can use underscores for readability
3. Defining functions: Functions can be defined by fun keyword and can be top-level, no need to put everything inside a class. Also functions can be passed around just like any other type and used as argument of functions.
// Function with params and return type
fun sum(a: Int, b: Int): Int {
return a + b
} // Function with params and no-return type
fun printSum(a: Int, b: Int) {
println("sum of $a and $b is ${a + b}")
}
4. Null Safety (The Billion Dollar mistake fix): In Kotlin, the type system distinguishes between references that can hold null (nullable references) and those that can not (non-null references).
Using safe call operator (?)
private var number: Int? = null // Here we are telling compiler that number can have null value. By, default any variable cannot be null in kotlin.
Using the not-null assertion operator ( !! ).
This option is for NPE-lovers. If we want an NPE, we can have it, but you have to ask for it explicitly using ( !! ), and it does not appear out of the blue.
val l = b!!.length // converts any value to a non-null type and throws an exception if the value is null
Checking for null with Elvis Operator.
val x= b?.length ?: -1 //We can use Elvis Operator instead of if-expression
Safe Casts. Regular casts may result into a ClassCastException if the object is not of the target type.
val aInt: Int? = a as? Int // Using safe casts will return null if the attempt was not successful
Function that returns null. Marking the return type with (?) as nullable when null value is possible.
// Return null if str does not hold an integer:
fun parseInt(str: String): Int? {
// …
}
5. Using conditionals: Pretty much similar to all the languages except notable for switch statements which is done by when statements.
: if is an expression, i.e. it returns a value. Therefore there is no ternary operator (condition ? then : else), because ordinary if works fine in this role.
// Traditional Usage
var max: Int
if (a > b) {
max = a
} else {
max = b
}
// As expression
val max = if (a > b) a else b
: for loop iterates through anything that provides an iterator. This is equivalent to the foreach loop in languages like C#
// for loop
for (item in collection) print(item)
: while and do..while work as usual
// while loop
val items = listOf("apple", "banana", "kiwi")
var index = 0
while (index < items.size) {
println("item at $index is ${items[index]}")
index++
}
: when replaces the switch operator of C-like languages. whencan be used either as an expression or as a statement. If it is used as an expression, the value of the satisfied branch becomes the value of the overall expression.
If when is used as an expression, the else branch is mandatory, unless the compiler can prove that all possible cases are covered with branch conditions.
//Switch(When) Condition when(view.visibility){
View.VISIBLE -> toast("visible")
View.INVISIBLE -> toast("invisible")
else -> toast("gone")
}
6. No need of “new” keyword:
val rectangle = Rectangle(5.0, 2.0) //no ‘new’ keyword required
val triangle = Triangle(3.0, 4.0, 5.0)
7. No “Static” keyword, that doesn’t mean that we can’t reap the benefits provided by static methods in Kotlin.
We should use package-level functions if we want to follow DRY, then we can import the function anywhere and use it there.
8. A brand new “Data” class, whose main purpose is to hold data. Avoid the boilerplate we need in Java. Apart from getters and setters we get equals(), hashCode() & copy() for free.
data class User(val name: String, val age: Int)
9. Lateinit (not Lazy). Every non-nullable class property that is declared in the class needs to be assigned in the constructor; otherwise, we’ll get a compiler error.
To defer initialization of the variable, we can specify that a field is lateinit. We are informing the compiler that this will variable will be assigned later and we are freeing the compiler from the responsibility of making sure that this variable gets initialized:
private lateinit var value: MyClass
fun init(externalProperties: Any) {
value = somethingThatDependsOn(externalProperties)
}
10. Type comparison with “is” and “as”. To check if an object is of a specific type you can use the “is” expression.
if (obj is Double) // Check is the obj a Double
println(obj + 3.0) if (obj !is String){ // make sure obj is not a string
println(obj)
}
To cast an object there is the “as” operator. This operator has two forms: the safe and unsafe cast. | https://medium.com/k4kotlin/kotlin-top-ten-things-to-know-62ca665e7fab | ['Angry Red Cat'] | 2019-03-27 06:39:11.187000+00:00 | ['Android', 'Java', 'Kotlin Beginners', 'Android App Development', 'Kotlin'] |
What we can learn from Facebook’s $610 million failed IPL bid | IPL is India’s biggest sports league. In a span of 10 years, it has become one of the hottest and most sought after sports event for traditional and digital broadcasting.
The recently concluded IPL media rights bidding process was a testimony to the growth and demand of the league. In probably the most transparent of all sports broadcasting bids, IPL proved it’s demand with 14 out of 24 companies vying for National and International television and digital broadcasting rights for 5 years.
Rupert Murdoch owned Star network was the eventual winner of both television and digital rights in an astonishing $2.6 billion for a package that included broadcast and streaming rights. They won the rights for being the only global bid bidder.
The highlight of the bid process, however, was the battle for the India subcontinent digital rights, which saw a mix of big players from India and the silicon valley going head to head.
The most anticipated category of the bid process attracted companies like Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, ESPN Digital, BAM Tech amongst the top names turned out to be a five-way race between TIL, Airtel, Jio, Star and Facebook.
Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, ESPN Digital picked up the tender but did not enter the bid and BAM Tech was disqualified for lack of documentation (submission). This left Facebook the only representative of the Silicon Valley.
What really surprised me was Facebook seemed to be unfazed by the asking price and in fact, Facebook were the highest bidders with a $610 million bid to digitally broadcast the 2-month league in India!
Facebook and Twitter are focusing very heavily on video and in this case sports based content seems to be an anchor content for Facebook. In February, Facebook was reported to have live streamed all 46 football matches of the top level Mexican football league Liga MX 2017 season. Facebook has also actively live streaming ESL esports events.
Recently at the Soccerex, Jerry Newman — Facebook sports partnerships Europe, spoke about their new video platform ‘Watch’, their platform for sports content. They launched it with a documentary about Real Madrid.
How serious is Mark Zuckerberg about video content and in particular sports as anchor content, you may ask? Facebook eventually wants all of its shows and content deals to move to an ad-revenue-sharing model, but right now it’s clearly comfortable spending money upfront — even hundreds of millions of dollars — to secure streaming rights for marquee content.
Facebook may have lost in spite of their mammoth $610 million bid but their bid is a proof about their ambition to become a leader in sports video content.
Visit our website to read opinions and infographics on trending sports business news from India and rest of the world. | https://medium.com/sportsnexus/what-we-can-learn-from-facebooks-610-million-failed-ipl-bid-a45159e25338 | ['Nilesh Deshmukh'] | 2017-10-13 16:59:22.298000+00:00 | ['Facebook', 'Ipl', 'Digital Marketing', 'Opinion', 'Digital Video'] |
Anonymous article that touched my heart! | Photo by Lisa-Marie Liebig on Unsplash
It was just another night when Dhruv decided to get up multiple times and kept nursing for hours together and as expected I was tired and frustrated and decided to distract myself by browsing random stuff on the internet. That’s when I came across this article. By the time I finished reading it, I had tears rolling down my cheeks. Read it for yourself and you can thank me later.
Dear mama,
Could you wake up for a minute? I know it’s hard for you to open your eyes — we haven’t slept a lot yet tonight. But mama, I kinda need you right now. You see, the thing is, I feel a bit lonely at the moment. I’m lying here in my crib and I’m somewhat cold.
I didn’t mean to cry so I’m sorry I did. I’ve been trying to get your attention by making some noises for a while now but you were in such a deep sleep, you couldn’t hear me. I don’t know how else to get your attention. During the day, I see and hear you all make noises and I see you respond well to each other. You talk to me like that too. And I try very hard but I don’t know how to do that yet. So I cry so you’d listen to me.
Mama, I’m sorry for crying. Like I said, I feel a bit lonely. I just spent nine months inside your belly where I’ve always felt safe. It’s a bit scary to me to be in such a big bed all by myself. I miss your heartbeat, the rushing of your blood, the warmth and the food. I miss your breathing and the hands you put over me to protect me when I still was inside your belly.
So mama, would you please listen to me? I’m calling for you in the only way I’m able to. I feel really alone. I need your warmth and your peace for a moment. I need to know for sure you’re still here. So can I come to lay with you for a little while to feel your warmth?
Some cuddles first. Mama, this feels so nice. I feel you holding me while you gently rock me and when I can smell and feel you, I feel so safe. I can feel your hand on my back and my ear is placed just right on your heart. Mom, this is home to me. Do you remember back when we were always together? I always felt like this back then. Sometimes I miss that time. It was so nice to be close to you.
When I hear you softly whisper into my ear “Everything is okay little one, everything is fine”. Your voice is so soft and familiar. You smell good mom, a bit like me and a bit like you.
Mama, will you hold me just a little longer? I’m really tired and I feel so relaxed in your arms. It almost feels like before. I’m going to close my eyes for a little while, okay? Can I please stay with you here a little longer to enjoy your love and your presence?
And can I drink some more? Mama, since we’re laying like this anyway.. I’d like to ask you something. I know, it sounds pretty sad because I can’t talk like you can yet so I’m sorry for crying again. But mama, can I please drink some more? My throat is dry and my tummy is empty and since we’re here anyway…maybe I can have a few more sips? Your milk tastes delicious and is so warm and familiar.
Thanks mom, that’s exactly what I needed. I was really really thirsty. Your finger on my cheek feels great by the way. And you’re smiling at me. Nothing makes me happier than seeing your smile and feeling your presence. I’ll close my eyes again, okay?
Please don’t put me away straight away, I really enjoy falling asleep here. This feels really good. Can I stay with you for another hour or so?
My tummy hurts. What is that?! Mama! Can you feel this? Mom? My tummy hurts so bad. What is happening? Please help me mama, I don’t know what’s happening. I’ve never felt anything like this.
