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When Desperation Meets Opportunity Chapter 9 — A #NaNoWriMo 2015 Story | Chapter 9 — Jim
Already lunch on Wednesday, and I can’t stop looking over my shoulder. Whether it is the fact that I illegally manipulated our accounting software, or that I’m hiding something that Mr. Man clearly didn’t want anyone to see, I haven’t felt safe yet this week. Sleep has been impossible the past two nights. The list of little mistakes and transposition errors has been slowly piling up this week. If I’m not careful, I may be attracting unwanted attention. I somehow have to focus.
The day to day is simply having trouble holding my attention. My brain has never been so overloaded in my life. The past two nights spent trying to piece together the information I was able to download. Questions floating through my mind. Did I execute the command correctly? Is it even the right data? How do I know he didn’t see me do it? Actually, that makes me think. If he hasn’t contacted me about that yet, it means he doesn’t know that I have the archived files from the database. If he doesn’t know that, that means he isn’t so much watching me as listening in to me. But where could he be doing that? Is my apartment bugged?
Then, it occurred to me. He knew that I spoke to Carl on the way to the park on Friday. Carl might have been in on it, some how. I still haven’t seen him. In addition, Mr. Man must have somebody in the city, at least one person, doing his bidding. After all, the money I had earned was waiting back at my apartment right after I had finished dinner with Carl. Considering all of what I know has happened so far, I can only think of one way that he’d be listening in to everything I’ve said — my phone.
I’m not sure how, and I’m not sure why, but Mr. Man must have hacked my phone in some way to keep the microphone always on. He’s always listening. That realization, even if I had somehow known he was observing me all along, makes my hair stand on end. My pocket is on fire. Every fiber of my being wants me to take the phone and chuck it right in the trash compactor.
So, I now have a second problem to solve. Knowing this information should allow me to strategically place my phone in different places so I can have private conversations. I don’t want to dump my phone, otherwise that would lead to what I’m sure would be some pretty bad consequences. My hands are mostly tied until I can learn more about who he is. Not to mention the fact that I really really like the money.
After I finished work on Monday, I returned to my apartment to see another envelope, this time with the promised fifty thousand dollars inside of it. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the money. The moral, good-boy side of me is fighting it, but to have made sixty thousand dollars in less than a week is incredible. I just hope I can survive all of this to enjoy it.
All of this thoughts have my head buzzing. It would be impossible to concentrate on my work at this point. I have to get out of here and take the rest of the day off. I need to try and sleep and think.
Nick is in his office on the far end of our floor, so I stand up and make my way down there. He is currently on the phone, and it doesn’t sound good.
“Yes, I get that. But you said you’d give us the quarter.”
“That is hardly solace for my workers.”
“You do what you need to do. If you want the gone, you come down here and tell them yourself!”
I try and stay hidden around the other side of the wall as I listen to this one side of the conversation. It would appear that my worst fears about this job are coming true. The end could be near for all of us here. Today, however, I would consider my other issues a bit larger. I need to get out of here.
Listening closely, it sounds like the conversation is over. Nick appears to make some heavy sighs, and then I hear a loud thump as his forehead connects with the desk. His devastation is obvious. For a moment, I consider walking back to my desk. But, if things are truly over soon, then really, what is the point?
I spin around and knock on his door. He picks his head up, fixes his short but carefully styled hair, and motions me in. He is trying to conjure up a smile.
“What can I do you for, Jim?”
“I’m going to level with you Nick. I’ve been having a tough week. Not sure if it is stress, or maybe some illness I don’t know about, but I haven’t slept since Sunday nght. I just have to get out of here, man. I can’t stop making stupid little mistakes. Focus is all but impossible. Is it okay if I just take the rest of the day to try and recover?”
I can tell he is thinking of what to say. It could be something about it not being a big deal because we’ll all be unemployed soon anyway. Or, he could feel his hands are tied and needs me to stay on because we are imminently done. After a few seconds, he speaks.
“WeIll, Jim, you know how important health and personal wellness is around here. Please, take the rest of the day. You’ve seemed really stressed, and I’d hate for that to continue affecting your work. We need you to be sharp, especially now. Corporate is already seeing some really bad signs from us already, and we’ve only begun the quarter. We can’t afford to let mistakes make the picture seem worse than it is.”
“I completely understand. Thank you, Nick.”
He reveals a small smile. “No problem. Rest up, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.”
With that, I head back to my desk, pack up my things, and head out of the office and down to the street below. As has been customary since Friday, I do a quick check at street level to see if Carl is around. Still no sign of him. I’m genuinely worried that he could be hurt, or worse. Maybe Mr. Man took him out. Or, in the craziest of all possible scenarios, he wasn’t even a homeless guy, just some kind of plant by Mr. Man to see if I’d follow his instructions.
I begin my walk down Monroe towards Wabash when I notice my phone buzzing. For a moment, I panic, because the last thing I want to do is carry out another task right now. Fortunately for me, the phone call is not from him. Weirdly enough, it is from Jake at work. I debate whether or not I want to talk with anyone for a while, but then decide to answer.
“Hey man, what’s up?”
His voice scares me. “I know what you did man. You need to tell me what’s going on or I’m talking to Nick.” I’m hoping this is some kind of joke.
“Haha. Very funny Jake. Have to be honest though. I have no idea what you are talking about.” My tone hardly convinces myself I’m innocent of anything.
“Cut it Jim. We need to talk. I tried to stop by and talk to you person to person, but you had already left. You better come straight with me, or I’m going to Nick about this.” Crap. He must have been suspicious after running into me on Friday, and somehow monitored my activity. This isn’t good. The last thing I needed in all of this was a loose end. If Jake truly knows what I did, then my only option is to try and convince him to be on my side about this.
“Alright. I think this is all just a big misunderstanding, but if you come over tonight, around six or seven, after I’ve had some time to rest up, we can talk.”
“I’ll be there. I sure hope you have a good explanation. You are a good friend Jim, and I’d had to lose my faith in you over this.”
To think that my actions and my involvement in this weird game would go completely unnoticed was naive of me. As I had up Wabash Street, I try and clear my head and come up with a game plan. Knowing what I know now, maybe this isn’t a bad thing. Maybe having Jake in the fold is just what I need to figure out the mystery behind Mr. Man. | https://medium.com/when-desperation-meets-opportunity-a-nanowrimo/when-desperation-meets-opportunity-chapter-9-a-nanowrimo-2015-story-b2231981cbe3 | ['Josh Gauthier'] | 2015-11-14 03:38:09.051000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'NaNoWriMo', 'Short Story'] |
How I fell in love with a rocking chair | To fasten a rocking chair securely to the top of a Ford Pinto requires patience, strong ropes, and expert advising — in this case from my grandfather. My mother was four months pregnant with me when the rocking chair, a Christmas gift, voyaged 180 miles to the apartment in the Bronx that would be my first home, my father nervously lurching through toll plazas to the laughs of strangers, accelerating cautiously lest the chair become a sail and tug them off the highway. I picture my parents struggling to unwrap the ropes when they arrived, delighted that the chair hadn’t catapulted itself off the car.
The rocking chair was a treasured possession for my parents. “A rocking chair is very useful,” my mother would say with a smile. I had never understood why anyone wouldn’t prefer to sit on a comfy couch or armchair, or swing at the park rather than tilt back and forth sedately. But then, this summer, I brought my own daughter home from the hospital.
My daughter was orange like a smoggy summer sunset when I first sat in our gliding chair with her. She had spent the first few days of her life losing the ample cushion of weight she had accumulated in the womb, finding sleeping preferable to the hard work of eating.
The chair itself was wooden, with gray-green padding rubbed sparse in spots, covered in spots and stains from its previous use with other small children — my sister’s two kids and the colleague who gave it to my sister. It was a step up from my parents’ wooden chair, but I felt doubtful of its usefulness, in the same way that I was skeptical of the need for the bouncer and swing, the baby tub and toys, and the overflowing tub of onesies. In the hospital, where my husband and I spent three nights with our baby, we operated in a lean environment, with just a bed and bassinet and a stash of diapers.
At home, our doctors agreed, our kiddo needed milk, lots of it, and I needed to stay awake and feed her for hours every day and night. In the hospital, I had fed her in my bed, but I quickly realized that I would be tempted to doze off in bed.
So when the alarm went off at 1 am, and then 4 am, and then 7 am, I would wrench myself out of bed, rouse our little one, and — after my husband changed her diaper — shuffle over to the chair with our faithful boppy cushion, and feed her.
That chair was the place where I sat with her for hours, tickling her feet and rubbing her belly to keep her awake as she ate. I would sit in the half-darkness, by the light of our owl nightlight, listening to our daughter sputter and cough and finally suck.
It was where I rocked her when she snoozed, mouth gaping open, a little triangle below her upturned nose. It was where I burped her and placed her once again on the boppy for more milk, more milk, always more milk.
“You don’t have to wake her up at night,” said the doctor one day, “She’s old enough now and she has gained enough weight.” We celebrated and marveled at how much less carrot-hued she appeared, how much chunkier her arms were — “like a Michelin man,” a woman in our building remarked to us, and we took it as a compliment.
But our routine remained of early morning feedings in the chair, when the only sounds outside our apartment were the occasional siren and the slamming of the door to the stairwell, every day at 4 am. It took me months to realize that it was the newspaper delivery person moving on to the next floor.
Every day it seems like there is a new milestone, but the chair is still there, a little more milk-splattered, a loyal companion. When my daughter was refusing to take a bottle and we were preparing for my return to work, my mother fed our kiddo, half asleep, in the chair. I was sitting in the chair with the little one when my parents came into the bedroom to remind me and my husband to head out for our first date night after the arrival of our child.
My sister asked me recently whether she could take the chair back. My husband and I had already begun piling up too-small clothes and the bassinet and the other accoutrements of early baby life, to return to her family. But the chair!
A few days later, my sister called me back. A neighbor was giving away a gilder chair — a newer chair, with white cushions. “We’ll just use that,” she told me. I smiled.
Some day, I expect my daughter will ask why we have an old, gray-green chair still hanging around. “A rocking chair is very useful,” I plan to respond. | https://medium.com/@bridget.k.cherry/how-i-fell-in-love-with-a-rocking-chair-4103d4596d68 | ['Bridget K. Cherry'] | 2019-01-06 21:01:21.252000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Baby', 'Objects', 'Motherhood'] |
3 Tips To Be More Productive | Everyone struggles with productivity. We all want it, but most of us don't have the strength to get it. I'm going to share with you three tips I have learned over the past few days to be more productive.
Eat A Breakfast With Eggs
The past few days I have been waking up and eating eggs, with some cereal and toast. I find that eating eggs that have protein gives me the energy I need. It also makes me feel healthy, which makes me feel good.
https://www.keckmedicine.org/10-healthy-benefits-of-eating-eggs-for-breakfast/#:~:text=You%20might%20have%20noticed%20that,satisfied%20after%20or%20between%20meals.
Get 7–9 Hours of Sleep
Getting enough sleep is crucial to being productive. You need to feel energized and not tired. But don't get too much sleep, because that can make you lazy and not want to get out of bed. I recommend 8 hours of good sleep.
Make A To-Do List
You don't have to write down all the little tasks you want to get done, but do right down at least 3–5 big tasks to get done. Therefore when you wake up you don't have to think about what to do. I suggest including one fun task that will make you excited.
And that is it. I am not one to be productive, but I like it. Being productive makes me feel like I have a purpose and I am using each day to its fullest potential. Even writing this article was on my list, now I can cross it off and feel good.
Bon Soir! | https://medium.com/predict/3-tips-to-be-more-productive-5141d57da40 | ['Vanessa Ham'] | 2020-09-15 21:21:01.809000+00:00 | ['Sleep', 'Food', 'Productivity', 'Tips', 'Predict'] |
US-China Competition: Another Cold War? | Starting January 20th, the Biden administration will be tasked with “picking up the pieces” of America’s democracy, alliances, and the liberal international order while addressing threats posed by adversaries such as China. The Biden team will want to consult historical precedent to address these challenges, but they must restrain themselves from using the U.S.’ Cold War playbook. Under no circumstances should the next administration apply a strategy of containment to meet threats from its adversaries. Doing so would mark a failure by President-elect Biden to accurately assess what motivates contemporary Chinese grand strategy and the international context which made the strategy of containment successful against the Soviet Union in the first place.
Cold War Containment
The experiences of the Great Depression and two world wars shaped the U.S.’ Cold War strategy of containment. Cold War historian Melvyn Leffler best explains America’s overarching lesson from this period: never again could a totalitarian power be allowed to gain control of the Eurasian landmass and its resources. Doing so would pose an existential threat to the U.S. and would force it to maintain a permanent war footing, limiting civil liberties and turning America into a garrison state. At the outset of the Cold War, American policymakers knew that the Red Army did not pose any direct military threat to Europe or Asia; but Germany, Japan, and the rest of the world drifting towards the Soviet orbit and lending their manpower and resources to the socialist camp would have the same effect. The USSR would be in control of the Eurasian landmass. The strategy of containment was thus necessary to prevent the spread of the Soviet ideology that could give the USSR control over Eurasia.
The Soviet Union’s communist ideology made peaceful coexistence with the West impossible. Its sense of insecurity and Marxist-Leninist ideology informed this view. Soviet leaders suffered from “Barbarossa Syndrome” after Nazi Germany’s devastating invasion of Russia in June 1941. They believed that keeping Germany down, expanding Soviet borders, and establishing a buffer zone of neighboring states was key to ensuring Soviet security. Similarly, most Soviet leaders, particularly Stalin and Khrushchev, held strong socialist beliefs: that the capitalist world was hostile, aggressive, and unstable; that conflict between the socialist and capitalist powers was inevitable; and that socialism would ultimately emerge victorious. With World War II still fresh in the minds of Cold War policymakers and power vacuums forming all over the world because of decolonization, it was only natural that clashing ideologies and a shared sense of global insecurity would make conflict between the U.S. and Soviet Union seem inevitable during this period.
Black Cat, White Cat…
Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping famously once said that it doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice. The same ideological pragmatism motivates contemporary China, which aspires to fulfill the “Chinese Dream” of attaining wealth and power coined by current President Xi Jinping and is ruled by a logic of political survival that preserves the power of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But becoming rich and powerful is not a motivation in itself — rather, overcoming the century of humiliation that China faced at the hands of Western and Japanese imperialism has greatly shaped the way many Chinese view their rightful place in the world. As one Tsinghua University professor put it, “they believe China’s decline to be a historical mistake, which they should correct.” To complicate matters, President Xi has made the CCP’s legitimacy contingent upon the party achieving the Chinese Dream. The CCP has put forth the narrative that the only thing protecting the Chinese from further humiliation by its adversaries is the party’s leadership.
As such, Xi’s China is equally as motivated by a logic of political survival as it is with achieving national rejuvenation, prosperity, and power. But this nuance is incredibly important for understanding the motivations undergirding contemporary Chinese grand strategy. The motivations of the Chinese people are not necessarily in lockstep with the CCP. As Yale professor Odd Arne Westad rightly notes, for the average Chinese citizen, “Communism is simply a name for the ruling party rather than an ideal to seek.” Under this assumption, competitive coexistence — if not peaceful coexistence — is possible between the United States and China so long as policymakers can properly differentiate between the motivations and aspirations of the Chinese people versus the CCP and act accordingly.
Moving Beyond Containment
Major takeaways can be drawn from this analysis. First, a Marxist-Leninist ideology is not the primary motivating factor for contemporary Chinese grand strategy. Coexistence — whether peaceful or competitive — is plausible and conflict with China is not inevitable. Second, China does not aim to take full control of the Eurasian landmass or its resources. President Xi does seek national rejuvenation, legitimacy in the international community, and influence over global affairs as a great power — things that cannot be dismissed out of hand. World domination is not on his mind, but prestige and power. Locking horns with the United States is not a necessary condition to achieving his Chinese Dream unless there are perceived to be no alternatives. In other words, the two motives that made the U.S.’ Cold War containment strategy necessary with the Soviet Union are simply absent from contemporary Chinese grand strategy.
Similarly, the international environment of the Cold War that made containment a sufficient strategy for addressing the threat posed by the Soviet Union no longer exists. Unlike the Soviet Union, which mostly sequestered its own economy from the rest of the world, China is a capitalist hub for the world economy and has been the world’s largest trading nation since 2013. As such, any attempt to contain China economically could tear apart the global economy itself — damaging one would hurt the other. Also absent from today’s international environment are the crop of new nations that formed during the Cold War due to decolonization, which upset the regional balance of power in many places. Instability still permeates the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia, but the likelihood of a new nation forming that noticeably shifts the regional power balance in favor of the Chinese or Americans is low.
The U.S. is not in a new Cold War with China, though it still poses a threat to the world order that deserves attention and careful calculation by policymakers. Instead of misapplying an analogy like the Cold War, the U.S. should follow the ingenuity that its leaders had in the aftermath of World War II and craft a new strategy for a new era. One that goes beyond historical comparison and properly assesses its asymmetric capabilities, such as its network of alliances, that China does not possess. Anything less ambitious will only maintain the status quo or prove disastrous for the liberal international order. | https://medium.com/@wrightevan/u-s-china-competition-another-cold-war-e7828af4f6b0 | ['Evan Wright'] | 2021-02-16 22:00:44.216000+00:00 | ['Foreign Policy', 'United States', 'International Relations', 'Grand Strategy', 'China'] |
How to keep your docker installation clean? | Docker is a powerful tool that significantly simplifies deployment, testing and prototyping of various applications and/or services. When heavily used it may turn out that considerable amount of the machine’s storage memory is occupied with docker files — sometimes up to tens of gigabytes or even more! How to save disk space? What can be safely removed, what cannot? This is what this post is about!
Photo by James Pond on Unsplash
Should I really care?
Well.. It depends, as usual ;) Actually, if you’re rich enough and whenever your machines are short of resources you can afford to buy additional disk space, CPU, etc. you don’t to have to worry at all. But keeping your system running clean, tidy and up-to-date is about being a good professional — so when you look at it from this perspective, then — yes, you should look after the system to make it running smoothly. Good news is that docker doesn’t use system resources besides disk space for non-running containers, images or unmounted volumes.
What is the resources usage?
Before any cleanup is started you need to know if it is even necessary — how can you actually know how much disk space is currently used by docker?
First of all you need to know where to check the disk occupancy. The following command:
docker info
will give you comprehensive information about the current docker installation. In particular there’s one key Docker Root Dir which typically points to /var/lib/docker and is a place where docker files are kept. To verify how much space is used by this path you can run: du -h --max-depth=1 /var/lib/docker which gives output similar too:
372K /var/lib/docker/containers
4.0K /var/lib/docker/tmp
20M /var/lib/docker/image
72K /var/lib/docker/buildkit
20K /var/lib/docker/builder
96K /var/lib/docker/network
4.0K /var/lib/docker/trust
20K /var/lib/docker/plugins
199M /var/lib/docker/volumes
312K /var/lib/docker/containerd
4.0K /var/lib/docker/swarm
4.0K /var/lib/docker/runtimes
2.0G /var/lib/docker/aufs
2.2G /var/lib/docker/
and clearly shows how much space is used by a given component.
Another useful command in docker monitoring is:
docker system df
Which gives the following output:
TYPE TOTAL ACTIVE SIZE RECLAIMABLE
Images 9 2 1.48GB 700.1MB (47%) Containers 2 1 54.48kB 21.64kB (39%)
Local Volumes 1 1 206.8MB 0B (0%)
Build Cache 0 0 0B 0B
and shows the current storage usage — what’s interesting is the value in RECLAIMABLE column. It represents the storage that will be freed when all non-running, but existing containers (images) have been removed.
Now, when you know how much space is used by all the components in general, it might be useful to know what is the occupancy of a particular element e.g. container, image or volume.
Containers
To know how much space is taken by a particular container you can run:
docker container ls -s
which shows all running containers, along with the SIZE column (which was added with -s or --size option)
CONTAINER ID IMAGE (...) SIZE
c55ec9a85ddd sonatype/nexus3 (...) 32.8kB (virtual 539MB)
where 32.8kB represents the writable layer of the container while virtual 539MB is the size of a read-only image on top of which the given container is run. Mind that it’s a bit misleading. SIZE value does not contain the size of the volumes used by containers and other metadata — for more info, please have a look at this post — so this is not the whole space that is taken by a given container.
Images
When it comes to the images it’s straightforward. Size is included into the output by default, so running:
docker image ls
gives:
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE sonatype/nexus3 latest 5d3600fd5cf2 5 weeks ago 539MB
where SIZE represents the whole space taken by the image and all its parent images.
Volumes
Finally, the volumes. There’s no command that shows the size of a given volume by default so you need to combine docker volume and du . Firstly, run:
docker volume ls
to get the list of the volumes:
DRIVER VOLUME NAME
local 69915af8ddf99
then, run:
docker volume inspect 69915af8ddf99
to get the volume’s metadata ( Mountpoint is what interests you):
[{
"CreatedAt": "2019-03-21T14:56:27Z",
"Driver": "local",
"Labels": null,
"Mountpoint": "/var/lib/docker/volumes/69915af8ddf99/_data",
"Name": "69915af8ddf99",
"Options": null,
"Scope": "local"
}]
and finally use du -h /var/lib/docker/volumes/69915af8ddf99/_data to know the space being used by given volume.
Now when you know how to monitor the disk space used by docker, it’s time to learn how to free the reclaimable memory.
For all types of docker components described here:
containers
images
volumes
networks
you need to remember that a component that is being used by docker cannot be removed. Such “used” components are for instance:
a running container
an image or volume that is tied to a running container
a network that is used by a running container
On attempt to remove a e.g. running container you will get the following error:
docker container rm c55ec9a85ddd Error response from daemon: You cannot remove a running container c55ec9a85dddd8e62100369ab2624d2463aa7ce22e3f2e732d88a4d7dcf79b46. Stop the container before attempting removal or force remove
How to cleanup docker containers?
To list the IDs of stopped containers you can use (see here for more filtering options which enable you to filter by e.g. exit code):
docker container ls --filter "status=exited" -aq
and then combine this command with docker container rm in the following way:
docker container rm $(docker container ls --filter "status=exited" -aq)
(Please mind that well implemented linux commands have an upper limit for the number of arguments passed — in this case it works as expected but you can consider using xargs )
docker container rm has two useful options:
-v or --volumes which will remove volumes associated with the container being removed
or which will remove volumes associated with the container being removed -f or --force which will force the removal of the container with SIGKILL
There’s also an useful option for docker container run command, namely --rm . It will remove the container automatically when it exits.
How to cleanup docker images?
To remove docker images run:
docker rmi $(docker image ls -aq)
In case of an image that is still used by docker an error will occur and such image will not be removed. Typically you remove dangling (untagged) images — which are useless, they just occupy the free space — and it can be done in the following way:
docker rmi $(docker image ls -aq --filter "dangling=true")
As with containers, there’s also -f or --force option available. What’s important here is that it’s quite safe to use, since images that are tied to running containers will not be removed even when -f option is present.
There’s also a similar option to docker container run --rm , namely docker image build --rm (which is used to remove intermediate containers after successful build) but the latter defaults to true, so it’s not needed to be passed explicitly.
How to cleanup docker volumes?
To remove docker volumes run:
docker volume rm $(docker volume ls -q)
Similarly to images there’s an -f (force) option available for docker volume rm and an -f (filter) option for docker volume ls . The latter can be used to filter only dangling (not tied to any running container volumes).
How to cleanup docker networks?
Docker networks are the least memory consuming components (these are just configuration files) so there’s not much gain from removing the docker networks. It also happens very rarely that you need to remove an existing docker network. However, as I wrote at the beginning, it’s not about space only, but about having it all clean and tidy.
To remove docker networks run:
docker network rm <NETWORK_ID>
Contrary to the previous components, there’s no -f (force) option provided. Similarly to them you can use docker network ls to filter the networks you’d like to remove.
Docker prune
The commands described in the previous sections are used to remove components of a particular type. But there’s a command that allows you to remove all redundant objects at once, namely docker system prune (available since version 1.13). It will remove all unused containers, networks and images (dangling). Optionally — if --volumes options is passed — volumes and (with -a option) also dangling images. Volumes are not removed by default, since it may contain some relevant/sensitive data. That’s why you need to state explicitly that you want the volumes to be removed too. After running the command you will see a warning:
WARNING! This will remove: - all stopped containers
- all networks not used by at least one container
- all volumes not used by at least one container
- all dangling images
- all dangling build cache Are you sure you want to continue? [y/N]
and will be prompted for a confirmation unless -f (force) option is present.
What’s more prune command is available for the components described in this post: containers, images, volumes and networks.
Remember to use it with caution!
Periodical cleanup
An idea to keep your docker ecosystem running clean and not overwhelmed by needless data is to run a periodical cleanup. But instead of setting it up on your own you can use a dedicated docker image that was already checked by other users. Here it goes! | https://blog.softwaremill.com/how-to-keep-your-docker-installation-clean-98a74eb7e7b3 | ['Maciek Opała'] | 2019-06-05 11:28:27.818000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Docker', 'DevOps', 'Monitoring'] |
8 best places to visit in Hong Kong click here. | http://tourinfo4u.ml we provide you information about beautiful cities of the world. | https://medium.com/@usmanzulfiqar14/8-best-places-to-visit-in-hong-kong-click-here-576940dcf86d | [] | 2020-12-24 17:17:55.916000+00:00 | ['Hong Kong', 'China', 'Hong Kong Travel'] |
The Long Day — A Short Story. “This is madness. Isn’t it?” | “This is madness. Isn’t it?”
We lay still in our dust laden clothes upon the roof of an old, dilapidated ‘house’ — a structure made of what the people of the Old Time called ‘bricks’ and ‘cement’. We were here today, as we were here every day, our bellies pasted firmly on a couple of worn-out mattresses, waiting and watching.
Always waiting.
Always watching.
My rifle’s body sat stoically on its bipod stand, its butt resting comfortably against my shoulder; the comfort was more habitual than structural. Its barrel peeped through one of the many cavities that plagued the roof’s railing. The rifle sat there, waiting, watching, just like me.
I peered through its lens at the expanse before me, to which there wasn’t much to begin with. A large, brown, barren stretch of land filled the lens’s scope. A large, brown, barren stretch of land that extended to the blurry end of the horizon. A large, brown, barren stretch of land and a handful of houses that sprouted across it as unexpectedly as devil’s grass in a desert.
The silencer on the barrel’s mouth always came in the lens’s way. I hated that. But orders from the Citadel made the muzzle mandatory. And orders are orders. They’re meant to be followed. Without hesitation. Without question.
Yet he questioned it all. His question now lingered with me.
‘This is madness, isn’t it?’
I nodded lightly, knowing well that he would notice it at his sight’s edge. I drew a large breath, which, for lying upon my stomach all day, hurt my spine. It’s alright, I told myself and waited for the pain to pass. It’s for the cause.
“You know, I sometimes wonder,” he whispered again, peering through his binoculars into the distance. “Puff of dust, eleven-o-clock,” he then said abruptly.
I turned the direction of my rifle and looked. A little brown mushroom of dust had erupted and was now slowly re-joining the earth. “Puff of dust,” I concurred.
“Making a record,” he said. “Thirteen-forty hours.”
I checked the watch on my wrist. The minute and hour hands made a placid arc between eight and two. The second’s needle ran from the minute’s hand to the hour’s hand. “Affirmative,” I responded.
He wrote in his diary with a blue pen that had a white clicking top. He always did that. There were automated diaries to upload information to the Citadel immediately. Yet he held on to this scrappy little notebook. ‘You never know when those gadgets would start failing us’ he would say. He had never trusted anything that the Citadel offered.
He closed the diary with the pen in it and resumed the dust-gazing.
An itch prickled my back. “What?” I asked him and left the trigger to reach for the itch.
“What?”
“You said that you sometimes wonder…”
“Oh,” he replied. “I wonder, you know, if this is all for no reason.” I saw him looking at me from the corner of my eye.
This again. I sighed to express my disinterest.
“I mean,” he carried on anyway, “we haven’t seen one of Them in six years. Fuck, I’m sure that I would have forgotten what They looked like if not for those training demos that the Citadel keeps sending over.”
“We’re just doing our jobs, man,” I said haplessly. “The Citadel counts on us to keep the Wall safe. If we don’t do our jobs and They come, then what?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know we’re “doing our jobs” for the Citadel,” he mocked. “But don’t you ever wonder what it could mean if this… if all of this was truly over? If we didn’t have to wake up every fucking day from our beds, leave behind our families, and come and lie here, on this piece of shit rug, which if I may add delicately, is fucking my back up?”
“Delicately,” I mocked.
He scoffed.
“And what would you do then? Sit by a lake and paint a picture like one of those artist folks?”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” he replied, ignoring the mockery in my tone. “Maybe I’ll sit and write a book about the life I spent on this fucking mattress. I’ll call it ‘Chronicles of a Broken Spine’.”
What? screamed my mind so loud that I had to turn away from my lens and look at him. It had been a while since I had moved. My back winced with the sudden rush of blood that flowed through it. But I looked at him through it all.
“Puff of dust, twelve-o-clock,” he said.
I returned to the lens. “Puff of dust.”
“The Citadel had warned of a lot of these today,” he said as he made the record in the diary. “Thirteen-fifty hours.”
A part of me resented his optimism. My insides cringed to see him still believe in hopes of a different life. You’re an idiot, I thought. This is it. This is all that ever will be. This is what we will survive as. Fucking idiot.
It’s not as if I didn’t hope for better times. I too sometimes wished for nothing more than a quiet day with a glass of whiskey in my hand and some fried chicken on my plate. The realist in me, however, had taught me that it’s wise to choose reason over hope. “You’ve always been a fucking moron.”
“Sure,” he hissed back. “Call me a moron. You’re not the first. And you damn well won’t be the last. But let me tell you, it’s better to be a moron than a hopeless, empty shell.”
Could he be right? It has been six years since we saw Them. Six whole years. And even six years ago, we had managed to push them away. What if they’re actually gone? What if we’re just sitting and waiting and watching for someone who doesn’t even exist?
But I knew better than to voice my thoughts in front of him. I knew it would only spur him in a direction I’d rather he wouldn’t venture into. “It’s not our job to think about the future,” I said coolly. “There are better people than you and I for that. People who can actually think about and work towards such things. Our job is to wait and watch and report what we see. Our job is to make sure that everyone and everything inside the walls is safe.”
He scoffed. “Let those better people in the Citadel dream my dreams while I just lie here in this fucking pile of old-time stones and stare at puffs of dust all day. Let them live their lives while I rot in here.”
“Twelve-o-clock,” I said, “Puff of dust.”
“Puff of dust,” he said. “Fourteen-hundred hours. Making an entry.”
“Affirmative,” I responded. I thought I saw another puff of dust elsewhere and adjusted the lens’s focus. It was nothing. A house of red coloured bricks stood alone in the line of my sight. It stood like it did every other day. It stood there while we lay here, waiting and watching.
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” I readjusted the lens by two ticks.
“You call this living?” he demanded. “We wake up every day to the same shitty binoculars and the same shitty snipers, lie upon this fucking rug for hours together, eat that fucking garbage they call “bread” three times a day.” He rotated the lens of his binoculars. “And for what? To see these puffs of dust that fly with the wind?”
“I’d say it’s still better than listening to the incessant ramblings of that wife of yours.”
“That,” he replied with an agreeing nod, “I’ll give you. But it’s still not the point.”
I felt an itch rise upon the tip of my nose. I pulled my finger away from the trigger to scratch at it. It felt good.
“Look at this,” he said, holding the diary in my face. “Look at the records it shows,” he said as he flipped through the pages. “Puff of dust. Puff of dust. Puff of dust. Fuck, I have written those three words so many times that sometimes, while sleeping, I write them on my wife’ back. Puff of dust at fourteen-hundred hours.”
“It’s our job, man,” I said. A saw speck of dust on my lens. I reached out to clean it.
“Yeah, it is,” he replied, “but for what? I’d rather They come and finish what they started and put me out of my misery.”
“Or you could just shoot yourself, you know,” I suggested. hoping in that moment that he would truly consider the option. My finger’s nail scraped delicately at the spot on the lens. “Or I could do you the favour.”
“Sure,” he agreed. “Why not? That would be an easy way out. Just get me some of that whiskey that your better people hide in the Citadel.”
“That whiskey is a rumour,” I said matter-of-factly. The speck on my lens still remained. I had in fact managed to smear it a little more than it was before. Damn, I thought. Now that will take some explaining to do. I looked away from the sniper’s lens and looked at him. “Give me that cloth to clean the lens.” I put my hand out but he didn’t move.
“What is that? Twelve-o-clock?”
I looked through the lens again. It looked a little blurry. I adjusted its focus. It was no spot. A cold wave spread through me. A frightened first drop of sweat trickled down my temple. “Get the radio,” I whispered. My words shivered for the first time. For the first time, I hoped to have lived the way he had said. “Call the Citadel. They’re here.” I looked through the lens again. The silencer came in the way of the lens. I always hated that. | https://medium.com/@kumar-naresh/the-long-day-a-short-story-2d638e88a7f8 | [] | 2020-12-19 07:23:23.366000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Dystopia', 'Short Fiction', 'Science Fiction'] |
Here is why you should hire Full Stack Developers for your Start-up | Here is why you should hire Full Stack Developers for your Start-up Skill Safari Jan 21·6 min read
Every year, with the enhancement of technology trends getting onboarded, there get onboarded new frameworks, new/updated programming languages, and other supporting tools to finalize a full-fledged working application and additional learning options for developers to learn and build. So, the crux is that finding a full-stack developer doesn’t only make it difficult than before. But your startup needs them, and I’m gonna tell you why.
For a common internet user, the web page he looks at is the key to attracting his interest. To create a cross-functional website/web app, there are 3 major components. Front-end, back-end, and database architecture that would connect everything. Full-stack development includes complex procedures such as designing the framework and network of a website.
It is a task that involves different roles, where a full-stack developer needs to be proficient in using both business knowledge and marketing experience. Full-stack developers work in different disciplines, working cross-functionally offering the “full-stack” of a website. Full-stack developers are by definition, those that have proficiency in all three of these and can work independently on any web development project without the need for additional support. And most importantly learning is a continual process.
In the life of a software developer, learning never ends. — Albert Sidhant
If you feel the concept of Full-stack developers being exaggerated then you can very well get associated with the old school who are called Frontend Developers, Backend Engineers, and architectures who stand as a stronghold to develop applications. Said this, if you want individual specializations as mentioned you need to be ready with splurged investment to fulfill the requirement.
But, this is not an idle working model for start-ups especially if it’s bootstrapped. Running a startup needs to cut corners and edges wherever and whenever required. If it’s about a technology-centric startup, it’s going to be a headwind against the capital. So, startup founders are focused on long-term capital, so they don’t look for perfection, if so they wouldn’t have started up in the first place, isn’t it? Hope you will agree with me. The below-mentioned points will back my points why a startup should hire a full stack developer or a trained full-stack developer.
#1 Full-stack developers reduce working capital and team size:
Building a tech start-up and running it with boundaries, constraints all around it viz. budget, employees, capital investments, etc., considering various aspects like these, its indigenous in nature. And when you hire full-stack developers, your resource requirement metric goes down for the same value of delivery. Thus, you go low on your pocket and more on the value received.
So if building up a web/mobile app or any software infrastructure is a part of your plan, hiring individual experts in frontend, backend and database separately would be a great option but these individuals usually work in their own silo, and none of them would have the right or vision about what’s happening outside their realm. That’s a difficult scenario for a start-up that doesn’t have streamlined processes which usually big MNCs have.
Thus, as a start-up entrepreneur, onboarding a few Full-Stack Developers will get your job done. Even at Skill Safari, we have onboarded only 4 main developers who take care of end-end processes. (I’m not making a point here, just mentioning our company for a backlink).
Having a few people onboarded makes the team’s vision clear. Communication becomes more engaging and conveying ideas become less challenging.
#2 Full-Stack Developers get along and grow with you
A start-up usually needs to share its vision with its employees, where the travel cycle of development or maintenance goes, full-stack developers will have a closer connection aligned to the start-up’s vision. They will get attached to the company and its vision, subsequently, when the start-up grows the developers grow along.