Thank you for rubbing my belly mom. It’s late and everyone is asleep. I’m so happy you’re here for me. I don’t know what I’d do without you mama. My tummy already hurts less and when you hold me like that… I feel pretty tired. Maybe I’ll close my eyes again. Please hold me a little longer?
Can I have more cuddles? You won’t believe this mama! I’m a bit scared. I just woke up and I didn’t know where I was for a second. It was all dark and a little cold again. I know you’re tired mama. But I really missed you, can I please be with you again for a while?
Mama, I can see that you’re tired. There are tears in your eyes and every now and then a tear rolls down your cheek. I’m sorry mama but I feel really strange in this new world. I miss home. I miss always being close to you.
Sometimes I feel a tear fall on my head while you gently rock me. You’re singing me a song so that I can go back to sleep. You softly dry the tears that fell on my head with your hand. That feels nice mom, do that again?
I fall asleep on your chest. You feel so soft, so familiar. There’s nowhere I sleep better than here. My legs are pulled up, just like they were back when I still lived with you. I can hear your heartbeat again and I move along with your breathing.
I will learn soon. Mama, you’re the best place to be. I’m so glad I get to come to you over and over again.
I don’t like being unable to just ask either but I’m really happy you listen to me when I call for you.
Soon, I’ll be able to be there for you. Or for my brothers or sisters. Or for my friends in school. You’re teaching me how to take care of someone.
You’re teaching me that you listen, even when I can’t ask. You’re teaching me I’m safe, even when sometimes it feels like I’m not. You’re teaching me that you love me, even when you’re very tired. Thank you.
And mama, I love you.
{author unknown} | https://medium.com/@dearnithya/anonymous-article-that-touched-my-heart-984d980f5579 | ['Nithya Natarajan'] | 2021-09-12 17:59:05.592000+00:00 | ['Heart Touching Story', 'New Mom', 'Baby Love', 'Breastfeeding'] |
Desfachatez | Jack of all trades, mistress of poetry. Mexicana. Bi. Autistic. Find all things Gaby here https://linktr.ee/GabyRosales
Follow | https://medium.com/voces-en-espa%C3%B1ol/desfachatez-a35cf2311654 | ['Gb Rogut'] | 2020-11-05 18:37:35.360000+00:00 | ['Poesía', 'Poetry', 'Relationships', 'Poema', 'Feminism'] |
Is JavaScript Synchronous or Asynchronous? What the Hell is a Promise? | Asynchronous Callbacks
The earliest and most straightforward solution to being stuck in the synchronous world is using asynchronous callbacks (think setTimeout() ).
Let’s use a database request as an example: asynchronous callbacks allow you to invoke a callback function which sends a database request (and any other nested callbacks) off to your app, where it waits for a response from the database, freeing up the rest of your code to continue running.
Image by Aleks Shineleva
Once the database request completes, the results (and any other nested code) are sent to the queue and then processed through the event loop.
In the diagram here, you can see how this differs from the synchronous code. Function C, along with E, F and G are all sent off to the browser, queue and event loop.
While this is a great solution, it leaves something to be desired. Since you can’t predict exactly when function C will resolve, you have to nest all dependent functions within it. This gets messy fast and leads to the infamous callback hell that no one wants to deal with. It was this environment that inspired the promise. | https://medium.com/better-programming/is-javascript-synchronous-or-asynchronous-what-the-hell-is-a-promise-7aa9dd8f3bfb | ['Kait Hoehne'] | 2019-06-28 17:49:02.502000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Promises', 'Asynchronous', 'Synchronous', 'Single Threaded'] |
On Remembering How to do Human | Can you ever forget how to be a human in the world? When major depressive disorder imprisoned me in my head and threw away the key for five years, I lost myself almost entirely.
Such was the disconnect between my previous life and what I had become that I looked in the mirror one morning and had no idea who was staring back at me. After being mostly housebound for many years, I couldn’t even remember how to put makeup on with confidence and put my best face forward.
Somehow, the little gestures that make up daily human interactions were more difficult to relearn than my job.
Even though I lost my writing voice for five years, I’m a journalist by profession and writing has always been vocation. I did struggle a lot at first but it was nothing in comparison to how much I’m struggling with the rest of normal life as I try and put back together all the pieces of my identity.
Despite depression, I’m still a communicator at heart, endlessly curious about our shared humanness. On the professional front at least, I’m operational, motivated, and able to think strategically. And I haven’t lost the innate ability to build a rapport with random strangers from all walks of life in no time and under most circumstances.
On the personal front however, I’m a two-legged tornado made of chaos, confusion, and endless epiphanies. | https://asingularstory.medium.com/on-remembering-how-to-do-human-39d5f19c457e | ['A Singular Story'] | 2020-12-10 15:17:37.189000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Mental Health', 'Relationships', 'Life Lessons', 'Psychology'] |
10 Principles of Strategic Thinking, or How to Think Strategically? | Perhaps the best explanation for this principle is a proverb that we all know well and tell anyone who is constantly changing. Yes, “A rolling stone gathers no moss” Both in business and personal life!
A young man who was a sailor during World War I when he was injured by a German submarine attack on his ship and had an unusual voice; He was trying to become an actor. In New York, his unusual speech led him to be given only limited plans. After that, he went to Hollywood and again played only short roles in eight films. Everyone thought that his speech problem would hinder his progress and that he had spent all his wealth on his expenses, even though he belonged to a wealthy family. So he returned to New York and auditioned for the role of a gangster in a Broadway theatre.
His speech problems came to his aid here. He could speak in the tone of a gangster. He succeeded in starring in the film when Warner Bros. Film Company bought the film production rights. Again, he impressed the producers, who offered him the original drawings, which he had previously turned down.
Humphrey Bogart showed that despite all the obstacles in the way of achieving his goal, commitment and commitment to the goal led to his success. | https://medium.com/@iambaradaran/10-principles-of-strategic-thinking-or-how-to-think-strategically-94d4ebcd824c | ['Mohammad Baradaran'] | 2020-12-18 22:27:39.775000+00:00 | ['Management', 'Strategic Thinking', 'Strategy', 'Thinking'] |
CIA Triad: What is it and how does it tie into infosec? | The Triad.
In terms of information security, the broadness of the topic itself has very few boundaries. That being said, there are a thousand ways to catch a mouse. However, after years of a problem reoccurring and costing people time and money, someone always comes up with “the mousetrap.”
Information security is way different than the direct act of catching a mouse, but like anything, there are foundations and fundamentals in place that ensure a higher success rate. The CIA Triad is composed of three things: confidentiality, integrity and availability. This triad should be at the forefront of any organizations security infrastructure and should function as objectives for every security program.
Confidentiality is an organizations act of keeping their information private. Organizations can only allow certain information to be seen by certain individuals within the organization so this act itself has a lot to do with preventing unauthorized access in general. For example, if a company is dealing with financing, they are likely to have a lot of social security numbers among other potentially detrimental information to let into the wrong hands. Only the client themselves and context-specific employees should be able to read a social security number so part of this company’s security plan regarding confidentiality would involve this.
Integrity is simple. The sensitive information that a company holds must not be altered in any way so that when the right person receives it, they can use it properly. It must be correct, reliable and authentic. Picture if a major bank had someone tampering with balances. As nice as it would be to have a few extra 0s added to my balance, it is easy to see how this could be a headache for the bank itself and its employees. It could even be an issue that stems further into other peoples worlds. Imagine the merchants where people used the phony balances to buy things they wouldn’t be able to beforehand. I’m sure the banks would do everything to recoup that cash — probably easier to have a strong integrity focus in your security camp.
Availability means that networks, systems, and applications are up and running effectively. It ensures that authorized users have timely access to resources when needed. Can you imagine working at a restaurant right now with the digital menus and the wi-fi goes out? It sounds ridiculous to think about a restaurant in regards to cyber security, but if customers cant readily access a menu, its going to be tough to keep the lights on. | https://medium.com/@klorenz013/cia-triad-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-tie-into-infosec-40992d7e6700 | ['Kevin Lorenz'] | 2020-12-08 01:13:49.714000+00:00 | ['Information Technology', 'Infosec', 'Cybersecurity', 'Technology', 'Cia Triad'] |
How the Best Problem Solvers Crack the Code | What’s the Secret to Great Writing?
Hint: It’s the easiest way to get over your writer’s block.
Photo by jules a. on Unsplash
The secret to great writing is becoming a dedicated reader.
Your writing is a culmination of everything you have read over time. The voices. The styles. The headlines. It’s everything you have picked up along the way. If you want to become a better writer, you need to read more.
To improve as a writer, you can’t neglect reading. A writer who doesn’t read is like an athlete who doesn’t watch his or her own sport or a movie producer who doesn’t watch movies. Even if you are a natural storyteller, you still need to read.
Let’s dive into how reading improves your writing skills. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/whats-the-secret-to-great-writing-847799e2f5c8 | ['Matthew Royse'] | 2020-10-19 12:36:53.659000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Inspiration', 'Writing', 'Productivity', 'Reading'] |
Why Our Future Depends on Libraries | I found a beautiful book. In his book amazing book, Neil Gaiman suggests that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I want to share a passage about the “library” part because everybody should read this part for our future. (You can buy the book from here)
Neil Gaiman made a plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and preserve both of these things.
It is obviously in his interest for people to read, for them to read fiction, for libraries and librarians to exist, and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur. So he is biased as a writer. But he is much, much more biased as a reader.
Everything changes when we read.
People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate. The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity.
I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. It’s tosh. It’s snobbery, and it’s foolishness. We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: Anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy. You are finding out something as you read that will be vitally important for making your way in the world. And it’s this:
The world doesn’t have to be like this. Things can be different.