A full-stack developer will be the best person to give KT and guide a new developer who gets onboarded. As they can be the best translator and they can be the voice for your product to your clients/investors. They will be the ones who’ll love to see your product getting developed from stack to stack.
#3 Full Stack developers can become developer wizards in the long run
Initially, Full-Stack developers are not experts, and it’s not a bad thing. Startups are not perfect either. And also, you are highly unlikely to find an expert from a startup but in established companies only. So on that note expecting perfection doesn’t make sense. In the same way, expecting a full stack developer to be an expert at the start is not sensible either. But in contrast, with more experience in any particular stack, one can become more proficient in development.
One of the greatest assets of a full-stack developer is that they are flexible enough to handle the development and architecture. That’s why Full Stack web developers are called the UNICORNS of the software development field.
To reduce training costs and get trained full-stack developers, you can hire from Skill Safari’s Alchemyst Program, where developers are trained vigorously with various projects and assessments for a duration of over 8 months. And Skill Safari never charges you a penny to hire these talents from the Alchemyst Program.
#4 Full-Stack Developers have their basics clear
While aspiring to become Full Stack Developers, they undergo thorough basics training. Which includes Fundamentals of Programming(FOP), Data Structures and Algorithms, Feature-Oriented Software Development(FOSD), etc. These things are the building base for any software developer, most of the individual developers will not have the basics cleared. But for a full stack developer, it is a must to cover their basics as it will act as a foundation for their stacks.
So, even if you onboard full-stack developers with a higher package in your startup, they can specialize themselves in any role you want and at a much quicker pace. This is due to the very fact that they have a strong base.
Even Skill Safari’s Alchemyst Program focuses on training and grooming developers in the basics. That’s one main reason why Skill Safari’s Alchemyst Full Stack Developer program is most sought among people for Full Stack training as well as by the companies who prefer hiring from Skill Safari.
#5 Hiring trained and skilled Full Stack Developers have become easier and free
There are many companies in India that are supplying Trained Full Stack Developers. One among them is Skill Safari, where you can get trained candidates. And I’m mentioning this as one of the reasons is because you can get quality Full Stack Developers for free. You just have to contact us, we give you profiles, you do the interview and you offer them.
Skill Safari’s Full Stack developer course follows an intensive boot camp format where they learn from expert faculty in the live Sessions and practice their skills by working on live projects. We cater efficient and productive developers to companies. And this is why you should hire from Skill Safari. To know more about the program please follow Alchemyst Full Stack Developer Program.
It´s better to wait for a productive developer to become available than it is to wait for the first available developer to become productive. -Steve McConnell
Concluding…
The aforementioned reasons give you clarity on considering Full Stack Developers for your startup. They will be the face of software development in coming years to leverage with the emerging on-demand technologies. They are flexible and solo which saves on your pocket and office space, they can adapt complexities of the development environment. Their strong base, deep and diverse knowledge about frontend and backend alongside architecture will make one heck of an asset to your start-up. And we made full-stack developers hiring easy | https://medium.com/@skillsafari/here-is-why-you-should-hire-full-stack-developers-for-your-start-up-aa670de56bff | ['Skill Safari'] | 2021-01-21 05:35:31.664000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Startup', 'Software Engineering', 'Full Stack', 'Software Development'] |
grow up so I can have a childhood | grow up so I can have a childhood
Glass House Poem #4
Photo by Saksham Gangwar on Unsplash
i can’t wait to grow up
so i can have a childhood. my sister
feels the same. you know what we are going to do?
we are going to get simple jobs.
somewhere fun. in a bar, in a coffee shop, in a bookstore.
we are going to relax.
we are going to play.
we are going to read a book
without being asked
what we are doing with our lives.
we won’t tell anyone that we were gifted.
we won’t have this pressure anymore.
i can’t
can’t
wait.
i will give myself trips
and years where
i don’t have any plans at all.
i will swim and talk to new people and
i won’t have to be afraid just because
my mom is afraid.
and i won’t have to feel like
i have to achieve the things she did not achieve.
it will be my life, my childhood.
ill make it so nice for myself.
am i building a career? no
a family? no
what am i doing, people will ask.
im having my childhood right now.
please ask again
later, later
much, much later.
call it what you want — some people have a
gap year
i will have a gap decade
where i let myself relax
take deep breaths
and think before i
make my next move.
i will be carefree, i will be…
bouncy, happy.
i can’t wait
i can’t wait
to have my childhood.
to give myself the gift of one. | https://medium.com/are-you-okay/grow-up-so-i-can-have-a-childhood-49617f94d23a | ['Lisa Martens'] | 2020-10-26 14:20:51.582000+00:00 | ['Glass House Poems', 'Childhood', 'Poetry', 'Poem', 'Mental Health'] |
Shining bright! It’s our latest DozerDoll | Hey! It’s always awesome to meet my fans! THE MIKEY MANIACS! It’s great that you’re all here to meet and greet me! I simply can’t say how much it means to me to see you all come out today!
Uh, Mikey… it’s just you and me here…
H uhh? Oh, not you! I’m talking to all my followers, fans, and awesome people out in the Dozer-verse via my socials! Remember smash that Like button! Click the bell! And rock it like MIKEY!
So, how many Mikey Maniacs are there? You must be super popular!
Right now, it’s a super tight group. The group is 30 strong! That’s right it’s a hard-core group of awesome people. We’re gonna change it all and keep it real!
30 Million? Wow, I’m talking to a real star here. I’m going to have to be careful not to annoy your legions of fans!
Mikey quietly speaks…
Uh, not 30 million, 30… But it’s the start of the big leagues! I’m already making awesome moves and deals. Mugs, T-shirts, Hoodies! Heck even sweet Nike dunks! All coming your way! I’m working on the album, spinning decs. Getting the DJ lifestyle set and of course, being totally open with the fans all the way!
So you’re doing licensing, music, massive social media work? What can’t you do?
Nothing! With the Mikey Maniacs behind me, I can rock it with the best of them! Not only that but we’re going to break the big leagues, heck I’ve even released my soon to be Christmas #1 “We Wish You A Merry Christmas!”. I sing, direct, act, and play all the instruments!
You know that is cool Mikey! I think I’m going to have that stuck in my head! It can’t be easy doing all this?
Oh no, it’s hard work. But I’m going to be the star! I’m going to help propel DozerFriends and PlayDapp to the top! I might be starting small, but everything I do is 100%. When I put my mind to it, I'm going to be the star of the show! Stardom will follow me, after all. If you do the hard work, you can achieve all the stardom you want!
You know Mikey, I like what you’re saying!
31!
Huh?
31 Mikey Maniacs now! Stick with me PlayDapp gamers and you’ll be rolling in ETH and PLA!
Well, we certainly can’t knock Mikey’s confidence, can we!
In fact, Mikey is such a star, our amazing art team couldn't resist doing some awesome work with him, customizing some awesome Nike Blazers, which… well let’s just say the lucky recipient needs to keep them under lock and key… I want them, no I need them. | https://medium.com/playdappgames/shining-bright-its-our-latest-dozerdoll-e3b0fe5a5e38 | ['Playdapp Editor_Ryan'] | 2020-12-17 06:59:13.368000+00:00 | ['Nft', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Crypto', 'Gaming', 'Game Art'] |
5 Things to Stop Doing in your Business | If you are like most people with ambition, passion and purpose, you’ve been taking the time to plan for growth and success as the New Year approaches. (yup, me too!)
Yesterday I finalized the plan for my 2 core offers to start the new year. While planning is an essential step in reaching success, its also important to reflect on things that did or did not work over the past 12 months.
The methods for success are not one size fits all, but I can share what to avoid that IS universal for all of us.
Here’s a list of five things I DID NOT DO to while growing my business this year.
YOU CAN (and should) DO THEM TOO
1. I DID NOT endlessly scroll social media trying to get free motivation and inspiration for my next level. I invested in coaching and took control of my personal development.
2. I DID NOT try to be someone else. I leaned in to my personality and connected it to my HR background. I embraced my Enneagram 8 qualities and spoke directly and honestly to my ideal clients.
3. I DID NOT stop talking about my offers because people may get annoyed with me. Business requires selling. It’s my duty to share my expertise and the transformation I facilitate. Do you believe in the value of your offer?
4. I DID NOT waste time obsessing on people making excuses to avoid investing in themselves and their business. I focused on the ones ready to level up instead.
5. I DID NOT let fear stop me from reaching my goals. 2020 was an “unprecedented” year, but I launched my group program, doubled my corporate salary, and even started a podcast 2.5 months ahead of schedule.
If you want to bust through a plateau and reach the next level of success in your business, decide which of these 5 things you will commit to NOT doing. | https://medium.com/@coachkeds/5-things-to-stop-doing-in-your-business-877ffe700c2b | ['Kristen Edwards'] | 2020-12-12 19:03:30.550000+00:00 | ['Online Marketing', 'New Years Resolutions', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Speculate! Derail the Economy | Three broad types of speculation are worth considering here: speculation in land, in tangible commodities, and in the markets for money and other financial instruments.
Sit Tight ‘till the Price is Right…
Over time, land values rise because people are willing and able to pay more for the use of land. But speculators don’t generally make use of the land they own; they want it simply because it grows in value. And the act of speculative landholding itself causes land values to rise further. It drives up prices making it harder for people who need land to get access to it: some end up homeless, others unemployed.
The same happens with speculative investments in tangible commodities like oil or wheat. Again, speculators have no use for the commodity in question, but they drive up prices for those who do. We all contribute to the unearned wealth of speculators each time we put fuel in our cars. And in poor countries, hungry people pay with their lives when wheat prices are driven up beyond the means of governments to import sufficient to cover the shortfall in domestic production.
If I Didn’t Do It Someone Else Would…
But screwing up the land and commodity markets is not enough for the ambitious speculator: speculation in the financial markets promises even greater rewards. Not only can currencies be played off against one another, regardless of the consequences for the citizens of countries so targeted, but there is no limit to the number and nature of financial ‘products’ than are invented, traded, and thus made subject to speculation. Among these are ‘naked’ Credit Default Swaps, whereby investment banks, hedge funds and institutional investors intentionally put themselves in a position to benefit from sovereign debt defaults.
The Rigged House Never Loses
Financial market speculation has been compared to a casino, but the comparison doesn’t stand up. In a game of roulette or blackjack, the odds are stacked against the punter; these are games of pure chance. In the financial markets, the game is rigged in favour of speculators, who, through their financial power, are able to influence events so they win every time. The beneficiaries of speculative investment get wealthier, not because they work hard (or at all), but because financial wizards have devised ways for the rich to further enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us.
If you accept speculation as an intrinsic and therefore legitimate part of the economic system it becomes hard to find grounds for regulating it. Given that it serves no useful economic purpose, perhaps it’s time we realised the world would be a better place without it. | https://medium.com/@renegadeinc/speculate-derail-the-economy-45266d058cef | ['Renegade Inc.'] | 2021-06-08 08:02:49.567000+00:00 | ['Investors', 'Capital', 'Investment', 'Economy', 'Wealth'] |
The Wonder of Getting Lost in a Bookshop | The Wonder of Getting Lost in a Bookshop
And why we should fight to keep them
Do you love visiting bookshops as much as I do? I love it! But, I don’t do it enough. There’s something so alluring about the convenience of online shopping, right? You think about something one minute, search for and buy it the next and voila…more often than not it’s on your doorstep the very next day. But, the thing about visiting a bookshop is that it’s a much better experience. Here’s why:
You open yourself to serendipity
One of the best things about bookshops is that you’ll pick up titles that you didn’t even know existed. You might even find a new subject of interest, surface an unknown author, or find an obscure title. It’s harder to do that online. Most of the time, when you’re online shopping it’s purpose-driven! You search for exactly what you want, conduct your business and badda-bing badda-boom you’re done.
However, in doing that you miss the opportunity to accidentally discover new things. You don’t broaden your horizons as much and you never know what you might be missing.
The romanticism of bookshops
What’s more inspiring to you? Finding a 500 square foot bookshop that has 1000s of titles crammed into every nook and cranny or imaging someone racing through a warehouse so big that they stopped measuring in square foot and started measuring in acres.
I know what floats my boat more. To me, there’s nothing better than discovering a bookshop. Every time I’m traveling I almost always visit a bookshop — just to see what’s going on. I love it and I could while away the hours quite easily. And, here’s a top tip…buying a book on your travels is a much better souvenir than an overpriced fridge magnet.
You have the opportunity to support your local economy
Support local, independent retailers where you can. In these shops nine times out of 10 you’ll find people who love books. Also, they usually love talking about books. This is where you can have a discussion about your recent favourite read or find out what you’ve missed in your chosen genre. They’re a wealth of information. And, what’s better is that you’re supporting the local economy and small retailers. What could feel more satisfying than that?
However, even if you visit a Barnes & Noble or a Waterstones they’re staffed by local people. They’re staffed by people who know books. They’re not staffed by people who don’t care if they’re picking a pack of dishwasher tablets, car windscreen wipers, or the latest Stephen King Novel. | https://medium.com/1-one-infinity/the-wonder-of-getting-lost-in-a-bookshop-ad29bb82154f | ['Jonny Mccormick'] | 2019-09-15 21:29:58.162000+00:00 | ['Retail', 'Local Business', 'Reading', 'Bookshops', 'Books'] |
Mozambique: Portraits Of Resilience Amid Historic Disaster | On April 25, Cyclone Kenneth made landfall in the southern African country of Mozambique. It was the strongest tropical cyclone to hit the country since modern records began. According to Mozambique’s National Institute of Disaster Management (INGC), “38 people have been killed by Cyclone Kenneth. More than 35,000 homes have been destroyed or damaged.”
Cyclone Kenneth came just as hundreds of thousands of civilians, left homeless and hungry by Cyclone Idai — which turned huge swaths of the country into an inland sea — were starting to put the pieces of their lives together. World Vision estimates that flooding from both cyclones have affected nearly 3 million people and the death toll is said to exceed 843 people.
But many experts believe that the death toll from Cyclone Idai alone is much higher than the official figure since countless missing bodies have never been discovered and are believed to have been washed away, and many of the hardest hit regions remain unreachable.
As victims of the storms are struggling to come to terms with the scale of the tragedy, the biggest fear now is the outbreak of communicable diseases such as cholera. “At least 1,428 people have been infected” with the waterborne disease as government and aid agencies work around the clock to contain the outbreak.
The international community has been slow to react to the unfolding humanitarian disaster in what is one of the poorest countries in the world. So far, aid remains “drastically underfunded, with only about $88 million received of the $390 million needed as of April 9.”
Earlier this month, BRIGHT Magazine dispatched independent documentary photographer Zinyange Auntony to Beira, one of the hardest hit cities, to document how victims of the natural disaster are slowly putting the pieces of their lives together. We spoke with Auntony in Zambia today on his way back to Mozambique to cover cyclone Kenneth. | https://brightthemag.com/mozambique-portraits-of-resilience-amid-historic-disaster-cyclone-idai-kenneth-climate-change-africa-a95d5e0e9d0a | ['Bright Magazine'] | 2019-05-02 09:26:55.906000+00:00 | ['Photo Essay', 'Climate Change', 'Humanitarian', 'Photography', 'Crisis'] |
How Much Does It Cost To Develop Your Own Mobile Application? | Mobile apps are about to become the next big thing in 2021. Here’s a guide that will help you estimate the cost of your Mobile App. In real-world examples, it can cost you between $15,000-$25,000 having single functionality as their core feature. Whereas medium-complexity apps fall in the range of $40,000-$100,000.
What to look for?
Development of your mobile app varies & totally depends on the factors that affect the cost, every feature & quality of your app can become a factor of the cost but here are some of the major key factors on which development cost depends in most cases.
1. The Functionalities In Your App: The more you need to integrate features in your mobile app, having multiple screens & complex UI, AI integration, user authentication puts your app in the group of basic application which doesn’t require much handling.
2. Your Development Team: Your development team can become the biggest factor for the development cost, the location & work environment plays a major role in it, where you need a team of UI/UX designer, programmers, project managers, and their geographical work location. These small factors change accordingly to the quality of your output in work.
3. The Industry You Are Targeting: Mobile App industry is a well-growing industry and will be a game-changer in upcoming years, as you are making product in a growing industry you have to add security requirements and protecting users data which requires a professional approach to advanced development & a higher cost of implementation.
4. User Support & Maintenance: At the end moment you have to provide a user support system where you will be collecting a lot of feedback from your users and managing this work requires a separate team, also you have to make sure about providing the right support system in case your users run into trouble because no amount of users will praise a Mobile-App which they can’t trust.
Your Development Platform:
Even cross-platform Mobile App Development is doing pretty good, choosing a native platform can produce a higher quality of Apps. Your development is more concise with a chosen native platform, as it provides a more engaged development team & which will give you a huge advantage.
iOS & Android:
The cost for hiring an iOS developer & Android is pretty similar, but the iOS ecosystem will be a great advantage for you, as the iOS ecosystem comes with a very narrow range of devices with different screen sizes, but in case you are towards Android you will be having a lot of devices with different screen sizes to focus on, it will be more complicated to make your app work on different screen sizes properly & that's why it takes more time to develop an Android app.
The time frame might be 3 times longer to develop an Android app as compared with an iOS, that’s why most companies focus on developing an iOS first, and once they are good in their business they move to the Android market.
Cross-Platform: Choosing cross-platform as your development can save you a lot of bucks, here’s why.
A single development team with higher engagement in the work.
2. Single codebase to maintain that work without any issues on both the platforms (iOS & Android).
3. Saves a lot of money with speedy development allows you to release your app quickly in the market.
Development Team:
According to Glassdoor & PayScale, here is what it might cost you to hire your developers.
Developers:
An hourly rate for mid-level developers can vary between $70-$100 in the US. Average Android Developers in the US expects $100K-$120K for their salary. iOS Developers get nearly $100K-$125K on average in the US, it can vary accordingly as high-end Developers expect twice this amount.
UX/UI Designers: The annual salary ranges from $60K-$130K in the US, whereas freelancers expect $100 per hour for good quality services. In European countries, the prices are around $30K per year. Project Managers: In the US software project managers expect about $125K per year. In Europe, it can vary between $30–35K per year. Mobile Testers: Around $60K-70K in the US market and half the value in the European market.
How Features In Your App Affects The Cost:
The way you plan to add features in your app affects the development cost, mobile apps can be more featured-packed as they are more hardware in Mobile Devices, GPS, Bluetooth, Fingerprint Reader & camera, having features related to these hardware makes the development more costly, so focus on making a simple MVP(Minimum Viable Product) out your app, remove all the unnecessary feature at first and test the core features, doing so will give you better clarity of what feature you actually need.
You don't need a well-polished & fully-fledged mobile app with all the fancy features in it, to start getting in front of your customer or investor you can learn a lot by building an MVP because no matter how good your apps are, premature scaling will result in a massive failure.
So instead of going towards a feature-packed app try building an MVP first.
Attracting investors should be one of your goals while developing your app, building an MVP makes this task a bit easy as you can modify the changes in your product to make it better even without making it cost you more. Building an MVP usually takes 310–330 hours, distributed among the entire mobile app development team accordingly to your app’s complexity.
The Reasons For Slow Development That Impacts Development Cost | https://medium.com/@mohit19/how-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-your-own-mobile-application-2c47cdb0cc61 | [] | 2020-12-22 11:55:20.433000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Technology', 'Entrepreneurship', 'App Development', 'Programming'] |
How to delete Instagram account? | Whenever you want to disable your Instagram account, your Profile, your photos, your videos, your comments, your likes and your followers will be permanently removed. If You want to temporarily disable your account just take a break and then start your process.
How can I temporarily disable my Instagram account?
Whenever you want to delete your Instagram account, your Profile, your photos, your videos, your comments, your likes and your followers will be hidden until you re activate your Instagram account by logging back in. You can disable your Instagram account from a computer or mobile browser. You cannot temporarily disable your account from the Instagram app.
Follow the following instruction to temporarily disable your account:
READ ALSO: Online Earning Websites in Pakistan without investment in 2022
From Computer:
Open your browser and Log in to instagram.com from a computer.
2. Click on your profile picture on the top right corner and click Profile, then click Edit profile.
3. Scroll down to the bottom, then click Temporarily disable my account in the bottom right corner.
4. Select an option from the drop-down menu to Why are you disabling your account? And enter your password. The option to disable your Instagram account will appear when you will select a reason from the menu and entered your password.
5. Then Click on Temporarily disable account.
6. That’s done.
READ ALSO : Qissay Meri Ulfat K Jo Marqoom Hain Saary || Best Urdu Poetry , Parizaad Hum Tv
From Mobile Browser:
Open your any internet browser and go to Instagram.com and Log in to instagram.com from a mobile browser.
2. Click on your profile picture on the bottom right corner and click on Profile, then click Edit profile.
3. Scroll down to the bottom, then click Temporarily disable my account in the bottom right corner.
4. Select an option from the drop-down menu to Why are you disabling your account? And enter your password. The option to disable your Instagram account will appear when you will select a reason from the menu and entered your password.
Read More | https://medium.com/@mallahalimuhammad2/how-to-delete-instagram-account-ad490e3a8d30 | ['Ali Muhammad Mallah'] | 2021-12-26 04:13:14.007000+00:00 | ['Instagram Stories', 'İnstagram', 'Instagram Followers', 'Instagram Marketing', 'Instagram'] |
You 100% do not have to bloom where you are planted. | A few years ago I attended a womxn’s entrepreneur event. It could have been any women’s entrepreneur event you’ve ever been to. We started with a small batch breakfast and craft coffee punctuated by a call to seize the day so inspiring it resembled a church service. After shuffling from break-out session to break-out session, we paused for a lunch of organic something with grass fed something else on artisan bread.
I know you have all been to events just like this one, and so you know a local successful business womxn shared her tips for having it all while we ate; we shuffled off to more breakout sessions; and we ended the day with a vendor fair, photo booth, and happy hour catered by a chef I adore — partially because she is the best in town and partially because she shares my love of a well-made charcuterie board.
Also like most events for womxn entrepreneurs in the pre-COVID days, the decor was Instagram worthy with boho garland and inspirational messages in the latest script font everywhere, including the center of every table in the room we convened for food with a side of you got this.
This particular event I was attending with one of the most thoughtful, intentional creatives I know, who is also a feminist poet, dedicated to making sure every word in every poem she writes means exactly what she is trying to say.
We started towards the front of the room, carrying our food and all the tree-killing handouts from the morning sessions. Anxious to have my hands free again, I put my stuff down at a table that would leave us perfectly poised to soak in all the successful energy sure to come from the lunchtime keynote.
With her signature laugh that all at once puts you at ease and tells you that you are missing something very key to your survival, my friend told me we needed to find a different table.
She nodded towards the inspirational message framed in the center:
Bloom where you are planted.
And then she said something that clicked in my soul they way hearing the perfect song for the exact mood you are in does.
I one-hundred percent do not have to bloom where I am planted. I get to dig up, uproot, move, reroot, and bloom where I am nourished.
And so we moved.
Words are my thing. Understanding what they do to us and the power they have to do for us is my jam. And as my soul played the rhythm of her words over and over for the next few weeks, I honed in on the unseen power balance that is solidified when we are told to bloom where we are planted and we listen.
For many of us, our mothers and grandmothers believed they had no choice but to bloom where they were planted — they became experts at making the best out of bad situations and being strong womxn in spite of a whole host of realities.
My own grandmother lived in a house next door to her husband because she couldn’t divorce him and she couldn’t live with him. My mom has never left a job without one waiting in the wings, regardless of whether she is being nourished or not.
And yet, during those same eras, living with those same expectations, womxn have refused to be that one flower that comes up through the crack in a hard sidewalk and sparks life. Instead, they have done whatever they had to do to to create a life that gives them life.
They have created underground railroads to bring their friends to safety even when they were told it was too risky. They have left abusive husbands in the middle of the night, kids in tow. They have gone down dark alleys to unmarked addresses to end a pregnancy. They have walked their black children into recently integrated schools with white people literally throwing things at them. They have spoken out in support of the education of girls, even when it meant getting shot.
They have also crossed the border from Mexico into the US in the dead of night following a coyote, hoping and praying that everything they have sacrificed for that moment will not be lost, and that they will at last get to start creating that new life they have dreamed of.
And still this belief that we should grace up, dig in, and turn lemons into lemonade prevails. It is such a strong current in our culture that the womxn posting this phrase on Instagram or using it to decorate a conference are the very womxn who desire freedom and empowerment for us all. They, too are fooled by the curvy words and flowery sentiment.
As twitter puns, well-timed one-liners, and serious conversations turned to the We may actually have to leave moment last week, I saw numerous people responding that even talking about leaving this country to find something else reeks of a privilege that many do not have. This is more well-intentioned folks perpetuating the myth that we have to be given anything to get up and go when it’s time to go.
While there is no doubt that privilege, access, inclusion, and equity are in a gut-wrenching spiritual battle right now with patriarchy, gaslighting, and straight up lies, I need ya’ll to hear me when I say this one thing:
Womxn have repeatedly found the means to get to some place better when we were ready. Womxn who leave their abusive husbands in the middle of the night often do so with zero dollars in their pocket. Right now, in our country, there are tens of thousands of womxn who are launching companies with no capital, starting podcasts with no college degrees, and just generally kicking ass and figuring it out as they go.
What I am not saying is that it is simple. I have watched my brother pull many a root from the ground in the hot Florida sunshine, and it is no small feat. The tropical plants at my mom’s house have roots that go under the driveway and wind around like that yellow brick road that also leads to a womxn realizing she had everything she needed all along.
They touch every part of our existence here. And still, it is possible.
The sad reality is that the only truth here lies in the fact that we are capable of uprooting and moving on. There is no guarantee that we will succeed and find that better life, or even that we will survive.
The beauty that flourishes at the intersection of these two truths is that the power comes not in succeeding, but in the uprooting. It is this power that we give to our daughters and to their daughters and to their daughters, just as it was given to us.
Each time a womxn refuses to smile when her heart is breaking, keep silent when she is passed over for a promotion she deserves, or ignore her uncle at a holiday dinner when he squeezes her ass, our power becomes greater and their shrinks.
And, as I love to say, With great power comes…
great power. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/you-100-do-not-have-to-bloom-where-you-are-planted-7506b6488970 | ['Lakay Cornell', 'She Her'] | 2020-11-16 01:55:11.368000+00:00 | ['Inspiration', 'Empowerment', 'Language'] |
Can bitcoin survive China’s debt bubble? | China is a key figure in the global economy, there’s no doubt about that. The nation has seen unprecedented growth over the past 20 years, but a hiccup in third quarter GDP reports this year has begun to raise doubts about the sustainability of the pace at which Beijing is taking on new debt.
China’s Debt
According to some studies, approximately 25 percent of China’s debt can be attributed to wasted infrastructure investments in what have become ghost cities.
Though the spending had its rationale at the time, creating jobs and demand for industrial commodities, that investment may be lost forever. Since the new infrastructure served little real-world purpose, these investments weren’t recovered by the state or the participating corporations.
And that’s just domestic spending.
On an international level, China has dumped billions into overseas projects, from its ambitious One Belt One Road Initiative to the billions in loans it has dished out to prop up countries in Africa and South America.
In fact, many of the world’s top emerging economies are heavily in debt to China — a problem which, if not resolved — could lead to these countries converting their national assets to pay off the debt, much like Sri Lanka already is.
The Debt Trap and Its Impact On Emerging Economies
Sri Lanka may be the most recent case of an otherwise promising emerging nation getting pulled back into a slump thanks to overreliance on debt.
China’s grasp on Sri Lanka has led to a ballooning debt of over $13 billion, and with an annual projected revenue of just $14 billion, Sri Lanka has had to hand over key assets, including one of its largest ports on a 100-year lease in 2017.
Additionally, this vulnerability has led to China spending millions to influence Sri Lankan elections in an attempt to re-elect President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who originally signed off on many of those debts.
But Sri Lanka isn’t the only country under China’s spell.
Under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Djibouti, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, the Maldives, Mongolia, Montenegro, Pakistan, and Tajikistan are now all at an increased risk of above-average debt, which has created an extremely delicate economic landscape, especially when considering that China, itself, is teetering on the edge.
Slowing Economy, Collapsing Markets
China’s slowing growth is already beginning to impact financial markets, with the Shanghai Composite falling over 20 percent since the start of the year, and a number of analysts saying the collapse has just begun. Adding fuel to the fire, there is the ever-escalating trade war taking place between China and the United States.
Though China’s markets have yet to succumb to a full-blown panic sell-off, the Central Bank of China is continuing to prop up the yuan to keep consumers eager. But this fix is only temporary.
In addition to market woes and slowing growth, however, China is dealing with another problem; shadow banking.
With over $10 trillion in asset-management products on the market, earnings are flatlining as liquidity dries up and bad loans start to pile up — a major problem for products largely built on balance sheets. Because of this, funding costs are skyrocketing, and capital outflows are speeding up at unsustainable rates.
Bitcoin and the China’s Debt Bubble
Over the past two years, China has given crypto investors whiplash with its back-and-forth rulings on exchange, mining and trading regulations, highlighting its influence on global markets in the process.
It’s no secret that China has some draw in the emerging crypto-economy. In fact, some of the biggest dips in crypto markets have been directly attributed to simple rumors that China was going to “ban bitcoin.”
So what happens when China’s debt bubble actually pops?
Generally, there are two schools of thought on this matter. One, a bullish resistance to the broken fiat system, and the other, a bearish take on regulatory influence.
In the first, advocates say that this is exactly why cryptos were created.
Joe DiPasquale, CEO of cryptocurrency fund of hedge funds BitBull Capital, notes,
“Bitcoin was forged in the fires of economic uncertainty.”
And indeed, it was.
Bitcoin, for its role, was built to be a deflationary, government resistant currency without borders. But as with everything, there’s a catch.
People actually need to use cryptocurrencies in order for cryptocurrencies to fulfil their roles. And the question on everyone’s mind is, if people do use cryptocurrencies, will governments step in?
The bearish take assumes just that. No government would ever allow cryptocurrencies to succeed where its fiat failed.
Removing the financial control of centralized governments is a loaded proposition. And a proposition no centralized government is especially eager to explore. Prying this control from governments, especially China, will be an uphill battle.
And without the approval from, or at least an apathy towards cryptocurrencies, it might be worth it to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
Featured image from Pexels. | https://medium.com/chainrift-research/can-bitcoin-survive-chinas-debt-bubble-7929c9d97231 | ['Michael Kern'] | 2018-11-08 14:22:31.912000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Economics', 'Crisis', 'Debt', 'China'] |
What is Algorithmic Trading for a Trader? | For starters, algorithmic trading is nothing more than combining technology with trading. In this context, a very important scenario is presented because it is combining two very powerful things in one context, one that you can control and another that you can estimate up to a certain level.
Currently, I see many people interested in learning programming to transfer that knowledge to the financial world, which is not bad, it is great, educate yourself as much as you can. But, have they asked themselves the question if what they do is right? is the right path? Is it the right way to get into algorithmic trading? If this is not the case, what should they do?
Based on my experience, it is not the same to learn a programming language and to analyze a series of time, to backtest a possible strategy, to have an exauthor analysis of the financial assets that they are taking into consideration (beyond without knowing if it is good or not), with what Algorithmic Trading really is, here is the neuralgic point of what it really is, this is undoubtedly one of the points that it really has to differentiate.
Algorithmic trading is thinking about what type of connection to use to access data, what is the best connection for this, what type of technology they have to use, if they are going to use an information protocol or not, in addition to speed, the order routing, the structure like this will be and where it will be housed, an analysis engine (that encompasses not only the operation, but the analysis of this pre and post), a risk and security control, are endless reasons that they do not take in consideration at the time they consume information from an API that returns information with possible delay, and under periods of unreal times of how they really would be at the moments of an operation wheel in a market.
Now, perhaps you get the idea of, making a call with a script to an API to have information and analyze it, probably ask you could be wrong?
NOT at all, it is not bad, it is great, since it is a great step and they are combining two very powerful knowledge, with amazing tools, but what is wrong, is to call it algorithmic trading, since it is not (because of what I commented in the previous paragraph) I would categorize it as analyzing a financial time series (which is what they are actually doing) based on a script and that is probably a part of the decision-making engine, of what would be an eventual algorithmic trading engine.
In the next post, I will show a fragment of the connection that I developed for the North American market, its different types of structure and the technology that I use to carry it out and why I make these decisions that are so and not based in another type of connection, I will also gather some simple strategies based on statistical analysis under some simple invariant estimation models for time series and what I consider would be an optimal structure to start building your first algorithmic trading engine
Best Regards
N.R.L.M .´. | https://medium.com/@nariclama/what-is-algorithmic-trading-for-a-trader-32f2020843d3 | [] | 2020-06-04 00:07:15.599000+00:00 | ['Trade', 'Trading', 'Finance', 'Python', 'Algotrading'] |
What is the iPad’s Role Among the M1 Mac? | Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash
With the addition of the Magic Keyboard, the iPad Pro and Air become the ultimate hybrid devices. As an owner of a Surface Pro and an iPad Pro, what Apple has done with the Magic Keyboard is a more complete vision of what Microsoft set out to do with their hardware. The iPad may lack traditional productivity software, but it makes up for it with alternative applications that can fill the same role (LumaFusion and Affinity Photo come to mind.)
So, that settles it. The iPad is Apple’s Surface Pro!
Well, not quite…
The iPad makes up for the Surface’s shortcomings with an interface designed for touch and battery life that you would expect out of a tablet. Where the iPad begins to trail is in the software department. Alternative apps do help bridge the gap, but industry standards are standards for a reason. The iPad may benefit from a more robust software selection in the future as developers transition to Apple Silicon — but we’re not there yet.
Apple may find success with an educational market push. It wouldn’t be outrageous to choose an iPad over a Chromebook, especially for digital note-taking with the Apple Pencil. The iPad hits a wide range of price points, and with desktop-class browsing, it’s definitely a contender. Students may be disadvantaged by the lack of browser extensions and the additional keyboard they need to lug around.
Is the iPad redundant?
On paper, the iPad is redundant. But, there’s something about the device that doesn’t translate in the numbers. It’s a joy to use.
As a companion device to a laptop, it can be a lightweight media device that can handle a moderate workload in a pinch, and it can serve as a second display for your laptop.
As a solo device, you’d be hard-pressed choosing an iPad over an M1 Mac. The current MacBook lineup will give you better performance, battery life, and a richer software library.
I love my iPad, I will still reach for it 9/10 times for my home computing, but I hope Apple has a plan for the device going forward. | https://medium.com/macoclock/what-is-the-ipads-role-among-the-m1-mac-210cda1e940f | ['J.P. Scott'] | 2020-12-05 08:34:14.579000+00:00 | ['Gadgets', 'iPad', 'Mac', 'Apple', 'Technology'] |
To Swallow or Not to Swallow | Nothing makes me feel closer to a man than having the taste of his cum in my mouth.
Let’s face it — at first sight, semen is kind of bizarre. Less milky than glutinous, sperm is like a thin, white, somewhat transparent porridge with a strong smell like school glue.
I can only imagine how strange it must be for young men to discover this substance flies out of their penises upon climax. The only analogy I can think of is what it feels like as a girl to first menstruate. When we discover blood flows out of our vaginas once a month, awe strikes us.
So boys discover they ejaculate too, and then men come to experience their first blowjobs. Once that happens, they begin to think about what else can be done with the sperm that jettisons out of their cocks. If a woman’s mouth is already on a guy’s penis, she might as well take his ejaculate in her mouth. Hell, she might as well swallow it.
Not all male spunk is created equal though. Some cum is sweet while some is bitter. In other words, some men taste amazing while others taste awful.
I’m sure it has something to do with how much you like a guy. When I’m really into a man, his sperm definitely tastes better.
Sometimes I like to gargle my boyfriend’s cum before I swallow him. In fact, one of the great pleasures of sucking a guy’s cock is holding his sperm in your mouth after he ejaculates.
That way I can savor the taste. But even after I swallow him, there’s a marvelous aftertaste.
You’d be amazed how long that flavor stays in your mouth. I’ve slept over at a guy’s house, had sex with him in the morning, and then when I’m driving home, I can still taste him on my tongue. I swear that sometimes I can sense his sperm in my mouth all day long, like his jizz is a rinse that seeps deep into my taste buds and gets stuck there.
Nothing makes me feel closer to a man than having the flavor of his cum in my mouth. But every once in a while, I meet a guy whose spunk tastes disgusting. It’s hard to say exactly what it tastes like, only that it’s bitter like licking an ashtray.
The problem is, when you’re working as an escort, putting up with nasty sperm is just part of the job. I’ve had to literally hold my nose and swallow. Then again, anything’s possible when a guy’s paying you upwards of $500 an hour just to have sex with him. | https://medium.com/sexography/to-swallow-or-not-to-swallow-a3988e02a422 | ['Mysterious Witt'] | 2019-10-15 11:23:06.679000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Oral Sex', 'Sex Work', 'Sexuality', 'Sex'] |
It’s Necessary to Ask “Why?” | When you’re a victim of a situation, and you’re on the road to healing, often you ask yourself, “Why did this person do this to me?”, “Why did they feel like they could hurt me?” and “Why haven’t they explained themselves to me?” Those questions can haunt you for years because the answers provide insight into how you can find your healing.
It takes victims to make victims. Although victims can’t heal each other directly, the act of listening and acknowledgment of one’s pain can be a start to healing. An apology can be as simple as acknowledging your pain and realizing you’ve hurt someone as a result of your pain. But there can’t be an apology unless someone asks the difficult question, “Why?”
Asking one “why?” allows for an open, transparent discussion. One can’t seek healing by sweeping issues under the rug and dodging difficult conversations. We need pain to grow. Beauty is found in chaos.
Today, I approached the woman involved in the infidelity in my relationship with the openness of having a conversation. I explained that there are multiple people involved in this situation, and I have a right to ask her why she partook in this entanglement. I’ve asked every party involved in the situation the same question, and they were more than willing to explain, including my ex. Every other party was willing to have a sincere, thoughtful, and productive conversation with me.
But, she responded defensively, with utmost hostility and bitterness towards my initial reaction to the situation a year ago. I can admit, when I found out, I was outraged. But, I don’t know a single person who wouldn’t be angry to find out about infidelity in their relationship.
Although her reaction was not an answer to my question, it revealed a lot about her hurt as a victim of other situations. When you’re a victim and not healed from the pain, everything is a battle. You’re fighting yourself, you’re fighting the people around you, and you’re unable to see yourself as the perpetrator to the people you’re hurting in the process.
When you hurt another person due to your pain, you don’t see yourself as a perpetrator. You still see yourself as the victim, and you can’t put yourself in another victim's shoes. We’ve all been there at least once in our lives. Where we strongly feel we don’t owe anybody an explanation for our behavior. But the energy you put out into the universe is the same energy you’ll receive. The more you hurt others, the more they’ll try to hurt you. And in the end, you’ll be caught in a vicious cycle of defending yourself from everyone.
Her reaction revealed that she does not have the mental capacity to take accountability for her actions as a perpetrator. Although I’m incredibly hurt by her actions and surprised by her response a year later, I can see that her pain is so deep that any conversation would be pointless. Everyone heals at different rates, and she’s not at the point to discuss her actions because she has yet to unravel the depths of her pain as a victim.
When someone is blinded by pain, it’s hard to stay mad at them. They don’t see anything beyond what they’re feeling and experiencing. Their response can be hypocritical and conflicting because they have yet to sort their problems out. You can transform your anger to empathy, and empathy makes way for forgiveness.
Not every answer is what you want to hear. However, it will provide you with insight as to how to proceed with your healing. And most importantly, it will help you find forgiveness for those who are still healing. Never be afraid to ask, “Why?”. Your fear is justified, but curiosity is one of the fantastic things about living beings. It allows us to grow, to create, to redefine, and much more. Learn to take every response, whether positive or negative, and use it to find a path to your healing. | https://medium.com/@simplyy/its-necessary-to-ask-why-b0690cf68332 | [] | 2020-12-18 09:46:19.966000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Spirituality', 'Healing', 'Forgiveness', 'Self'] |
Train a Face-Mask Detection Model in Under 5 Minutes using Lobe.ai | Lobe, owned by Microsoft, is a free, no-code tool to train machine learning models without technical skills. Only image classification is supported as of this writing, and an object detection model training is coming soon according to Lobe’s homepage. You can download it here by entering your basic info. It’s 608 mb.
Lobe is suitable to use it when you would like to keep your images private and train the model on your PC freely. You can also use it to create models for both Android (Tensorflow Lite) and iOS (Core ML).
Lobe welcomes you with a tour, documentation, and more, as you see below. Let’s create a new project and see how easy it is to use.
As of writing this article, you can import your image dataset only with folders so you can’t use CSV files. But Lobe does allow you label your images if they are not in labeled or categorized in folders yet.
I will use this face-mask classification dataset on Kaggle which has images categorized into two folders as with_mask and without_mask. Download this dataset and click Import and select Dataset in Lobe.
After importing your dataset, Lobe starts training immediately.
Lobe automatically splits 20% of your to dataset to test your model. Test images are a random subset of your examples are not used during training.
In the left panel you can see your dataset details. You can click on these folder names to check your images.
Lobe shows the training process live in the lower area in the left panel. There you can see how many images it predicts correctly or incorrectly.
You can leave the app while training, as it notifies you with a click sound when training finishes. For this dataset -which has 440 images- training finished under five minutes. When training finishes, you can check the results and see the correct/incorrect classifications that your model made.
Hovering over the image will show you the confidence score of the model.
To see the accuracy of your model on test images, you can select View > Test Images. It will show your model’s accuracy on test images it hasn’t seen before.
In the Play section, you can drag-drop new images or take photos with your webcam. Lobe will run the trained model with this new image and you can see how good your model does with the new images. | https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/train-face-mask-detection-model-under-5-minutes-using-lobe-ai-46a26b7b1f17 | ['Özgür Şahin'] | 2020-12-16 15:12:00.266000+00:00 | ['Image Classification', 'Lobe', 'iOS', 'Coreml', 'Heartbeat'] |
Streamroot Data Science Series #1: per-Browser QoS Analysis | We’ve all been there: that crucial moment in our favorite series where all of a sudden, video froze. Video quality is a topic close to everyone’s hearts, binge watchers and broadcasters alike.
In addition to the amount of traffic offloaded from CDNs by our distributed delivery network (Streamroot DNA), quality of service (QoS) related metrics are crucial for our customers. This is why our Data Science team religiously monitors and analyses our clients’ QoS metrics. Our 20 million daily video sessions give us a unique understanding of QoS, and in this first article of a series, we would like to share with you some of our insights.
As most of us are in a quest for the best QoS to watch our favorite series, many viewers wonder what is the best browser for watching video.
To answer this question, we took a month’s worth of data with a 1-hour granularity, keeping only the multi-bitrate streams, i.e. videos that have more than one quality available, which changes in real time according to viewers’ internet connection to keep smooth playback. Streamroot is compatible with all modern web browsers, and we picked four of the most common ones across our customers’ audiences: Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari. For each browser, we focused on the most common major versions.
From this dataset, we plotted the average values per browser and per major release of four of the key QoS metrics we constantly monitor:
Buffering Ratio — measures the time a player spends buffering as a ratio of the total play time. We’ve all experienced buffering before: when your video freezes and this annoying loading wheel appears. Even though it depends a lot on the use case, we can say that up to 1% buffering ratio is very good, anything under 0.5% is excellent.
— measures the time a player spends buffering as a ratio of the total play time. We’ve all experienced buffering before: when your video freezes and this annoying loading wheel appears. Even though it depends a lot on the use case, we can say that up to 1% buffering ratio is very good, anything under 0.5% is excellent. Track Switch Events — the number of times video quality switches up or down. The acceptable number of track switches would be the same as the number of available qualities, usually no more than 6 per session.
— the number of times video quality switches up or down. The acceptable number of track switches would be the same as the number of available qualities, usually no more than 6 per session. Average Bitrate — usually in Megabits per second (Mbps), but you’re probably more familiar with other terms for video qualities like HD, 1080p or 720p. Basically, the higher the quality, the higher the bitrate. A medium quality video streams at around 1 Mbps while an HD stream would be 6 Mbps.
— usually in Megabits per second (Mbps), but you’re probably more familiar with other terms for video qualities like HD, 1080p or 720p. Basically, the higher the quality, the higher the bitrate. A medium quality video streams at around 1 Mbps while an HD stream would be 6 Mbps. Dropped Frames Events — a video is a collection of ordered frames and it can happen that some of those frames are not displayed, resulting in a jagged rendering of the video. This phenomenon starts to get visible above 60 dropped frames per minute, it becomes annoying above 150 and is barely watchable over 300.
No winner takes it all
Looking at the data, first thing we can see is that no one browser performs better than the rest on all four metrics:
In Bitrate, Opera takes the lead, closely followed by Safari, Chrome and Firefox.
When looking at the Buffering Ratio, one of the most important metrics in streaming, Safari leads ahead of the competition with an average close to 0.5%, followed by Opera, Chrome, and Firefox.
Moving on to Track Switch Events — Safari takes first place with an average of 4 track switch events per session, followed by the very close second, Opera, Chrome comes third, while Firefox closes the list once again.
However, track switch events do not make much sense without also looking at bitrate and vice versa. More track switch events are not necessarily bad if they come with a higher average bitrate: it means viewers switch tracks, but they switch for a higher quality on average. An even better situation is when track switch events go down and bitrate goes up. It means viewers are more likely to have a high video quality and stay on that quality for longer periods of time. That’s what you can see above for Opera releases.
Our fourth metric is Dropped Frame Events. Here, Firefox and Chrome lead with Opera not far behind. Safari, which demonstrated good performance so far, surprisingly comes last with 95 dropped frame events per minute, almost 4 times more than Opera! One could stop here and think that Safari is underperforming. A data scientist, however, would be intrigued by this anomaly — this does seem like abnormal behavior… how can we explain this one? Does Safari really drop that many frames, causing a poor viewing experience?
Digging into distributions
Let’s zoom in on dropped frame events and see how each population (Chrome 64, Chrome 65, Chrome 66, Firefox 52…) is distributed for this metric.
First, a general comment: you can see that most populations stick to the left of the distribution, that is, to the low dropped frame events per minute. This is where you find all Firefox versions - more than 60% of their populations are located in the 0–15 dropped frame range. Same for Chrome 64 and 65.
Let’s get back to Safari’s abnormally high average dropped frame events per minute. If you compare Safari’s distribution to other browsers you can tell there is something wrong: it spreads from the first range up to the +150 dropped frame range and not one range reaches more than 30% of the population.
This distribution actually illustrates the Safari “open tab” issue. A Safari user “virtually” experiences dropped frames whenever switching tabs and the longer she spends on another tab, the higher the dropped frame rate becomes. This is because Safari considers that a frame is dropped as long as it is not visible. As we can’t tell how many people switch tabs and for how long, we can only intelligently assume that this is the reason we see this highly spread distribution going up to crazy values, above 150 dropped frame events per minute, causing an extremely high average value.
Know your Biases
One important thing to note regarding this analysis is the possible effects of confounding factor and bias. When we want to explain the effect of X (browsers) on Y (QoS), there could be another extra variable Z that affects both X and Y. In our case, Z, the confounding factor, could be, for example, the quality of the user’s hardware. For example, Safari users are likely to have more powerful computers, which might account for their excellent QoS more than the use of Safari as their browser.
Let’s actually look into that. We split our dataset according to three operating systems: Mac OS X 10, Windows and Other, which includes operating systems such as Ubuntu and Android. We scatter the resulting series of points in the graph below. The x-axis represents the number of track switch events per session; the y-axis shows the buffering ratio. The size of each point is proportional to the video bitrate. | https://medium.com/streamroot-developers-blog/streamroot-data-science-series-1-per-browser-qos-analysis-f66b7e9578b1 | ['Jean De Ducla'] | 2018-05-31 08:18:24.122000+00:00 | ['Streaming', 'Data Analysis', 'Browsers', 'Data Science', 'OTT'] |
10 Tips on How to Take Care of Baby in Winter | Is your child due this winter? Have you recently brought your infant home in the pinnacle of the virus season? It is safe to say that you are stressed that the unforgiving weather will influence your newborn and are pondering about your baby care in winter?
Peruse on to know how you can shield your child from the virus winter climate. Here are 10 tips on the best way to deal with the baby in winter.
1. Wash Your Hands Frequently
Winter is a season of influenza and colds. Ensure you wash your hands frequently or utilize a hand sanitizer before contacting your baby. It will keep you from giving any germs to your infant. You should demand all guests to watch this insurance.
2. Breastfeed Your Newborn
Breastfeeding your infant is the ideal approach to help his insusceptibility. It will assist him in keeping the cold and diseases under control. Attempt to breastfeed your infant for the initial a half year.
3. Pursue The Vaccination Schedule
Ensure your infant doesn’t avoid any immunization plan. It will help guard your child against the illnesses that strike throughout the winter season. On the off chance that your baby misses an immunization, you should check with the doctor when he can give the next shot to your baby.
4. Keep The Room Warm
Keep up a warm temperature in your child’s room all through the brutal winter season. Close all windows around evening time to evade any virus air from entering the room. But keep in mind that it should guarantee sufficient ventilation as well.
5. Make Your Baby Wear Warm Clothes
Make your newborn wear warm and comfortable garments. Recollect that the temperature of his room may as of now be warm, and subsequently, your baby may not require an excessive number of layers of attire. Not to forget putting socks and gloves for your baby to make him feel comfortable and cozy.
6. Stay away from Heavy Blankets For Your Baby
You may feel that you should take care of your little one a warm cover around evening time, yet don’t do as such. Evacuate things like covers, cushions, and such from your infant’s bunk to check the danger of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).
7. Back rub Your Newborn To Improve Blood Circulation
Back rub your infant, particularly in the winters, to help improve the bloodstream levels. You can rub your baby by using olive oil, almond oil, or coconut oil. Keep the room warm while massaging your baby. You can give your baby a decent back rub at the time of the shower. On the other hand, you can knead your child before sleep time to assist him with quieting down and resting better.
8. Dodge Too Many Baby Products
The cold and dry climate strips the skin of dampness. Your infant has a touchy skin. Accordingly, keep away from over-utilizing items like child cleansers, shampoos, and body washes during winters. Your infant may create rashes as a result of extreme dryness. Play safe and give your child a straightforward water shower all the time. You may decide to utilize a mellow child cleanser once per week.
9. Moisturize Your Baby’s Skin
Apply a small portion of child skin cream to your little one. This is an excellent infant care tips in winter. You can check with your infant’s primary care physician for any exceptional suggestions. You can likewise go regular and back rub your infant’s skin with milk cream or explained spread (ghee), to keep it delicate and supple.
10. Utilize A Humidifier
Winter months may require a warmer in your baby’s room. If you are utilizing one, additionally, use a humidifier. It will keep up the moistness levels in the room and keep your infant’s skin from losing dampness.
Take Away
These 10 tips will ensure that your baby stays protected and sound through the brutal season. If your baby builds up a cold, do plan a meeting with the specialist at the most punctual. Plus, during these times, if you need any sort of medical assistance, then the Raksha card is just a call away. Plus, if you need medicines delivered or wish to meet your doctor get app.rakshacard.com to solve all your medical needs. | https://medium.com/@rakshacard/10-tips-on-how-to-take-care-of-baby-in-winter-c53d19aa64b8 | ['Raksha Card'] | 2020-06-08 01:37:38.128000+00:00 | ['Healthcare', 'Health Tips', 'Infant', 'Wintercare', 'Baby Care'] |
Your Ultimate Spa Day Based on Your Favorite Workout | So many of us can’t live without our Muay Thai sessions and yoga classes because of how strong, happy, and confident they make us feel. It’s a well-known fact that exercise has many health benefits, but how is our skin affected by our favorite physical activities? It turns out that exercising can cause redness, acne, and dehydrated skin. And, just like your muscles, your skin also needs to recover. That’s why we’re here with products, tips, and treatments that will help keep your skin healthy and clean, no matter which workouts you love. Read on to find helpful info targeted to your favorite sweat sesh.
HIIT/Cardio
If you’re a fan of cardio or HIIT workouts, you’re probably used to a fair amount of sweat. You may also know that letting sweat stay on your skin for too long can lead to itchiness and inflammation. But did you know that higher body temperatures (like the ones you may reach during a kickass combo at Hit House) can cause your blood vessels to dilate? This can lead to redness.
If you’re sick of being super flushed post-workout, you might want to try Skin Spa New York’s anti-inflammatory Laser Genesis Treatment. This preventative and corrective treatment can also help diminish fine lines and wrinkles by kickstarting your collagen production. Expect to leave with skin that’s plumper, firmer, and more youthful. If those benefits weren’t enough, this treatment can also help with any active acne.
Another treatment you might want to try is a facial with lots of skin massaging. Katie Werbowski, the director of Skin Spa New York, recommends a facial where creams or serums are massaged into your skin with a circular motion. This movement brings fresh blood and new nutrients to your skin cells, giving you an instant glow and helping to deflate puffiness.
Lastly, for a solution you can try at home, consider buying your very own face roller. Keep it in the fridge and roll it on your face to help calm down irritated skin (bonus: the coldness feels amaaaaazing post-cardio).
Swimming
If doing laps at the Y is more your speed, it’s likely that your skin is dehydrated. Pool chemicals can really affect your skin, drawing out natural oils and breaking down your skin’s protective layer. This can make it easier for moisture to escape.
Sound like you? You may want to try a hydrating facial, like Skin Spa New York’s OxyTrio Facial. In this treatment, the stimulating power of oxygen can help hydrate your skin while minimizing fine lines and wrinkles. Expect to emerge with revitalized skin, and swim away happily knowing your skin now has an increased ability to absorb vitamins A, C, and E, plus other nutrients.
For an at-home fix for thirsty skin, try products with hyaluronic acid, which acts like a sponge to pull moisture in. Incorporating this chemical into your routine will help protect your skin, providing the perfect balance to your aquarian tendencies.
Hot Yoga/Pilates
More of a hot yoga or pilates person? Well, steamy studios (we miss you, y7!) can cause your pores to open up, which makes them appear larger.
While you may think sweat is the main culprit for acne after a hot yoga sesh, it’s more likely to be other environmental factors. First off, sweaty skin creates the ideal moist environment for bacteria. This means the dirt and bacteria on your towels and hands can find its way into your newly opened pores. Plus, if your exercise glow also comes from piling on foundation and highlighter, you could see increased acne after exercising.
If you’re having problems with acne or oiliness, it may be time to try Skin Spa New York’s Power Peel. Power Peels exfoliate your skin to reveal your freshest face without abrasion or down time. Not only will they help prevent clogged pores, Skin Spa New York’s Power Peels loosen the top layer of the dermis, promote cell renewal, reduce fine lines, minimize the appearance of pores, and even out skin tone. This treatment is perfect if you’re struggling with acne, or if you just have an oily skin type.
Looking for another way to fight exercise-related breakouts? Try using a salicylic acid cleanser, which dissolves oil and dead cells. This strategy works best if you’re able to wash your face thoroughly right after working out. This will help get the debris out of your pores and prevent future acne.
What if you just worked out and you can’t make it to the spa? Luckily, our favorite Thom Elzner Complexion Treatment Pads fit right in your gym bag. The pads are designed to reveal your own healthy, glowy skin. How do they work? Well, they contain glycolic acid and salicylic acid, which together exfoliate and rejuvenate the skin’s surface. Plus, soothing aloe leaf extract nourishes your skin while keeping it balanced, radiant, and ready for your skincare routine.
Lastly, laser hair removal can make your locker room experience that much quicker and more comfortable. Are you tired of shaving and waxing? Would you like to avoid razor bumps and ingrown hairs? Laser Hair Removal does all that and more. Skin Spa New York can help you get rid of hair permanently with a spa laser treatment.
Fortunately, it’s not all bad skin news for fitness lovers! Exercising can also help bring oxygen and nutrients to your skin, helping you achieve a true post-movement glow. Even if you don’t have time to squeeze in a sweat session, there’s a hack that can bring similar benefits to your skin. Try getting upside down in a handstand or forward fold. You’ll be amazed at the immediate lift and over time, the circulation in your face will be even better.
No matter your preferred way to work out (even if it’s JetSweat vids and IG Lives in your living room for the foreseeable) you can help protect your skin. For all of us that depend on movement during these stressful times, this should come as welcome news.
Maggie Norsworthy is a writer, editor, and writing coach based in Jersey City. Her favorite exercise is running and her favorite color is orange. Find out more at maggienorsworthy.com. | https://medium.com/@maggie-r-norsworthy/your-ultimate-spa-day-based-on-your-favorite-workout-6e81119e6647 | ['Maggie Norsworthy'] | 2020-12-18 19:55:35.126000+00:00 | ['Skin Spa', 'Skincare', 'Kickboxing', 'Exercise', 'Fitness'] |
Nuxt Redirects in 4 Steps. Nuxt uses automatic routing. Nuxt… | Nuxt uses automatic routing. Nuxt automatically transforms the “pages” folder into basic routes. Therefore, if you create index.vue in the “pages” folder, it will be your homepage. Any nested folders can be accessed through the url from the directory path. Imagine you have a “customers” folder inside of your “pages” folder. Inside of your “customers” folder, you have another “index.vue” file. If you navigate to http://localhost:3000/customers, you would see this page.
However, now, I want to redirect the user from the “/” to “/customers” (homepage to customers page). How could I do this? We will have to use some middleware. Sounds complex. Hopefully, we can accomplish this in 4 steps.
Create a folder in your root directory called “middleware” Create a file called “redirects.js” in the “middleware” folder In redirects.js, paste the following code. Here, we are setting up a middleware function. The code below will reroute the user from the homepage to the “customers” page with a 301 code (used for redirects). Change the bolded code below to fit your needs.
export default function(req, res, next) {
const redirects = [
{
from: "/",
to: "/customers"
}
]
const redirect = redirects.find((r) => r.from === req.url) if (redirect) {
res.writeHead(301, { Location: redirect.to })
res.end()
} else {
next()
}
}
4. Add the redirects.js middleware to the nuxt.config.js file so that our code will run. | https://medium.com/dont-leave-me-out-in-the-code/nuxt-redirects-in-4-simple-steps-9a0d5cb4c0d | ['Lance Watanabe'] | 2021-04-13 00:53:55.199000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Vuejs', 'Web Development', 'Vue', 'Front End Development'] |
An RPA Growth Story: Why R-Path Partnered With WorkFusion to Grow Their Business | There’s an emerging, even more compelling growth story to be told around process automation: Entirely new businesses can form around RPA, and small businesses can grow bigger through the exponential productivity that automation software allows.
R-Path Automation and Telogical Systems are two great examples of this business creation and growth.
Automation consulting firm R-Path helps businesses use robotic process automation and RPA tools to improve business outcomes. Its client, Telogical, had maximized what they could do with their staff and wanted to scale rapidly — but didn’t want to hire more workers to do the kind of data-gathering that can be quickly and accurately automated.
R-Path shortlisted four software solutions and recommended WorkFusion’s Intelligent Automation Cloud.
Jim Frost, R-Path’s Solutions Partner, said, “Telogical’s business revolves around monitoring telecommunications providers’ offerings, pricing, packages, and more across hundreds of sources a day. The primary use case was to automate monitoring that data and compare it to Telogical’s master data.” Telogical also delivers competitive insights to their clients via email and wanted to automate that end-to-end process too. In short, they required a versatile solution that could address multiple, disparate challenges, and WorkFusion’s software fit the need.
Capability wasn’t the only factor. As a smaller company with big growth ambitions, Telogical didn’t want employees to spend valuable time learning a complex, cumbersome software product. They knew time was better spent quickly delivering value to clients. Compared to other products, they recognized that WorkFusion’s dashboard is more intuitive and easier to understand, because it was built for business people without software-development expertise.
“You can be a very smart business user and, with good training, start using WorkFusion a lot faster. With WorkFusion’s help, we were up and running in a production environment within one day.” — Jim Frost, R-Path Automation
R-Path also was careful to choose an automation software product that comes with a supportive, proactive team behind it. RPA is still a new capability and getting the most out of it often means spending some time with the people who know it best. WorkFusion customers benefit from support and education, often in the form of courses on the Automation Academy training platform.
WorkFusion applauds the team at R-Path Automation, and what they are achieving for their clients. To learn more about R-Path and how they saved a client 10,000 hours of manual effort by automating a single use case, read this short case study. https://bit.ly/329Ot5G | https://medium.com/@workfusion/an-rpa-growth-story-why-r-path-partnered-with-workfusion-to-grow-their-business-6cfc535a88eb | [] | 2019-09-04 16:00:08.086000+00:00 | ['Rpa', 'Automation', 'Business Process', 'Data Processing'] |
Fog | Written by
It gives me immense joy to help those in need and I feel content in making someone’s life a little easy. | https://medium.com/invisible-illness/fog-c59260e44f5d | ['Urvi Karani'] | 2020-07-06 13:01:01.137000+00:00 | ['Mind', 'Thoughts', 'Body', 'Soul', 'Poetry'] |
One Unconscious Mistake, Your Career Dies | One Unconscious Mistake, Your Career Dies
How negative facial expressions killed my rating!
Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash
I entered the cabin.
Me: “Sir! You gave me a low rating on my evaluation, but I did the most important job…and I did well.” Boss: “Yeah! I did give you a low rating.” Me: “So what happened? Why did you rate me low?” Boss: “Irfan! It’s all about your negative facial expressions. Remember, I called you into my office when another manager was sitting right next to me. It was late and I’d asked you to attend to some emergency work at the site. At that time, your face shown totally negative expressions and I felt embarrassed in front of my colleague. No matter, you ultimately accepted the job.”
As I left the cabin, his words were shaking my brain like balls on the snooker table that move upon a stroke. Fortunately, for me, he was straightforward in telling me the reason, which most bosses don’t ever tell you.
If there is one thing that every boss hates, it’s negative facial expressions. They show you aren’t actually willing. They show that even if you end up accepting the job, you won’t do it right. They show you aren’t mentally and physically prepared to take up the challenge.
Negative expressions reveal an entire flurry of your inner thoughts…
Especially when you show negativity in critical situations — e.g., a hike in workload, the wrong product reaches the customers, senior management pops in for a surprise visit, project deadlines exceeded. In such situations, your boss will not take at all kindly to your negative facial expressions. If he feels offended, he can even ruin your career.
From my own perspective, I can’t stand those juniors who display a negative attitude. Think about this for a moment! Do you also feel like this? Sometimes, when we visualize the same situation in a different context, we can better understand it. [This is called framing in psychology, specifically in neuro-linguistic programming(NLP).]
However, those who readily accept the new challenges with positivity on their faces win the situations. They are like those ministers who know when to seize the power. Bosses feel comfortable assigning them jobs and rely on them in difficult situations. On top of that, they enjoy discussing ideas and strategies with them.
One of my seniors had exactly this quality. Though he was worst in terms of his actual work performance, he was best at taking on challenges and pushing his juniors to achieve the objectives of the task. As soon as a new task was assigned, he would run to the boss’s office to show his enthusiasm for the job. He would throw ideas into the arena and start planning how he’d approach it. He would pass on instructions to his juniors in front of his boss and would show he was fully on board with the task in hand. When he was not in his boss’s office, you would find him eating salad and taking tea.
He knew when and where he had to apply his energy. He often used to fascinate me with his power of communication.
I don’t mean, however, that we shouldn’t focus on the quality of work. But recognizing the value of positive body language is my point.
In professional culture, a straight “No” is usually not possible. Most of the jobs assigned fall within the remit of the job holder. The way employees refuse the job is using negative expressions, avoiding contact with their bosses, taking leave, or showing they are too busy.
In such situations, bosses simply end up seeking out those who adopt an all-around positive approach. | https://medium.com/change-becomes-you/one-unconscious-mistake-your-career-dies-845a263c26b4 | ['Irfan Ali'] | 2020-10-17 18:19:08.101000+00:00 | ['Communication Skills', 'Management', 'Work', 'Productivity', 'Body Language'] |
Christianity’s Polygamy Problem | Christians do sometimes disagree.
“Well it’s right there in the Bible, so it must not be a sin,” sings Rich Mullins in 1991 in “Jacob and 2 Women.”
Or Martin Luther writes in 1524, in a private letter: “I confess that I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict the Scripture.”
But publicly, the clerics kept a unified front — for monogamy.
That didn’t mean they liked it?
A history might be written of the Christians who might’ve been open to a polygamous life. William Blake, the poet, was said to have “wished to add a concubine to his establishment in the Old Testament manner, but gave up the project because it made Mrs. Blake cry."
But mostly they’d be restrained by convention — and punished if they’re not.
So are the heroes of the Bible un-Christian?
The great Abraham has a wife, Sarah, and two slave-wives, Hagar and Keturah. The hero Jacob, in the famous story, wants to marry Rachel, but her father tricks him and he finds himself married to her sister Leah.
Had this been a Christian story, Jacob might have to make do with Leah. But it’s the Bible, so he marries them both. Plus Jacob has two slave-wives, Bilah and Zilpah. A busy guy?
In Judges 8:30, the hero Gideon has “many wives.” Saul has a concubine (2 Sam 21:8). The great David has “wives and concubines” in 2 Samuel 19:5, and his son Solomon is a legend of polygamy, with 700 wives and 300 concubines (cf. 1 Ki 11:3).
Standing back in sheer amazement, you might even wonder, when reading the Bible, if the heroes are guys with lots of sexual energy.
Does God like very sexual people? Because heroines are the same way.
Like Tamar of Genesis 38, who has sex with three guys in a row. What a role model!
Though personally I’m a huge fan of Rahab the Harlot, the madam of Joshua 6 who has an unusual ability to know things. Perhaps her sexual experience has endowed her with this grace?
I think of Delilah, Jael, Bathsheba, the Queen of Sheba, Esther, and the girl in the Song of Songs, as I see God loving a lady who’s ready for action. And it’s rather hard to make an argument for a monogamous mindset.
You’d have Adam and Eve to work with, I suppose. When there’s one man and woman—they seem to be monogamous.
God is also polygamous, of course.
In biblical spirituality, deities ‘marry’ nations. We see this in the regular word for a deity, ‘Baal’—it’s just the word for ‘husband’. YHWH gets married to Israel and then to her ‘sister’ Judah.
It’s a plotline developed throughout Ezekiel 23, as the wife Israel committing ‘adultery’ (with other deities) wears on God. In Jeremiah 3, He agonizes about it, and finally divorces her.
Then Jesus, as a ‘bridegroom’, comes along in the New Testament, and seems to want to marry—everyone?
And the world of the Bible is polygamous. There was no rabbinic ban, as Adiel Schremer details in his 2001 paper, “How Much Jewish Polygyny in Roman Palestine?” as he concludes the Palestine of the New Testament period “may be designated as a polygynous society.”
So where did the anti-polygamy talk come from?
It’s a cultural ideology whose origins might make one queasy. I sit reading about the long effort to use the Bible to advance monogamy, as keeps lurching into the ugly. “The higher primates are in many, if not all cases, monogamous,” goes an effort in 1900.
Let me translate? They know that polygamy is practiced in regions of the world where there aren’t many white people, like Africa and the Middle East. In saying that monogamy marks the ‘higher primate’, they’re offering white Christianity as the religion of evolved or more developed humans.
How do Bible readers deal with the polygamous evidence?
As an Evangelical the line I’d sometimes hear is: God allows it, but doesn’t approve of it.
I’m not sure how that argument works. The heroes care about their wives very much. There might be a primary or favored wife, but that is just part of polygamy, probably. The ‘law’ is working to manage situations involving extended families (cf. Gen 30:26; Exo 21:10–11; Deut 17:17, 21:11–17, 24:5; Lev 18:18; 2 Sam 5:13; 1 Ki 11:3).
And there’s more multiple wives than the tradition wants to admit. Scholars have had to work on the fact of Moses having two wives. The traditions only like to remember Zipporah the Midianite, but there was an unnamed second wife, noted in Numbers 12:1 to be Cushite.
For all the effort by tradition to combine them and achieve a monogamous hero, a Midianite wife is not the same as a Cushite wife.
It all begins to look like the faithful in a mass hallucination?
Rich Mullins would say: “So many people are distressed by ‘Jacob and 2 Women,’ and I respond, ‘then the Bible must be very distressing to you.’”
Helen R. Jacobus, a scholar studying the Bible’s narratives of sex with slaves, writes of attending a lecture in which a cleric says: “Abraham’s marriage to Sarah was monogamous, and then, as an aside, he added, jokingly, ‘apart from the handmaiden.’”
Perhaps, in the minds of such speakers, the ‘handmaiden’ is easy to dismiss—for being a female without much social status, or perhaps because she is a darker-skinned Egyptian.
But God always cares for Hagar and Keturah, and takes care of them even when Abraham does not.
The Christian tradition reaches for any reference to support its monogamous agenda.
In 1 Timothy 3:2, the apostle Paul is talking about the ideal leader of the church: “Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife . . .”
Aha, the traditional Christian reader says. ‘Wife’ is singular, not plural!
But this is a system which sees the Christian people as the ‘bride of Christ’, a figure of a woman. To be faithful to the ‘wife’ — is to be faithful to her.
“Anyone who seeks a firm rejection of polygamy in the Bible is probably doomed to frustration,” writes William Tucker.
In his 2014 book, Marriage and Civilization, he makes a case for monogamy having been a beneficial idea, indeed, in his view, making us ‘human’.
Perhaps there’s a good case for that, and to be monogamous is a good idea.
But to be a monogamous liar doesn’t sound good. And the Christian idea that God hates multiple spouses was simply that. There were also palpable racist origins, as anti-polygamy theology kept many out of the faith.
Christian missionary efforts, over time, have often been focused on stamping out polygamy—instead of, say, that ‘gospel’ thing?
So let’s be clear? The Bible assumes polygamy.
Although, that insight might lead to a chain of others, sadly. Why did a religion set itself against its own text?
And why does the system the clerics seem to favor look less like the Bible and more like the prevailing policies of ancient Rome? In the process of writing his History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault realized the sexual codes of ancient Rome and Christian tradition were about the same.
As he concludes in 1980, “the so-called Christian morality is nothing more than a piece of pagan ethics inserted into Christianity.” (The case is elaborated in David Wheeler-Reed’s 2019 book Regulating Sex in the Roman Empire.)
And really, when we step back and look at ‘traditional morality’, we might see a moralizing agenda being brought to the Bible.
Try reading the Bible as a polygamous mentality, and it changes rather startlingly. Like Jesus’ speech in Mark 10:10–12.
Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.
The typical Christian reader hears the deity saying to human males: If you divorce one woman to marry another, you’re bad.
But if rules about marriage are the subject, and divorcing one woman to marry another the problem being discussed, then Jesus’ would be prompting the man to marry both women.
For Jesus, the more love, the better?
Maybe God likes people to like each other, and take care of each other.
That seems like a possible meaning of Jesus saying “love one another” in John 13:34. He doesn’t seem to narrow it to numbers of spouses.
But, between you and me, Jesus isn’t as ‘Christian’ as you’d think. 🔶 | https://medium.com/belover/christianitys-polygamy-problem-9bca6b4ada8e | ['Jonathan Poletti'] | 2020-11-29 03:22:12.002000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Christianity', 'Religion', 'Psychology', 'Marriage'] |
Invisible girl, the one you can't see, | Invisible girl, the one you can't see,
Even when she's desperately sending a plea.
She longs to be loved, remembered, adored.
She longs for someone to think she's the world.
To look into her eyes and to see her soul,
To think that she is a prize and a goal.
She may be the quietest girl in the room,
An abundance of thoughts in her head does loom.
She desires to give and to love and to serve,
But forgotten is what she feels she deserves.
Few people see her and think there must be,
More to this girl who sits quietly.
Most often she's the one who nobody sees,
Forgotten faster than she cares to be.
She's the one whose words get cut off in a crowd,
The one you wouldn't invite to come around.
She's the one who's message you forgot to respond,
The one you would never think to build a bond.
She's the one you don't give a thought during the day,
The one you'll forget once you've walked away.
She convinced herself that it is better this way,
Than to invest in those who don't see or don't stay.
There's so much inside her worth getting to know,
Even the parts that she's afraid to show.
She wonders if any will ever look and really see,
The kind of person that she's trying to be.
Can any see inside; can they see her soul?