Fiction builds empathy. Fiction is something you build up from twenty-six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. And you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world, and people it and look out through other eyes. You are someone else, and when you return to your world, you are going to be slightly changed.
Neil Gaiman says:
“I was lucky. I had an excellent local library growing up, and met the kind of librarians who did not mind a small, unaccompanied boy heading back into the children’s library every morning and working his way through the card catalog, looking for books with ghosts or magic or rockets in them, looking for vampires or detectives or witches or wonders. They were good librarians. They liked books, and they liked the books being read. They had no snobbery about anything I read. They just seemed to like that there was this wide-eyed little boy who loved to read, and they would talk to me about the books I was reading. They would find me other books they would help. They treated me with respect. I was not used to being treated with respect. I was not used to being treated with respect as an eight-year-old.”
Libraries are about freedom. They are places for freedom of reading, ideas, and communication. They are about education, entertainment, making safe spaces, and access to information. All books will or should migrate onto screens. Over twenty years before digital editions showed up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: There were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is.
Physical books are sturdy, hard to destroy, bath resistant, solar operated, feel good in your hand: They are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them.
A library is a place of safety, a haven from the world. It’s a place with librarians in it.
We need to teach our children to read and enjoy reading. We need libraries. We need books. We need literate citizens. Books are the way that dead communicate with us. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, the way that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned over and over.
We must read for pleasure. If others see us reading, we show that reading is a good thing. We must support libraries and protest the closure of libraries.
If you do not value libraries, you are silencing the voices of the past, and you are damaging the future.
Fiction is the lie that tells the truth. We all have an obligation to daydream and to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that society is vast, and the individual is less than nothing. But the truth is individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.
Albert Einstein was once asked how we could make our children intelligent. “If you want your children to be intelligent.” he said, “read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more creative, read them more fairy tales.
I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine and understand.
*A passage from Neil Gaiman’s “ART MATTERS.” | https://mathladyhazel.medium.com/why-our-future-depends-on-libraries-969851bed55a | ['Hazel Clementine'] | 2020-01-20 08:31:57.280000+00:00 | ['Personal Development', 'Life', 'Libraries', 'Books', 'Education'] |
Graceful Shutdown of NSQ Consumers | Tokopedia ecosystem is powered by micro-services architecture using cutting-edge technologies. A plethora of web services are developed and deployed on daily basis enhancing the user’s experience.
Service Reload, thus, is an integral part of the deployment process and the smoother the process is, the easier is the life of the engineers. Over the years, multiple CI/CD tools have been developed to automate such deployment process and are adopted as per the requirements & expertise levels.
It is easier to attain the graceful reload of the HTTP services but the same is not true with NSQ consumers. The NSQ consumers stop as soon as they are reloaded and a new consumer spawns which then starts consuming the messages.
Now, the real question is:
Why do we need to perform the graceful shutdown of consumers? Aren’t the messages going to be handled by the newly spawned consumers?
The short answer is Yes but it does not have any impact only if the consumers are performing tasks that can be re-processed as per the business needs. However, it is not the case in most real-life situations. There are cases where the actions performed by the consumers need to be atomic or are scenarios where real-time processing is intended.
What to do?
System signals come to aid to achieve the graceful shutdown.
When the service reload command is triggered, the system sends SIGHUP signal to the workers/consumers. Consumers are listening to this signal and waits until the handlers have processed the message in-flight. However, the daemon starts another consumer as well with the reloaded configuration.
When the signal is received, consumers perform the following actions:
1. Request handlers to not process the new messages
2. Wait until all the concurrent handlers have completed their processing
3. Stop the Consumer Gracefully
The concurrent handlers are configured to maintain the global count of handlers processing the messages. DoProcess maintains the state to decide if the message received needs to be processed or re-queued.
When all the handlers are done processing their messages, a notification is sent to stop the consumer.
The above implementation helps to perform the Graceful Shutdown of the consumers but leads to another complexity. When the messages are re-queued to NSQd, they are moved to Deffered state and wait until the consumer is stopped. They are not being instantly picked up by another consumer.
To resolve the sticky behavior, MaxInFlight for the current consumer is configured to 0 . This informs NSQd that the consumer is no more able to receive any new messages and the messages are consumed by other consumers.
This implementation helped us to reload the consumers and process the requests received from clients in real-time without impacting the user experience.
Wrap Up
NSQ Consumers are the background jobs performing a plethora of jobs. This implementation helps to keep the sanity of the already running processes while loading the new binaries.
References | https://medium.com/tokopedia-engineering/graceful-shutdown-of-nsq-consumers-23cb9134d637 | ['Ankit Agarwal'] | 2020-12-15 04:41:23.132000+00:00 | ['Graceful Shutdown', 'Nsqd', 'Golang', 'Nsq'] |
Why you should invest in Texas | Why you should invest in Texas
Texas has always been a place that embraces new ideas and hard work — from the scrappy ranchers of the early days, to the oil wildcatters, culminating in today’s high-tech entrepreneurs. It’s no wonder that Texas is one of the most active states for entrepreneurs and startups. This year’s Global Entrepreneurship Week, which included Capital Factory’s Texas Startup Roadshow, included breakout sessions relevant to each city and showcased local promising startups. These Texas startups exhibited the innovation, determination and grit of the early Texans. Capital Factory Follow Dec 16, 2020 · 4 min read
What you’ll find out
Why Investors and Entrepreneurs choose Texas
Experiences startup founders have had starting and growing companies in Texas
What Austin’s mayor has to say about why Austin has become so popular
What kinds of investment seeking startups pitched at the Texas Startup Roadshow
Which breakout sessions occurred in each Texas city along with links to view them
In 2017, Capital Factory’s founder put forth a vision for a unified Texas startup ecosystem in his Texas Startup Manifesto. In it he claims that the infrastructure of Texas, that 4 of the 11 largest US cities are all within a day’s drive of each other (creating literally, the “Texas Triangle”), the talent in Texas as an outcome of its strong University system, its diversity, and Texas’ history of determination and grit are all uniquely Texan strengths that startups can tap into.
We amplified this in last month’s sessions. In the Houston keynote, Joe Alapat, CEO of Liongard, said “When you invest in Houston, you get the oomph of the Texas Triangle.” In the Dallas keynote, Dave Copps, CEO of Worlds was lamenting how things are different than a few years ago. When talking about his two previous startups, he said “it was a normal thing to get started here and then move west…..I’m thrilled to say that’s not only not the case anymore, but over the last several years, that’s completely reversed…. I don’t lose anybody anymore!….most importantly there’s capital. You can raise money here. There’s no reason to go anywhere else.”
▶️ Click to play the full Keynote with Brett Hurt and Miguel Garza
In the Austin keynote, Mayor Adler said, “Austin, culturally, has a higher tolerance for risk than any other city. That’s why we like to keep this city weird, which means innovative and creative.” Brett Hurt, CEO of data.io, shared why Amy of Amy’s ice cream chose Austin (because Austin was the only place that she visited where small business owners literally would open their books for her). To help explain why Austin and Texas are even better places to start a company Brett also said, “Capital is all about the ripple effect. There have been almost 50 companies started by former Bazaarvoice (his former company) employees. We went public in 2012.”
Each city hosted break out sessions around topics that are especially relevant in that city.
In Austin and San Antonio, the breakout sessions included:
In Houston, the breakout sessions were:
In Dallas, the breakout sessions covered:
Investors heard pitches from upcoming startups in Austin and San Antonio on robotics, taxes, and water systems, in Houston on technology related to energy, broadband infrastructure and healthcare and in Dallas on healthcare and enterprise software. The week culminated with both a keynote from Mark Cuban and a competition awarding cash prizes to the best startups.
The Texas startup Manifesto was written in 2017; hasn’t a lot changed since then? In a word, YES! First the pandemic has sent people home to work, meaning it’s no longer required to live on one of the expensive coasts of the US to get funding; many moved to Texas where housing is cheaper and the quality of life is better. So there’s more talent coming in. The pandemic created layoffs, allowing more people to pursue their dream of starting a business. We’re seeing more startups than ever before. Events have gone virtual, so it’s even easier to get a mentor in one city to share their expertise or to get the attention of an investor in another city. Capital Factory holds events for all of Texas, not just Austin or Houston or Dallas, and attracts people from around the country and around the world.
In Austin, the innovation departments of the US Defense departments have taken up residence, many within Capital Factory and are curating, funding and buying technology from local startups. This has sped up dual use technology, technology that can be used for both commercial and military applications and helped startups to think bigger, both in product and in its application. Dr. Kevin McNeill, SVP Cyberspace solutions CACI said, “CACI has been investing resources into the Texas technology corridor over the past several years, including opening new offices in San Antonio and in Austin. We’ve made these investments because this area provides the ideal startup environment for companies like your own to develop the products and expertise our national security customers’ need.”
When answering the question: What’s the outlook for startups and entrepreneurship in 2021? Mark Cuban answered, “Phenomenal!” We know Capital Factory will continue to be the center of gravity for entrepreneurs in Texas. If you’re an investor, you’ll want to seriously consider investing in Texas companies. A great way to do that is to engage with Capital Factory. Mark your calendars for November 16–22, 2021 for next year’s event. On line or in person, it promises to be another event not to miss. | https://austinstartups.com/why-you-should-invest-in-texas-b8ec632149dd | ['Capital Factory'] | 2020-12-18 14:24:57.683000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Angel Investors', 'Investing', 'Texas', 'Venture Capital'] |
How to install Minecraft on Ubuntu — LinuxTechLab | Learn how to install Minecraft on Linux (Ubuntu) in this simple tutorial. Minecraft has been a craze now for almost 9–10 years now but for those of you who don’t know about it.