Does anyone really want to know?
It is hard to invest her time and her soul,
To people who forget she exists and so.....
Who is that forgotten girl, standing there?
Trying to act like she just doesn't care?
I look in the mirror and all that I see,
Is the invisible girl staring back at me.
Mary L. Queen 2/24/2016 | https://medium.com/@marylqueen74/invisible-girl-the-one-you-cant-see-d7b12abac80e | ['Mary Queen'] | 2021-06-08 02:25:55.711000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Lonely', 'Feelings', 'Words', 'Honesty'] |
Movable Food Chamber on Mars deep space food challenge by NASA | Movable Food Chamber on Mars deep space food challenge by NASA krishna kakade Mar 1·13 min read
In this article I explained about How to grow plants on mars with the help of scientific proofs and also how we can make Movable Food Chamber on Mars with help of basic science principles and raw handmade paper designs of Movable Food Chamber.
This is my entry for -deepspacefoodchallenge by NASA
Soon in future NASA and Space-x will send humans/astronauts to the mars and the major problem they are facing food supply to the crew for that NASA is seeking ideas from all around the globe for that they started deepspacefoodchallenge .
In this article I will explain my theory in detail with scientific proofs / handmade paper designs for a movable food chamber and some theories with help of basic science principles.
Contents of This Article
How I came to know about this challenge and how i got this idea?
Detailed Research of mars soil from well known blogs and papers.
Detailed Description of scientific terms those are useful for growing plants.
My theory How we can grow plants on mars?
References
Raw Handmade on paper designs
How i came to know about this challenge and how i got this idea?
Few days ago I am was thinking about plants and it’s process in my spare time then i thought about how plants grow which scientific processes takes place at the time of plants growing? /how we can grow? plants on mars?. and then I thought I will just discuss these things with one of my chemistry professor(Prof CV Mane Changdev Mane) and then I started talking with him about this idea and then other teachers sitting beside to him said I think you have a good idea have you heard about the NASA’s deep space food challenge after that i thought i can write on this with help of my idea and also i registered for this challenge.
Now Let’s deep dive in Scientific terms
Detailed Research of mars soil from well known blogs and papers
As compared to the soil of earth and mars, earth soil is having 50% of air and water and also mineral matters and when living organisms and bacteria dies then that organic matter gets created. on mars there is no such evidences like living organisms are there but according to Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter drone there is a life existed on mars half a billion years ago. Also on mars 98% of mineral matter is found and 2% of water this details are from previous mars missions NASA’s rovers. Also if humans are going to mars then we can land them on the surface where is the water lakes existed billions years ago so in that soil we can get some nutrients and stuff otherwise we can add fertilizers in the soil so we can make it better for plants.
When soils are rich in nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium crops grow well. otherwise we can use our waste material like Matt Damon(The martian) & Bear Grills did means urine and toilet waste.
Plants need to create energy for which they use a process called photosynthesis, which is a series of chemical reactions that convert water and carbon dioxide into sugars and oxygen. These chemical reactions can be summarized in the following way (in this case, the sugar is glucose (C6H12O6)):
6 CO2 (g) + 6 H2O (l) ⇾ 6 O2 (g) + C6H12O6 (aq)
Aq=aqueous solution, if you add H2O to it.
To carry out photosynthesis, plants also need various nutrients, such as nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. Nitrogen is a key component of chlorophyll, the compound responsible for the green color of plants and for capturing the light needed for photosynthesis. Potassium helps to open and close tiny pores in leaves and stems that take in the water and the carbon dioxide used in photosynthesis. Phosphorus is involved in the chemical reactions that make up photosynthesis.
References from the martian movie and in case of making water on mars we can make : take oxygen, add hydrogen, and burn them together to create water. But Matt Demon did not have hydrogen at his disposal. The oxygen, on the other hand, was easy to get. The Hab’s oxygenator liberated oxygen from the abundant carbon dioxide in Mars’ atmosphere.
To obtain hydrogen, Matt Demon used hydrazine (N2H4), an inorganic compound widely used to propel rockets, satellites, and spacecraft that was available from his mission to Mars. He had hundreds of liters of unused hydrazine. Matt Demon dissociated hydrazine into nitrogen and hydrogen, and then, he burned hydrogen with oxygen, which resulted in water, as follows:
2 H2 + O2 ⇾ 2 H2O
Is it possible to create water from scratch yes it is but since creating water from scratch by burning hydrogen and oxygen would be too dangerous.
Note:-You should not try burning hydrogen and oxygen at home. or else we can reuse and re-purify our urine and waste material.
Detailed Description of scientific terms those are useful for growing plants
1. Nitrogen: Nitrate (the form of nitrogen that plants use) helps foliage grow strong by affecting the plant’s leaf development. It is also responsible for giving plants their green coloring by helping with chlorophyll production (gardensalive.com). For additional information on nitrogen, visit this blog: Nitrogen Fertilizers 101.
2. Phosphorus: Phosphorus is responsible for assisting with the growth of roots and flowers. Phosphorus also helps plants withstand environmental stress and harsh winters (gardensalive.com). For additional information on phosphorus, visit this blog article: Why Your Plants Need Phosphorus.
3. Potassium: Potassium strengthens plants, contributes to early growth and helps retain water. It also affects the plant’s disease and insect suppression (extension.uum.edu).
4. Magnesium: Magnesium contributes to the green coloring of plants (gardeningknowhow.com).
5. Sulfur: Sulfur helps plants resist disease as well as contributing the plant growth and the formation of seeds. They also aid in the production of amino acids, proteins, enzymes and vitamins (davesgarden.com).
6. Calcium: Calcium aids in the growth and development of cell walls. This is key because well-developed cell walls help the plant resist disease. It is also necessary for metabolism and the uptake of nitrogen by the plant (davesgarden.com).
Photosynthesis
To perform photosynthesis, plants need three things: carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight.
Just like us, plants need to take in gases in order to live. Animals take in gases through a process called respiration. During the respiration process, animals inhale all of the gases in the atmosphere, but the only gas that is retained and not immediately exhaled is oxygen. Plants, however, take in and use carbon dioxide gas for photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide enters through tiny holes in a plant’s leaves, flowers, branches, stems, and roots. Plants also require water to make their food. Depending on the environment, a plant’s access to water will vary. For example, desert plants, like a cactus, have less available water than a lily-pad in a pond, but every photosynthetic organism has some sort of adaptation, or special structure, designed to collect water. For most plants, roots are responsible for absorbing water.
The last requirement for photosynthesis is an important one because it provides the energy to make sugar. How does a plant take carbon dioxide and water molecules and make a food molecule? The Sun! The energy from light causes a chemical reaction that breaks down the molecules of carbon dioxide and water and reorganizes them to make the sugar (glucose) and oxygen gas. After the sugar is produced, it is then broken down by the mitochondria into energy that can be used for growth and repair. The oxygen that is produced is released from the same tiny holes through which the carbon dioxide entered. Even the oxygen that is released serves another purpose. Other organisms, such as animals, use oxygen to aid in their survival.
By taking in water (H2O) through the roots, carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, and light energy from the Sun, plants can perform photosynthesis to make glucose (sugars) and oxygen (O2). and plant takes CO2 in and release O2 outside basically those plants are going to help crew/astronauts and humans on the mars
If we were to write a formula for photosynthesis, it would look like this:
6CO2 + 6H2O + Light energy → C6H12O6 (sugar) + 6O2
My theory How we can grow plants on mars?
Challenges
Nutrients water light carbon dioxide / oxygen Gravity for plants
Nutrients
Plants can probably grow in Martian soil, with some help. All essential plant nutrients have been found in the soil on Mars or in Martian meteorites. However, the level of most nutrients is too low for healthy plant growth, so Martian soil will need to be improved with fertilizer.
Growing plants on Mars will require more than just fertilizing the soil. Martian soil is harmful for plants and people because it contains a lot of chlorine molecules called percolates. These toxic molecules will need to be removed before using the soil to grow food crops.
The harsh Martian environment posses many additional challenges plant growth. Plants need water, but liquid water on Mars is scarce and too salty for plant growth. Water will need to be sent from Earth, or collected and purified on Mars. A Martian garden will also need protection from the planet’s freezing temperatures and modification of the atmosphere to be more like Earth’s. Mars receives less sunlight than the Earth because it is farther away from the Sun. Frequent dust storms further reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the planet’s surface. This means that artificial lighting will also be needed to grow plants on Mars.
Some kind of Martian greenhouse will need to recreate Earth-like conditions to allow plant growth.
In some case for nutrients we can use our waste material for giving nutrients to the plants
Water
Water can be made but it is dangerous process but still we can reuse our waste water but we can make water with this chemical formula
2 H2 + O2 ⇾ 2 H2O
After burning hydrogen and oxygen we can make water but is dangerous and harmful process then substitute for that is our waste we can re purify that too for that crew needs water supply that can last for a year or two. after doing that to many things increase rocket size and then prize means when we increase rocket size for giving more materials to the crew then similarly needed fuel is also going to increase and then overall budget of that mission will increase. best and hard option is making water with help of that formula.
Light
According research mars is also having seasons like winter/spring/fall/summer but winter is little bit longer there we can make chamber or some sort of hub for that then we can open that when best season comes for the plants. For example summer but sun is far away from the mars so impact of that sunlight will be less now substitute for that is we can use Artificial Light for that
There are some differences between sunlight and artificial light most artificial light doesn’t emit as much energy in the red and blue region of the light spectrum as sunlight does.
The sun, a torch, and a light bulb all emit energy in the form of particles called photons. The photons from the sun are a product of thermonuclear fusion. A torch uses a chemical reaction to burn. A light bulb converts electricity to photons. But a photon is a photon and light is light whether it comes from the sun or a flashlight.
Huge amount of energy comes from the sun than from any artificial light. But the light from the sun is different from a street lamp another way: most artificial light doesn’t emit as much energy in the red and blue region of the light spectrum as sunlight does. In other words, different ratios of reds, yellows and blues all combine together to make up white sunlight.
Researchers can successfully grow plants using only artificial light in growth chambers. But sunlight is best for most plants. It’s generally more intense than artificial light, and it’s pretty equally distributed among the different wavelengths that earthly plants have evolved to like best.
carbon dioxide / oxygen
According to the Wikipedia mars contains Oxygen: 0.174%,Carbon dioxide: 95.32%,Carbon monoxide:0.0747%,Argon: 1.9%
Good news is in photosynthesis process plants use carbon-dioxide through the pores of there leafs
According to Live-Science
It's widely believed that the rise of plants turned that carbon dioxide into oxygen through the chemical reactions of photosynthesis, in a period called the Great Oxygenation Event. But a new study suggests there may be another way to make oxygen from carbon dioxide, using ultraviolet light in that machine carbon dioxide will grow through lasers and then those gases will be separated otherwise Plants convert carbon dioxide to oxygen during a process called photosynthesis, using both the carbon and the oxygen to construct carbohydrates. In addition, plants also release oxygen to the atmosphere, which is subsequently used for respiration by heterotrophic organisms, forming a cycle.
Gravity
Gravity on mars is 1/3 of the earth in this case we can create chambers there and we have to create disposable paper block so in that we can put soil and seeds and other fertilizers and stuff so we can fix plants in that and with help of that we can solve that issue otherwise Artificial gravity (centrifugal force )Earth’s surface is actually a combination of gravitational and centrifugal forces.
Now Question arises how we can grow plants on mars with help of scientific processes that explained earlier
First of all we have to create one chamber. That chamber should be lightweight because spaceship crew can set that to anywhere. So after doing this make a cup/glass structure paper-made (that will be fit there for avoiding the issues of gravity and other things). We will put soil and all other nutrients/fertilizers in that structure. If we don’t have fertilizers and other chemicals we can use our human waste stuff too but before that we must purify that soil and put that in a soil.
After that we have to make outer covers for that chambers means when we want to give carbon-dioxide and sunlight to plants. We have remove that cover and after doing that we have to free those holes for entering carbon-dioxide in that chamber if sunlight is not available we can use artificial sunlight option too in that we can grow plants there.
After this things we have to pour those seeds in the soil after that we have to give water to those plants but for that we have to perform to many processes like burning
2 H2 + O2 ⇾ 2 H2O
since creating water from scratch by burning hydrogen and oxygen would be too dangerous. or else we can reuse and re-purify our urine and waste material.
Note :-You should not try burning hydrogen and oxygen at home.
According to that we can give sunlight and water to plants daily the good news is for photosynthesis process plants use CO2 and they release oxygen and that is the good thing if astronauts/scientists can grow more plants.
Then one of the crew members can stay in that chamber with out wasting Oxygen storage they have in the spaceship and also human releases C02 and inhales oxygen then this process is visa versa helpful to the plants as well as the human beings living in that chamber.
And for getting natural sunlight & carbon-dioxide we have to check weather conditions daily according to NASA past rovers there is dust issues those can block sunlight and also temperature on mars is freezing cold.
so we have to make something that can filter inside environment like purifier according to the plants needs like some sort of AI program that can be trained with help of reinforcement machine learning model so it will learn automatically according to the environmental condition's.
And with help of this food chamber we can feed astronauts for year or two years because without natural resources it is hard to survive forever on mars. but if Perseverance rover finds the place where the lakes/water-resources existed then by boring deep if we get some water then that is good but that will be in ice state we have to melt that water and then may be we can use that for daily purposes and also for feeding plants if scientists wants real sunlight on mars then another option is where the angle of sun towards mars put mirrors there and then mars will get sunlight but that will cost billions of dollars to complete.
Below is raw designs of my food chamber model
Movable Food Chamber
and also details of design working given in the figure handmade
in the water plant section there will be a one water plant we can make water there or use from storage and also on fold-able chamber we have to make one cover that will protect from temperature environment changes so it can’t harm the plants inside in it and those holes will be automatically open and other things will be manual done by crew members.
We can be able to dispatch those the wheels outer covers of the movable food chamber(Assemble and De-assemble) if we design in that way.
Hopefully my article will help to the mars deep space food challenge.I think this is one my best article till date with lots of crazy ideas but those can implemented in real life with help of science principles.
Thank you for reading and have a good day ahead.
References
Article Reviewers
Prof .CV Mane
Prof .Sugandha Nandedkar
Prof .Ashwini Gaikwad
Prof .Pankaj Durole
astronaut holding food
All Rights Reserved by krishna kakade
You can find more about me https://krishnadevz.github.io/
Old Raw Designs | https://medium.com/@krishnakakade/movable-food-chamber-on-mars-deep-space-food-challenge-by-nasa-b4b76b987c8c | ['Krishna Kakade'] | 2021-03-20 10:26:55.377000+00:00 | ['Deepspacefoodchallenge', 'NASA', 'Space', 'Mars', 'Food'] |
Want to be an effective manager? Start with managing people better | Want to be an effective manager? Start with managing people better
Designating a person as a manager does not make him one. The title does not bestow upon the person the required managerial skills and talent. To be an effective manager one needs to focus on many aspects simultaneously.
Of all the skills that I desire in my managers, the one that I favor most is the skill to relate to people and build a team. They may be technically qualified and operationally excellent but managing a team with different personalities and steering them in a common direction towards attainment of corporate goals is a skill most wanted.
There are various challenges in managing people, as what motivates one individual may rarely apply to all. Each person is distinct with underlying motivations, thinking patterns and attitudes.
The manager understands people, the key drivers of their behaviors and capitalizes their strengths to achieve more. The manager steps on onto a role of a guardian and is genuinely interested in connecting with and developing his people.
I enumerate a few additional traits of a good people’s manager.
Empower and step back
Good managers provide the necessary platform and resources for their employees to perform. They delegate tasks and step out of their way. Guidance and support are offered whenever required in performing their role. A good manager never micromanages or breathes upon the neck of the employee. In fact, he gives his/her employees enough leeway to accomplish the desired results on their own merit.
Practice what you preach
When you manage a team, you are also a part of it. The managerial designation is not a crown on your head, rather you are the role model who must lead by example for others to follow. If you expect your teammates to be on time, then this norm must begin with you. Be one among the team, rather than putting yourself on a pedestal.
Be fair, honest and transparent in all your dealings. Your actions must match your words to command respect and when people see it happening, they will live up to your words.
Listen and care
A good people’s manager cares about the company, its vision and employees. He/she respects people’s time and their contributions, so they never feel unimportant, or disregarded. Actively listen to the suggestions and views of your team. Giving people your attention and time is an act of care.
Be approachable
Keep your door open to discuss ideas and experiences at work. Making time for your people shows you value their work and their inputs. Keep your door open, be accessible and approachable. Involve your team in the decision-making process and collectively source feedback to improve the way you and your team operate.
Communicate and offer feedback
Communicate in a clear and a positive way about how your team is progressing and suggest areas for further development. When mistakes are made, highlight them as learning opportunities. Recognize areas for improvements and coax people towards raising the bar while performing.
When plans fail or go awry, refuse to get stuck on the post-mortem and dwell on the past. Instead, own up the failure and focus on problem-solving so that the project or task moves forward.
Manage difficult situations by resolving conflicts and dysfunctional behaviors. Don’t find the fault, find the remedy and chart a plan to get everything back on track.
Take responsibility
A people’s manager passes the credit and celebrates the success of the team. When things go wrong, a target missed or a customer lost, a manager takes the responsibility and shields the team from blame and criticism.
Never pass the blame down the hierarchy to try to appear infallible. Own the mistakes and keep the spirit to learn from it and move forward. An effective manager backs his/her team in good and bad times.
Whether you are an experienced manager or just been promoted, I hope these lessons would be useful to you. I would like to hear your comments and your insights too. | https://medium.com/@hello-66783/want-to-be-an-effective-manager-start-with-managing-people-better-211bcddb4c28 | ['Chirantan Joshi'] | 2020-12-22 07:44:17.530000+00:00 | ['People Management', 'Manager', 'Leadership', 'Teamwork', 'People'] |
How To Plan For Healthcare During Retirement | Miles Brown | Planning for retirement is always about balance. On the one hand, it’s important to make sure you have money for fun things like travel and dining out. On the other hand, you also need to make sure that basic necessities like housing and healthcare are covered as well.
Healthcare, as you can probably guess, is often the most challenging cost to plan for when you’re getting ready to retire. Many pre-retirees make the mistake of assuming that as long as they have Medicare, all their problems are solved. Sadly this is not the case.
To help you with your retirement healthcare planning, here are some basic tips to make sure you’ll have a happy and healthy retirement.
Get Familiar With Medicare
Having Medicare and really knowing how it works are two different things. Before you retire, make sure you know how all four parts of Medicare (A through D) work. We’ve already written in-depth about how each of these parts works, but here’s a quick summary:
Part A: Medicare Part A covers hospital visits. Assuming you paid Medicare taxes while you were working, there is no cost or monthly premium, all you have to do is opt-in.
Part B: Medicare Part B covers visits to your doctor and outpatient care. Monthly premiums cost between $135 and $460, depending on your income. You’ll also have copays and some out-of-pocket expenses.
Part C: Commonly known as Medicare Advantage, these are plans offered by private insurance companies that contract with Medicare. Medicare Advantage can cover parts A, B, and D, along with additional benefits such as vision, hearing, and dental. Costs for Medicare Advantage vary by state.
Part D: Medicare Part D helps cover prescription drugs. Part D can be purchased separately if you don’t want to buy a Medicare Advantage plan.
For even more details, you can visit the Medicare website.
Start A Health Savings Account (HSA)
If you have a high-deductible health plan-which the IRS defines as any health plan with a deductible of at least $1,350 for an individual or $2,700 for a family-you qualify for a Health Savings Account.
HSAs allow you to contribute pre-tax dollars (up to $3,550 for an individual or $7,100 for a family in 2020) to use for qualified medical expenses. Additionally, the funds roll over from year to year, and there are no requirements for when you need to use them.
Important Note: If you enroll in Medicare, you can no longer contribute to an HSA. Existing funds are still available, however.
Plan For Long-Term Care
It’s not fun to think about, and even less to plan for, but planning for long-term care is essential to do while you still can. Half of adults over age 65 need help with at least two or more daily living activities, such as eating, dressing, or hygiene. This means either hiring a part-time or full-time caretaker or moving into an assisted living facility.
The costs for long term care are, unfortunately, considerable. The average long-term care cost is $138,000 for men and $182,000 for women.
Because there is no way to predict with perfect certainty what your exact long-term care needs will be, it can be challenging to predict individual costs with any degree of accuracy. The safest option is to plan for the worst and hope for the best.
Start Working With A Financial Planner
If you’re not already working with a financial planner to help you plan for retirement, it’s never too late to start.
At Miles Brown, we have extensive experience helping people at all stages of life start planning and saving for retirement. To learn more about how we can help you, even if you’re already retired, please contact our office today. | https://medium.com/@milesbrownam/how-to-plan-for-healthcare-during-retirement-miles-brown-ea070c1a29b | ['Miles Brown Asset Management'] | 2019-12-17 20:28:10.817000+00:00 | ['Healthcare', 'Financial Services', 'Savings Plan', 'Retirement', 'Medicare'] |
Lessons the Cannabis Industry should take from the WNBA | By Eliana Green, Root & Rebound’s Equal Justice Works Fellow, whose work is sponsored by Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Morgan Lewis and Bockius.
New York Liberty players standing in unity for the #SayHerName campaign. (Source)
On Saturday, July 26, 2020, the WNBA tipped off the season with a message all businesses and industries should add to their playbooks, especially the Cannabis Industry, given its relationship to the war on drugs and police violence. The Seattle Storm and New York Liberty left the court prior to the playing of the national anthem, in peaceful protest. The players also observed a moment of silence in memory of Breonna Taylor, a young Black woman and EMT, murdered by police in her home during a no-knock drug raid on March 13, 2020. Breonna’s killers have still not been brought to justice. Therefore, the league has dedicated the entire season to Breonna Taylor and the Say Her Name campaign, a campaign which brings visibility to the countless Black women who are victims of state-sanctioned violence, but often overlooked in racial justice and social change narratives.
In early July, the league also announced the creation of the Social Justice Council (SJC), an unprecedented and bold new commitment. The league describes the SJC as “a driving force of necessary and continuing conversations about race, voting rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and gun control amongst other important societal issues.”
The Council is led by majority black women, and this representation matters because 100% of the league’s players are women, 83% are women of color, and 67% are Black. Players like Layshia Clarendon, Sydney Colson, Breanna Stewart, Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, A’ja Wilson, and Satou Sabally are members of the SJC. Creating a Social Justice Council and ensuring it is led by Black women shows that the league understands that systemic racism is an issue it must root out, and to do so effectively, they must put the experts in charge. Black women — Black players — know explicitly the impacts of systemic racism and state-sanctioned violence. They know it in practice — through lived experiences that most White players only read about. Black and BIPOC players understand exactly what needs to be done to take action and effect change — not through theoretical frameworks but through lived experience — and the WNBA understands this. The Cannabis industry would benefit from a similar model of intentional and lived social justice leadership, where the voices most impacted and most proximate lead the charge. Black women.
Most people see the War on Drugs (WOD) as a direct assault on Black men, and largely it has been. Black men have long been impacted by mass incarceration as the state found creative ways to evade the 13th amendment which abolished slavery. However, the WOD and crack epidemic took a different approach, for the first time intentionally targeting Black women as a way to undermine social control in the Black community.
Black Women, The War on Drugs, and the Cannabis Industry
Dr. Marilyn Jones, founder of Because Black is Still Beautiful. (Source)
Dr. Marilyn Jones, the founder of the non-profit Because Black is Still Beautiful, argues that the crack epidemic and its harsh WOD criminal (in)justice response intentionally targeted Black women as an entry point to disrupt the entire Black community.
In a recent interview, Dr. Jones explains, during the crack epidemic, women were arrested for the first time and removed from the community at alarming rates, which led to the loss of community social control.
Data compiled by the Sentencing Project underscores Dr. Jones’ assertion that Black women have been severely impacted by the WOD. The Sentencing Project explains that “though many more men are in prison than women, the rate of growth for female imprisonment has been twice as high as that of men since 1980,” with the female prison population being disproportionately Black. Additionally, women in state prisons are about twice as likely than men to be incarcerated for a drug offense.
Over 60% of women in state prisons have children who are under the age of 18. Thus, it is no surprise that the societal removal of Black women has had a detrimental cumulative impact on their community. This begins at the familial level, by negatively impacting those who rely on Black women for financial and interpersonal support; and extends to the larger community, by stripping Black women of their voting rights and damaging their ability to find stable housing, education, and employment opportunities.
Additionally, Tracey Meares explains in her 1998 article, “Social Organization and Drug Law Enforcement,” “socially organized or cohesive communities are better able to engage in informal social control that can lead to lower levels of crime than communities that are not cohesive.” The removal of large sums of adults from a neighborhood makes it difficult for community-based social institutions to foster shared values or social control.
In her doctoral dissertation, “The Come Back Queens: Understanding Black Women’s Transition From Incarceration to Higher Education,” Dr. Jones argues that Black women are the gatekeepers of urban areas of concentrated poverty. As such, she asserts, they are the holders of social control of Black communities. She highlights examples of Black women’s authority to mediate community disputes, their ability to referee physical altercations to maintain fairness, and even their power to control the speed of traffic so the community’s children can play. Black women have long held the wisdom and the answers for the Black community. Their wisdom comes from powerful lived experiences and insights. Having been hit the hardest by the issue, Black women are experts, and thus must be equipped to be in positions of leadership to effectively address the harms and create solutions that are equitable and just.
The Value of Lived Experiences
Dr. Jones, who earned her doctorate in educational leadership from San Francisco State University, describes her work as ‘Streacademics,’ using academia only to support the much more valuable lessons learned from collectively-lived experience in the streets. Since pursuing her bachelor’s degree, her area of focus has been the correlation between education and incarceration. This is because she felt there has been an erasure of the narratives of women like her: Black women who happened to be formerly incarcerated and pursue higher education.
Noticing this erasure and understanding gap amongst primarily white female social service providers she developed and published the Araminta Approach. The Araminta Approach, named after Harriet Tubman, is a theoretical framework designed for practitioners to facilitate a deeper understanding of the intersection of cultural and gender responsiveness when attempting to find solutions to systemic racism.
Harriet Tubman, abolitionist and political activist. (Source)
In a recent Zoom interview, Dr. Jones suggested that when the cannabis industry organizes to look for solutions to redress the harms done to the Black community, those who are the “hardest hit” by the harms need to be in charge and taking the lead of directing efforts. She argues that Black women are “hardest hit,” but don’t have the privilege of making any of the rules, and yet society, despite its unwillingness to put Black women in leadership, continues to be surprised when things don’t work out. She argues the matriarchal hierarchy of low-income Black communities and Black women’s centralized stronghold on the general Black community points to them for answers. She asserts that without the support of Black women, the Black community withers. The Black community also withers when White allies attempt to lead.
White Allyship is Not Enough
White allyship is critical in the global movement towards racial justice but, as Dr. Jones emphasizes, the experts who must lead the movement are the people with the lived experience. This cannot be accomplished by elevating and centering Black voices through a White lens. This can only be done when White people step back, step to the side, and open doors of opportunity to their Black peers.
This sentiment is shared across race and gender lines, by progressive White allies who truly have an understanding of power dynamics and that institutional racism is a concept bigger than them, their individual actions, or intentions.
People like educator Andrew Saturno, a man of Jewish and Italian descent, who was interviewed for this piece. Andrew is a Diverse Learning teaching and grade chair at a KIPP charter, a predominantly Black school on the West Side of Chicago.
Andrew is conscious about his leadership. Although he enjoys his school and would love to be an administrator, he would never feel comfortable being the Principal at a school made up of a 95% Black student-body. Instead, Andrew says he would love to share his ideas as Vice Principal and support a principal of color in leading. He challenges other white leaders to do the same. He asks “if you can’t take perspective from those you want to serve, how can you dictate what is best for them?”
Andrew believes that society cannot place the burden and labor of solving racism on Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) but that the space must be made for BIPOC to access positions of power and influence where they are adequately paid, allowed to delegate work to those who want to contribute to the movement, and encouraged to act in pursuit of the bigger long-term goals of all that needs to be done.
Andrew believes that the inherent privileges he holds in society as a White man won’t disappear because he uses these privileges to create space and opportunity for Black people. Andrew’s leadership style, framework, and perspective is a model for allyship in the cannabis industry could adapt. The report, Awake, to Woke, to Work: Building a Race Equity Culture, also speaks to the importance of examining our roles in the continuation of structural racism, saying, “The attainment of race equity requires us to examine all four levels on which racism operates (personal, interpersonal, institutional, and structural), recognize our role in enduring inequities, and commit ourselves to change.” The report offers an equity-framework the Cannabis Industry could leverage. (Equity in the Center, 2019)
What this means for the Cannabis Industry
81% of cannabis business owners or founders are White, 5.7% are Latinx, 4.3% are Black, 2.4% are Asian, and 6.7% identify as other. (Marijuana Business Daily, Sept. 2017) Yet, according to the ACLU’s report, A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform, “Marijuana arrests made up 43% of all drug arrests in 2018, more than any other drug category.” Additionally, “Black people are 3.64 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession, notwithstanding comparable usage rates. The increasing number of states legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana has not reduced national trends in racial disparities, which remain unchanged since 2010.” (ACLU, 2020)
The cannabis industry was built on the backs and blood of Black people, many of whom remain behind bars today, or were killed in experiencing police brutality. The majority of entrepreneurs in this space, young Black cannabis entrepreneurs, were penalized for their genius. Therefore, the industry has a responsibility to address the systemic and structural racism that continues to taint the industry, especially if it wants to address the persistent harms done by the War on Drugs.
Between Memorial day and the 4th of July, the 13 billion-dollar, seemingly recession-proof, overwhelmingly white Cannabis Industry started to see the tale of two Americas first-hand. While modern drug policies have “freed” certain groups from criminalization, the War on Drugs continues in the other America.
For the last 50 years, in the War on Drugs, marijuana was labeled a Schedule 1 drug in an attempt to fight what former U.S. President Nixon called public enemy number one: drug abuse. In a 1994 interview, former President Nixon’s Policy Chief, John Ehrlichman admitted the War on Drugs was indeed intentionally racist:
“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the [Vietnam] war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.”
In the midst of the current opioid epidemic, there is a new-found American sympathy for opioid users as suburban victims of drug abuse, rather than urban criminals. Given this shift in sympathy, some may see the War on Drugs as a thing of the past. The truth is that the War on Drugs continues today and that Cannabis Industry tax dollars are, in fact, used to fuel and pay for it. As highlighted in a recent Forbes article, 20% of Cannabis taxes from California’s multi-billion dollar industry is allocated to “public safety” to fund policing. In fact, just as recently as June 2020, California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control requested state funding to create a specialized police force to fight the Cannabis black market.
There are examples of the industry stepping up in this moment to recognize this hypocrisy and to do the right thing. For example, the Oregon Cannabis Association (OCA) called upon Portland Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler to stop supplying funds derived from cannabis tax revenue to the Portland police budget. The next day, Wheeler announced that $12 million from the city’s police department would instead be invested in supporting communities of color. While the OCA should be applauded for its realization that its dollars and resources must contribute to repairing the space that it leisurely and comfortably occupies, there must be bigger changes within the industry in order for the industry to meet the needs and desires of the Black Community, and to see this kind of change across the country.
Black Women in The Cannabis Industry — Pushing for Change
In the age of marijuana legalization (for some) and ongoing unrest, the cannabis industry may finally have growing awareness that policies enforcing the WOD are largely to blame for the mass incarceration and continuous state-sanctioned murders of Black Americans like Breonna Taylor.
Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, was killed in a no-knock drug raid in March. (Source)
Breonna Taylor, just shy of 27, was a young woman of the same age, race, and gender as me — a woman who was killed in her bed during a no-knock drug raid that took place while police searched for a man whom they already had in custody. Yet, Black women continue to be erased from the War on Drugs narrative. The industry may also be growing its awareness about the historic erasure of Black women and the ways white patriarchy works. Black feminist scholar, Bell Hooks, names the legacy of this erasure in her book, Ain’t I a Woman, saying, “As far back as slavery, white people established a social hierarchy based on race and sex that ranked white men first, white women second, though sometimes equal to black men, who are ranked third, and black women last.” Thus in most recountings of history, “Black people” only encapsulates the experience of Black men and “women” only tells the stories of white women
Black women are the matriarchs of the Black community and have been equally harmed by the War on Drugs.
If the industry really wants to stop perpetuating harms, which continue to adversely impact the Black Community, the industry would be wise to create spaces like the WNBA’s Social Justice Council that elevate Black women in power and leadership.
We are the experts because of our lived experiences. Put Black women in charge. Let us lead.
About the author: Root and Rebound’s cannabis justice work is led by reentry attorney Eliana Green.
Root & Rebound, is a national legal non-profit whose mission is to restore power and resources to the families and communities most harmed by mass incarceration through legal advocacy, public education, policy reform and litigation — a model rooted in the needs and expertise of people who are directly impacted.
As an Equal Justice Fellow at Root & Rebound, Eliana’s project focuses on using this model to help repair the harms the War on Drugs has on communities of color. She also focuses on collaborating with the cannabis community to help corporate partners develop equitable hiring practices as well as relevant philanthropic initiatives that illustrate their understanding that corporate social responsibility should center those most harmed by cannabis prohibition.
Editor: Damali Robertson (Director of Strategic Partnerships, Root & Rebound) | https://medium.com/@rootandrebound/lessons-the-cannabis-industry-should-take-from-the-wnba-4e33ae07f27d | ['Root'] | 2020-08-10 22:46:47.107000+00:00 | ['War On Drugs', 'Social Justice', 'Cannabis', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Criminal Justice Reform'] |
One Rest API for your Lifetime Salesforce Implementation with Flow Builder as Controller | Hi Folks, in this article, I’d like to show you how to reuse one Rest Apex Class (+test class) for your lifetime Salesforce implementation.
For those who still not see my article about JSON Parsing in Salesforce Flow, I would suggest you to visit here and here to see how I managed to parse JSON inside Flow Builder because in this article, I will use those components to process inbound data from the rest API.
You may already know that, we can launch Flow directly from Rest API from this official Salesforce Documentation. So the question is, why would I use this method if Salesforce already has default way to launch Flow from Rest API? My personal answers are:
1. That method only support 1 HTTP method, that is POST. And sometimes, we need to use other method when we’re dealing with Salesforce Rest API
2. If you use Official Salesforce method, you’ll not able to custom your own JSON Structure, you’ll have to follow their pattern. And sometimes, that pattern won’t work for your integrated system (or I’d say, its a very awkward structure)
Okay okay, so what solutions am I offering here?
My solutions here are to:
1. Have one Rest Apex Class (+test class) that basically would able to control all of your rest requests (And every time you want to expose new function, you just need to update the flow and don’t need to add new test class)
2. Route the flow functions based on path you set in your flow builder
3. As you may already know, Flow has functionality to send error message to admin when there’s something wrong with your flow. So you’ll immediately notified if there’s something wrong with your integration
4. Supports POST,GET,DELETE,PUT,PATCH methods
5. Able to catch request headers in your flow
6. Able to have dynamic JSON structure
So, here are the steps you need to do to setup that solutions:
a. Install this package which contains OneRest Class, OneRest Test Class, And Main controller for your Rest API. : https://login.salesforce.com/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=04t2w000009F5cg (Don’t forget to change login to test.login if you want to install in Sandbox)
Source Code: https://github.com/munawirrahman/OneRest
b. After you installed that Package, congratulations, you already have your first rest with ping pong functionality
Image1: OneRest is the default path name for your installed package, feel free to change it in the apex class (and test class) if you need to
c. After you already installed that package, you’ll have an AutoLaunched Flow like this
Image2: Initial installed flow
Image3: Decision element, as your router based on path
Image4: How to return pong
Image5: Return error code 400 if no path found
Image6: Return 400 if no path found
d. Here are the variables that you can use to route and process the request | https://medium.com/@munawirrahman/one-rest-api-for-your-lifetime-salesforce-implementation-with-flow-builder-as-controller-435fc7e4109 | [] | 2020-12-21 02:20:15.338000+00:00 | ['Flow Builder', 'Rest Api', 'Salesforce', 'Apex'] |
Me and my mental health | Me and my mental health
I wrote an article recently about a different take on a break up, what I wrote was true and that was how I felt. I said in the article that I would see where this journey since the break up would take me. Well here’s a little insight, what happened next is after living with my mum for 6 months I got myself a place to live, I was feeling good, things were looking up. What I wasn’t expecting was for things at that point to feel difficult.
After the break up I put my focus on running the London Marathon, then it was moving out of the house Stuie and I shared, then I was focused on finding a place to live, I found somewhere to live…and then what? I didn’t have anything to focus my attention on and I had a lot more time to think.
A new start or so I thought
Suddenly the break up caught up on me but the way I was trying to deal with it wasn’t healthy, it was the same way I dealt with my sexuality and the death of my dad. This was to not deal with it, bury it and move on, pretend it isn’t happening, but this isn’t healthy. I was also finding that I had started to get anxiety about meeting new people or going out somewhere new, I got too comfortable in my own little bubble. This anxiety of meeting new people had never been a part of my life before.
I listen to a lot of podcasts, some of which talk about mental health, the message seemed to be from listening to them and from listening to people close to me, if you need help ask for it, get the help, don’t keep things bottled up. I am very lucky to work for a company who has a number to call if you need this kind of help and they put me in touch with a counsellor.
I was anxious about my first session with the counsellor but I had no reason to be, he was a really nice guy who put me at ease straight away. I told him everything that had happened to me and he said ‘you’ve been through a lot haven’t you’ I hadn’t thought about it like that before but maybe I have. Just in the first session he gave me a new way of thinking and driving away, I started to feel positive and I started to feel like me again and all he did was let me talk and he listened.
The second session I was getting more off my chest and again was receiving a different take on what had happened. The third session was one that I felt like I needed, I heard some unwanted news which played on my mind so the session came at the right time. Talking to my counsellor helped put my mind at ease about the news that I received and again changed the way I was thinking and feeling.
The mug said it all
It’s amazing just how much the act of just talking to someone can help, I’m an introvert and opening up isn’t something I find easy. It’s only when I let my self imposed guard down that I could be honest about how I was feeling. At the end of each session I felt like I was heading in the right direction I was feeling better about myself.
Just before my last session I had a sensation that I hadn’t felt for a while, I realised I was happy, I felt like me again. Although it’s a new Kevin, not the closeted Kevin, not the one who had just got comfortable with his sexuality, not the one who was part of Kevin and Stuie, but a new one. A Kevin who was happy and comfortable with his sexuality, happy to be single and happy with his new life. The anxiety had also gone and I was meeting new people again. On the way home after my last session, I listened to Feeling Good by Muse, the words in the song said how I felt leaving that session.
Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
I got some unexpected news on Christmas Eve regarding Stuie being with a new partner but my reaction surprised me and others around me. I told my brother what had happened and my reaction to it and he said ‘counselling has given you that reaction’. He right, I don’t know what my reaction would’ve been if I hadn’t had the counselling but it wouldn’t have been the same.
From this experience I have learnt that we need to talk more, men, women, straight, gay, we all go through difficult periods in our lives. I was so lucky that I had somewhere to go that offered me that support and I know not everyone can have this luxury. We need to listen and understand each other, just through talking and hearing a new perspective I felt like a completely different man. I know that at some point I may need help again and I hope that next time I don’t bottle it up and I deal with it. | https://medium.com/lgbtgaze/me-and-my-mental-health-5241bf4efdc6 | ['Kevin Laurie'] | 2020-01-01 11:06:44.243000+00:00 | ['Happiness', 'Happy', 'LGBT', 'Mental Health', 'LGBTQ'] |
7 Best Facts About Social Psychology | 7 Facts About Social Psychology
Social psychology is such a type of psychology that helps us to scientific study about thinking and thought of different people. It also plays an important role in the study of the feeling, emotions, behaviour, and attitude of different people in society.
Importance Of Social Psychology
Social psychology plays an important role in our life in different ways. It helps to understand the psychology and mindset of different people. It also plays an important role in learning about different thing about society and social behaviour. It also plays an important role in understanding the relationship and their interaction with one another.
Research On Social Psychology
Social psychology is an important field nowadays because society has a great effect on our personal life. So it is very important to know about basic and important research areas of social psychology. Here we are discussing some important research areas that play an important role in our life:
Social Cognition.
Attitudes.
Violence and Aggression.
Prosocial Behavior.
Prejudice and Discrimination.
Social Identity.
Group Behavior.
Social Influence.
All the above fields and term are most researchable in social psychology. So, those persons who have an interest in social psychology should work on those topics.
Social Psychology Theories
As we know, social psychology is the most researchable term in the whole world. So, there are many scientists and philosophers who give their own theories on social psychology. Some of them are near to become law and some of them are under hard research. If any person works on the following theories, then that person becomes a reasonable and remarkable person in this society and universe. Here we are discussing some important theories:
Action Identification Theory.
Attachment Theory.
Attribution Theory.
Balance Theory.
Broaden-and-Build Theory.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory.
Correspondent Inference Theory.
Drive Theory.
Every person who has an interest in social psychology should focus on those theories that play an important role in our society. | https://medium.com/@tahir-talib-786/7-best-facts-about-social-psychology-8906160a0d9c | ['Tahir Talib'] | 2021-04-13 15:26:37.309000+00:00 | ['Motivation', 'Social Psychology', 'Psychologyhost', 'Psychology', 'Social'] |
Brad Acts Up — Queer Hero Worship | Luke wasn’t like me, he wanted to live.
Can we not talk about Luke right now? I’d a gave anything to take his place, but the world don’t work like that. He didn’t wanna have AIDS, obviously. I know why you’re here, ya know. I ain’t as dumb as I look.
You wanna know why I did what I did.
But I ain’t ready to talk about that.
You know what they say about guys who stick with their boyfriends who got AIDS. That they’re heroes? That if you really love him, you stick with him straight to the end?
Yeah, well… what happens when they don’t want you to stick with them? Ever think about that?
Know what Luke told me once? “Having AIDS is a full time job.” Then he said …
He said a lotta things, but what matters is we were never close again. We stopped doin everything together. He stopped sleepin in the same bed as me. “To keep you safe.” We never became boyfriends officially, so we never had to break up. We just fell apart. Then he …
Never mind.
All I know is, he told David he had AIDS before he told me! I dint even know David was positive. Luke knew! But I dint know a lotta things back then.
No more talkin about Luke.
It’s too fuckin hard. I still cry about him. I still cry about him bein 42 when I’m 40, and how that ain’t never gonna happen.
How bout before I tell ya about Luke, I talk about the next happy part of my life? About the first guy I told about my big HIV plan? The big plan I can tell you’re dyin to ask me, only you’re too polite.
Cooper Union’s foundation building where Act Up met in the 90s. Photo by Ajay Suresh, Wikimedia Commons.
I was standin at the back of Cooper Union, sorta waitin to see if Mike was gonna talk. I don’t wanna say he was kinda hot, but fuck it, he was hot and he always hugged me when he saw me.
Sometimes I only went to Act Up so Mike could hug me.
Michael-angelo, I mean. But he dint talk that night. His friend Ann did, you know that TV person? I looked around while she gave this really long speech I couldn’t hear. Act Up’s like a big family, so I wanted to see who was there, even if I dint talk to nobody.
People smiled at me, but …
I was too shy to just walk up and say hi. Not even to the guys who came into Uncle Charlie’s sometimes.
Then!
I saw this smokin cute boy leanin against the brick wall just behind me. I could tell he wasn’t with nobody cuz even though he was listenin hard to Ann, he looked lost.
I’m terrible at cruisin, but I tried.
I felt guilty, but I was lonely, and I ain’t apologizin for not wantin to be alone.
The guy dropped his eyes when I looked. He was as shy as me! I dint walk up, I just kinda took a few steps back and leaned up against the wall like him.
I kept lookin, he kept droppin his eyes, and we both kinda scootched closer to each other.
Then he took a breath so deep I could see his chest move. He stood up real straight and stuck out his hand. To shake! He was like, “Hi, I’m Jim. It’s so nice to meet you.”
So lame I had to bite my lip not to laugh!
But … he was my age, or at least I thought he was. He had this funny posture, back way too straight. Hair blond and buzzed like he was in the Army. And short? The top of his head only came up to my mouth.
But when he took my hand and pumped it, squeezin so hard I winced, he looked me right in my eyes and relaxed like he was all comfortable. I smiled right back and somethin snapped. Like we both knew we were friends, just like that.
We dint talk about going to the Waverly for burgers.
We left just as the meeting broke up and headed west, me all anxious to get outta the East Village because it was like foreign territory. I couldn’t get used to walkin in strange neighborhoods without Luke.
Jim dint talk, just grabbed my arm and walked with me, which made me smile. I buttoned up the top button of my jacket, cuz it was gettin pretty cold. I dint relax until we hit Washington Square Park, all decorated up for Halloween.
Home turf again! We walked into the diner and sat down together like we did it every day.
Cover of Outweek, featuring Madonna. Though the magazine ran from only 1989 until 1991, it vaulted Michelangelo Signorile to national fame (or infamy) as he used his weekly column to out closeted gay public figures like Malcolm Forbes.
Ten minutes later, Jim went all spastic.
“You KNOW Michelangelo Signorile!? Oh, my FUCKING god! What’s he like? Tell me EVERYTHING!”
I swear to God he dropped his burger and splattered ketchup everywhere.
He dint calm down neither, not once I told him me and Mike sat in this exact same booth once when Mike invited me to that zap.
“No way! I read Outweek EVERY week as soon as it comes out. I flip straight to his column! Signorile is like … Oh, my GOD, I can’t believe you KNOW him. He goes to regular diners and eats food just like everybody else?”
I snorted. Seriously I snorted. Then I went, “Calm down. It’s the Waverly. Everybody eats here, including Mike. What’s Outweek?”
His eyes got so big I thought they was gonna pop out of his head.
So we HAD to walk to the Center on 13th Street, which was still open cuz it was Girth and Mirth night … you know, the club for fat gay guys? To find a copy of Outweek for me.
Anyway, on the way there, Jim’s hand kinda brushed up against mine a buncha times. His shoulder kept bumpin mine. So I grabbed his hand and held it.
The first time I’d held anybody’s hand since April. Six whole months. It felt so good I can’t even explain. But I felt so bad. I knew Luke was …
Forget it. We’re not gonna talk about him right now.
So we went in, found the damn magazine and sat in the garden to read, which wasn’t so easy cuz all the light came from candles and oil lamps. Jim kept sayin hi to all the Girth and Mirth guys, which it turned out he knew a bunch of em.
Dominic, this guy I knew from Charlie’s, he walked up to our bench. Squeezed my shoulder. Kissed Jim on the cheek. “Where’s Lenny?” he asked, soundin a little … funny.
Jim dint care, I could tell. He was all like, “He stayed home tonight. Too much work to get done. Plus, he’s not sure about Act Up, which is where I was. You know Brad? I met him there.” | https://medium.com/james-finn/brad-acts-up-queer-hero-worship-6a9391375a97 | ['James Finn'] | 2020-04-06 15:16:28.719000+00:00 | ['Activism', 'LGBTQ', 'HIV', 'Love', 'History'] |
Was the Miami Heat Finals Appearance a Fluke? | Photo cred: backsportspage.com
I know what the Miami Heat did last season was impressive, yet still I’m not 100 percent convinced that the Finals appearance was not a fluke.
Call me a hater if you want but when a 5th seed makes the NBA Finals eyebrows are likely to be raised.
Although the Eastern Conference is the conference where anything is humanly possible the Miami Heat were not on anybody’s radar to make a championship appearance.
The team’s surprising Finals appearance was largely due to some unexpected contributors. Bam Adebayo had a great leap in production, Kendrick Nunn and Duncan Robinson also added some unexpected productivity. Tyler Herro looked like the steal of the draft, Jae Crowder added toughness, defense and a veteran presence.
Jimmy Butler showed us in last season’s playoffs that he should be mentioned amongst the league’s elite.
I feel as though we should all take the results from the NBA bubble with a grain of salt. We all can admit that last season had some unique circumstances.
I’m not convinced that Butler can regularly lead his team to an NBA Finals appearance. I wouldn’t quite classify Butler as a superstar just yet until he proves that he can keep his team in championship contention with regularity.
For those of you who disagree with me, what do you consider a superstar to be? What are the requirements? Most might say that even the lowest level of superstar would at least need to average 20 points per game.
Well Jimmy Butler for his career averages 19 points per game, and hasn’t averaged 20 points per game since 2018.
For those of you who think that Butler is a superstar, can you confidently say that he can lead his team back to the Finals?
Probably not.
In the bubble I think that the Heat entered with a mindset that most of the teams there didn’t have.
They showed up a lot more prepared and focused than most teams there and it showed, while this is not the Heat’s fault, they will not have that luxury heading into this season and this playoffs.
I don’t live in a world of hypotheticals, so no one should blame the Heat for making the best out of the scenario that they couldn’t control.
I commend the Heat for what they did last season, but again that season was like none other and I strongly believe that this season will be a lot more predictable.
If you believe that a 5th seed lead by Jimmy Butler will be in the NBA Finals again, I don’t know what to tell you.
Not to say that Jimmy isn’t a great player, but you’d be lying if you said prior to last season that you thought he could be the best player on a championship level team.
Let’s keep in mind that the Heat were a 5th seed last season and their biggest off season acquisition was Avery Bradley.
When you consider how good the Celtics are, the improvements the Bucks have made, the Sixers still being a threat, and the Nets equipped with a healthy Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, you start to realize that the odds of the Heat returning to the Finals is that much more unlikely.
With a season with no interruptions, I can confidently say that the Heat’s ceiling this season is a second round exit.
I like Jimmy Butler but I believe he’s more star than superstar.
A player that can get his team to the playoffs consistently, but ultimately can’t get his team to that championship level.
In order to be a true championship contender, team’s need a solid number 2. While Bam Adebayo has been improving greatly, I still don’t think that he can be the second best player on a championship level team.
When we look at the duo of Jimmy and Bam in comparison to the rest of the Eastern Conference, how do they match up?
In comparison to a Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, a KD and Kyrie, even Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid have a strong case to be considered a better duo.
The Heat might have the worst duo of the bunch.
This season the Heat will catch a lot less people off guard because now teams are focused and hungry, and the Heat have a target on their back. | https://medium.com/sportsraid/was-the-miami-heat-finals-appearance-a-fluke-a8038a32c5cc | ['Breaking The Glass'] | 2020-12-26 17:50:42.625000+00:00 | ['Sports Journalists', 'Basketball', 'Sports', 'NBA', 'Heat'] |
Beauty and Tragedy in Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole | Beanpole is a visually beautiful film. It is full of saturated color and warm light, but from the first seen to the last, it presents one heartbreaking tragedy after the next, it’s relentless. Even with this overwhelming amount of pain and misfortune, the film is not melodramatic or overwrought, but the sheer density of terrible occurrences strains credulity.
The movie takes place in Leningrad after World War Two. Two women, Iya and Masha have returned from the front badly traumatized. Now back home, they work as attendants in a hospital for recovering veterans.
The Soviet Union lost 26 million people in the war. More people than you will ever see, meet, hear of, or are even capable of imagining. You could wipe out the entire population of New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Dallas, Houston, Boston, San Fransisco, New Orleans, Memphis, and Phoenix and you still wouldn’t reach 26 million. It’s impossible to fathom living in such a time, but Beanpole presents the audience with a profound sense of emptiness. Everything is hollow, hollow of meaning, and hollow of feeling. People are just going through the motions of their lives.
Masha has a horrible smile that she wears throughout most of the film. It is completely unnerving. It doesn’t change with the surrounding context. Whatever happens around her she has the same expression. It looks as if she is about to burst into something like tears or rage but she just continues to smile.
Iya has suffered serious head trauma and simply isn’t all there. She’s stilted and foggy and prone to seizures where she freezes and stays unreachable for unpredictable amounts of time.
Most of the characters have lost interest in anything that requires trust or vulnerability, but Iya has a little innocence left in her, even with the never-ending barrage of horror that comes her way.
Beanpole was directed by Kantemir Balagov in 2020. It was based on a collection of oral histories collected by Svetlana Alexievich. Balagov and his cinematographer Ksenia Sereda render the film in red and green. There are a few notable exceptions where everything is white but otherwise red and green are present in every frame.
The presence of the colors gets stronger and more evident as the movie progresses until it is stylized and symbolic like a Peter Greenaway film. The meaning doesn’t seem to be explicit but the colors are complementary which is close in meaning to the opposite. There were painters in the nineteenth century who believed that if you balanced a painting properly you could stimulate the entirety of the brain.
The craftsmanship and quality of Beanpole are impeccable, but the intensity is too high. Even with the consummate acting, the sparing use of dialogue the striking compositions, and the color the plot involves such a grotesque parade of the worst possible situations and worst possible consequences that it’s hard to stay invested. Maybe my American constitution isn’t strong enough to withstand the severity of Russian tragedy. It is unlikely I will have ever have to endure what the Soviets endured during the first half of the Twentieth Century but even with all its beauty and skill Beanpole seemed exaggerated.
This specific criticism aside the two lead characters are very compelling. Iya is well over 6 feet tall, hence the title of the movie. Her presence on screen is gripping. She has bright blonde hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes and seems otherworldly. We are never sure what is going on in her head. We want to protect her innocence but we don’t fully understand her.
Masha loves Iya but Masha’s desire to get pregnant has reached the point of depravity and she is willing to sacrifice anything or anyone, including Iya, to have a baby. The relationship between the two of them runs the gamut of emotions, from rage and bullying on both sides to the deepest intimacy and sympathy for the other.
Beanpole is a memorable film, it leaves an indelible mark. I tender my criticism with reservations. My incredulity over the level of tragedy depicted in the film may simply come from living a far more comfortable life.
If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy one of these - | https://medium.com/@36toesproductions/beauty-and-tragedy-in-kantemir-balagovs-beanpole-d8e600ebda9a | [] | 2020-12-19 18:38:46.389000+00:00 | ['Film', 'Movie Review', 'Film Reviews', 'Movies', 'Cinema'] |
The 3 Easiest Ways For Newbies To Start In Affiliate Marketing. | With the guide of the Internet, you can nearly have everything directly readily available. With only a couple of snaps you gain admittance to thousands and even large number of snippets of data and information on for all intents and purposes any field of interest. As a long time elapse by, the Internet constant to impact revolutionary changes in numerous aspects of human undertakings, including trade. Specialists say that the data space, normally known as the internet, develops by north of 1,000,000 pages regularly as an ever increasing number of individuals use the Internet for data, instruction, diversion, business and other individual reasons. It doesn’t take a business-arranged person to understand that this peculiarity can achieve high as can be monetary profits. The Internets quickly developing notoriety in the new years is without a doubt a chance for business that any business person would not have any desire to miss.
You may be figuring no one but financial specialists can get a lot of cash-flow out of the Internet, dont you? Reconsider. You also can procure truckloads of money through the Internet regardless of whether you dont have items to sell and prominent and set up organization. How? That is through member showcasing. You may have gone over these words over the net while surfing. Member showcasing is an income dividing among a vendor and a partner who gets compensated for alluding or advancing the shippers items and administrations. It is one of the blossoming businesses these days since it is shown to be cost-effective and quantifiable method for accomplishing extraordinary benefit both for the shipper and the associate and different players in the member program, for example, the offshoot organization or subsidiary arrangement supplier.
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Associate advertising turns out adequately for the vendor and the subsidiary. To the primary, he acquires freedoms to publicize his items to a bigger market, which expands his opportunities to procure. The more associate sites or persevering partners he gets, the more deals he can anticipate. By getting partners to advertise his items and administrations, he is saving himself time, exertion and cash in searching for potential business sectors and clients. At the point when a customer taps on the connection in the member site, buys the item, prescribes it to other people who search for a similar thing or gets it once more, the trader increases his odds of acquiring. Then again, the partner advertiser benefits from every client who taps on the connection in his site and who really buys the item or profits of the help given by the shipper. By and large, the associate gets commision per deal, which can be fixed rate or fixed sum.
Assuming you need to be a member advertiser and make fortunes out of the Internet, you might follow the accompanying three generally essential and least demanding ways of beginning a powerful offshoot showcasing program. First is to distinguish something specific you are keen on or energetic about so you wont be exhausted and compelled to foster your partner site later on. Zeroing in on a particular region you realize will assist you with drawing out your best absent a lot of dangers and exertion. You can add an individual touch to your site and give your guests who are potential purchasers a feeling that you are a specialist in your field. Along these lines, you gain their trust and ultimately urge them to purchase the items you underwrite. Next is to search for great paying dealers and items or administrations identified with your advantage and make now a site. In picking the items, you should likewise consider its change rate | https://medium.com/@bholakhadka636/the-3-easiest-ways-for-newbies-to-start-in-affiliate-marketing-dcd526575d51 | ['Bhola Khadka'] | 2021-11-23 14:21:58.434000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Passive Income', 'Money', 'Internet Marketing', 'Make Money Online'] |
The Orb gang rebrands Wrexham AFC. | Even if you’re not a football fan you’ve probably seen Wrexham AFC hitting the headlines recently. They’ve been propelled into the spotlight after Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney completed a takeover of the club. One thing all football fans fear following a takeover is the club losing its identity, but there’s also a lot of excitement about the future. If Wrexham start to move up the leagues, they’ll want to attract new fans and will likely need to develop and evolve their brand to be more marketable. | https://medium.com/@thisisorb/the-orb-gang-rebrands-wrexham-afc-d452778b7d17 | [] | 2020-12-29 12:31:13.581000+00:00 | ['Football', 'Branding', 'Rebranding'] |
Data Science, Alexander of the Times Ahead | Raise your hands if you ever heard about Data Science! It has been the buzz word in the recent past. This field can retain and stay in the marketplace for a long time and provide numerous opportunities to people who add value by utilizing data. I strongly believe Data science is the place to be going forward in the next couple of years or even decades.
Firstly, What is Data Science?
Data science is a field that uses algorithms, processes, and models to extract knowledge and generate insights from data. To know more about Data Science, you can read my previous article here.
There’s lots of data in the world. And ultimately, data is the resource that our scientists work with. If there is more data, there’s more work, and if there’s less data, there’s less work. Let’s jump straight into it. Since the dawn of time up until 2005, humans had used 130 exabytes of data. Well, this tells us absolutely nothing.
What is an Exabyte? Why is this impressive?
Well, let’s start from the ground up. Let’s start with one byte here we’ve got the letter A. It takes up exactly one byte of space.
Now, assume we have a page of letters. Each page of letters can have between two thousand to five thousand letters. So we’ll say that half a page of text is about right for one kilobyte.
Let us zoom out a thousand times, and you’ll get a book. So a book of about 500 pages that’ll take up about a megabyte.
Designed using Canva
Now, let’s zoom out another thousand times. And what we’ll get is a gigabyte, and a gigabyte is sufficient to fit the whole human genome. So a human genome, once it is coded (in an ideal world) can fit into a gigabyte.
Source — By Elymas via Shutter Stock
So you can fit an entire person onto a gigabyte if you think of it that way. But here you can counter-argument by telling that the genome of a person is not sufficient to tell you everything about that person. A person has life experiences. Different people live their lives differently. And there’s lots more to a person than just a genome.
Well then, let’s zoom out another thousand times, and we’ll get to a terabyte. If you take an HD camera and you follow a person for every single day of their life for every single hour, minute, and second and you film everything that they’re doing for 70 or 80 years, you can fit all of that material onto one terabyte.
Source — By Donald Tong via Pexels
How about that?
This seems to be pretty impressive already. So one terabyte can fit all of your life experiences filmed throughout your life for every single second that you live.
And what next? This is getting better.
Source — By Tom Fisk via Pexels
Consider the Amazon rain forest that takes up about 1.4 billion acres. That’s 1.4 billion acres of trees. There are about 500 trees per acre, making it about 700 billion trees(Estimated). Now, if you take all of these trees and you chop them down, and you turn them into paper, and you fill that paper with letters entirely on both sides of the sheet, then that will amount to approximately some petabytes of data.
Well now, if you zoom out another thousand times, you will get an exabyte, and an Exabyte is a thousand petabytes.
I guess you got an idea of the abundance of data we have used.
Wait! I mentioned 130 exabytes until 2005 only. What about today? How much data have we consumed until today?
Designed using Canva
So you can see that data in the world is growing very very quickly. Data is being generated in huge numbers as time moves on. | https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/data-science-alexander-of-the-times-ahead-1f9caa8f9c4d | ['Saiteja Kura'] | 2020-05-06 13:05:50.337000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Future', 'Data Science', 'Technology'] |
A start-up language start-up | Welcome back to the View from the Monolith! I’ve spent the last few years siloed in a monolithic organisation, but now I am adventuring in the world of start-ups. In this blog, I share the learning I glean along the way.
Every industry has its language: words or phrases that mean something specific in that culture which baffles outsiders who might stumble across them. The language of start-ups is a hybrid of business terms and technical ones, so depending on your background, some or all may already be familiar to you. But in today’s blog post, I thought I’d offer up some of my learning: phrases that were new to me (well, except one of them).
Almost have it…
Ideation. The creative process of forming ideas. Of “ideating”.
The concept this word embodies is exactly what I assumed it would be, but I was still surprised to discover it was a real word in the dictionary and everything. Apparently, it goes back to the 1820s, so perhaps I’m the only person who hasn’t encountered it before. Nevertheless, it seems it’s a common word around start-ups.
Incubator. An early-stage program, incubators provide a venue to develop and refine ideas.
Often established in a specific location, or focussing on one market, incubators help entrepreneurs at the very early stages, developing ideas into viable start-ups.
Loot!
Angel Investor. Provides the seed money to get the start-up moving.
They invest capital in the company, usually in exchange for an equity share. This generally happens before Venture Capitalists get involved, and Angels would typically be investing less money than a VC would.
Full disclosure, I had heard the term Angel Investor before, but I really wanted to draw an angel with a bag of money. I think she turned out quite well.
Accelerator. A program aimed at really getting a start-up moving.
Accelerators will provide seed money and a mentorship program which help start-ups accelerate their growth, generally for the fixed duration of the program. One of the most well-established accelerators is the Y-Combinator program.
Y-Combinator. The Y-Combinator program, often abbreviated to YC. Originating at Stanford University, it teaches entrepreneurship skills and provides seed investment for start-ups. Much of the training program is available online. For start-ups accepted into the program, YC acts as an accelerator.
Jack Attack!
Growth Hacking. Finding and using tactics to keep the start-up growing.
As a writer, words fascinate me, and ‘hacking’ is so interesting. Most of the older uses of the word are destructive or at least negative, viewed in that light, it’s easy to imagine growth hacking as undercutting growth. But, of course, that is not the case. In recent years, a ‘hack’ has come to mean a strategy, trick (or Shortcut!) to achieve something. So growth hacking becomes finding ways to keep your start-up growing; an essential element of success.
Runway. How long until the money runs out.
When I first heard this term, I had it the wrong way round. If your start-up has a runway of two months, that doesn’t mean two months to launch, it means that after two months your runway, and cash, runs out, and you’re not taking off at all!
Thanks for reading. I may revisit this idea as my own understanding of start-ups grow, but for now, time to move onto something practical. Join me next time when I share with you the advice we’ve received about recruitment at start-ups. And if you want to read this series from the start, check out the first View from the Monolith. | https://medium.com/the-shortcut/a-start-up-language-start-up-b3b5faaac41f | ['Rob Edwards'] | 2019-01-02 12:46:01.732000+00:00 | ['Stories', 'Startup'] |
Coping with Trauma During the Holidays | Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD is defined as a condition that includes flashbacks and memories of a traumatic event, avoidant behaviors, anxiety, and depression. The holidays can be filled with triggers for those who suffer from PTSD. Whether you are spending more time with family* or social distancing in your own home, the holidays can provide its own set of challenges. Your triggers do not define you and there are ways to cope with them when you experience them. Below is a list of ways you can have a safe and healthy holiday season.
Join a group therapy session or sign up for one on one therapy sessions
Group therapy can be helpful to show you that you are not alone. Many people can share their different experiences and coping skills that may be able to help you through this stressful time. One on one therapy is another option that can assist you in sorting through and coping with uncomfortable feelings and memories. There can be community programs in your area which may provide these services at little to no cost.
Find some “Me Time”
If you are spending a lot of time with your family, find a moment that you can spend doing an activity that will improve your mental health. Go for a walk, meditate, work on a craft or hobby, make sure you find some time, especially if you are feeling anxious or overwhelmed. Exercise is another way to find that “me time.” Exercise has also proven to help with the symptoms of PTSD. You can go for a jog, watch a tutorial on YouTube for yoga, ride your bike, there are many ways to relieve that stress.
Reach out to others
It isn’t unusual for someone who is suffering from PTSD to cut themselves off from their support system and isolate. Isolation, however, can worsen PTSD symptoms. Reach out to trusted friends or family members who may be able to help you through any depression or anxiety.
Set boundaries with others — and yourself
When spending time around family during the holidays, it is important to address any boundaries that you may have. Setting up boundaries can help you cope with trauma and sort through feelings in your own way. If it is safe to do so, talk to a trusted family member about what your boundaries are and what they look like. For example, If you need extra “me time,” communicating with a family member that you are living or staying with, can help open up dialogue and communication so that you can get what you need without any conflict.
You can also set up boundaries with yourself as well. You can give yourself permission to not engage in a discussion that could be harmful to your well-being, set up boundaries with yourself with stress eating and drinking, and also not allow yourself to feel pressured to buy a lot of gifts. Do what you can with what you have, and the sentiment will shine through.
Overall, remember to be gentle with yourself. At the end of the year, we may need to be even kinder to ourselves as we process all that we have been through. Just remember that you are worth feeling better.
*The CDC recommends only celebrating with those in your own household.* | https://medium.com/matthews-place/coping-with-trauma-during-the-holidays-e3d3a2038643 | [] | 2020-12-07 18:10:44.626000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'PTSD', 'Holidays', 'Trauma', 'Family'] |
50 Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) Quotes About the Discipline of Life | Our beloved Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) has taught us the best way to live a better life and has given us examples of humanity, caring for others, forgiveness, dignity, bravery, and selfishness. Prophet Muhammad quotes will have a profound effect on us to be the best and live an ideal life which will help us in the hereafter too because if we live a good life and do no harm to others then we will get the best in the hereafter ۔
If we follow in the footsteps our Beloved Holy Prophet, we can enter Jannah. Prophet Muhammad PBUH Quotes Images:-
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50 Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) Quotes About the Discipline of Life | https://medium.com/@urduquoteslines/50-prophet-muhammad-pbuh-quotes-about-the-discipline-of-life-39efd6e32bd6 | ['Urdu Quotes Lines'] | 2020-12-26 18:07:47.159000+00:00 | ['Hindi', 'Quotes', 'Quotes About Life', 'Urdu', 'Prophet Muhammad'] |
Upcoming Event: Blockchain Impact Investment Summit | September 27–28 2018, Toronto, Canada
The 2018 Blockchain Impact Investment Summit hosted by Miller Thomson LLP and Blockchain Impact Institute will take place from September 27–29 at the Downtown Hilton Hotel in Toronto.
This year’s event is expected to attract over 500 investors, 30 companies, partners and Blockchain industry leaders from around the world and will feature speakers from Microsoft, Huobi Canada, Miller Thomson, Draper Associates, Interac and more.
This event plans to bring together the best from China and Canada in the heart of Toronto to share developments, discuss technologies and their practical applications, and build relationships that will transform the way that we interact with blockchain technologies in the foreseeable future.
FAB will be joining the event to showcase our project and connect with the blockchain community in Toronto. To join us, purchase tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/blockchain-impact-investment-summit-tickets-47563518765?aff=Influencers89&afu=234251989368&discount=LC100. You will receive a $100 discount when purchasing through this link!
We hope to see you there! | https://medium.com/fast-access-blockchain/upcoming-event-blockchain-impact-investment-summit-b65052da2eff | ['Fab Info'] | 2018-09-10 13:27:29.032000+00:00 | ['Events', 'Blockchain', 'Investing', 'Canada', 'China'] |
An excellent and very interesting piece showing the working people and parties committed to the… | An excellent and very interesting piece showing the working people and parties committed to the principles of communism under its various names and around the world. This is a vital force that holds significant power in many regions. They have been reduced in power by the mistakes of the communist states under Russian influence but in their districts and regions they still working for the poor and repressed. There is honesty and commitment there. They do win a place in your heart.
And the planetary destruction of the hypercapitalist, neoliberal empire must be ended. We are facing changes that require us to build new political ideologies dedicated to sustainability and equitable asset manage for the benefit of all. Capitalist dogma is a failure in the world we are moving into. The old mindless memes need to be put away. All ideas must now be looked at in new ways as the old ways are failing rapidly. This helps.
Thank you. | https://medium.com/theotherleft/an-excellent-and-very-interesting-piece-showing-the-working-people-and-parties-committed-to-the-f2e3a4d0d5af | ['Mike Meyer'] | 2018-01-11 06:06:07.873000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Future', 'Diversity', 'Climate Change', 'Politics'] |
The summer I took on Representative Brad Sherman | This was my first time ever protesting a member of Congress.
When the Israeli government announced plans to annex the West Bank this summer, I was enraged. Even worse, everywhere I turned it seemed that Jewish community leaders and politicians were not taking Netanyahu’s threat seriously. Was I really alone in believing there should be consequences when the Jewish state violates international law?
That’s when I found #JewsAgainstAnnexation. I joined their conference call, met other young Jews aching to do something, and learned how to plan a protest. The next day, me and a few others from IfNotNow LA had a plan: show up at Representative Brad Sherman’s office demanding he support conditioning military funding to Israel if annexation happens.
When I shared the Facebook event, a friend commented, ‘he’s one of AIPAC’s favorite Democrats. He’ll never move’. I responded, ‘AIPAC is powerful, but if we all show up then we can win’.
And, a few days after our protest, Brad Sherman publicly supported conditioning military funding to Israel if it annexes the West Bank.
When we organize, we win, even against one of AIPAC’s favorite Democrats. I want to keep organizing and winning with IfNotNow in 2021, so I’m asking you for your financial support. Will you support IfNotNow in not only rising to the occasion in 2021, but also develop the leadership of people like me in the process?
(that’s me with the megaphone!)
When I joined this movement, I learned firsthand how IfNotNow expands what’s politically possible by standing up for what is morally right even when everything feels stacked against us.
Before organizing this protest, I don’t think I would’ve believed that Congressman Sherman would even consider conditioning military funding to Israel. Not until I witnessed my new found friends in IfNotNow LA coming together with a shared focus, hustling, and planning, did I believe we could win.
My new community told me about how they spent the last four years fighting an intensely uphill battle against an administration sympathetic to white nationalism. Now that Trump finally is on the way out, my friends and I are already talking about how we’re going on offense to ensure that the Biden administration holds Israeli government accountable.
Our campaigns are working, and we want you in this fight with us. But to keep up our grassroots pressure and hold our leaders accountable in 2021, we need your support. Click here to sustain our fight for justice in 2021 and beyond.
Thanks for listening to my story,
Greg, IfNotNow LA | https://medium.com/@IfNotNow/the-summer-i-took-on-representative-brad-sherman-4008051644ce | [] | 2020-12-21 15:25:40.702000+00:00 | ['Annexation', 'Grassroots', 'Ifnotnow', 'Israel', 'Palestine'] |
Undone: Falling Apart Under my Brown Skin | I am a coconut. A lychee. A spud.
Stuck between here and there. Stuck in the middle of nowhere. I am lost. I am nowhere to be found. My parents look at me. No, my mother looks at me with anger. My father doesn’t look at me at all. Neither of them see me. They don’t know how to find me. They don’t realize how far I’ve gone. They hope it will pass, it will all go away, that we’ll move on and forget this day. Forget that I am lying here in a hospital bed. My own doing. I am undone.
Imploding with every breath. Feeling nothing and altogether too much. Death was my only escape. I tried. I failed. My plans were foiled. I lay here terrified, alone. But I will never forget. I can never forget this scene, this feeling, this life. Because I live it. Every day. Every day I am brown and I cannot escape. Hard as I try. I am denied.
Where it began. Boarding school. Away from home. Away from my parents. Next to them, my parents, people can guess I am adopted, perhaps. Away from them, I am a free-floating, unidentified object. A teenager trying to fit in. Sixteen. Awkward. Alone. New. ‘She probably has a brown, wrinkled, grandmother at home making curry.’ Right. Ya. That’s me.