What is Minecraft ?
Minecraft is an online game that allows users to create & explore their own, virtual world. Currently it is being maintained by Microsoft but was initially developed by Mojang Studies, which was acquired by Microsoft.
Minecraft is available for almost all OS like Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android etc. In this tutorial, we will learn to install Minecraft on Ubuntu.
Recommended Read: Simple guide on how to install STEAM on Ubuntu & CentOS /RHEL Also Read: Installing PlayOnLinux on Ubuntu & CentOS
How to install Minecraft on Ubuntu
There are two ways using which we can install Minecraft on Ubuntu, i.e.
Let’s discuss both these processes one by one.
Install using DEB package
To install Minecraft using .deb package, we will first download the package file,
$ wget https://launcher.mojang.com/download/Minecraft.deb
Now we install the package using the following command,
$ sudo dpkg -i ~/Download/Minecraft.deb
Installation is still not done as we will be encountering some dependency issues for the package file, which can be resolved by the following command,
Now some other packages will install & upon completion you will be able to launch the Minecraft launcher from the Ubuntu Application List. Open the Minecraft launcher & login the your account to enjoy the game.
Install using the Snap
2nd way for the installation of Minecraft on Ubuntu is using the snap package manager. Snap comes pre-installed on Ubuntu 20 but for older you might be required to install it, you can refer the following tutorial to install Snap on your system.
Once the snap is installed on the system, Install Minecraft using the following snap command,
$ sudo snap install mc-installer
This single command will install Minecraft on Ubuntu system, Launch the Minecraft installer, login & enjoy.
Please so let us know how this works out for you or if you have any questions or queries regarding this tutorial, please share those with us using the comment box below.
We are giving you exclusive deals to try Linux Servers for free with 100$ credit, check these links to claim your 100$,
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We have more deals for you, CHECK HERE. | https://medium.com/@linuxtechlab/how-to-install-minecraft-on-ubuntu-linuxtechlab-171a92bcf01c | [] | 2021-02-04 15:58:30.745000+00:00 | ['Debian', 'Linux Gaming', 'Linux', 'Ubuntu', 'Minecraft'] |
How Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud Is Changing The Landscape For Manufacturers | With every new year, manufacturing companies continue to advance and evolve their strategies to reach goals. The investment in technology has been increasing in the last decade, especially with the rise of Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things and, of course, cloud technology. More and more businesses have taken the leap into moving their key data to the cloud for easier access, and the manufacturing industry is no exception. Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud can help manufacturers to leverage cloud technology to grow their businesses.
Consider the place of the manufacturing industry in the U.S. economy. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, manufacturers contributed $2.37 trillion to the U.S. economy in the second quarter of 2019, not far from the all-time high recorded in the fourth quarter of 2018, which was $2.365 trillion. It is also important to consider that, with these numbers, manufacturing accounted for 11.1% of GDP in the economy.
This means the National Association of Manufacturers calculates that “for every $1.00 spent in manufacturing, another $1.82 is added to the economy. In addition, for every one worker in manufacturing, there are another four employees hired elsewhere.” Sectors such as retail, transportation, and business services benefit from this.
However, for decades manufacturing companies had to operate with technology that required higher investments for acquisition and maintenance. Data was siloed, which made it more difficult to increase productivity, efficiency, and profits. The 2010s brought the Fourth Industrial Revolution in full force, motivating these companies to innovate and incorporate technologies such as AI and cloud computing.
SaaS has helped bring productivity to new levels, allowing businesses to integrate systems and get the most out of information available, and making it accessible to their teams regardless of when and where they’re located. Salesforce has brought leads and customer data to the cloud, and with data integration technology such as Commercient SYNC, employees have access to this data whether they’re in Salesforce or in the ERP. Without needing to be in front of their desktop computers, or having to call the person with access to the system. A 360° view of sales and customers instantly, even from a mobile device.
This is one of the benefits Commercient’s customer Gecko Alliance sees by using Salesforce and connecting it with their ERP, Infor Visual, through SYNC. Gecko Alliance provides manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and technicians customized and complete solutions for spas and hot tubs, and they have been working with Commercient since 2017. Recently, they switched to Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud, and the results seen are amazing.
Commercient interviewed Elodie Martinez, Salesforce Administrator at Gecko Alliance, during Dreamforce 2019. When asked about the Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud, she said: “It covers a gap. I have not seen any app that is built the way that Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud is built.”
Where have they seen more benefits? Below are three key areas Gecko Alliance has seen significant improvement through the Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud, and manufacturers can leverage as well:
1. Product Forecasting
One of the strengths mentioned by Elodie Martinez about Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud is how strong it is on the forecasting side. Before, they were doing forecasting in the ERP, “and then we heard about Manufacturing Cloud so we have been running on pilot since Q3. Within a few months, you will see a lot more people using it,” said Martinez.
Forecasting in Infor Visual provided valuable data, but the main issue was that manufacturers don’t only forecast revenue, but also products and quantities. The possibility to track inventories, orders, and to be able to financially plan for either more or less product quantities accurately contributes to mitigating long-term risks. This is how software such as Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud and integrations like Commercient SYNC help manufacturing companies for better forecasting.
“What it does for us is currently we had multiple people entering the same data into different databases, so you had errors, wrong data, investing time in something less valuable, added task such as taking a number from an Opportunity and putting it into another system; you are not doing anything that is valuable for a company,” she explained.
Managing everything from separate apps, not even synced to Salesforce, used to bring these and other issues. Now things have changed, and their goal is to eventually feed that forecast into the ERP system, as forward orders, future orders and other data.
2. Customer Analysis
In addition to forecasting, Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud has helped Gecko Alliance with customer analysis. If they take actual quantities of the orders and feed that back into the Manufacturing Cloud then they have their forecast versus actual. Then they have real, live data SYNCing from Infor Visual to the Salesforce Cloud.
“It also allows us to see if I signed a contract with that many quantities, I have opportunities with that many quantities,” Martinez said. She also explained that this detailed analysis helps Gecko Alliance to detect any gaps between current orders and former orders, so they can forecast more accurately. They can even contact the customer and ask about the changes in the orders, which helps them to analyse better the customer’s behavior and see if there are ways to resolve any issues.
“With Einstein and analytics you can study your customer a lot more,” Martinez said. Teaching some people about what it is to do an analysis on a customer can be tricky, but with Manufacturing Cloud and Einstein Gecko Alliance expect to provide a more intuitive, user-friendly reporting experience, in order to reduce the learning curve as much as possible. This will provide them the necessary insights to make decisions based on accurate, up-to-date information.
Another benefit mentioned with Einstein is seasonality. “Depending on where you are in the world, China and Australia don’t have the same seasons we have here in North America,” Martinez mentioned when she explained why the orders may vary according to the current season where the customer is located.
Being able to understand these cycles helps Gecko Alliance and manufacturing companies to understand their customers better, which paves the way to a more transparent communication. This improves processes, workflows and, especially, customer experience.
3. Optimize Sales Processes With an Integration
Organizational changes can take some time, but once the users adopt the technology and embrace the new process, workflows improve and more gets done, faster. The Gecko Alliance Sales team started using Salesforce as “something they needed to do”. They started to use it, got to know the software and all the powerful features Salesforce offered for them when managing leads and customers’ information.
When they connected the ERP Infor Visual with Salesforce through Commercient SYNC, they reached a new level. Bringing customer information from the ERP to Salesforce gave them easier access to information such as orders and invoicing.
“In the last sales meeting, they all came back and said ‘we can’t live without it anymore. This is our true source of data, this is where everything we do is happening.’ It pushed Salesforce into the front end for them. They know that without SYNC they couldn’t be doing what they’re doing right now,” said Martinez.
For decades, manufacturers have relied on ETL or legacy systems to store key data, but these are not user-friendly, requiring a bigger investment and complex maintenance.
That’s changing. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, “manufacturers in the United States perform 63% of all private-sector Research & Development (R&D) in the nation, driving more innovation than any other sector.”
From advanced robotics in R&D labs to computer vision in warehouses and other devices, technology is making an impact on every step of the manufacturing process. Innovation used to focus on production or distribution, but now, thanks to technology such as Salesforce and SYNC, these changes are rapidly coming to other areas such as Sales, Accountings, Customer Service, Human Resources, and more.
Now, technology is here to help manufacturing companies to focus on implementing roadmaps that bring not only more business and profits but also opens the way towards a companywide digital transformation.
Check out Commercient on AppExchange today. | https://medium.com/inside-the-salesforce-ecosystem/salesforce-manufacturing-cloud-changing-the-landscape-for-manufacturers-6b1669e49cad | ['Isaura Martinez'] | 2020-03-17 15:01:01.288000+00:00 | ['Apps', 'Manufacturing', 'SaaS', 'Technology', 'Salesforce'] |
Making Short Films and The Dunning Kruger Effect | For three years I have been back at it. Last night I watched the first youtube video I made. It was published on May 3, 2018. In my experience it is always hard to look back on old work. It never gets any easier. In fact as I gain more experience in life. What some would call wisdom. The pain is even more apparent. I can now look back and remember how confident I felt in my newly developed skill. Just being able to take a couple video clips, music, and a generic title was more than I could do in January of that year. I felt like I had cracked the code.