Cast in a school play as the maid. Tituba in the Crucible. A good part, but…I wanted to be the lead. I wanted to be white. I thought I was. That’s what everyone always said. Not in so many words. In fact, there were no words. So I assumed. No one told me otherwise…not to my face. My ugly brown face. Someone should have told me.
And after the play, a big summer holiday. A trip to Indi-yuck.
Indi-yuck. The homeland. That’s not my home. Nor my land. I was born there, that’s all. Big deal. Nothing to do with me. Nothing to do with my parents. Except my father. My father loves that place. I don’t know why. I know why. Because that’s where he ran off to. That’s where he volunteered shortly after University. To become a man. That’s where he was on his own for the first time, he and his friends. Off to save the world.
But why go there now? Why take me? I don’t want to see. I don’t really care. I don’t feel prepared. It’s just my father and me. White man, brown girl. The odd couple. Or the master and his servant. Is that what they see? At the airport? In the lounge? On the plane? ‘What is wrong with that man,’ they think. About this man. My father. My father. I want them to know. I want to wear a sign explaining it all. All of it. To these strangers.
‘Who cares! Who cares what people think!’, they teach us. I care. I care what people think. Because they always think wrong. And I am never seen. Forever invisible, in my “minority.” Forever invisible. Never seen. Where am I? Where have I gone?
Here we are, the two of us. My father, happy as a clam. Me, quiet as a mouse. Overwhelmed. With heat. By smells. The days that overlap and weave into each other. The hazy days of India. Thick, wet, endless, heat. Monsoon rain clatters atop a taxi with no doors. The driver manually clears his window. With a broken windshield wiper. Heavy, oily foods send me drowsily into my pillow. Beautiful morning bathing. Copper bucket, plastic cup. The only thing of beauty I will see. We stay with families. One family lives in a walled-in courtyard, on the second story. Another lives in a palace, with long driveways and lush green gardens. Immaculate rooms, endless servants. And a third lives in a simple, white-washed, welcoming home.
We eat. We travel. We take the train. Wherever we go it is the same …hazy, dusty, brown. An occasional scrawny cow. Huge multiplexes that are sparkling and new in smooth, clean marble. They look displaced. Like me. But I was dissed and placed. We are surrounded by children in rags. Starving dogs.
Is that what my parents saw, when they saw me? Couldn’t be. Then what did they see? I wonder.
We finally visit Shreyas. Where it all began. Where our paths crossed. Where destiny happened. Where fate took over. Under a covered terrace a large crowd of brown children, sitting in rows facing us. The Guests of Honour. They sing for us with earnest voices, clear eyes, open hearts. My sixteen-year-old frame is rocked. Something begins to splinter. We are given a tour of the grounds. For my father, the foreigner, memories resurge. I remember nothing. He is happy. I feel nothing. He shows me the world map that he built with cement. He is proud. The oceans can be filled with water. I am angry. But I don’t know it yet. The hut that had been his home for those two years still stands. As I crumble.
Finally we stop. A row of doors, by a low building. They point. This one was my home. ‘With five other children, and a house family,’ they tell us. Oh, I say. It is has a large room, a small kitchen, a bathing area. There is a loft for sleep. In the bathroom 6 little pegs under the mirror. 6 little towels on each peg. 6 little colourful cups above each towel. Everything is lined up. Low enough for children to reach. It is orderly. I am in chaos.
A young girl appears. ‘She is your age,’ they tell me. Oh, I say. ‘She was here,’ they tell me. Like me? I ask. ‘With you,’ they say.
But she is still here.
And I shatter.
I don’t understand. These children. This girl. They are here and I am not. Why are they here, and I am not? How could this place, this country, this god-awful country have anything to do with me? My life is Europe, is Canada, is white. This place of dirt, of mud, of brown faces, dark eyes? It’s ugly. It’s UGLY. This is not who I am!
And I fall. I fall. I fall deeply down into the pit. The depths of despair. The unanswered endlessness of:
Who am I…? | https://medium.com/@dharini.woollcombe/undone-falling-apart-under-my-brown-skin-5e0814a86c39 | ['Dharini Woollcombe'] | 2021-09-15 13:12:00.275000+00:00 | ['Adoption', 'Suicide', 'Identity', 'Skin', 'Race'] |
GOOGLE: MDDUS RACIST FREEMASON STEPHEN HENDERSON. | GOOGLE: MDDUS RACIST FREEMASON STEPHEN HENDERSON. Stephen Henderson, Racist Freemason, Head of MDDUS. “A complaints such as Mrs Bishop could trigger an enquiry.” Stephen Henderson, Racist Freemason, Head of MDDUS. Olu Bamgbelu Dec 27, 2020·14 min read
A RACIST DUNCE.
The head of MDDUS is a dunce; the tail of MDDUS must be mentally subhuman.
“Yes, Sir, it does her honour, but it would do nobody else honour. I have indeed, not read it all. But when I take up the end of a web, and find it packthread, I do not expect, by looking further, to find embroidery.” Dr Samuel Johnson.
WOLLASTON, ENGLAND: Based on available evidence, GDC-Witness, Ms Rachael Bishop, Senior NHS Nurse, unrelentingly lied under oath — Habakkuk
A RACIST CROOK.
White privileged dullards fear the untamed mind of the self-educated, genetically pure Negro (ancestors were never carried) more than Putin poison.
“The Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro is mean, the Negro is ugly, look, a ni**** ……..Mama, the ni**** is going to eat me up ……..Where shall I hide?” Frantz Fanon
pt-br.facebook.com › Daringtruths01 › photos › district…
DISTRICT JUDGE AYERS OF BEDFORD COUNTY COURT: A BRAINLESS WHITE MAN; A RACIST DESCENDANT OF PROFESSIONAL THIEVES AND ..
twitter.com › adeadeolacole1 › status
5 Jan 2018 — … SEEMS TO SEE ONLY NEGROES; ACHROMATOPSIA BEDFORD, … RACIST FREEMASON BRITISHER, DISTRICT JUDGE PAUL AYERS, .
GERAINT EVANS (DENTIST), WELSH DUNCE THE YOUNGER: ROWTREE DENTAL CARE, NORTHAMPTON, Rowtree Rd, Northampton NN4 0NY.
“They may not have been well written from a grammatical point of view but I am confident I had not forgotten any of the facts.” Dr Geraint Evans, Postgraduate Tutor, Oxford.
“The earth contains no race of human beings so totally vile and worthless as the Welsh…..” Walter Savage Landor.
Based on available evidence, in the Welsh Valleys, there are thousands of sheep and people: All the sheep but not all the people are incestuously conceived, and all the sheep but not all the people are excessively stupid.
“Why, Sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pain to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature.” Dr Samuel Johnson
GOOGLE: HELEN FALCON (COMMUNITY DENTIST): RACIST EMPRESS OF PRIVILEGED DULLARDS.
“The land of my fathers, and my fathers can have it.” Dylan Thomas.
Helen Falcon, the closeted racist cougar, looked like the dirty old-women who regularly visited THE GAMBIA to sit on black rocks; she reminds one of the ugly and wicked Welsh women that a Scottish poet encountered. “The ordinary women of Wales are generally short and squat, ill-favoured and nasty.” David Mallet
NORTHAMPTON, ENGLAND: Based on available evidence, GDC-Witness, Geraint Evans, Dentist, Rowtree Dental Care, unrelentingly lied under implied oath — Habakkuk 1:4. His Welsh ancestors were incompetent racist liars too; they were industrial-scale professional THIEVES and owners of stolen children of defenceless poor people (Kamala’s ancestors) — Habakkuk.
GERAINT EVANS (DENTIST), A RACIST CROOK: A RIGHTEOUS DESCENDANT OF THIEVES AND OWNERS OF STOLEN CHILDREN OF DEFENCELESS POR PEOPLE (KAMALA’S ANCESTORS) — HABAKKUK.
A bastardised, unashamedly mediocre, vindictive, indiscreetly dishonest, potently weaponised, and institutionally racist legal system that is overseen by MASONS (Mediocre Mafia) — Habakkuk 1:4.
“To deny or belittle this good is, in this dangerous century when the resources and pretensions of power continue to enlarge, a desperate error of intellectual abstraction. More than this, it is a self-fulfilling error, which encourages us to give up the struggle against bad laws and class bound procedures and to disarm ourselves before power. It is to throw away a whole inheritance of struggle about the law and within the forms of law, whose continuity can never be fractured without bringing men and women into immediate danger.” — E. P Thompson
“A complaints such as Mrs Bishop could trigger an enquiry.” STEPHEN HENDERSON, RACIST FREEMASON, HEAD OF MDDUS.
A brainless fake expert; an impostor and an expert of deception.
“I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.” George Bernard Shaw.
Stephen Henderson, Racist Freemason, Head of MDDUS, and Oral Surgeon (with no postgraduate qualification) at Edward Byrne Associates, and the Quasi-Oral Surgeon, at John Miller Dental Practice in Oxford, immortalised a story about Rachael Bihop, Racist, England’s Class Senior NHS Nurse — that his functional semi-illiterate father taught him at odd moments when he had been to QUEEN VICTORIA and got drunk.
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD.
A RACIST DUNCE.
Had his mum cared, he’d not have written ROT at 16, and he’d be a properly educated QC, Privately-educated Rabinder Singh’s Class, and he’d do real law in STRAND.
BEDFORD, ENGLAND: MASONS’ RULE. Freemason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports and unrelentingly lied under oath — Habakkuk 1:4.
A RACIST CROOK. When their people commit racist crimes against our people, they criminally bury RACIAL HATRED.
TWEETS:
Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
Then,racist bastards carried and sold stolen children of defenceless poor people;now,they carry natural resources
SUBSTITUTION:FRAUDULENT EMANCIPATION
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW; KEMPSTON SHIELDS ONLY FOOD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
Dr Richard Hill lied under oath
Then,racist bastards carried and sold stolen children of defenceless poor people;now,they carry natural resources
SUBSTITUTION:FRAUDULENT EMANCIPATION
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW; KEMPSTON SHIELDS ONLY FOOD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
Dr Kevin Atkinson (NHS) lied under oath
Then,racist bastards carried and sold stolen children of defenceless poor people;now,they carry natural resources
SUBSTITUTION:FRAUDULENT EMANCIPATION
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW; KEMPSTON SHIELDS ONLY FOOD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
Dr Geraint Evans (NHS) lied on record
Then,racist bastards carried and sold stolen children of defenceless poor people;now,they carry natural resources
SUBSTITUTION:FRAUDULENT EMANCIPATION
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW; KEMPSTON SHIELDS ONLY FOOD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
Dr George Rothnie (NHS) lied on record
Then,racist bastards carried and sold stolen children of defenceless poor people;now,they carry natural resources
SUBSTITUTION:FRAUDULENT EMANCIPATION
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW; KEMPSTON SHIELDS ONLY FOOD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
Dr Stephanie Twidale lied under oath
Then,racist bastards carried and sold stolen children of defenceless poor people;now,they carry natural resources
SUBSTITUTION:FRAUDULENT EMANCIPATION
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW; KEMPSTON SHIELDS ONLY FOOD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
Ms Rachael Bishop lied under oath
Then,racist bastards carried and sold stolen children of defenceless poor people;now,they carry natural resources
SUBSTITUTION:FRAUDULENT EMANCIPATION
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW; KEMPSTON SHIELDS ONLY FOOD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
Dr Sue Gregory (OBE) lied on record
Then,racist bastards carried and sold stolen children of defenceless poor people;now,they carry natural resources
SUBSTITUTION:FRAUDULENT EMANCIPATION
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW; KEMPSTON SHIELDS ONLY FOOD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
BEDFORD:Dr Sue Gregory(OBE) lied on record
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.”DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW
Children with huge oil-wells near their houses eat 1.5/day; a semi-illiterate racist is our Judge in BEDFORD
Mason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.”DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW
Children with huge oil-wells near their houses eat 1.5/day; a semi-illiterate racist is our Judge in BEDFORD
Mason, Dr Richard Hill lied under oath
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.”DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW
Children with huge oil-wells near their houses eat 1.5/day; a semi-illiterate racist is our Judge in BEDFORD
Mason,Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
DELUDED PAPER TIGERS
SUPERIORITY:THEIR BIRTHRIGHT
Their hairs stand on end when challenged by AFRICANS;we and our type are the only ones racist bastards will beat up without the support of the YANKS
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Mason,Dr Richard Hill lied under oath
DELUDED PAPER TIGERS
SUPERIORITY:THEIR BIRTHRIGHT
Their hairs stand on end when challenged by AFRICANS;we and our type are the only ones racist bastards will beat up without the support of the YANKS
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Freemason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
A RACIST DUNCE
A MORON MASON
If he read his approved Judgement, he was a FOOL; if he didn’t, he LIED
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Freemason, Dr Richard Hill lied under oath
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
A RACIST DUNCE
A MORON MASON
If he read his approved Judgement, he was a FOOL; if he didn’t, he LIED
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Freemason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
Had his mum cared, he’d be a properly educated QC, privately-educated RABINDER SINGH’s class, and he’d do proper law in STRAND
Freemason, Dr Richard Hill lied under oath
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
Had his mum cared, he’d be a properly educated QC, privately-educated RABINDER SINGH’s class, and he’d do proper law in STRAND
CORBY: Dr Kevin Atkinson (NHS) lied under oath
NORTHAMPTON: Dr Geraint Evans lied on recordd
CORBY: Dr George Rothnie (NHS) lied on record
OXFORD: Dr Stephanie Twidale lied under oath
WOLLASTON: Ms Rachael Bishop lied under oath
BEDFORD: Dr Sue Gregory (OBE) lied on record
Freemason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
BEDFORD-MASONS: HALF-EDUCATED SCHOOL DROPOUTS AND THEIR SUPERIORS WHO HAVE INFORMAL ACCESS TO SOME JUDGES
Ignorant racist leeches; righteous descendants of THIEVES
NIGERIA: SHELL’S CASH COW: KEMPSTON YIELDS ONLY FOOD
CORBY: Dr Kevin Atkinson (NHS) lied under oath
NORTHAMPTON: Dr Geraint Evans lied on record
CORBY: Dr George Rothnie (NHS) lied on record
OXFORD: Dr Stephanie Twidale lied under oath
WOLLASTON: Ms Rachael Bishop lied under oath
BEDFORD: Dr Sue Gregory (OBE) lied on record
Freemason, Dr Richard Hill lied under oath
BEDFORD-MASONS: HALF-EDUCATED SCHOOL DROPOUTS AND THEIR SUPERIORS WHO HAVE INFORMAL ACCESS TO SOME JUDGES
Ignorant racist leeches; righteous descendants of THIEVES
NIGERIA: SHELL’S CASH COW: KEMPSTON YIELDS ONLY FOOD
Freemason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports an unrelentingly lied under oath
A RACIST CROOK
BEDFORD: District Judge, your ancestors were THIEVES; you’re a righteous racist leech
NIGERIA:SHELL’S DOCILE CASH COW: KEMPSTON YIELDS ONLY FOOD
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Freemason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
A RACIST CROOK
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
A RACIST DUNCE
OUR IMBECILE FREEMASON DISTRICT JUDGE OF OUR EMPIRE OF STOLEN AFFLUENCE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
The last time that he was subjected to objective scrutiny was when he studied 5th Rate Law at Polytechnic
The brainless Freemason Judge and the cretins who sit before him are intellectually worthless
RIGHTEOUS DESCENDANTS OF THIEVES
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
NIGERIA: SHELL’S CASH COW
Babies with huge oil-wells near their houses eat only 1.5/d; a semi-illiterate racist rubbish whose father and mother have never seen crude oil is a District Judge in BEDFORD
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
A DEMONIC SYSTEM WHOSE ENTIRE FOUNDATION IS INCOMPETENT LIES
THE BRAIN ISN’T INSIDE THEIR INDISPUTABLY SUPERIOR SKIN COLOUR
Freemason:Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
A RACIST CROOK
NO BRAIN
NATURAL RESOURCES POOR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Freemason,Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.”DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
A RACIST DUNCE
A brainless racist descendant of THIEVES;owners of stolen children(Kamala’s ancestors)-Habakkuk
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
BEDFORD,Dr Sue Gregory (OBE) lied on record
A RACIST CROOK
NEW HEROD:Matthew 2: 16
They lied to their children that they’re geniuses;they kill those who know they’re brainless racist bastards
DESCENDANTS OF THIEVES;OWNERS OF STOLEN LIVES
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
BEDFORD, ENGLAND:
Freemason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports and unrelentingly lied under oath
A RACIST CROOK
“The best opportunity of developing academically an emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
A RACIST DUNCE.
ENGLAND’S CLASS JUDGE
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
“The truth allows no choice.”Dr Samuel Johnson
OUR DISTRICT JUDGE STANK
“The best opportunity o developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
Based on contacts, the semi-illiterate white man had a distinct body odour
“Britons stank.” WOLE SOYINKA
“The best opportunity o developing academically and emotional.”DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
A RACIST DUNCE
A brainless white man;England’s Class Judge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
“A typical English man, usually violent and always dull.” Wilde
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
“The best opportunity o developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
A RACIST DUNCE
A FOOL
A MORON MASON
BEDFORDSHIRE MASONS: Half-educated school dropouts and superiors who have informal access to some powerful Judges
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
“The best opportunity o developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
A RACIST DUNCE
A FOOL
A MORON MASON
BEDFORDSHIRE MASONS: Half-educated school dropouts and superiors who have informal access to some powerful Judges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
Demented (Alzheimer’s) half-educated school dropouts.
Racist bastards use aprons to decorate the temples of their powerless and useless fertility tools.
We and our type are the only ones spineless racist cowards could beat up without the support of the YANKS
NO BRAIN.
NATURAL RESOURCES POOR.
SEVERAL CENTURIES OF STEALING/SLAVERY PRECEDED THE TRUST FUND.
Here, RACIST MASOONS powerful only because it’s illegal to deal with them
Boris: “Give us the tools, and we will finish the job..” CHURCHILL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
BEDFORDSHIRE CHARITABLE RACIST FREEMASONS:
NEW HEROD:MATTHEW 2:16
Shepherds lied to sheep that they’re geniuses; they kill all those who know they’re brainless RACIST BASTARDS.
Half-educated school dropouts; only their skin colour is good
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Freemason,Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
BEDFORDSHIRE RACIST MASONS(HIGHER CLASS CHARITABLE BNP):Half-educated school dropouts and their superiors who have informal access to some semi-illiterate white Judges
NIGERIA: SHELL’S CASH COW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
Freemason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
A RACIST
Then,racist bastards carried and sold millions of stolen children(Kamala’s ancestors);now,they carry natural resources
KEMPSTON YIELDS ONLY FOOD
SUBSTIITUTION:FRAUDULENT EMANCIPATION
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Freemason, Dr Richard Hill lied under oath
A RACIST
Then,racist bastards carried and sold millions of stolen children(Kamala’s ancestors);now,they carry natural resources
KEMPSTON YIELDS ONLY FOOD
SUBSTITUTION:FRAUDULENT EMANCIPATION
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.”DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
A RACIST DUNCE
A brainless fake Judge
A racist descendant of THIEVES; owners of stolen children (Kamala’s ancestors) -Habakkuk
NIGERIA: SHELL’S CASH COW
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
NIGERIA:SHELL’S DOCILE CASH COW: THE HIGHLY LUXURIANT SOIL OF KEMPSTON YIELDS ONLY FOOD
Then, all the people of BEDFORD, including, MASONS, JUDGES, and JOHN BUNYAN (1628–1688) were fed like battery-hens with the yields of stolen children
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
A Racist Dunce approved what his semi-illiterate FATHER spoke when he returned from the Masons’ Temple, a quasi pub
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
A RACIST DUNCE
Had his white mother cared, he’d be a properly educated QC, PRIVATELY-EDUCATED RABINDER SINGH’S CLASS, and he’d do proper law in STRAND
https://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Trump didn’t know that Britain has independent Nuclear deterrence
DELUDED PAPER TIGERS; SUPERIORITY IS THEIR BIRTHRIGHT
Their hairs stand on end when they’re challenged by AFRICANS; we and our type are the only ones they could bet up without the support of the YANKS
Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD
A RACIST DUNCE
If the brainless racist white plebe read his approved judgement, he was a FOOL; if he didn’t, he lied
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
BEDFORD,ENGLAND: District Judge, NIGERIA (oil/gas) is by far more relevant to the economic survival of your father and mother than KEMPSTON
KEMPSTON is poor; the land yields only food
Your ancestors were THIEVES- Habakkuk
A MORON FREEMASON
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW. “The best opportunity of developing academically an emotional.” DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORD. A RACIST DUNCE. Babies with huge oil-wells near their houses eat 1.5/d’; a semi-illiterate RACIST whose mum has never seen crude oil is a Judge in BEDFORD. Freemason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports. BORIS JOHNSON, Masons are above all laws. Gives us the tools, and we shall deal with the demented, overfed RACIST BASTARDS(Freemasons).” Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.” CHURCHILL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
“The best opportunity of developing academically ad emotional.”DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORDA RACIST DUNCEA MORON MASONHe approved what his semi-illiterate father and mother spoke; his supervisors in LUTON authorised ithttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1Ahttps://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
“The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.”DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORDA RACIST DUNCE Had his mum cared,he’d not have written that at16,and he’d be a properly educated QC,in STRAND,privately educated RABINDER SINGH’S classhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
PUTIN sits on the largest gas reserve in the world;did he poison Bob Dudley?”The best opportunity of developing academically and emotional.”DISTRICT JUDGE BEDFORDA RACIST DUNCE NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COW:A FOOL IS OUR JUDGE IN BEDFORDhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
RACIST MASONS:AFRICA’S TARZAN.If we’re not smart, why are we very rich?Shepherds didn’t bring stolen children home; they lied to MORON-SHEEP that they did only virtuous works in AFRICA.May the Corona Virus love their HUGE OLFACTORY PROTUBERANCE(CORONA CASTLE)?
RACIST MASONS:AFRICA’S TARZAN.If we’re not smart, why are we very rich?Shepherds didn’t bring stolen Africans home;they lied to MORON-SHEEP that they did only virtuous works in AFRICA.May the Corona Virus love their HUGE OLFACTORY PROTUBERANCE (CORONA CASTLE)?
Tamed descendants of PLANTATION NEGROES are the ones brainless racist bastards are more familiar withMcSLAVES: Descendants of genetically reversed stolen Africans who were unnaturally bred for labour and reared like cattle on stolen landhttps://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
“All sections of the UK Society are institutionally racist.”Sir Bernard Hogan-HoweRACIST BEDFORDSHIRE FREEMASONS IS PART OF THE UK SOCIETY.BEFORE SLAVERY,WHAT?Ignorant descendant of THIEVES ad owners of stolen childrenOUR EMPIRE OF STOLEN AFFLUENCE — HABAKKUK
BEDFORD,ENGLAND: Freemason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports and lied under oathA RACIST CROOKBEDFORD RACIST MASONS: When their people commit RACIST CRIMES against our people, racist bastards criminally bury RACIAL HATRED — Habakkuk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
BEDFORD RACIST MASONS:CHARITABLE WITH STOLEN MONEY;RIGHTEOUSNESS WITHOUT REPARATION IS CONTINUNG RACIST FRAUD -HABAKKUK.
Then, racist bastards carried and sold children (Kamala’s ancestors);now, they carry natural resources
SUBSTITUTION: FRAUDULENT EMANCIPATION
“Mama look …. a Negro…. Hell, he’s getting mad, where shall I hide?” Dr Frantz Fanon.
BEDFORD-MASONS: THE CHARITABLE RACIST BASTARDS: Half-educated school dropouts and their superiors who have informal access to some JudgesTHE BRAIN ISN’T IN THE SKIN COLOUR
Kim’s ancestors didn’t kidnap and imprison the people of North Korea overnight; they did gradually.Freedom of Speech was the first to be withdrawnBEDFORD,FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION:Negroes are free to say or print only what Masons want to hearhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
They want a subjective world where human beings are graded according to the decorations and embroideries on the expensive aprons they use to decorate the temples of their powerless and useless fertility tools.Spineless racist bastards should stay here; it’s safe
DELUDED PAPER TIGERS: COWARDS.Superiority is their birthright.Their hairs stand on end when they’re challenged by our people (AFRICANS); we and our type are the only ones RACIST BASTARDS could beat up without the support of the YANKShttps://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
BEDFORD RACIST MASONS,KEMPSTON:Half-educated school dropouts and their superiors have informal access to some JudgesTheir people are everywhere;Judges,nearly all,are MASONSThey lie that they don’t lie -Psalm 144NIGERIA:SHELL’S CASH COWhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1A
BEDFORD, UK: Freemason, Dr Richard Hill fabricated reports and unrelentingly lied under oath.A RACIST CROOK.Judges nearly all, are MASONS; some of them are thicker than a gross of planksNIGERIA: SHELL’S CASH COWhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlpH4hG7m1Ahttps://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
“The Good Samaritan had money.” MARGARET THATCHERMASONS: Brainless racist bastards who use expensive aprons to decorate the temples of their powerless and useless fertility tools — do vulgar Pharisees’ charitable works with STOLEN MONEYhttps://www.facebook.com/rotimi.osunsan/videos/3088536551193798
Freemason,Dr Richard Hill fabricated reportsBEDFORD-MASONS:NEW HEROD,MATTHEW 2:16They lied to their duller children that they’re geniuses; they kill all those who know they’re brainless RACIST BASTARDS.COWARDS harass unarmed AFRICANS;there,they’d fall in <8:46 | https://medium.com/@olubamgbelu21/google-mddus-racist-freemason-stephen-henderson-fbc78bc5374c | ['Olu Bamgbelu'] | 2020-12-27 10:09:07.718000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Racism', 'America', 'Africa', 'Law'] |
The Week in Public Services: 8th December 2020 | This week: the first vaccine; Covid inequalities; and 2021 exams news.
General
Today (8th December) is a milestone in the Covid-19 pandemic: the vaccine rollout in the UK has officially started. On ‘V-Day’, as it is currently being called, the first vaccine was given to 90-year-old Margaret Keenan at University Hospital, Coventry. Of course, the delivery of the largest mass vaccination programme in the UK’s history is going to be an enormous logistical challenge. But nevertheless this is great news at the end of a terrible year.
Health and Social Care
With several months of restrictions still ahead of us, new research on Covid-19 continues to be vital. Sadly, as this chart from the Nuffield Trust shows, weekly deaths in England and Wales are once again above average at the moment due to Covid-19. The latest ONS data (published today) shows that Covid-19 accounted for 24% of all deaths in the week ending 27 November. With lower case numbers after the period of national restrictions in November, hopefully we will see these numbers begin to fall soon.
The relationship between Covid-19 and inequality has been the focus of several pieces this week. New analysis in The Guardian finds that across England, there is a correlation between Covid cases and average salary: places with lower average salaries were more likely to have high infection rates. At an even more local level, within the ten worst affected local authorities the areas that had the highest Covid rates were also likely to have both lower salaries and a higher BAME population. On a similar theme, Health Foundation research published in The Lancet examined the success of Test and Trace in different areas. The research shows that in more deprived areas in England, Test and Trace reached a lower proportion of positive Covid-19 cases and their contacts. These findings may not be surprising, but they are important in demonstrating the unequal impact of the pandemic.
The Health Foundation has also been looking at the effects of GP remote consultations and ‘total triage’ (where every patient contacting a practice is triaged before an appointment). Although the authors acknowledge the study has limitations, they tentatively suggest that ‘early adopters’ of this technology had 3% fewer A&E visits in 2019 among their patients, compared to ‘late adopters’ who only began using the technology during the pandemic. As the authors conclude, more research is needed to understand the consequences of increased use of technology during the pandemic — as we at the Institute for Government recommended in Performance Tracker 2020.
One of the sights we have now all got used to is people wearing face masks. But how much of a difference do they actually make? A new paper uses data from Germany to try to answer this question. Different areas introduced mandatory mask wearing at different points in time during April 2020, which provides a useful dataset. Depending on the region, the authors find that masks reduced the number of new infections between 15% and 75%. Pretty good for a measure that, as the researchers say, has “economic costs [which] are close to zero compared to other public health measures.”
Children and Young People
The major news of the week was the government’s announcement regarding the 2021 exam series in England. The government has clearly learnt from the mistakes made in 2020. As Gavin Williamson put it in the House of Commons: “The fundamental problem with this year’s exams is that we tried to award grades without actually holding exams. We are not going to be repeating that same mistake again.” There were five key measures in the government’s announcement:
Generous grading , in line with results from 2020, so that 2021 students are not disadvantaged. Trying to prevent grade inflation was one of the causes of this year’s fiasco.
, in line with results from 2020, so that 2021 students are not disadvantaged. Trying to prevent grade inflation was one of the causes of this year’s fiasco. Advance notice of some topic areas to help schools and students prepare.
of some topic areas to help schools and students prepare. Exam aids such as formula sheets will be provided to students.
such as formula sheets will be provided to students. Contingency plans for students who may miss an exam due to illness or self-isolation. Backup exam papers will give students a second opportunity to sit any exam they miss.
for students who may miss an exam due to illness or self-isolation. Backup exam papers will give students a second opportunity to sit any exam they miss. An expert group “to look at differential learning and monitor the variation in the impact of the pandemic on students across the country.” Gavin Williamson said that the group would report in the spring.
In general the government’s announcement was received fairly well, providing clarity as to what will happen in the summer. Most commentators were positive about the first four measures in the list above.
Criticisms have focused on the potential for inequity in the 2021 exams, as explored well on Twitter by Lewis Goodall. Measures such as generous grades will help all students. But we know that there has been significant variation in how much learning time students have lost since returning to schools and colleges in September. The government’s announcement of the ‘expert group’ shows awareness of the problem, but does not solve it. Dame Glenys Stacey, interim chief regulator at Ofqual, has written that “differential lost learning remains one of the most intractable issues that the education system faces.” For example, using data from an FoI request, Tes reports huge differences between FE college absence rates in different regions of England in October. In the two weeks before half term, students in the North West missed 3,870 days due to Covid-19, whereas in the South East students only missed 531 days. That level of variation probably exists within regions as well — not all parts of the North West have been affected in the same way. (Data at the local authority level is due to be published from 15 December, which should help us understand the issue better.) This is, potentially, a real problem for 2021 exams. The danger is that the exams will measure students’ experience of the pandemic, rather than their abilities and knowledge. It will also be worth keeping an eye on the alternative arrangements in Wales and Scotland. Wales, in particular, has taken a very different approach to England by cancelling all formal exams in 2021.
Moving on from exams, the latest school attendance data in England was released today, showing an uptick in attendance at both primary and secondary schools. As the graph below shows, this suggests that the second lockdown period may have helped improve school attendance.
On the same topic, an interesting piece in the Financial Times has some good data visualisation on the relationship between case numbers and schools reopening across Europe. Overall, schools don’t seem to cause case numbers to increase dramatically. The approach of the US remains out of step with Europe on this — schools are closed again in many places including New York and California.
With many students unable to attend school in person, there is a continued focus on the digital divide. A survey from a report by Microsoft and the Centre for Education and Youth shows that students in private schools were far more likely to be able to take home a device from school than students in state schools. It is estimated that a million children in the UK do not have access to the Internet and a computer/tablet at home. The government needs to address this, especially for secondary school students, if it wants to prevent students falling further behind — and level the playing field as much as possible for the 2021 exams.
A report from the National Foundation for Educational Research this week comes to a similar conclusion. The report suggests that existing and additional funding is insufficient to help schools meet the costs of Covid. The authors join those calling for improved access to technology, and also argue for more targeted funding for disadvantaged pupils who need catch-up support.
New data this week revealed the government has hit its target for Initial Teacher Training (ITT) for the first time in eight years. Despite this, targets for some key subjects were missed: physics, foreign languages, maths and chemistry.
Local Government
IPPR’s State of the North 2020/21 includes a section on local government (chapter 6). Recommendations include devolving the forthcoming shared prosperity fund to combined and local authorities. | https://medium.com/week-in-public-services/the-week-in-public-services-8th-december-2020-a8c91bad665b | ['Andrew Phillips'] | 2020-12-08 15:52:54.604000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Vaccines', 'Teachers', 'Healthcare', 'Schools'] |
5 Things to Look For When Choosing a Coworking Office Space | Draper Startup House Austin, TX
Coworking spaces are becoming more popular than ever before. They are a perfect choice for self-employed individuals and startup companies. They can also be a great option for large corporations that are keen on reducing operating costs and network with other companies.
One of the greatest advantages of shared office spaces is the wide range of options that they provide. However, sometimes selecting the right coworking space may prove to be a challenge, due to the endless amount of coworking spaces there are to choose from.
Below are some of the things to consider when choosing a coworking office space:
Draper Startup House Austin, TX
1. Office amenities
It is true that most shared office spaces come with standard office amenities. However, always go beyond that and check for things such as whiteboards, projectors, chargers, internet among other things.
Never forget to check if the printing services are part of the monthly rate charged by coworking spaces throughout Greater Austin. It is even better if there is a kitchen to minimize lunch costs.
2. Office environment
It is always important to check the environment around the Austin startup office spaces. This is because things such as moisture, temperature, noise, and lighting affect productivity. Some shared office spaces may be too hot or too cold to work in comfortably.
Others may be too noisy or allow in too much light that makes it difficult to concentrate. Try to check the noise levels, and temperature before making the final decision.
Draper Startup House Austin, TX
3. Atmosphere
This is another important factor to consider when shopping for a coworking space. It is easy to find coworking space in Austin but the problem is getting a place that offers the atmosphere to encourage work.
The main reason for going to work in an office environment is to increase productivity. That’s why it is important to choose a place that not only has amenities but also creates networking opportunities.
4. Flexibility
Most people tend to be more productive when they are able to change their working locations. They love when they are able to dictate where and when they can work rather than being fixed in one place.
Always check at the plans offered by different Austin coworking spaces before checking them out. Otherwise, it may not be different from any other traditional office.
5. Internet speed and security
The Internet is almost everything in today’s world. There’s little you can do without an internet connection. As such, the amenities alone without high-speed internet won’t attract many people. It is important to ensure that the WI-FI connection being offered by coworking spaces is fast and stable.
The other thing is the security of the internet. How secure are the devices connected to the WI-FI? It is good to ensure that there are no third-parties who can hack into the system and steal user information.
Draper Startup House Austin, TX
We at Draper Startup House encourage those looking for shared coworking office spaces in Austin to visit us today! We’re excited to work with you. | https://medium.com/@draperstartuphouseaccelerator/5-things-to-look-for-when-choosing-a-coworking-office-space-81787500c19c | ['Draper Startup House Accelerator'] | 2020-12-24 16:51:50.995000+00:00 | ['Coworking', 'Austin', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Office', 'Startup'] |
3 Valuable Lessons I’ve Learned on My Way to Better Skin | When I went to my dermatologist because of strong acne and acne scars, she told me to change my diet.
I winced and felt the vanishing happiness in my life. I love eating so much, and I wasn’t reading to give up the food I like.
Avoiding sugar, wheat, white rice, and especially coffee. It seemed like pure torment to me! Even though I eat plant-based and as healthy as possible, I’m more of a person who does lots of sports to eat more without feeling bad.
During the week, I skip breakfast in the morning and only drink a coffee cup with oat milk while sitting in my yellow wing chair. It’s such a relish! I adore sweets like vegan ice-cream or dark chocolate! I couldn’t imagine my daily life without sugar.
Still, I needed to find an effective way to beat my acne to avoid strong medication like Accutane.
My skin still looks bad, but it’s way better than it was a few weeks ago. There are no new inflammations, my skin is healing, and the scars are getting lighter. Apart from avoiding the above-mentioned foods, I take five yeast pills every day, and I’m thrilled about the progress.
During the last few weeks, I learned three life-changing lessons in terms of health and nutrition. Here’s what has changed my opinion: | https://byrslf.co/3-valuable-lessons-ive-learned-on-my-way-to-better-skin-c8797ffa4de0 | ['Manuela Putz'] | 2021-05-08 21:03:48.021000+00:00 | ['Women', 'Feminism', 'Health', 'Acne', 'Beyourself'] |
How To Get Started With Your Daily Gratitude Journal | Photo: Annie Spratt
Whether you’ve been journaling in various ways for years or you’re just getting started, I’ve created a simple guide to writing a daily gratitude list. Using the power of three, this list is split up in an easy, habit-forming way that you’ll enjoy and want to do every single day.