Now I have the confidence to film, edit, and even to do a little creative consulting with regional brands. At this point you would think the confidence would be out of control. It is in fact the exact opposite. I am wildly aware of how little I know about this industry. I feel like I know less now than I did in May of 2018. | https://medium.com/@jonjkuhn/making-short-films-and-the-dunning-kruger-effect-549ae9782ebd | ['Jon Kuhn'] | 2020-12-12 15:17:34.930000+00:00 | ['Freelance', 'Skill Development', 'Creative Journey', 'Creative', 'Dunning Kruger Effect'] |
Best Happy Teddy Day Messages 2022 | Teddy happy day message 2022
The first impression, when you hear love, provides a way to describe love as a tender and sweet feeling, Teddy is the first sign of tenderness. The meaning of Teddy Day is to make your loved ones feel the tenderness of your love, the only reason we give a special teddy bear, you can also give something different, soft, and have the meaning of Teddy Day Messages.
On Teddy Day, you can distribute Happy Teddy Day SMS in Hindi, Happy Teddy Day SMS in English, Happy Teddy Day Shayari, Teddy Day SMS for wife, Teddy Day SMS for girlfriend, happy teddy day message, teddy bear day music, and many more. Again. Here you will find superfine happy day teddy bear, SMS day teddy bear happy, happy day teddy bear messages.
Teddy’s day message
Always be ready to love you from time to time. Love you. Happy teddy day!
I hope the teddy bear that I am sending you will make you smile, in your sad time! Happy teddy my love day!
On this Teddy day, send you all my love wrapped up in a bear hug that will make you smile instantly. Happy teddy bear my bear!
Love me, love my bear
Kiss me, kiss my bear
I hugged my bear
Happy teddy bear day
May the love of love be with you always, here I am sending you a teddy bear to warm up in love. Happy teddy day!
On a teddy bear day …
I am sending you a bear.
But the bad thing is that …
He cannot honor you in tenderness.
May this day of teddy bear give you great love and happiness …!
It was Teddy Bear Day and I look forward to your warm embrace. come see me soon, good wife. Happy teddy day!
I am sending you Teddy.
I love bears
Kiss the bears in my mouth
Hug my bear
Stay with Teddy well because Teddy had a happy Teddy day.
Do not close your eyes to the one who has opened your heart. Happy teddy bear day.
Teddy’s day message in English
My little bear bears soft and tender,
Stay with me all the time
It gives me your feelings all the time
Soft and beautiful.
Happy Teddy ụbọchị day.
Teddy was a wrestler, a strong hug, with no complaints or requirements; If you can’t see me, you know where to go … your little bear. Happy teddy day!
For the most beautiful little bears, I know: I love you, I miss hugging your bears. Happy teddy day!
He may not always be by your side, so I am sending you a beautiful bear to take a hug and a lot of kisses to start your day off well and end lovingly.
Teddy bears don’t want hearts
as they are now full of love.
I am Teddy with a big heart.
I grew up listening to fairy tales.
When I met you, I knew that myths could also be true.
Thank you for making my story come true.
Happy teddy my day!
Happy teddy day 2020
Send my teddy bear who has become the most important part of my life so that she can have a happy teddy 2020 day !!
For my most tender and tender wife
Who is my real life
This teddy bear is a symbol
And you will be mine forever.
Happy teddy day 2020
I wish the teddy bear was near you, so every time you hugged him. Instead, you hug me. Happy teddy bear day, honey.
It was TEDDY bear day! I think of a beautiful and cohesive person, and the special someone is you. Happy teddy bear day
Read More | https://medium.com/@tmadly25/best-happy-teddy-day-messages-2022-85ac46e1fb29 | [] | 2021-12-24 09:54:55.825000+00:00 | ['Valentines Day', 'Teddy Day'] |
Introducing Emeris — The Cross-Chain Portal to All Crypto Apps | In the past few years, blockchain maximalism — the idea that one blockchain will “win” over all the others — has run rampant in many crypto communities. Yet, here at Tendermint, we have always believed that the future of crypto involves multiple interconnected blockchains, with each blockchain serving different use cases; a vision that has begun to realize recently. In recent months, there has been a rising trend of decentralized applications built on Ethereum alternatives, including sovereign Cosmos chains, layer 2 solutions like Polygon, layer 1 chains like Solana or Polkadot, and many others. Yet, numerous applications that are spreading from a single chain to multiple ecosystems leaves crypto heavily fragmented. As a result, there’s still no easy way to access the best decentralized applications in one place. That’s where Emeris comes in.
An Interface with the Internet of Blockchains
Emeris has a simple goal: providing access to a wide range of decentralized applications scattered around various blockchain ecosystems in a single, easy-to-use interface. Starting as a non-custodial, cross-chain DeFi dashboard, Emeris will soon extend its line of products with other entries like a mobile app and a browser extension wallet.
As for the long term vision of Emeris, it revolves around one main concept: blockchain agnosticism. Emeris seeks to integrate the best decentralized applications no matter what sector they belong to or what blockchain they run on. It will provide access to various types of protocols, from lending and yield farming to NFT marketplaces, payment applications, data storage, and many other use cases.
Interoperability is at the core of Emeris’ vision. We will prioritize integrating blockchains that have an interoperability gateway (a bridge, an IBC connection, or another type of connection) with the rest of the ecosystem. This way, users can enjoy the entirety of what the internet of blockchains has to offer, no matter which ecosystem they originally come from.
Emeris Beta — Unlocking the Power of Cross-Chain DeFi
At its beta launch in mid July, Emeris will focus on cross-chain DeFi. Starting as a non-custodial dashboard, Emeris provides users with a consolidated view of their crypto holdings across multiple Cosmos chains. The starting lineup of supported chains includes Cosmos Hub, Crypto.com, Akash Network, IrisNet, Persistence, Osmosis, Regen Network and Sentinel. New chains will be continuously integrated.
In addition to its asset management capability, the Emeris dashboard comes with two flagship features:
Gravity DEX integration . The Gravity DEX protocol is a novel type of DeFi protocol that is scheduled to launch on the Cosmos Hub on July 12th, 2021. Built with cross-chain trading in mind, this cutting-edge DEX is perfectly suited to be the first protocol supported by Emeris.
. The Gravity DEX protocol is a novel type of DeFi protocol that is scheduled to launch on the Cosmos Hub on July 12th, 2021. Built with cross-chain trading in mind, this cutting-edge DEX is perfectly suited to be the first protocol supported by Emeris. Cross-chain asset transfers using Cosmos’ ground-breaking Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol. Emeris is the first interface to feature smart IBC routing capabilities, to enable the smoothest IBC user experience to date.
Beyond the Beta
Over the summer, we will continuously roll out visual design improvements and new Cosmos chain integrations. Emeris will also deliver key performance metrics, staking capabilities, and add support for multiple wallets (at beta launch, only the Keplr wallet is supported).
The real fun begins in late September with the public launch of Emeris. At this stage, Emeris will extend support to chains outside the Cosmos ecosystem, starting with Ethereum. This expansion follows the Gravity Bridge implementation, a next-gen bridge which allows tokens to freely flow between Cosmos chains and Ethereum. In addition to supporting more chains, Emeris will provide access to new DeFi protocols beyond the Gravity DEX. Finally, the public launch will also mark the release of the Emeris mobile wallet.
From there on, Emeris will keep adding support for new blockchain ecosystems and decentralized applications, and increase its focus on making the internet of blockchains accessible to wider audiences.
Are You Ready?
In the new era of interoperability that is made possible by cross-chain technologies, blockchains no longer live in silos. This emerging internet of blockchains needs an interface, and it’s called Emeris. Beginning with cross-chain token transfers and swaps, Emeris will rapidly expand to enable all kinds of other decentralized applications built on various blockchains — all from within a single easy-to-use interface. The era of cross-chain DeFi is upon us. Are you ready to experience its power? | https://medium.com/emeris-blog/introducing-emeris-the-cross-chain-portal-to-all-crypto-apps-4e6eee5b53a8 | ['Gautier Marin'] | 2021-08-17 10:54:11.166000+00:00 | ['Wallet', 'Blockchain', 'Defi', 'Cosmos Network', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
How my Daily Life Changed by Putting my Phone on Silent Mode | How my Daily Life Changed by Putting my Phone on Silent Mode
Photo by Zan on Unsplash
A couple of months ago I decided to put my phone on silent mode, indefinitely. Since then, my daily life has changed significantly in three ways.
First of all, my attention span has increased.
This is why I decided to turn my phone on silent mode in the first place. To be honest, I get distracted very easily. So, when I started working remotely, I had to find a way to stop, or at least minimize distractions.
As you can imagine, or even experience yourself, my smartphone was a major distraction for me. Now, after having it mostly on silent mode — and vibration— I can stay focused on the tasks at hand for longer periods.
Secondly, I feel less anxious.
Before I changed the notification settings of my phone, I used to feel mildly anxious all the time. I used to study, work, and do whatever needed me to sit down in front of my computer and concentrate while having my phone at my side. But not only that, the internet connection was on, too. Thus, the notifications that I received from people texting, calling, and emailing me, or even from the apps on my phone, made me feel I had to do even more work and consequently increased my anxiety.
Thirdly, my productivity increased.
After following this tactic for at least a couple of months now, I can say confidently that I am more productive than before. It’s a result of both being more focused and less anxious, which made me realize practically what I have to work on more to start achieving the results I want in every aspect of my life.
Additional notes
I also want to mention that besides putting my phone on silent/ vibration mode, I turned on focus assist on my laptop, too. What is focus assist? It’s a setting that Windows 10 have that lets you set which hours of the day you won’t receive notifications. That also helps me a lot, as I have apps on my laptop such as Viber, Skype, etc., and receiving notifications from them alongside multiple email notifications during a single day, not only distracts me but makes me feel overwhelmed, too.
If you want to learn how to turn on focus assist on your computer, watch this short video. | https://medium.com/afwp/how-my-daily-life-changed-by-putting-my-phone-on-silent-mode-c2b6cbafc144 | ['Athina Kontolati'] | 2020-12-07 15:32:48.686000+00:00 | ['Smartphones', 'Attention Span', 'Daily Life', 'Distraction', 'Notifications'] |
My First Day in Therapy. | I feel anxious. Is this normal? I feel a little worried about what she will think. I’m scared that they might mistake my random moodiness and depression for “thoughts of suicide”. I swear I would never. But. Sometimes, I just feel a little sad, lost and alone. I can’t be the only one. Am I?
I’m not always sad. Sometimes I am happy, anxious, in love, mad, excited and jealous. My emotions vary. Not always so one sided, it just depends on how well you know me or how I am doing that day. People know me as such a kind, caring, happy person. Always smiling. But…the closest people to me know that there’s a little darkness in me too. Like I said, I vary.
At the end of the day though, I just hope it helps. I am getting a little tired of all of these unnecessary feelings. I just want to feel happy, worry free, calm. I’m tired. I am only 28 years old, man. I’m so young. I can’t continue being like this for the rest of my life. I can’t live a life of anxiety and depression.
It’s not fair to me at all, I deserve better. I deserve more. Anyway, we shall see how this goes.
9/5/20 | https://medium.com/@pngcthings/my-first-day-in-therapy-4e11c0f6342d | ['Pngc Things'] | 2020-12-25 07:35:53.334000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Life', 'Anxiety', 'Therapy', 'Journal'] |
Raspberry Pi : Agent of Change. The Raspberry Pi project reminds us… | Unanticipated success
The idea seems to have worked — and then some. Initial demand saw several hundred people a second registering interest with production partners of the project. Over the first weeks, over two million people pre-ordered the tiny computers — many were caught up in the excitement and had no idea what they might use the computers for — they still don’t know.
The success of the Raspberry Pi caught everybody off guard — spawning school computer programming clubs, an explosion in the “maker” community, and copy-cat hardware projects throughout the world. This year has seen the launch of the “Raspberry Pi 400” — a return to the 8 bit form factor roots of those who flagged the skills gap and designed the Pi. It has sold-out almost everywhere in the run-up to Christmas. | https://medium.com/the-shadow/raspberry-pi-agent-of-change-5a42c76bbc2f | ['Jonathan Beckett'] | 2021-02-07 06:23:37.712000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Skills', 'Future', 'Computers', 'Technology'] |
Calculating The True Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) | Originally published on WebEngage.
A 5% increase in customer retention is capable enough to trigger a 25% increase in profits, says Bain & Company.
The stat itself says how impactful retention marketing can be for your business.
Over the years, companies have been able to acquire users but not retain them. This has necessitated a move towards retention marketing that would keep the existing users engaged and drive more transactions through these users.
All leading brands today are advocates of customer retention and rightly so! Customer churn has a drastic impact on your bottom-line figures. While focusing on customer acquisition can increase your revenue, it dramatically reduces your profitability per transaction.
Moreover, customer retention is directly connected to boosting your CLTV.
CLV, CLTV, or Customer Lifetime Value is the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with your customer. CLV helps in segmenting customers that are worth retaining and ones that do not need to be retained on priority. Customer lifetime value has an intuitive appeal as a marketing concept. In theory, you can assign a monetary value to each customer and assess the spending limits behind acquiring such customers. CLV helps in setting a benchmark for COA (Cost of Acquisition) and COR (Cost of Retention).
How to calculate Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)?
Where, T = Total Number of transactions per year,
AOV = Average Order Value
AGM = Average Gross Margin (%)
ALT = Average Customer Lifespan in years
Example:
Say you are a smartphone manufacturer and you’ve sold 2mn devices in 2019. Across your range of products, the average ticket size is $250. On every device you sell, your company has a gross margin of 15% after all the overhead expenses. Off the 2mn devices you sold, you attracted 1.8mn customers (including both new and retained customers). The average lifespan for your product is 1.5 years, or in other words, your customer is expected to make a repurchase in the same category (with your brand or any other competitive brand) in 1.5 years.
In this case your customer lifetime value is: (2mn*250*0.15*1.5)/1.8mn = $62.5
Now, if your COA is less than $62.5, the customer is deemed to be profitable and acquisition is acceptable.
Well CLTV is just one spoke of the entire retention wheel. Read more on the Retention marketing metrics here. | https://medium.com/@kinjal-shah/calculating-the-true-customer-lifetime-value-cltv-8fcbe10a97d5 | ['Kinjal Shah'] | 2021-04-06 06:39:50.099000+00:00 | ['Customer Lifetime Value', 'Metrics', 'Data Science', 'Acquisition', 'Marketing Strategies'] |
Photo a Day Project: Day 10 | My love for Leica | I Couldn’t sleep, so I got up, made some coffee and went upstairs, and started working. It was about 4 in the morning and I was drinking my coffee while exploring new lenses to possibly buy for my SL2-S. I always keep my Q2 Monochrome and SL2-S on my desk, you never know when a moment will present itself so I always keep my cameras at the ready. My room was completely dark and the only visible light was coming from my iMac. As I took a sip of my coffee, I looked down and caught a glance of my SL2-S. I thought, “Man, that is one sexy camera”! Then I thought, wonder what type of picture my Q2 could catch in this scenario, a pitch-black room with just a monitor light. And of course, the Q2 didn’t have any issues at snagging this picture. The more I look at it, the more I love my Leicas!!! I waited a long time to own a Leica, and now I own two. I am addicted to using these more than my Canons. I take them everywhere with me, I dont even use my iphone anymore to capture photos. Just wanted to share with my fellow Leica members. Have a great day. | https://medium.com/@arshots/photo-a-day-project-day-10-my-love-for-leica-8f65f32cdd6d | ['Alonso Ramirez Iii', 'Arshots'] | 2021-11-24 16:30:51.044000+00:00 | ['Leica', 'Blackandwhitephotography', 'Photography', 'Photos', 'Photographer'] |
6 Ways to Get Your Kids Hiking | With TV, games, and toys competing for your child’s attention, being outside could be the last place they want to be.
But whether it’s a vacation to the mountains or a local day hike, the tips below could help the transition run more smoothly.
1. Get outside. A LOT.
Fostering your child’s love for the outdoors could mean letting them get a little dirty.
Let them puddle-jump, collect weird things, feel the ground beneath their toes.
It goes beyond fresh air.
Harvard University says to get your little ones outside is not only good for their health but also crucial for their development.
Vitamin D and exercise are great reasons to spend time outside, but did you know that unstructured time outside helps children problem solve? It creates a safe space for risk-taking and responsibility. Promoting a love for nature, creativity, and imagination.
All things that will ultimately make time outside more enjoyable for them and for you.
2. Talk about it.
If you’re excited about your hike, chances are it will catch.
Children that are prepared for what’s to come experience less anxiety and stress. It’s like saying ‘it’s almost time for bed’ an hour before-hand so they have time to process it.
Books can be the best way to dive into visual explanations. Find some of the following titles at your local library or bookstore–
And most likely, the characters in their favorite TV show go on an outdoorsy adventure at least once or twice. Flip it on and watch it with them for extra effect.
3. Show them ‘the gear’.
If you’re planning on hitting the trails, share the equipment you’ll be taking along.
Whether it’s a headlamp, a map, or the carrier they’ll ride in, let your child get involved in the planning process. This encourages questions and gives you a chance to show how excited you are.
Have a test-run camp-out and set up a tent in your backyard or your living room. Let your kids roast marshmallows over a candle, and sleep in a sleeping bag.
I know I still remember when my parents let me set up my little wal-mart tent in the backyard, holding a flashlight until I fell asleep.
4. Give them a job to do.
For older kids, entrusting them with a job can make them feel confident and important.
Talk it up.
Let them ‘navigate’ with the map, or maybe they’re in charge of an important snack!
Sometimes the only way my dad could get me and my brothers up a mountain… was the promise of chocolate pudding. (Do I use this bribery today? Well, yes I do.)
A compass is a great lightweight tool for little ones to carry.
(Make sure an adult is always aware of direction.)
5. Make it interactive.
Bring along a journal, or nature bingo.
It’s a great reason to get outside, but also a good way to break up the monotony of walking.
Some great options are linked below.
Creating a prize is a great idea for some of those more resistant kids.
6. Make it memorable.
Remember disposable camera’s?
They’re a light, easy way to keep your kids entertained on trail. It’s a great ‘Leave-no-trace’ way to bring it back to #5. Without disturbing natural wildlife and delicate flora and fauna, you can document things you’ve found.
Not to mention the great memories to look back on once they’re developed.
If you’re lucky you’ll get more than just pictures of thumbs.
So get out there and enjoy the benefits of nature!
It doesn’t have to be work. Incorporating any of these tips into your daily life will strengthen your child’s love for the outdoors. Not to mention getting on trail easier and more enjoyable for all involved. | https://medium.com/@thomsencopywriting/6-ways-to-get-your-kids-hiking-211a1db613c5 | ['Sarah Thomsen'] | 2020-12-06 14:58:41.071000+00:00 | ['Nature Walk', 'Hiking', 'Children', 'Tips And Tricks', 'Hiking With Kids'] |
VWM Rare yet Everywhere | Vanishing White Matter Disease (VWM) Leukodystrophy is a degeneration of the brain. VWM is one of 52 different leukodystrophies. VWM has a face around the globe. Currently there is no cure or treatment for VWM. We are in race against time to Find a Cure for VWM ! Time is not on our side; most children born with this genetic disease die at an early age. Research efforts are greatly underfunded and there is little awareness.
Your purchase will help aid and benefit VWM research and spread leukodystrophy awareness. Proceeds from this limited addition Find a Cure for VWM fundraiser: https://onemission.fund/support/find-a-cure-for-vwm/?shopfor=72805 will go to AFTAU towards VWM Research at TAU. To read more about VWM research see: https://english.tau.ac.il/impact/VWM
Note: About a year ago we have joined #SavingChloeSaxby Team : Our goal is to raise $2,600,000 …..but we need your help to get there.