Getting Started
Each morning take a few minutes to think of what you are grateful for. Put on inspiring or happy music to increase your good feelings and positive emotions and then begin to write your lists.
I suggest splitting your gratitude list into three sets of three. You’ll do two sets in the morning and one at night.
Morning — Past/Present
The first set of three focuses on both the past and present. It gives you an opportunity to not only be grateful for what you have currently, but to also reflect on what you are grateful for from the past.
You can choose to simply write a word, person, or an event. Or you can choose to go into detail about why you are grateful for that specific thing you wrote down. We recommend at least having one from both categories — past & present — giving you the option to choose the third.
Examples:
Music Coffee — It helped wake me up this morning and get me going. Teal & Matt for creating this journal ☺
The important part here is to feel the gratitude. Write down whichever words will evoke the most feeling for you.
Morning — Future
The second set of three focuses on the future. More specifically, your future. Use this space to write down three things you want to happen or have as if they have already happened or you already have them. Again, the feeling part here is the key.
Examples:
I finally started my new business and it’s an instant success. Bali — I traveled to Bali and had the best trip ever. I have the most loving and caring relationship with the person I love.
Feel grateful now for what you want to happen in the future, as if it’s currently happening and you’re feeling incredibly happy and grateful about it.
Remember these 3 things have not happened just yet. However, you are writing them as though they have.
Night — Three Things That Went Well
Before you go to sleep, reflect on your day and write out this list, thinking of three things, no matter how big or small, that went well or made you feel good. This should be an enjoyable activity and help you remember that no matter how exhausting your day has been, you can think of at least three things that made it enjoyable in some way.
Examples:
The sun was shining today and that makes me happy. I had pizza for lunch. I love pizza. My friend called just to say hi and check in.
Overall, starting and ending your day with gratitude is proven to have positive life-changing effects and we couldn’t be happier that you’ve chosen to continue your journey with this new daily practice. To show my appreciation I’ve created a free 7 day downloadable journal with an added bonus — daily quotes and affirmations.
Stay tuned for the full 16-week journal coming soon! | https://medium.com/@justteal/how-to-get-started-with-your-daily-gratitude-journal-e4eceb0db2fa | [] | 2020-07-03 15:34:10.847000+00:00 | ['Self Care', 'Journaling', 'Gratitude', 'Wellness', 'Mindset'] |
Breathless: Haiku | 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/red-rose/breathless-haiku-7776450c6f7a | ['Patsy Starke'] | 2020-12-05 22:25:59.811000+00:00 | ['Haiku', 'LGBTQ', 'Gender Identity', 'Poetry', 'Transgender'] |
Tech Is Not Neutral | If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.
— Neil Peart
Those of us in the tech field like to pretend that it’s neutral. We like to pretend that we’re neutral. We don’t take sides. We call ourselves platforms and reject any responsibility for the way those platforms are used. We build systems that support institutions without ever questioning whom it serves, or whom it harms.
We have to stop.
Tech is not and cannot be neutral, because the world it exists in is not just nor equal. And the world is so much less equal than we want to tell ourselves. As I write this, people are protesting unchecked police violence that continues to get worse with no end in sight. Most of those protesters are Black. And so are the victims of the violence they’re protesting. This protest comes in the midst of a pandemic which has killed more than 100,000 people in the United States alone, and which also has no end in sight. Most of those victims are also Black. That’s not a coincidence; and tech is not blameless.
We built social networks and called them platforms. We valued them based on engagement and active users. We designed them to foster outrage and arguments, because it kept people online. People used them to spread misinformation, fear, and hate. And we did nothing to stop it.
We built delivery services, and car services, and online shopping. We exploited desperate people to staff them for starvation wages. The world was already unequal, so the already desperate people were mostly Black, and we did nothing to change it.
We built tracking systems, and monitoring systems, and predictive models that we like to call AI. But we didn’t question who would be tracked or why. We never examined the world we were modeling and whether it was equal or just, or who would be harmed by solidifying it into algorithms. And so we continued to hurt the people who were always hurt. And most of those people are Black.
When we try to act as though tech is neutral, what we’re saying is that we don’t want it to change anything. We’re deciding that the status quo is good and right. That the world is the way the world ought to be. I don’t think that, and I hope you don’t either, but people in tech-and especially white people-have a degree of privilege which allows far too many of us to ignore the effect what we do has on the world. We abdicate our responsibility to our fellow humans, our neighbors, and ourselves.
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
— Desmond Tutu
The Black Lives Matter movement is nearing its 7th anniversary. It grew out of a frustration and rage with decades of indifference from white people to the deaths of young Black people at the hands of the police. We’ve known for many years that police inflict wildly disproportionate levels of violence on Black people. Yet Amazon voluntarily shares video from their Ring doorbells with hundreds of police departments.
In the 1950s, redlining locked Black families out of the financial growth and generational wealth that white Americans gained through real estate. This has been well established for more than 50 years, and Black people live with the aftermath of that reality to this day. We know this; we’ve known it for decades. Yet algorithms at fintech and credit agencies make lending decisions based on home zip codes.
Black neighborhoods are massively over policed. Police stop and arrest Black people at hugely disproportionate rates to any other racial group. This has been true since the earliest incarnations of America’s police forces, when they existed as runaway slave patrols. This has been established fact for many many years. Yet knowing this, and knowing the elevated risk Black people face from the police, tech companies built predictive policing models that sent even more police into Black neighborhoods to reinforce the cycle of over policing.
In the court system, Black people are charged much more often and with more serious crimes than white people. Black people receive harsher sentences for the same crimes. This has been well known for decades. Yet Northpoint built a guideline tool for criminal sentencing that simply replicated that reality.
I could go on. I could describe some of the myriad ways that tech products enable stalking and harassment. I could discuss the ways that tech companies exploit workers all over the world. Never mind tech’s contributions to America’s unending wars. But this moment and this space is for the Black people of America who’ve been devastated by police violence for far too long.
We have been choosing the side of the oppressor. We have to stop.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I’m not a racial scholar. I am a software engineer and a feminist. I’ve described what I do as not just building software, but making it easier to build software. But that’s not enough. If all we do with software is to more efficiently recreate the injustices of the past, then we’ll have just made the world a worse place. I want to make the world a better place. People in tech say that a lot, and I think we genuinely mean it. But it won’t happen just because we built some software. We have to build the right software. We have to do it for the right people and the right reasons. And more importantly, we have to refuse to build tech that hurts people. We have to question how it will be used. We have to understand who it will be used by, and who it will be used on. And sometimes we have to say no.
I want to live in a just and equitable society. We don’t have that right now. We can, if we work at it. Those of us working in tech have a great deal of privilege. We have to exercise it. It will be uncomfortable. It will be hard, at first. We have to do it anyway because it’s the right thing to do.
This will be a long journey. Educate yourself and speak up. Start here. | https://medium.com/women-who-code-dfw/tech-is-not-neutral-6827af1dd88c | ['Jennifer Moore'] | 2020-06-04 02:40:23.538000+00:00 | ['BlackLivesMatter', 'Social Justice'] |
Dynamically Adding Lines to a Plotly Plot in R | Since Plotly made their interactive graphing platform available for R, I’ve been trying to incorporate it into more of my projects. Recently I was working on a graph that included the price of a particular stock as well as multiple moving averages and thought it could be useful to use vertical lines to help better define buy and sell points for the viewer. While ggplot2 allows users to pass a single vector of values into the geom_vline() argument to do this, Plotly appears to require a separate list of arguments for each line (possibly as a result of the complete control they give you over the positioning of shapes). Below is a snippet of the data I used to build the graph. Full data available here.
A snapshot of the full GE price dataset
Below is an example of the arguments necessary to build a vertical line from the x axis to the adjusted price for GE on 2–11–1997.
p <- layout(p, shapes = list(type = “line”, fillcolor = “blue”,
line = list(color = “blue”),
opacity = 0.3,
x0 = “1997–02–11”,
x1 = “1997–02–11”,
xref = “x”,
y0 = 0,
y1 = 10.22,
yref = “y”))
Obviously drawing more than a couple lines in this manner would be very clumsy. My goal was to point out crossover points between the 2 EMAs, which means a non-programmatic approach would be very impractical. To make this task easier, I created a simple “for” loop to identify crossovers indicating a “buy” (in green) or a “sell” (in red).
First I used dplyr to filter out all the days where the EMAs did not cross:
line_dat <-
dat %>%
filter(dat$signal != '--')
Then I created a list of lists, with each of the nested lists containing the arguments for one line. To make it easier for the end user to distinguish between “buy” and “sell” days, I used an if-else statement to alter the line color for each iteration depending on the signal.
line_list <- list()
for(i in 1:nrow(line_dat)){
line_color <- ifelse(line_dat$signal[i] == 'buy','green','red')
line_list[[i]] <-
list(type = “line”,
fillcolor = line_color,
line = list(color = line_color),
opacity = 0.3,
x0 = line_dat[[1]][i],
x1 = line_dat[[1]][i],
xref = “x”,
y0 = 0,
y1 = line_dat[[2]][i],
yref = “y”)
}
Below is the resulting graph
I’ve already found other uses for Plotly at work, and I’m excited to see how I can work it into my R workflow. | https://medium.com/zappos-engineering/dynamically-adding-lines-to-a-potly-plot-in-r-546ace6e626b | ['Raphael Fix'] | 2016-02-16 20:14:50.507000+00:00 | ['Plotly', 'R', 'Data Visualization'] |
Earn money on the side — 10 ideas to earn $1,000 every month | Money. Who couldn’t use a little more of it? Whether you’re saving for a down payment, planning a wedding, wanting to pay off a loan, or just want to put some money aside, a little extra money can sometimes make a real difference. Your normal job allows you to cover your everyday expenses. With a part-time job from home, things can look completely different: You can not only earn money with it but also develop the freedom you have always dreamed of in the long term. So below you will find the best ideas with which you can earn money on the side and, with a little luck, change your life from the ground up.
Earn money on the side? What’s the matter?
A part-time job allows you to earn money outside of your regular job. Overall, you can significantly increase your income with it. And that in turn gives you the freedom to pursue your passions and finally leave possible financial worries behind you.
Unfortunately, these days, most 9-to-5 jobs might just be paying the bills. This is especially true if you are just beginning your career.
If you add up the cost of rent, food, car, etc., you may find that there is hardly anything left after you settle your bills. That can’t be true, can it?
And even worse: your financial growth is usually very limited. Maybe at the end of the year, you will get a bonus of a few hundred euros and a small raise every few years. But is that really enough to live the life you dream of? Maybe, but probably not.
So you decide to take a part-time job to earn a few hundred or maybe even a thousand euros a month. This can be something that you can already earn more money with today, tomorrow, or maybe in 2 years.
So let’s jump straight into the ideas that you can use to earn money on the side — and that easily from home.
Earn money on the side: Your plan for success
So you’ve decided that you want to earn money from home on the side. Congratulations, this is the first step. However, you still don’t know where exactly to start. Do not worry. We have put together a list with which you will soon be able to successfully earn money on the side.
Make a List of What You
Are Interested in If you want to be successful in making money on the side, you have to love your sideline. This work is done in your free time and outside of your regular working hours. So if you have a normal job, your project will require a lot of energy and motivation. So only something that you are really passionate about will provide that drive. So think about ideas around your interests, hobbies, and skills that you could potentially use to set up your own business on a part-time basis. Decide early on if you want to invest money
Typical sideline jobs shouldn’t cost too much money. However, they can require some upfront investment for things like hosting, branding, and tools. You may also find that you have to put some money into advertising to get your first customers. Whatever your growth and expansion plan for your sideline, you should be aware of the upcoming expenses. So plan accordingly from the start and measure your success to determine if you should move on. Avoid Conflicts of Interest
If you have a regular job or have connections that could create a conflict of interest with your sideline, it is best not to continue. Sometimes the best advice is to try something different or to put your idea on hold for later. This is how you avoid ending up doing something that you will regret. Schedule time for your
part-time job A part-time job will take up part of your time every day. Therefore, you should plan. For example, you can’t set up your website, schedule your content, and then forget about everything until next month. If you want to successfully earn money on the side, you should reserve time slots for your project in your calendar. Outline actionable goals for these timeframes so you can see the big picture. Aim to reserve three to four evenings a week and maybe a few hours on the weekend for your project (depending on how difficult it is, of course). Don’t forget your regular job
If you want to earn money on the side and have a normal job at the same time, one thing is really important: If you are at work, you should still put 100% of your energy into your work. Such a sideline will make you a little more money. At the end of the day, however, it will still be your main job payroll that pays your bills. So don’t try to balance your job and your sideline during your normal working hours. That can only end in a catastrophe.
Earn money on the side: The 10 best ideas
#1. Building a dropshipping business
Earn money on the side? Dropshipping is a perfect idea for this. It enables you to sell a product directly to customers without having to keep an inventory yourself. Why is that so great? Quite simply: You do not invest any money in purchasing products, so you can keep your risk low. The manufacturer not only keeps the inventory but also delivers it directly to the customers. Your focus here is on marketing and customer service — the lifeline of every business. If you have a strong marketing background and want to make money on the side, dropshipping could be just your thing be. It’s one of those rare part-time jobs that can help you distinguish yourself as a true entrepreneur. You can become self-employed part-time and become the owner of your very own company.
With dropshipping, you can turn your passion into a lucrative business. Do you like decorating your home? Then you could sell home decor products. Maybe you’re obsessed with fashion too. Then you could open your own online boutique. Is makeup your passion? Then you could sell beauty products and build an audience that will follow your makeup tutorials. Almost every niche can be served with dropshipping. And if you’re a creative type, there are lots of ideas you can try out here. After all, as the owner of your own business, you always have the last word. All of this makes dropshipping a perfect way to effectively make money on the side.
You are probably wondering how much that can be in the best case. That will depend on how much effort you put into your business and marketing. But it is quite possible to make a few thousand euros or more a month.
Dropshipping tip: Do you want to get started with your dropshipping business? Sign up for Oberlo on Shopify now. With the Oberlo app, you can choose from millions of products that you can sell in your shop today. It also automates various aspects of the business process. You can easily add products with one click and also process orders at the same speed.
# 2. Freelance writer/copywriter
You can also earn money on the side with side activities such as freelance writing. Since you are actually exchanging time for money, your earning potential is limited. But if you want to earn around 1,000 euros a month, freelance writing can definitely be a solution. Because here you can predict with relative accuracy how much you will take. So you can sign a contract with one or two customers and use it to calculate your income. The secret to success as a freelance writer or copywriter lies in being billed based on the value you will bring to your clients. Most freelance writers underestimate, resulting in quick, low-profit burnout.
How Much Can Freelance Writer / Copywriter Make? As a part-time job, a freelance writer can earn an additional 500 to 3,000 euros per month. That will depend on how much he charges for an article and how many articles he can write in his spare time.
Expert tip: If you are just starting, there are several platforms on the German market on which you can create a profile. For example, Textbroker, Content.de, Contentworld, or Upwork are good opportunities to get started.
# 3. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of those ideas that can either make you a lot of money on the side or nothing at all. It’s not just about finding the right product, it’s also about finding the right brand to work with. If you choose to become an affiliate marketer for e-commerce stores, your commission will likely be much lower than if you dropped the same products yourself. However, there are also technology companies that pay high commissions to partners who bring them, new customers.
How much money can you make with this sideline? It depends on what product you are selling and what affiliate network you are using. For example, if you’re an affiliate marketer for a tech company like Shopify, you can potentially make $ 2,000 for every merchant you promote on the e-commerce platform. Not bad, is it?
Affiliate Marketing Tip: Ask the affiliate program or content creator about assets that you can use to market their product. For example, there could be a lead magnet or a free tool that you can use to motivate people to buy the product. Often, engaging content can also help transform a cold lead into a warm one. This will give you a far better chance of being successful with this sideline.
# 4. Earn money on the side as part of the “gig economy”
Does the income earned in your normal job fluctuate? If you don’t have a predictable income, you may need a little more money in some months and a little less in others. If you find yourself here, the so-called “gig economy” could be something for you. These are small jobs that you can take on freelance from time to time. These could be “gigs” you create on Fiverr or occasional freelance projects on Upwork. For example, you could design wedding invitations for a client. After that, you could help a customer build their social media presence under the arms. As you can see, the types of projects here can vary widely. But if you love the variety and like to try new things, this sideline could be perfect for you.
You can also earn money with this idea on the side — the only question is how much? You could earn between 50 dollars and 2,000 dollars per month, depending on the gigs and the platform you are using.
Gig Economy Tip: Platforms like Fiverr work based on ratings. So if you’re just getting started, you could pay a friend to buy your gig and then rate you (positively, of course). So you can start with a strong rating and quickly secure your first “real” customers. Without a review, customers will find it difficult to trust you and give you your first chance.
# 5. Become a blogger
Blogging is one of the best sideline things to do to make money — from home or anywhere in the world. It allows you to build your personal brand while owning your own assets. You can even write about your own personal passions. Writing about a particular niche (e.g. yoga, business, beauty, or automobiles) can help build an audience that shares the same interest with you. You can monetize your blog in different ways and earn money on the side: Affiliate links sponsored posts or adding a shop link through which you sell dropshipping products.
As a blogger, you can earn money on the side, no question about it. Some bloggers are so good that they have made their passion for their main job. However, in the beginning, you will most likely have no income for the time being. So it’s a rather long-term approach. But some bloggers who persevered and mastered the first few years were ultimately able to quit their jobs and pursue blogging full-time.
Blogging Tip: If you have a passion for blogging, consider setting up an online store, and then add a blog to it. So you kill two birds with one stone. With this strategy, you can monetize your own platform even before you’ve built a real audience. Plus, the connection between content and e-commerce is a really powerful combination. As your blog grows, you can use retargeting ads to monetize your blog traffic and generate even more revenue. If you publish quality content regularly, you are sure to have some highlight posts that will get you loads of traffic. And that will be easier to monetize in the long run than hoping for some affiliate sales.
# 6. Earn money on the side with information products
You want to earn money on the side, but still haven’t found a brilliant idea? How about selling info products? This sideline requires a lot of research, time, and marketing skills. Are there any topics that are very popular at the moment and that you know a lot about yourself? Or have you found a popular topic that there is not enough information about yet? By creating and publishing content for it, you can monetize such opportunities. So you can z. B. Publish books on Amazon or sell courses on Udemy.
Earning money on the side with information products — how much is possible? That depends on the niche, your marketing, and a host of other factors. In principle, you can earn a few thousand euros a month with such a sideline. However, such successful entrepreneurs have usually already created several different types of content (e-books, courses) and are marketing them very successfully.
Info product tip: If you want to earn money with info products on the side, you should focus on niches where people have a big problem that they need to solve. For example, once you’ve identified your fitness niche, you could create a workout class or diet plan with recipes. When people are desperate to solve a burning problem, you can add value to them and help them solve that problem. Your content can play a crucial role in this. The best part: You could earn money on the side and help people at the same time.
# 7. Become an Instagram influencer
At a young age, most people dream of becoming famous. The truth, however, is that not everyone can sing or are born to be actors. Fortunately, you can still build a personal brand around yourself and your skills. Maybe you have a really good taste for fashion or you can bake delicious cakes. In principle, anyone can earn money as an influencer on Instagram. If you don’t like being in the spotlight yourself, that’s no problem either. For example, you can set up a presence for your dog or a platform for your photography. You can monetize your Instagram account in different ways: sponsored posts, Instagram takeovers, or the sale of products on your website.
Can you effectively earn money as an influencer on the side? The average influencer calculates between $ 200 and $ 400 per post. However, this can vary based on the size of your audience. Check out our article on building a successful Instagram presence.
Instagram influencer tip: consistency is the key. This refers to the type of content you post, how often you post, and when you post. If people know what to expect from you regularly, you will quickly gain more followers. Of course, you won’t be able to monetize your presence right from the start. So you should invest your time in growing your audience — and you can do that by posting engaging content several times a day.
#8th. Working as a virtual assistant
A virtual assistant is an assistant or employee who does not work in an office at the company location but is located in another, often more distant, location. Such employees can assist with tasks like administration, social media, bookkeeping, and more. There is a growing demand for business leaders for virtual assistants who need help with various projects. As a virtual assistant, you can specialize in countless areas. In the past, for example, I’ve hired virtual assistants for my social media management and customer service. There are now countless companies around the world that rely on virtual assistants to develop their brands.
Earning money on the side as a virtual assistant — that sounds good at first. But how much is actually possible here? Most virtual assistants trade their time for money. So based on the upper limit of your working hours, there will also be an upper limit in terms of earnings. In addition to hourly billing, you can also opt for a monthly flat rate. Some virtual assistants may only earn the current minimum wage, while others may charge 40dollars an hour or more, depending on their skills.
Tip for virtual assistants: If you decide to take on this part-time job, the freelancer platform Upwork is a good place to find your first customers. However, positioning as an independent and independent contractor could be more promising. Getting started could be a little trickier as you have to find customers first. In the long run, however, this path is likely to be more lucrative, so you can earn more money on the side. To get started, you can join popular corporate or online retailer Facebook groups to offer your services there.
# 9. Earn money with your photos on the side
If you enjoy taking photos and you have basic Photoshop or Lightroom skills, you could make money with your photos on the side. Do you like taking photos of your city? Then you could sell them to your local newspaper or blog. Sites like Foap allow you to sell your phone pictures and make money with each picture. Another way would be to put your photos on products like canvases, t-shirts, and phone cases to make even more money. And if that’s not enough, you can also venture into wedding photography, animal photography, or product photography.
How much money can you earn as a photographer on the side? If you sell your pictures online, you can make a few hundred or thousand dollars a month. If you choose to do wedding photography, you could make a few thousand dollars or more per wedding.
Photography Tip: If you want to advertise your images on a stock photography website, success lies in bulk. The more photos you take and upload, the greater the chance that your images will be bought. Make sure to use the correct tags so that your photos are easy to find. The more pictures you take, the faster you will improve your photography skills and become a real professional. So you can only win like this.
# 10. A part-time job
If you’d rather trade time for money, you can opt for a part-time job. Earning money on the side with part-time jobs — this can include activities such as babysitting, waiter, receptionist, administrative assistant, barista, and much more. But you can also find part-time jobs in your industry. Maybe you have a full-time job in marketing. Then a part-time job as a social media manager might be for you. The only downside to a part-time job is that you have to trade your time for money here too. Let’s be honest with us: time is your most valuable asset — a real luxury. Part-time jobs don’t scale as well as an online business. This means that your earning potential is limited.
How much money can you earn with a part-time job? For most jobs, the remuneration is around the minimum wage mark. But if you do a little research and have patience, you can certainly find higher-paying jobs.
Part-time job tip: You can search for part-time jobs on job pages to do in the evenings and on weekends. But remember: after working a full day, you will likely feel tired and exhausted. Accordingly, you should choose a part-time job with flexible working hours. If you have to spend four hours on your part-time job from Monday to Friday after an eight-hour workday, burnout probably won’t belong in coming.
Conclusion
With a sideline, you can effectively earn money with a little effort. But you can also use it to develop new skills, build your personal brand or portfolio, and gain more freedom. Take a risk and start your own business. Or pursue a new hobby that has always fascinated you. A sideline is the best recipe for living your life on your own terms. And with a little more money in your pocket, nothing will stop you from finally making your dreams come true. | https://medium.com/@adrianrwhited/earn-money-on-the-side-10-ideas-to-earn-1-000-every-month-58568bed207a | [] | 2020-10-10 08:27:32.273000+00:00 | ['Earn Money Online', 'Money', 'Money Management', 'Economy', 'Work'] |
What Our 20s has been Teaching Us | Artwork by Alessandro Mulya
As someone who is familiar with design and art, a tutor once taught me that, “Art is fleeting.” As in, it will not be there tomorrow — it will be replaced by another act, perhaps another actor, another artist, and what we really do is really for the very moment, right now. The same goes for our age. It took me several highs and lows to really sums up what the youthful days and colorful friendships and a lifetime of school, of work, of community has really changed me. A little spoiler alert, there is a good ending!
Number one is that we change. And that’s okay. A lot of my friends, whom I haven’t seen for a very, very long time — has been saying for every few years we have met, that I have changed. I genuinely thought that it’s a bad thing at the start, but that’s not really the point of it all. There is no human that has undergone a period of time in their life and made it out, exactly the same person they have been in the past. Some become better. Others found new way and journey in their life, and some others learnt their mistakes, gaining new experiences en route to there. And when is the best time to make mistakes, rather than our youth days? We were once reckless, after all.
Number two is everybody learns. Just not at the same pace. What school has taught us in our childhood days is that someone is better than me at doing this, someone is doing things that I cannot do, and that somehow, some way, we were classically trained that academic rankings is the only scale of our hard work and talents — and that is even more apparent in college. Truthfully, that is not the case. Some kids were artistically gifted, and yes, of course, they were bad at math, but that doesn’t make them any less talented than any other kids in the room. Some were good at things that didn’t even have contests — such as managing people, building things, or even for being punctual. Growing up, those soft skills are the ones that you actually need. So never underestimating yourself for showing up 15 minutes earlier at every meetings.
Number three is we have our own journey. Some goodbyes were inevitable. So many friendships has been fading away, and the biggest example is our school days. Some friends went to another school, or you went to different high school, or they dropped out of college, or all of your friends altogether found work at different offices and grew apart. I have been hard on myself back then and always told myself that it was somehow my fault, which is wasn’t ( And it’s not your fault, too! ). Albeit different journey, we have shared memories — precious memories together, and I would hold them tightly, and perhaps the next time I saw my old friends again, we can actually reminisce the good old days, and prepare ourselves for good new days!
The 20s is the days of waving hands and shaking hands, the one period of time where we are not old enough to do this, but young enough to do that.
It is, in my opinion, the period of experiences. Experimenting and trying out new things and make mistakes in between, and nothing is better than that. I personally regret about the things I could’ve done in the past, but the best thing is to do things I wanted to do, right now. When I look back, it is actually the mistakes that made me grow, as to who I am right now. So, big thanks for the new things I actually tried for the first time back then! And as far as I know, it has helped me in the past, so it will certainly help me in the future — yup, I’m basically saying that I am down for making mistakes again. Perhaps this time I’ll be wiser on tackling such things.
We discover who we really are, where do we belong, and who can we share our times with. Times like those bear seeds to future businesses together, everlasting friendship, and the becoming of our partner-in-crime, in romance, in beers and burgers, in playing hoops, in anything it is that you can put your mind on. Nobody really enjoy being older, but for me personally, I enjoy looking ahead on what the life might gave me, year after year — I treat it as an opportunity to grow personally, on my own terms ( I know my hair is getting more white, too ). It is not about the good old days, in fact — it never was. The good days is the today, it is the very day right now. Make it your moment, share a laugh, do crazy things, and you will be looking back years from now on and be glad you done those things. In fact, I will be upholding the same mindset going to my 30s, 40s, and 50s. | https://medium.com/@alexxmulya31/what-our-20s-has-been-teaching-us-1bee3f11a251 | ['Alessandro Mulya'] | 2020-12-10 05:52:14.431000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Reflections Of Life', 'Learning', 'Youth', 'Teenagers'] |
Library or Framework ? | Library or Framework ?
Why would you prefer framework over the library ? Both frameworks and libraries are reusable codes written by someone else to solve common problem. There isn’t anything magic about libraries and frameworks. Both helps you to solve your problem in easier way. Let me first give you a brief introduction about library and framework.
What is Library ?
Before the definition part, lets implement some method to “add” two integer values.
public class Simple {
public static int add(int a, int b){
return a+b;
}
}
Yeah !!! You’ve created a simple library.
Library is a collection of helping methods which you can be used for specific functionality in your code, when you need it. Now you would understand the previous example that we used to add two integers also can be used as a simple library function. In your program there is particular function that will need consistently in your program, you can write common function where you can pass in the necessary parameters to solve your common problem, that also can be a library function. Example of a Library is jQuery.
What is Framework ?
Framework is collection of inter-related libraries that work together to serve a large purpose. Framework itself an application you can plug your code into it. Example of a Library is Vue.js
Wikipedia makes it more clear:
“In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software providing generic functionality can be selectively changed by additional user-written code, thus providing application-specific software”
What is the key difference between library Vs framework ?
The key difference of the framework and library lies in a term called “Inversion of Control”(IoC).
Imagine the physical library we use our day to day life. Whenever you need a book for your specific work you can borrow it from the book shelves and use it at anytime, which means you are the in charge. Consider about the foundation of a house it like a framework. You build your house on the foundation it gives you the structure when you place your components of the house. That’s the way of framework works. Framework is the in charge.
In Technical Terms
When you call a method from a library you are the in charge because you call it when you need it, so you are in control. When it comes to the framework its the opposite side. In the framework the control is inverted, framework is the in charge of the flow and it provide some space to plug your code and it calls you when plugged in as needed.
Their Relationship
To work these framework and libraries together it use an API. Think a library as a function of a application, framework as the skeleton of the application, and API as the connector to put those things together. In generally way framework calls the functions implemented in library through the API.
“Opinionated” or “Un-opinionated.”
Finally, On the idea of being opinionated, Frameworks are more opinionated it order you to put specific files in specific places in project. And framework can initialize itself. On the other hand libraries are rarely opinionated, it rarely give the instructions to where to put your files or not. You have to manually initialize your application because library cannot initialize itself. The different frameworks are opinionated at different degrees. These terms are subjective.When I personally would consider AngularJS a highly opinionated framework, and VueJS a less-opinionated framework. | https://medium.com/@senuradiwantha900/library-or-framework-14ec284708e6 | ['Senura Diwantha'] | 2020-02-20 16:09:45.584000+00:00 | ['Framework', 'Libraries', 'Inversion Of Control'] |
Tuesday Morning | Yesterday I came back home from work, a little happy with a hope that tomorrow will be good, so I ate my dinner, a plate of rice and kisamvu a small portion, Sat down beside my granny asking why did I take a little food, smiling I told her this I enough for today, then after we set our eyes on TV watching something that I had no interest with, I was there for the food, After a little while we prayed or at least I know they did, I was lost in thoughts thinking of different things before I go with the flow. Went to my room, a little disorganized looking at my new bed that I bought on the past days with my own money and I smiled, sat on my bed before I turned on my laptop thinking of what to watch, stood up undressed myself to remain with only a boxer and a vest, wondering why people call me “big” and I don’t see myself as that, I smiled again when I thought of how many times, I said I will hit gym just to get fit.
I was restless, so I put on some music before anything else, opened up my banana Crips excited with the sound they will make after I gave them a bite, I could bear the song lyrics but not the banana Crips they were salty so I had to take water. Passionate with the movie I was going to watch, my phone rang I smiled because I know what I was going to hear and yeah that was it, I felt glass shattering inside my head and again am a “Man” so I got act strong which is stupid but I did before I hang up on the phone. I was Sad thereafter, my face swallowed up, to satisfy my sadness and emptiness I felt at that time, I put on sad shows on my laptop so that when I dropped these tears it won’t be because of my life but for what I was going to watch, I cried as much as how it made me feel, sobbing with tears while I sat on my bed. I felt darkness In front of me and it was not because of the tears, my heart made slow beats within my chest I always tell myself that my sufferings have to be good for something but here I am hoping this Storm won’t last.
I can’t feel anything, I feel defeated, shot with all types of guns, the AK, the shot guns, slayed with the swords, gasping for air just, praying with faith hoping to survive the day, and may be tomorrow I will walk with my wounds to see the sunshine, I woke up for the future that I don’t see but hopefully it will get better, that is what I told my friends well to some
of them who see the pain inside me, not the one I make happy with my words and charm, I understand things should go a little better the way I planned so they won’t leave my heart damaged but right now I feel broken inside Flesh and bones everywhere, every day I woke up to iron my clothes, dress good put on everything I like, carry my bag with my laptop, loving the idea that I go to work but am not sure that’s true or I just like the idea that I go out in the morning and get back at night but my work don’t complete me at least not yet, I want more than this and right now am just stranger to myself, I don’t know what I am doing at day sometime but I just wore a smile, I want to be busy and not on my head only but the reality too, am getting distracted with this madness praying that I will bounce back and keep fighting and after all if every time we are sad we are told to be positive then we never learn how to deal with sadness.
Mad question asking, music blasting, blunt smoking, I finished my T bone steak smiling right before I go to sleep with these secrets inside me because right now when I think about my life it gets me “Horny” but in the end I hope to get the extreme “orgasm” whenever I look back at it.
When I put my head on my pillow, I felt the coldness of it and it felt good closing my eyes thinking about what Sylvia Path said, “perhaps someday I’ll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow”. | https://medium.com/@billoh/tuesday-morning-da76fc5d8288 | [] | 2020-12-19 17:19:51.970000+00:00 | ['Giving Up', 'Sadness'] |
~Power Book II: Ghost~ S1 :: Ep08 ~Episode 08~ Full Series | 📱 CREDITS 📱
Television shows are more varied than most other forms of media due to the wide variety of formats and genres that can be presented. A show may be fictional (as in comedies and dramas), or non-fictional (as in documentary, news, and reality television). It may be topical (as in the case of a local newscast and some made-for-television films), or historical (as in the case of many documentaries and fictional series). They could be primarily instructional or educational, or entertaining as is the case in situation comedy and game shows.
♕ ALL CATEGORY WATCHTED ♕
Anaction story is similar to adventure, and the protagonist usually takes a risky turn, which leads to desperate scenarios (including explosions, fight scenes, daring escapes, etc.). Action and adventure usually are categorized together (sometimes even while “action-adventure”) because they have much in common, and many stories are categorized as both genres simultaneously (for instance, the James Bond series can be classified as both).
📱 STREAMING MEDIA 📱
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream identifies the process of delivering or obtaining media in this manner.[clarification needed] Streaming refers to the delivery method of the medium, instead of the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies particularly to telecommunications networks, as almost all of the delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, music CDs). There are challenges with streaming content on the Internet. For instance, users whose Internet connection lacks satisfactory bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of the content. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain content.
Live streaming is the delivery of Internet content in real-time much as live television broadcasts content over the airwaves with a television signal. Live internet streaming takes a form of source media (e.g. a video camera, an audio tracks interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the origination point, although it frequently is.
Streaming is an option to file downloading, a process where the end-user obtains the entire file for this content before watching or listening to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to get started on playing digital video or digital sound content before the complete file has been transmitted. The word “streaming media” can connect with media other than video and audio, such as live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are considered “streaming text”.
📱 COPYRIGHT CONTENT 📱
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[4][2][3][4][5] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[6][7][8] A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
Some jurisdictions require “fixing” copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders.[citation needed][1][40][44][42] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[43]
Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered “territorial rights”. This means that copyrights granted by the law of a certain state, do not extend beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works “cross” national borders or national rights are inconsistent.[44]
Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 50 to 400 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[5] to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration.
It is widely believed that copyrights are a must to foster cultural diversity and creativity. However, Parc argues that contrary to prevailing beliefs, imitation and copying do not restrict cultural creativity or diversity but in fact support them further. This argument has been supported by many examples such as Millet and Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Monet, etc.[45]
📱 GOODS OF SERVICES 📱
Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[4] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and extensible to a large group of unrelated people.
The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[2] Credit is extended by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
FIND US:
✓ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
✓ Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/
✓ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/ | https://medium.com/power-book-ii-ghost-s1-e08-show-starz/power-book-ii-ghost-s1-ep08-episode-08-full-series-3ece99410bc7 | ['T O N G Tolan G Nan Gka'] | 2020-12-22 04:27:08.841000+00:00 | ['Schools', 'Drama', 'Crime', 'Students', 'TV Series'] |
Kafka, The Writer of Human Frustration | Kafka, The Writer of Human Frustration
Photo by Emanionz on Unsplash
Franz Kafka’s literature is peculiar, ambiguous and difficult to access. However, the Kafkaesque style never ceased to be current, even now, more than 130 years after his birth.