Watch this video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuh899edPOQ&t and read here: https://medium.com/leukodystrophy-awareness/our-fundraising-goal-2fa45fed014a#.nuoki9n71
There are 3 easy ways YOU can support #findacureforvwm fundraiser:
1.You can purchase any of One Mission’s great products — https://onemission.fund/support/find-a-cure-for-vwm/?shopfor=72805 and 40% of what you spend will be donated to VWM research
2.You can donate cash (One Mission doesn’t charge a platform fee) — https://onemission.fund/support/find-a-cure-for-vwm/?shopfor=72805
3.You can share this fundraiser with your friends and family: https://onemission.fund/support/find-a-cure-for-vwm/?shopfor=72805
Thank You!
Originally published at onemission.fund. | https://medium.com/leukodystrophy-awareness/vwm-rare-yet-everywhere-168c325403ad | ['Find A Cure For Vwm'] | 2017-03-30 14:00:27.652000+00:00 | ['Fundraising', 'Health', 'Awareness'] |
How To Find The Best Fake ID Websites | Idsbuddy is the best fake id websites. This is the best place to get a fake id, Idsbuddy is the best fake id company fake id maker, fake id creator, fake id generator! PA, RI, NY, FL, TX are the most popular fake identification card on that website, make your fake id online. Idsbuddy assure all their clients of 100% SECURITY. We keep all their clients information safe from any third party. After the client receives and confirms his/her document, Idsbuddy erase all the client’s information from their system.
More Info Click Here | https://medium.com/@asshahed109/how-to-find-the-best-fake-id-websites-dd34a8930307 | ['Best Fake Id Websites'] | 2020-12-29 12:24:01.930000+00:00 | ['Fake Id', 'News', 'USA', 'Id Card', 'Fake'] |
#SaveOkavangoDelta Open Letter! | #SaveOkavangoDelta Open Letter!
Okavango Delta, courtesy of tourradar.com
We, a coalition of concerned Namibians, Batswana and global citizens, wish to stop the proposed oil and petroleum explorations and the possibility of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in Kavango East and West and neighbouring Botswana by the Canadian company Reconnaissance Africa (RECON AFRICA).
Namibia was the first country to include environmental protections in the Constitution. Namibia, Canada and Botswana have signed the Paris Climate Agreement. Namibia already draws financial resources from the Green Climate Fund to compensate for climate related changes. Allowing more oil drilling and fracking will only cause the compensation needed higher. Namibia is also a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
In spite of these international obligations and commitments, the Namibian Government has granted a petroleum-prospecting licence for oil and gas explorations to a Canadian registered junior oil and gas company, RECON AFRICA. They bought the rights from Namibia and Botswana to drill more than 35 000 km2 in the environmentally sensitive Okavango basin. Fracking in the Okavango Delta violated every treaty that Namibia and Canada have ever signed.
History shows us that oil and gas companies are driven by economic incentives with little care about the long-term impacts or how they undermine the climate and human development goals. What is particularly concerning to us is that the marketing material of Recon Africa makes implicit reference to fracking — e.g. “unconventional play”, “unconventional methods”, etc. These are industry codes for fracking. And while the EIA makes no mention of fracking, key players in the management team and board of Recon Africa are linked to fracking in the US and beyond. We know what they are after.
The park within the exploration site has received enormous donor funds from foreign governments and donor organisations. The prospecting area in Namibia and Botswana borders three National Parks; the Okavango River and the Panhandle supplies water to the unique OKAVANGO DELTA, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The prospecting area also overlaps with another UNESCO World Heritage Site, Tsodilo Hills, revered amongst the First Nations San community who live nearby in one of their last refuges.
What we have heard from the Namibian government, Recon Africa and the EIA practitioner is that these oil and gas explorations will bring social development, jobs and opportunities to the country. Experiences from elsewhere in the world paint a different picture. The proposed resource distribution smacks of neo-colonialism. It is clear that the people of Namibia and Botswana will not benefit here, instead it will be millionaire CEOs in Canada.
It is absolutely shocking how little the Namibian public knows about this huge project and the impacts it will have. We have spoken to affected parties across Kavango East and West including those living near the drill sites. None of them including resident San peoples had been consulted before the start of this project. If this was legal, they wouldn’t have had to hide it.
We are deeply concerned about the anticipated and historically documented impacts of oil and gas explorations in environmentally sensitive ecosystems:
• depletion and pollution of restricted water resources (surface and aquifer)
• drilling onshore requires clearing the area of vegetation thus causing deforestation and desertification
• rising noise level rises from drilling (and potentially fracking), which impact people and wildlife
• poaching may increase
• air pollution which leads to health issues
• seismic activities including earthquakes may persist long after drilling
There are extensive negative and long-term impacts to the environment, indigenous communities, and the tourism industry. Where there is oil, there is unrest! Keep the oil in the ground.
To the Namibian, Batswana and Canadian and US Governments: We would appreciate a public response that clearly lays out how the government will protect our environment, people, wildlife, water resources, archaeological sites, farms and protected areas.
As we have seen a lack of action from governments, we have decided to raise money to become major stakeholders in the Delta, and make sure to keep it safe and governed by its people. We will communicate the details of the fundraiser as soon as it is set up. Your contribution will be very much appreciated. We have thousands of people signing petitions and striking this dumpster fire of a project.
Silencing us would speak for itself! #frackrot
Yours faithfully,
Members of Frack Free Namibia
Supported by:
~Fridays For Future Digital
~Climate Strike Canada
~Extinction Rebellion Africa groups.
# SavetheOkavangoDelta | https://medium.com/fridays-for-future-digital/saveokavangodelta-open-letter-1cbe834cc2b4 | ['Fff Digital Team'] | 2020-12-06 22:59:33.731000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Africa', 'Activism', 'Letters', 'Environment'] |
My Favourite Books of 2020 | Books
When the Shooting Stops, the Cutting Begins: A Film Editor’s Story
Ralph Rosenblum & Robert Karen, 1979, Da Capo Press
Take a second and see with how many directors’ names you can come up with. I assume for most of you the number is greater than two. Now repeat the exercise with film editors…My bet is that most of you won’t be able to name a single one (directors who edit their own films don’t count) which is nothing to be ashamed of. As far as filmmaking goes, editors are an invisible force. Turning mere footage into something that can be called a movie, they are often more important than the director — or at least this is the argument Ralph Rosenblum (a long-term editor for Woody Allen and, perhaps most famously, for “The Producers”) puts forward in his book that is part autobiography, part behind-the-scenes look at the history and secrets of a profession that belongs to the least-understood in movie-making. A must-read for film buffs.
Our Europe: Banquet of Nations
Laurent Gaudé, 2019, Europa Editions
Recommended to me by my dear friend and colleague Mary Sanford, this book is a true gem. While I’ve been told it’s best read in the French original I had to revert to the English translation by Alison Anderson as my French is virtually non-existent. Over 192 pages (that will fly by) Gaude presents a history of Europe in free verse, making a passionate case for a European Union, not despite but because of some of the differences between its people. Two excerpts below…
“Europe was built without the enthusiasm of the people,
As a precaution,
Because the enthusiasm of the people led to crime.” (p. 144)
“Who are we now?
What we share,
Is from having been through hell together,
Having been, each one of us,
Torturer and victim,
Gagged youth and blood-covered hands.
What we share,
Is a troubled humanism.
We know man’s inhumanity to man,
We know the abyss,
We have been swallowed by its depth.
What binds us together, is that we are an anxious people.
Who know the shadow within.” (p. 181)
Not Born Yesterday
Hugo Mercier, 2020, Princeton University Press
A fellow countryman of Gaudé, cognitive scientist Hugo Mercier has written one of the best science books this year. The central claim of his “Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe” is fairly simple: humans, Mercier argues, are far less gullible and prone to believe crazy things than most pundits these days would have us believe. “For most of history, the concept of widespread credulity has been fundamental to our understanding of society”, he writes “[…] but far from being gullible, humans are endowed with dedicated cognitive mechanisms that allow them to carefully evaluate communicated information. Instead of blindly following prestigious individuals or the majority, we weigh many cues to decide what to believe, who knows best, who to trust, and what to feel.” At a time when large swaths seem to believe that we are hopelessly doomed because everyone else is stupid and easily misled or manipulated, Mercier’s book provides a nuanced antidote to such thinking, grounded in a careful examination of a wealth of evidence from psychology and the social sciences. If you’re keen to get a sneak preview, Henry Farrell has a good summary here…
The Decline and Rise of Democracy
David Stasavage, 2020, Princeton University Press
Unless you are a political theorist (I’m not) this book is probably not what you’d casually pick up at your local bookstore. Which is a shame really, given how good it is. David Stasavage offers a rich, international overview on the origins of democracy and the conditions under which democracy flourishes (or doesn’t). Drawing on a wealth of evidence and scholarship and examining the concept across continents and centuries, Stasavage makes the compelling case that democracy is something “common to the human condition” (at least in its early and most basic form), flowing from a deeply human instinct to have agency and restrain power from above. In an analytical tour de force the book traces the evolution of democracy, and details its preconditions and tensions, sweeping away some longstanding preconceptions along the way (Convinced that democracy was only invented by the ancient Greeks or is a uniquely Western thing? Think again). Most importantly, however, The Decline and Rise of Democracy is an outstanding piece of scholarly writing not just because of the theory it develops, but how it does so: In clear, concise, and forceful prose — the rarest of combinations, which makes this book all the more enjoyable.
Haven’t You Heard? Gossip, Politics and Power
Marie Le Conte, 2020, 535 Publishing
We stay in politics with a book that doesn’t take the high view but instead looks at the inner workings of one of the world’s oldest surviving democracies: the fascinating, sometimes absolutely bonkers, but often just very mundane world of SW1 — better known to many as Westminster, the political district from which the United Kingdom is being ruled. Drawing on many years of experience as a political journalist at the heart of UK politics, her extensive network of contacts, and a good deal of scholarship on the more human side of politics, Le Conte addresses the lubricant that keeps the Westminster machine (and presumably many others around the globe) running: Gossip. On top of that, the reader gets an overview of how politics “works” in the UK (if you ever wanted to know what e.g. a “Whip” is, this is your chance to find out). “Haven’t You Heard?” is a highly entertaining and educative read that treats its subjects with a sense of compassion that’s hard to find these days in writings about politics. At a time when many people feel that weekly screw-ups are Westminster’s modus operandi, rather than the exception to the rule, Le Conte manages to look beyond partisan divisions and provides a tough but fair assessment of the dynamics at the epicenter of British politics.
Artificial Intelligence. A Guide for Thinking Humans
Melanie Mitchell, 2020, Pelican
Talk of AI is everywhere these days but as but as soon as it comes to the question of what AI actually is, things get tricky. One of the main problems here is the chasm between the public perception of AI and the reality of such systems. Melanie Mitchell, one of the leading computer scientists in this field of research, addresses exactly this gap in her book. The result is a cautious and often skeptical overview of artificial intelligence technology and its application which pushes pack against some of the more outlandish claims about the impending arrival of a superintelligence or the technological singularity. Essential reading for the likes of Elon Musk.
Retooling Politics: How Digital Media Are Shaping Democracy
Andreas Jungherr, Gonzalo Rivero, & Daniel Gayo-Aveloo, 2020, Cambridge University Press
Just as AI is beset by hype and exaggerations, so is the topic of digital media and their role in modern-day politics. Steering clear of the simplistic arguments made by both the apostles and fear-mongers of digital technology, Jungherr et al. marshal the latest evidence from across the social sciences to produce a careful, rigorous, and step-by-step analysis of why, where, how, and to what extent digital media re-shape the various aspects of contemporary politics and democracy. The central argument of “Retooling Politics” is as elegant in its simplicity as it is convincing: Focusing on the needs of political actors (that is e.g. politicians, campaigns, activists, and yes, citizens), Jungherr et al. argue that these have not fundamentally changed. Instead, campaigns still try to change minds and to mobilise people, voters still search for information, and organisations continue to face challenges in coordinating supporters, to name just a few. What has changed, however, are the tools by which these actors pursue their needs. In other words: digital media have “retooled politics” (hence the title) but not fundamentally transformed the same. What we witness is a gradual, layered change rather than a revolution as some people have argued. It’s the kind of book I want to put in the hands of anyone who talks about “social media revolutions” or claims technology corporations are solely responsible for political upheavals.
Political Entrepreneurs. The Rise of Challenger Parties in Europe
Catherine E. De Vries & Sarah B. Hobolt, 2020, Princeton University Press
The final entry in this list is yet another book on politics, this time by professors Catherine De Vries and Sara Hobolt who address one of the most pressing and intriguing questions in European politics: How should we make sense of the decline of mainstream parties and the rise of political outsiders on both sides of the political spectrum across Europe? What explains this upheaval in European politics? De Vries and Hobolt tackle this question head on by borrowing from their colleagues in economics, namely those in industrial organisation. They effectively describe politics as a market with imperfect competition where parties compete for “market share” (just like firms). In this tug-of-war between mainstream parties seeking to protect their dominance, and challenger parties trying to break the same, it has become increasingly difficult for the incumbents to defend their territory (among other things due to decreasing voter loyalty and various wedge issues that weaken them) and easier for challengers to gain a share of the pie (by mobilising new issues such as immigration or the environment and by employing anti-establishment rhetoric). “Political Entrepreneurs” is a smart and accessible book which relies on a wealth of empirical evidence to make its case — and it shines bright as an example of great academic writing, because it does so with a clarity that looks effortless but is so hard to attain. | https://medium.com/@felixsimon/my-favourite-books-of-2020-d3f04f1c4665 | ['Felix Simon'] | 2020-12-15 13:13:27.358000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Academia', 'Book Review', 'Best Of'] |
How to Create Animated Visualizations with Plotly | How to Create Animated Visualizations with Plotly
Take your data viz skills one step further.
Photo by Daniel Cheung on Unsplash
We live in the era of big data. We can collect lots of data which allows to infer meaningful results and make informed business decisions. However, as the amount of data increases, it gets trickier to analyze and explore the data. There comes in the power of visualizations which are great tools in exploratory data analysis when used efficiently and appropriately. Visualizations also help to deliver a message to your audience or inform them about your findings. There is no one-fits-all kind of visualization method so certain tasks require different kinds of visualizations. In recents years, animated visualizations have gained more popularity as they make it possible to “tell” much more than a statis visualization. Animated visualizations are great at showing how things change over time.
We will cover how to create animated visuzalizations with Plotly Python (plotly.py) which is an open-source plotting library built on plotly javascript (plotly.js). One of the things I like about plotly.py is that it offers a high-level API (plotly express) and a low level API (graph objects) to create visualizations. With plotly express, we can create a nice plot with very few lines of code. On the other hand, we need to write more code with graph objects but have more control on what we create.
In this post, we will use plotly express API. I will write up another post to cover animated visualizations with graph objects.
We will merge two different datasets. One is obesity rate dataset which available here on kaggle. The raw dataset needs to be cleaned and reformatted. If you’d like to go through the data cleaning steps, feel free to visit my post on that:
Here is the first five rows of the cleaned dataframe:
The other dataset that we will use is not separating gender. Thus, we need to eliminate gender on this dataset by grouping on “country” and “year” and taking the mean of “obesity_rate”:
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd # fixing data tytpes
obesity_cleaned = df2.astype({'obesity_rate': 'float32', 'year': 'int32'}) # eliminating gender
obesity_cleaned = obesity_cleaned.groupby(['country','year']).mean().reset_index() obesity_cleaned.head()
The other dataset is available as built-in dataset of plotly express. It is called gapminder and includes life expectancy, gdp per capita, population of 142 countries from 1952 to 2007 (with 5-year-increments). We first import plotly express and the dataset:
import plotly.express as px df_gdp = px.data.gapminder() df_gdp.head()
We can combine these two dataframes using merge function of pandas. The shared columns are country and year so we pass them to on parameter:
df_merge = pd.merge(df_gdp, obesity_cleaned,
on=['country','year']) df_merge.head()
We can now create our first animated visualizations. Here is the code to produce the animated scatter plot. I will explain each parameter and then show the plot.
px.scatter( df_merge, x="obesity_rate", y="gdpPercap",
animation_frame="year",
size="pop", color="continent", hover_name="country",
size_max = 50,
range_x=[0.1, 50], range_y=[100,60000],
log_x=True, log_y=True ) fig.show()
We first right the name of the dataframe and specify x-axis and y-axis. So our animated scatter plot will show how gdp per capita and obesity rate changes over time. To make the plot animated, we use animation_frame parameter. We use “year” as the animation frame so values will change based on the year. We assign population to size parameter so size of the points in scatter plot becomes proportional to the population of the country. For color parameter, we use continent column so that we have an idea about each continent in general. Size_max parameter allows to adjust the size of points in scatter plot. If not specified, points may look too small to distringuish for human-eye. Range_x and range_y parameter are used to specify ranges so that all points remain visible during the animation. Finally, log_x and log_y parameters adjusting axis ranges on log scale. If there is big difference in values, it is better to use log scale to make the plot look nicer.
Visualizations are great tools to deliver a message. Animated plots are even more powerful as they account for time as well. With the plot we just created, we gain information about:
Population of countries
Gdp per capita of countries
Obesity rate of countries
How these values change over time
How continents differ according to these measure
If there is a correlation among these measures
Let’s see the animated scatter plot we created: | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-create-animated-visualizations-with-plotly-c54b9c97b133 | ['Soner Yıldırım'] | 2020-05-31 15:16:29.293000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science'] |
42-year old mom lost 84 lbs in “third month” | How One Woman Discovered the Female Fat-Loss Code Missed by Modern Medicine And Lost 84 lbs Using a Simple 2-Step Ritual That 100% Guarantees Shocking Daily Weight Loss
MORE INFORMATION WATCH THIS SHORT VIDEO CLICK HERE
The coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, While this has got in the way of many diet and exercise plans, slimmers do not need to give up hope altogether. A personal trainer revealed the best ways to stay fit while at home.
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Speaking to she shared five tips on how to stay fit and healthy during this time.
Exercise
There are plenty of at-home workouts available for free online no matter what level you are at which dieters can take advantage of
Stay motivated
It can be difficult to stay motivated with everyone adapting to a drastic change in their routine, but doing so is important for keeping fitness goals on track.
“The importance of motivation is pivotal right now with personal trainers around the globe championing that narrative by recording ‘home workouts’ to access online,” she added.
Create a routine
Creating a new routine and sticking to it can be a great way not to lose any fitness progress.
The expert said: “Try and add these home workouts into your daily routine.
MORE INFORMATION WATCH THIS SHORT VIDEO CLICK HERE | https://medium.com/@olegmat89/42-year-old-mom-lost-84-lbs-in-third-month-7caaa943eaa6 | ['Olivia.M', 'Health', 'Fitness', 'Weight Loss.'] | 2020-07-23 16:42:09.659000+00:00 | ['Weight', 'Weight Loss', 'Weightloss Foods', 'Weightloss Recipe'] |
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