The power of writing
“The Metamorphosis”, is perhaps Kafka’s most famous story. The story of the young Gregor, who one day dawns transformed into a huge insect, is a disturbing and chilling text about man’s vulnerability and his precarious position in the world, which, overnight, makes him an outcast.
But why did Kafka decide to tell his story in such an enigmatic way? Couldn’t he have written it in a more “realistic” or “credible” way? Many of his contemporary readers became annoyed with the mysterious nature of his literature, which, during his lifetime, prevented him from being recognised by a wide audience.
Kafka’s closed and enigmatic literature is a reflection of the absurdity of the authorities, rulers and, above all, the state bodies with which his characters are confronted.
In books such as “The Trial” or “The Prison Colony”, the author describes the powerlessness of the individual in the face of an anonymous power. This kind of helplessness, a central experience of the modern mass society, is known as “Kafkaesque”.
A life intertwined with literature
Everything in Franz Kafka was painful, some called it absurd, others Kafkaesque. A twisted and restless universe that made him the most revealing author of the last century. And this despite the fact that in his 40 years and 11 months of life, Kafka only finished 350 pages and left 3,500 unfinished. Among them three novels, a faithful reflection of his main characteristic, his neurotic perfectionism that made him an obsessive being who claimed to be “made of literature”. For him, more than an interest and inclination, more than a profession and entertainment, literature was his own life.
Franz Kafka’s writing presents the impotence of the human being in the face of the external factors, which can be a monstrous transformation, as in “The Metamorphosis” or the presence of an inbred and closed community that torments the main character of “The Castle”. Franz Kafka represents the permanent state of human frustration. Kafka is the most intense grey in the history of literature. It is the grey that the heirs of existentialism wanted to copy and that the American “dirty realists” were unable to express correctly.
Franz Kafka usually wore a “sweet mask” facing outwards, but he had a “dark side”, a convoluted inner world inhabited by what has come to be known as Kafkaesque. The author was born in Prague into a family of Jewish merchants and died in Austria, in 1924. He received a doctorate in law and also studied the mysticism of the Jewish religions in depth. In 1917, when he was thinking of going to Palestine, he became ill with tuberculosis and began to devote himself body and soul to literature.
His devotion to literature was such, that despite family opposition, five failed marriage projects, his work as an insurance agent and his serious illness that would end his life, he continued to pursue his dream.
Chronically dissatisfied, self-demanding to the point of flogging, neurotic and compulsive, Franz Kafka was not, however, the weak character that has been stereotyped. His strength to write despite his self-imposed inhuman perfectionism shows this.
His particular way of writing reflected a vision of his own — arising from his deepest fears, from the depths of his being — of what he wanted to tell and he intended to expose it in its entirety without any interruption. Maintaining that intensity was almost impossible. One only has to take into account the amount of work he did not manage to finish.
Nevertheless, there is a divorce between the Franz Kafka known to his peers and the Franz Kafka made by his contemporaries after his literary canonisation. The former was rather more jovial, vitalistic, cheerful and funny than the reader assumes after confronting his work. The personality of the flesh and blood Franz Kafka does not easily get caught up in the cliché of the Kafkaes coined under the influence of the narrative universe he created.
He was certainly naive, not very practical and private. He had enormous difficulties in organising his life, especially his relationships with women. However, he was not a bitter person, nor a party pooper, nor a mystic. He had a quick wit and was fond of making sparkling puns that he often spread in his encounters with people. He was also a good playmate and seemed to possess an extraordinary ability to cast shadows on the wall with his hands that caused amazement to those who looked at them.
Something that is repeated in several testimonies of those who conceived with him in life is that Franz Kafka gave a lot of importance to the fact of being well dressed and that he spent time to look like an elegance that did not attract attention. Neither the illness that ate him nor death could take away Franz Kafka’s captivating smile, a gesture that, according to the nurse who closed his eyes, remained on his lips after he had left.
Kafka’s insects
The Metamorphosis is Franz Kafka’s most famous short novel. Published in 1916, it surprised the literary world of the time because the anecdote that supports the story is as simple as it is absurd: a man wakes up one morning transformed into an enormous insect — apparently a beetle, although it is not explicitly mentioned in the text. He continues to live in his room, tolerated by his family, and to contemplate the passing of life from the perspective of an animal. After reading Franz Kafka’s most famous novel, the great writer Gabriel García Márquez decided to dare to write his first work, realising that the most important part of a narrative is not in the plot or the argument, that any one is worth, even an absurd one, but that the key lies in the way it is told and the reflective background it provides.
Franz Kafka is the voice of the conscience of an era. That is why he was more interested in the reflection that emerges from his works than in his narrative essence. In fact, he is not a narrator per se, because the events he relates do not follow and evolve in a suitable literary dynamic, but he settles down in front of a powerful symbol and there he leaves the reader alone to go around that point until he reaches his own conclusions, which are never far from those of the author.
The more absurd the symbol presented by Franz Kafka is, the more significant it is for the reader’s reflection. Franz Kafka’s characters are shaken and threatened by hidden instances. They are not important in themselves, but are prototypes of the helpless and disoriented man. The aim is to highlight the absurdity of life and, to do so, introduce a surprising distortion into the most everyday reality by using absurd and fantastic elements, such as the transformation of the commercial traveller Gregor Samsa beetle. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/kafka-the-writer-of-human-frustration-ccda94280875 | ['Fadoua Soussi'] | 2020-11-16 13:30:51.576000+00:00 | ['Writing Tips', 'Kafka', 'Education', 'Writing', 'Literature'] |
Sunset in the distant sky: Short Romantic Story | A clear view of the eternal yellow-brown sunset in the distant sky could be viewed from the tenth floor of the seemingly tallest building in the area. There was a breezy gracious balcony, broader than usual attached to the floor. Everything was so serene that day.
Just then, an unbelievably gorgeous woman walked into the balcony with a cup of coffee. She was in her top and pajamas, and she went to lean over her balcony. As she was admiring the sunset, suddenly her phone rang. She reached into her pocket to grab the phone. It was from an unknown number. As she pressed the accept button, there was a manly voice from the other end.
Man: Hii.. it’s me, Sanjeev. I just called to know how you’re doing lately.
The woman halted for a second, and after a heavy breath, she replied.
Woman: Are you drunk??
Man: No! No! I am sober, just took one shot. I needed courage badly.
The woman then placed the coffee cup on the tiny table right next to her, and with a slight disappointment, she spoke…
Woman: Why are you doing this?
Man: Why do you want to leave me all alone?
Woman: We have talked about this before. I don’t want to recall those stuff again, please.
Man: But will you be happy in life without me?
This question came to her like an arrow and hit her at the point she was trying hard to cover. Trying to regain control over herself, she softly spoke.
Woman: No, I wasn’t. I wasn’t happy when you left me all alone for all these years. I wasn’t happy when you were not there for me when I needed you the most. You changed. You are not the Sanjeev I knew before our marriage. I know you cared for me and our future but the fact that you compromised me over your career, your money, shattered me. If we continue this relationship, it will be even more painful later. So, please.
Pin drop silence prevailed for a moment. The woman’s eyes then had a hint of tear in them. At some point, it felt like there was a connection flaw between her words and her soul. After a moment, the man gently spoke out.
Man: I know, I became mean and a piece of shit. I became a robot running after money. You know my common sense tells me that it’s better splitting. It tells me that it’s better going away from you, that without money there’s no life but that same common sense is non-sense when your smile pops in my head when the sweet memories we lived together pops in my head.
I know apologies are meaningless when one repeats the same mistake again and again. Second chances mean nothing after hurting someone again and again and that second chances are hard to give, but I need a second chance. Please let me love you once again.
As soon as she heard these words, tears rolled out her cheeks. She couldn’t hold them any longer, and it looked like she felt a sense of relaxation from a burden she was carrying all this time. Now she softly spoke up.
Woman: If you come any closer to me this time, I won’t let you stay away from me again.
After this, there was silence except for the chirping of the birds flying back home. Sometimes silence speaks more than words.
Please check out my blog for more contents.
Thank you | https://medium.com/@gunjan-thecoinrepublic/common-sense-91f83898a5b6 | ['Gunjan Phukan'] | 2020-12-13 09:34:25.336000+00:00 | ['Short Read', 'Short Story', 'Screenplay', 'Screenwriting', 'Lovestory'] |
2020 Vision | As I was walking to school one morning, the number 2020 came to mind. I wrestled with my thoughts on what this number represented. 2020 is the perfect vision that I wanted to have. Yet, I have to use glasses and contacts to help me see close to 2020. I could have LASIK surgery to have the perfect 2020 vision. 2020 is the year that our vision of life becomes perfectly clear. Right?
Is it just me or has anyone ever thought.. oh this is the year that I’m going to make it. I will achieve so many things in my life. This is the year where my dream job will happen! This is the #perfect year! How can this 2020 year not be perfect. I mean when you think of 2020 doesn’t it mean the perfect vision of life?
Year 2020 has been anything but perfect. Why did I put so much emphasis on ensuring that this would be THAT year? Is it because how I view the world with the lens of perfect 2020 is how I view all aspects of my life as achieving the perfect 2020 vision in my own life? Do you feel me on this friends? Do you strive for the perfect 2020 vision in this world?
Friends, I am guilty. I have been striving for the perfect 2020 vision life because I wanted to earn the prize. I couldn’t see clearly what that prize was but I know that I wanted to claim the ultimate prize that would define my perfect 2020 year. Anyone with me on this? Have you claimed your ultimate prize? If you answered YES! I’m clapping my hands for you! I’m so proud of you.
A song that has gotten me through my teaching career right now is the Greatest Love of ALL by: Whitney Houston
Greatest ❤ of All by: Whitney Houston
I love the words to this song. It was how I was educated to build up the children of the world. I truly believed that the “children are our future.. teach them well and let them lead the way”. As I began my teaching career with the zest and excitement that I have chosen, the career that has a lifetime of impact because I recalled what my 4th grade teacher did for me. To this day, I credit her as the inspiration that led me into this career choice. Two decades of teaching have pass and yet I’m wondering if I have made the right career choice. Does this career of shaping the future generation is how I’m going to achieve the 2020 vision? I hope you take some time to reflect on what 2020 vision looks like for you.
I can honestly share with you all that a career in education is the best career for me because year 2020 is when I can claim the ultimate prize. The ultimate prize of recognizing that I have made the RIGHT career decision for myself. I ❤ ❤ ❤ teaching. I ❤ being a learner in education. I ❤ what learning has represented for me. I ❤ that my art in this world is to shape the minds of our future generation. I ❤ that I get to go into a job that is filled with pure genuine JOY that I just can’t contain and want to shout from the rooftop of the world that a choice is in education is my “the BEST is YET to come”.
I hope your 2020 perfect vision year is a year where you reflect and ask yourself if the lens you view the world is the way you view yourself? | https://medium.com/@estmaria/2020-vision-35b9573ed0ff | ['Est Maria'] | 2020-12-08 10:16:18.265000+00:00 | ['Teaching And Learning', 'Year In Review', 'Inspiration', 'Education Reform', 'Whitney Houston'] |
Move semantics in C++ and Rust: The case for destructive moves | For value-oriented programming languages, move semantics present a big step forward in both optimization and representing uniqueness invariants. C++ has chosen the path of non-destructive moves, where moved-from variables are still usable (albeit usually in an unspecified state). Rust, on the other hand, uses destructive moves, where the moved-from variable can no longer be used. I’ll introduce both approaches in a little more detail and present some issues with non-destructive moves. Finally, I will present what C++ could have looked like with destructive moves.
Move semantics in C++ (simplified)
In C++, each expression has not only a type, but also a value category. There exist three primary type categories, and two mixed type categories. Each expression has a primary type category, which determines how the language will treat it in relation to other expressions.
An lvalue is, simply put, a variable; a memory address with a name.
An xvalue is like an lvalue, but we declare that the resources that this variable owns may be transferred to a new owner.
A prvalue is a temporary value without a name.
A glvalue (mixed) is either an lvalue or an xvalue.
An rvalue (mixed) is either an xvalue or a prvalue.
auto i = std::string{"value categories"};
// `i` is an lvalue
// `std::move(i)` is an xvalue
// `static_cast<std::string&&>(i)` is an xvalue
// `std::string{"value categories"}` is a prvalue (pure rvalue)
As their name suggests, rvalue references are refrences that point to rvalues. With these references, we can differentiate between lvalues and rvalues, most often in constructors and assignment operators.
struct MyData
{
std::string data1;
std::string data2; MyData() noexcept = default;
// this is (basically) what the compiler will generate for you
// never write these by hand unless you're managing resources
// copy constructor
MyData(const MyData& other)
: data1{other.data1}
, data2{other.data1}
{}
// copy assignment
MyData& operator=(const MyData& other) {
data1 = other.data1;
data2 = other.data2;
return *this;
}
// move constructor
MyData(MyData&& other) noexcept
: data1{std::move(other.data1)}
, data2{std::move(other.data1)}
{}
// move assignment
MyData& operator=(MyData&& other) noexcept {
data1 = std::move(other.data1);
data2 = std::move(other.data2);
return *this;
}
};
Classes that manage resources, like std::vector<T> , std::string , will usually do the following in their move constructors: instead of allocating new memory, they will take the already allocated buffer from the rvalue they’re being constructed from, and leave some valid value in its stead. Move assignment will usually simply swap the allocated resources with the rvalue, where they will be freed with the moved-from rvalue after the assignment call.
template <typename T>
class almost_vector {
T* buffer = nullptr;
T* data_end = nullptr;
T* buffer_end = nullptr;
public:
almost_vector() noexcept = default;
almost_vector(const almost_vector& other)
{
// allocate buffer, copy elements
}
almost_vector& operator=(const almost_vector& other) {
// allocate new buffer, copy elements
// swap the buffers
// deallocate the old buffer
}
// the move constructor will do something like this
almost_vector(almost_vector&& other) noexcept
{
std::swap(buffer, other.buffer);
std::swap(data_end, other.data_end);
std::swap(buffer_end, other.buffer_end);
}
// move assignment will do something like this
almost_vector& operator=(almost_vector&& other) noexcept {
std::swap(buffer, other.buffer);
std::swap(data_end, other.data_end);
std::swap(buffer_end, other.buffer_end);
return *this;
}
};
There is a non-intuitive side to rvalue references. For example, variables that are rvalue references become lvalues when used in expressions! Also, when you write std::move(data) , the expression actually does nothing on its own; it is merely a cast to an rvalue reference.
void foo(std::string data); void bar() {
std::string data;
std::string&& data_ref = std::move(data);
foo(data); // this will copy!
foo(std::move(data)); // this moves
}
There exists a third kind of reference in C++ aside from lvalue references and rvalue references: the forwarding reference. In templated functions, T&& becomes a forwarding reference instead of an rvalue reference, and auto&& is always a forwarding reference. Forwarding references preserve the value category of the expression they’re initialized with, and can be preserved when passing to other functions.
std::string baz(std::string); template <typename T>
struct Templated {
// t is an rvalue reference
void foo(T&& t) {}
// u is a forwarding reference
template <typename U>
void bar(U&& u) {
// forward to another function
// x is a forwarding reference
auto&& x = baz(std::forward<U>(u));
}
};
std::move is a utility function in the standard library that lets us mark lvalues as xvalues. It doesn’t hide any compiler magic, as its implementation is just a static_cast to an rvalue reference.
void foo (T&&); void bar() {
T value;
// this is a noop
std::move(value);
foo(std::move(value));
// this is the same thing, only cryptic
T value2;
foo(static_cast<T&&>(value2);
}
Moved-from states
The variables we move from are still usable after the move in C++. The variables’ destructors will be run when those variables reach the end of their lifetimes, and users may assign to them, or call any of their member functions.
The C++ standard library chooses to keep the moved-from variables in a valid, but unspecified state; this means that we can reuse the variable, we just cannot rely on its contents.
For user-declared types, the only real requirement is that the destructor on a moved-from variable must run without causing any issues for the rest of the program. Any invariants of the type may be broken and calling any functions on them can cause undefined behavior, it is just a matter of convention (and convenience) that we usually don’t do these things.
Move semantics in Rust
In Rust, all types are movable, and all move operations amount to a bit copy of the original data to its new location. Unlike C++, moving is the default operation, and we explicitly have to call a function to copy them.
Rust move operations are also destructive. After we move from a variable (even potentially), that variable becomes unusable in code.
#[derive(Clone)]
struct MyData {
boxed_uint: Box<u64>,
data: String,
} fn foo(_data: MyData) {
// do something with _data
}
fn bar() {
let data = MyData{
boxed_uint: Box::new(42),
data: "".to_owned()
};
foo(data.clone()); // we copy here
if random_bool() {
foo(data); // we move here
}
// foo(data); // ERROR: use of moved value
}
The reason why bit copies are always enough for a move operation in Rust is that Rust does not support self-referential structs in its safe subset. The borrowing rules in Rust make it impossible for a struct to borrow from its own fields (unless you reach for raw pointers and unsafe ). Such structs would require their move operations to adjust these references after moving the resources from the original object, but without them, there is no real need to execute arbitrary code on moves.
// you cannot do this in Rust // C++
struct SelfReferential {
std::array<char, 1'000> data;
char* cursor = nullptr;
SelfReferential(): data{{}}, cursor{&data[0]} noexcept {}
SelfReferential(SelfReferential&& other)
: data{other.data}
, cursor{&(data[0]) + (other.cursor - &(other.data[0]))}
{}
// copy constructor, assignment operators omitted
};
The Clone and Copy traits
For copy operations, Rust has the Clone trait. Structs implementing this trait take a reference and create a new value from it.
#[derive(Clone)]
struct MyData {
boxed_uint: Box<u64>,
data: String,
} /* derive(Clone) will generate
something semantically identical to this
impl Clone for MyData {
#[inline]
fn clone(&self) -> MyData {
MyData {
boxed_uint: self.boxed_uint.clone(),
data: self.data.clone(),
}
}
}
*/
There exist types where copying by default is desirable (like integers, bools, floats, tuples of integers, arrays of integers, etc.). These types can be marked with the Copy trait, which makes them copy-by-default (and thus impossible to move). By convention, only types that are inexpensive to copy are marked with this trait.
Where non-destructive moves fail
Weaker invariants for resource management
In C++, raw pointers can have many different meanings: they can represent
Nothing ( nullptr ) An address of a single object in owned dynamically allocated memory An address of a single object in non-owned memory An address of an array of objects in owned dynamically allocated memory An address of an array of objects in non-owned memory
Because of this semantic ambiguity, references are usually preferred in modern C++, because they always point to one valid object, where we always know that we don’t own it (both are possible to break, but breaking the first assumption is undefined behavior and breaking the second breaks every reasonable C++ convention). There exist alternatives for other scenarios from this list as well.
Where C++ has been able to improve this situation in non-owning contexts, it still has the same billion dollar mistake ingrained in its core smart pointers: both unique_ptr and shared_ptr can be nullptr .
With non-destructive moves, this is a neccessity. There exists no other real option for a moved-from state other than nullptr for smart pointers: If they kept the original pointer in them, unique_ptr would free the same memory twice, and shared_ptr would have more references than it tracks. If they assigned a random address, we would access (and delete ) random memory. Finally, an explicit marker for moved-from states would be exactly nullptr, but slower.
Thanks to destructive moves, Rust’s smart pointers ( Box , the counterpart of unique_ptr and Arc , the equivalent of shared_ptr ) always hold dynamically allocated memory. This invariant lets us prevent many possible errors at compile time instead of relying on conventions (like never passing nullptr smart pointers) or runtime checks everywhere. For situations where we actually want nullable pointers, we have the very explicit Option<Box<T>> , Option<&T> and Option<Arc<T>> , where we always have to check for the presence of the value explicitly (and have nice built-in ways of handling those situations).
Non-destructive move operations may fail (if you consider OOM errors recoverable by default)
For at least some container implementations in C++, moved-from objects require memory allocations. This means that at least in some cases, calling the move constructor is not an infallible operation.
With destructive moves (or by treating OOM errors as unrecoverable), C++ could realistically mandate that all of its move constructors are noexcept . While there theoretically exist other potential failures when moving objects with arbitrary code, I haven’t seen any convincing examples where types with other kinds of move errors are worth complicating the language over.
Move semantics become complicated
As we saw in the C++ overview of move semantics, non-destructive moves bring with them heaps of complexity: we add an entire new value category, two more kinds of references, and we all of a sudden have at least 5 ways to pass an argument to any function (by value, by pointer, by reference, by const reference, and by rvalue reference; not counting arrays and optional values), where all of them have valid usecases. We have to care and know about moved-from states, and we introduce potential failures for move operations.
Containers become complicated
Containers in the C++ standard library provide exception guarantees (if an operation fails in the middle of its execution, the container will be left in a valid state) and strong exception guarantees (if an operation fails in the middle of its execution, the container will be left in an identical state to what it was originally). If we consider std::vector ‘s push_back , the container must
Potentially increase the size of the buffer to fit the new element Move or copy the new element in its new place.
To achieve strong exception guarantees when increasing its size and copying elements, push_back will
Allocate a new buffer Copy all elements into the new buffer Swap the old buffer with the new one Free the memory of the old buffer
Done this way, if any of the copy operations fail, the container still has its original buffer with all of its elements. For fallible move operations, achieving strong exception guarantees is impossible this way:
Allocate a new buffer Move all the elements into the new buffer In the middle, a move operation fails We can’t move the already moved objects back, because that could fail too
For this reason, only vectors containing objects with noexcept move constructors will use move semantics when resizing their internal buffers. If you forget to mark your move constructors noexcept , you lose a lot of the optimization you thought you were getting by implementing them.
C++ with destructive moves
I will present a rough outline of what C++ might have looked like with destructive moves, and how it could have avoided some of C++’s current problems.
void foo(std::string x); void bar() {
std::string data {"Important stuff"};
if (random_bool()) {
foo(move data);
} else {
// do nothing
}
// ERROR: cannot use potentially moved-from variable
// foo(data);
// data's destructor will run if it hasn't been moved from here
}
Operator move
To move objects in C++, we introduce a new operator move . This operator would always call the move constructor of that type (which would still take an rvalue reference). The original variable would then become unaccesible and no destructor would run on it. Operator move would not be usable on lvalue references. There would exist a variant similar to placement new in that the target of the move could be a specific memory address instead of a new temporary.
struct Movable {
std::string data;
std::string data2; Movable() = default;
// default move constructor; always noexcept
// the argument's destructor is not called after this
Movable(Movable&& other)
: data {move other.data}
, data2 {move other.data2}
{}
// default assignment for movable types
Movable& operator=(Movable other) {
data = move other.data;
data2 = move other.data1;
// after (partially) moving from a variable's members
// the destructor is only called for non-moved-from members
return *this;
}
}; struct NotMovable {
std::string data;
std::string data2; NotMovable() = default;
// declaring a copy constructor still disables move semantics
NotMovable(const NotMovable&) = default;
// default assignment for non-movable types
NotMovable& operator=(const NotMovable& other) {
data = other.data;
data2 = other.data2;
return *this;
}
};
Operator ref_move
Operator ref_move would be usable through lvalue references. Instead of removing the variable, it would leave unspecified data in its place. This operator would be necessary for implementing memory-handling standard functions such as std::swap , where we would be able to make sure the original variable ends up with a valid value by the end of the call. We would also need a variant for placing the result directly in a specific memory address.
This is what a destructive move-based swap function could look like:
// enable if T is movable
template <typename T>
void swap(T& lhs, T& rhs) noexcept {
T temp {ref_move lhs};
ref_move(&lhs) rhs; // place the move into lhs
move(&rhs) temp; // place the move into rhs
}
rvalue references
In this outline, we keep rvalue and forwarding references in the language. This allows us to keep consistency with copy constructors and perfect forwarding.
If we gave up both of these and trusted the compiler to optimize away extra moves, we could use different syntax (such as move T(T& other) ) for move constructors and do away with rvalue and forwarding references entirely.
Solving nondestructive move’s issues with destructive moves | https://medium.com/@radekvit/move-semantics-in-c-and-rust-the-case-for-destructive-moves-d816891c354b | ['Radek Vít'] | 2021-02-10 16:18:10.109000+00:00 | ['Cpp', 'Rust', 'Programming', 'Programming Languages'] |
CodeChain SDK in Python | The alpha version of CodeChain-sdk-python(hereafter sdk-python) has been released, and now it’s possible to use CodeChain’s SDK in Python projects. Currently, only Python version 3.6 and above are provided. sdk-python ported the existing CodeChain-sdk-js to Python and provides most of the functionality supported by sdk-js except for the browser-specific functions.
Sub Module
Unlike sub libraries in the existing sdk-js, which are managed in different repositories, sdk-python manages the sdk-js modules’ primitives, keystore, rpc, crypto, and sdk as submodules. This makes each submodule both easier to manage and access. Each sub module can be used as follows:
Primitive
The main data types used in the SDK are defined in this module, and most submodules have dependencies on this module.
For example, the unsigned integer and hex string types are provided in the module. Fundamentally, it converts to a string and provides the function that checks whether an arbitrary data is of that type or not. In addition, it also provides diverse methods according to each characteristic of data. Unsigned integers provide arithmetic operations, RLP encoding, JSON encoding, etc. Hex strings also provide RLP encoding and JSON encoding.
In addition, AssetAddress and PlatformAddress, which are used by the CodeChain, are provided in this module. Address classes provide the ability to receive keys and generate addresses.
Keystore
This module is for managing CodeChain’s keystore. The CodeChain keystore uses the same format as Ethereum’s web3 secret storage definition.
CodeChain keystore basically manages three types of addresses. Currently, python-sdk only supports PlatformAddress and AssetAddress, and functionalities related to hdwseed will be added later. The keystore module allows users to more efficiently and easily manage the keys required to use CodeChain.
RPC
This module makes it easy to use CodeChain RPCs. Basically, it is a module composed of functions that send RPC calls and return values when data is given as an argument. It is classified into 6 groups: account, chain, devel, engine, mempool and net.
These functions are called thin rpc functions, which allow users to create applications that use CodeChain’s rpc suited for their own purposes. The SDK submodule, which provides a number of features, also uses the thin rpc functions of the RPC module.
Crypto
This module provides the crypto functions used in the CodeChain. Typically, ECDSA functions are provided in this module. In addition, the hash functions used in CodeChain, as well as crypto functions related to addresses, including bech32, are defined in this module.
SDK
This module provides a top-level class of sdk-python. This module allows users to create applications that use CodeChain more effortlessly and conveniently. The classes provided by the SDK module are called helper classes. The alpha version only provides the functionality of importing accounts and creating assets. All other features provided by sdk-js will be added in the near future.
Usage
The main module for developers using sdk-python is the sdk module. The sdk module contains definitions of the SDK class, which is a helper class. Users can use the SDK helper classes appropriately for their needs, and can import and customize submodules (primitive, key, rpc, crypto) if necessary.
Now let’s take a quick look at the example code, focusing on the features currently supported by the helper class. First, install the codechain module in your Python environment with the following command:
For convenience, let’s say you are running a CodeChain node in your local environment. Below is the code to import the private key of the platform address whose address is “tccq9h7vnl68frvqapzv3tujrxtxtwqdnxw6yamrrgd” to the node and create an asset using it. The above address is on the genesis block when the CodeChain node is initialized in solo mode and has 10000000000000000000CCC.
If you import the account’s private key to the node as follows, you only need to provide the passphrase without signing anything when sending a transaction to that account.
After importing the account, this code creates a mint transaction and sends it to the node. Since you have imported the private key before, you can successfully execute the mint transaction on the node by providing only the platform account and passphrase to mint the asset through the mint transaction.
Conclusion
The sdk-python alpha version manages all the sub-libraries within a single module, unlike the js version, allowing various function access much simpler. Currently, only the submodules, except for the sdk module, are fully supported, and only the ability to import accounts to nodes and send mint transactions through the helper class is implemented. Other features will be completed soon. | https://medium.com/codechain/codechain-sdk-in-python-fe46938adbf8 | ['Geunwoo Kim'] | 2020-02-12 06:14:36.270000+00:00 | ['Codechain', 'Blockchain', 'Python', 'Sdk'] |
The Truth On Trump’s Recent Firing Of My Father | The context because it matters
A military career is very much a family experience. When a soldier takes new jobs and promotions, that almost always means lots of change and moves (for us, 12 moves before I turned 18).
Consequently, you are always pushing reset. Your dad’s career becomes particularly relevant in your own life. You are primed to pay attention, even after you leave the nest.
We never thought it would go this far. Back when dad was a junior officer, he planned on doing his 20+ years. Then he was going to take a quiet job as a high school math teacher. He went on this great run, but it wasn’t without merit.
Dad finally got out of the military and landed a good corporate job. He was building his finances back up. Having two screw-off kids and constantly moving wasn’t good for my parent’s retirement account.
He got the call to serve as undersecretary. I was actually apprehensive about him taking the job. He already had a job and a boss he liked. The president was already churning through employees with an unceremonious and troubling velocity.
Dad has always felt a strong calling to serve the country. He saw this job as an opportunity to help improve national security. He moved forward. I had the unique experience of watching him get grilled during his confirmation hearings on C-SPAN.
Watching John McCain question your dad on national television is totally surreal. I would equate it to those Olympic videos of parents squirming as they watch their kids on the balance beams. Only, instead of “don’t fall, don’t fall”, it is “don’t say anything stupid”. | https://medium.com/publishous/the-truth-on-trumps-recent-firing-of-my-father-9d773c610a39 | ['Sean Kernan'] | 2020-11-25 22:39:41.771000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Politics', 'Military', 'History', 'Life'] |
Merry Christmas 🎄 Friends. | Merry Christmas 🎄 Friends.
Jingle Bell Jingle Bell Jingle all the way. Santa Claus 🎅 came last night to take our woes away .
My prayers & wishes that Santa Claus 🎅 to annihilate all the difficulties, sufferings & miseries from our planet earth.
Santa Claus being the good harbinger should give ton of generous gifts for everyone from his enormous backpack like peace, serenity, contentment, exhilaration, happiness & joy to everyone.
Santa Claus 🎅 should take back from us our burdened baggage which we have been carrying with us .These obstructions we have like jealously, anger hostility, bitterness, fury, outrage etc.
Santa Claus should finish these negativity from every human being hearts, minds & souls.
I wish Santa Claus thru his promising accomplishments blesses us with lot of courage,vitality to facilitate us to fight the evils happening everywhere like corruption, conspiracy, dishonesty , criminality, poverty , bigotry, racism etc.
Let's all open hands & hearts to accept Christmas 🎄 gifts of Covid Vaccine accessible to all in coming year 2021& free all human beings from this covid 19 corona pandemic.
Let's accept the other divine gifts of conscientious, spiritual,sovereignty, emancipation, & liberation to talk willingly & freely from Santa 🎅 Claus.
Finally wishing to bring into the world a beautiful, wonderful, peaceful, & marvelous planet to live in for all of us.
Let's there be peace , joy, & happiness all around.#jawaharlalla#jbl7#@jbl7blogs#blogger.#writer. | https://medium.com/@jawaharlalla2/merry-christmas-friends-dfaeb85c4f55 | ['Jawahar Lalla'] | 2020-12-25 02:27:11.307000+00:00 | ['Jbl', 'Writer', 'Merry Christmas Greetings', 'Jawaharlalla', 'Blogger'] |
Culture is the new counterculture | In an age of neoliberalism, private media, dwindling education and higher literacy, we find ourselves being more and more trapped and alienated by commodities. Since the 1960s, rebellion was sold by Hollywood intellectuals as vapid nihilism, sunglasses, drug use and consumer identity. In which words, ideas and expression took precedence over action, organisation and popular democracy.
The jaded petit-bourgeois intellectual became marketed as “The Rebel Without A Cause.”
This gave rise to centrism, the idea that having ideas is wrong. That when you take a position on something, and stand for ideas outside of the media regimented overton window, then you lose. How true change is no change, and how real freedom is meekness to authority.
An ironic twist in which the 1984 quoting centrist intellectual will, in essence, embody the notion that true thought is no thought, and that true consciousness is no consciousness.
It takes a special kind of idiot to look at two arguing politicians, and say “The truth can be found somewhere in the middle.”
Men of truth such as Tony Blair, who told the public that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Men of truth such as Al Gore, who told the public that climate change could be resolved by purchasing his carbon credits.
Men of truth such as Barrack Obama, who promised to combat racism and war, only to become the father of drone warfare, and to crack the whip at Ferguson.
Men of truth such as Donald Trump, who promised to end corruption in DC, only to openly collude with Nancy Pelosi in order to carry out bipartisan violations of the US constitution.
Men of truth such as Bernie Sanders, who spent his career promising peace only to participate in the genocidal horrors of Yugoslavia, causing even his own staff to resign in shame.
Apparently, the truth, lies somewhere in the middle of these fork tongues. It is no wonder that centrism began in the drug-fueled madness of the 1960s, you would have to be under very strong psychotropic influence to believe such a thing.
Rather, it is culture that becomes the new rebellion. In a world of reality television, commercial pop music, and self-help books, it is the people who read Dostoyevsky, who listen to Shostakovich, who make citations from Lenin and Marx, who become the true rebels.
If you ever want to know how to challenge the powers of tomorrow, then talk to a rich person about Lenin, and watch how nervous they get. Ask your local canvasser about Karl Marx, and see them trip over their words. Talk to a campus liberal about Stalin, and witness the outrage. If you want to know what truly frightens authority, then look to the East.
It is the clean cut and socially approachable people who will help strangers, behave politely, maintain civic pride and encourage culture and education that become the rebels of an age in which alienation, vapidity, xenophobia and obedience to the market is status quo.
If you want to rebel against tyranny, then read a book, hang a portrait of Stalin in your home, wear clean and respectful clothing, help an old lady cross the street, give money to the poor, hold the door open for a neighbor.
Make the world feel less estranged to itself, disarm the frustrations of a misinformed and indoctrinated citizenry, listen to two words for every one word you speak, introduce kindness and gentleness into a culture which encourages distrust and vindictiveness.
The rebel of yesterday was a pretentious middle class intellectual with a motorcycle and a leather jacket. The rebel of today is a good citizen in a world in which neoliberalism is decaying the advancements of the modern state through budget cuts and austerity, who seeks to turn the modern state apparatus into a feudal piggy bank for landlords and bosses.
Culture is the new counterculture. Embrace what is foreign, embrace what is fascinating, embrace inquiry, temperance, good will and decency, introduce these things into every dilapidated casualty of the hippie movement, and save them from themselves.
To every hippie I say: Put down the Buddha, and pick up the Red Book. Quit funding drug habits, and start funding homeless programmes. Quit hiding in the cheap esoterica of world denying spiritualism, and put yourself on the line. Expose yourself to the consequences of authority, and enjoy the fulfilment of virtue and bravery. Wear scars, not hemp. | https://medium.com/@thumblesteen/culture-is-the-new-counterculture-c72b1463ca9b | [] | 2021-09-10 05:30:08.252000+00:00 | ['Progress', 'Culture', 'Socialism', 'Politics', 'Freedom'] |
The Rise of the Gig Economy and Unmet Financial Wellness Needs | The Rise of the Gig Economy and Unmet Financial Wellness Needs Dave Farber Follow Sep 8 · 6 min read
In late August Uber and Lyft nearly halted their operations in California in response to a court’s order to reclassify their drivers as employees rather than independent contractors. But this public showdown between ride-sharing companies and lawmakers is part of a much larger issue. Uber and Lyft drivers are currently treated as gig workers — those who work for themselves rather than as employees of a business. While estimates vary, there could be nearly 70 million gig workers in the U.S., which would be more than one third of the U.S. workforce.
Part of the reason that we struggle to estimate how many gig workers are out there is that beyond determining whether someone is an employee or an independent worker, there are variations in what independent work can look like. Gig work can be part-time or full-time. Gig workers can set up their own businesses or gain work via platforms like Uber. Gig workers may rely entirely on their independent work or they may also be traditional employees at the same time. They could pay their taxes in entirely different ways, and some likely avoid paying taxes altogether. Things pretty quickly get complicated.
Although there are countless different ways to classify gig workers, some of those classifications really do matter. Beyond tax implications and operations implications for platforms that connect gig workers with customers, the needs and lifestyles of gig workers can vary substantially. Those who don’t have a full-time job with a traditional employer may lack access to important benefits and consistency in their income. Based on hundreds of conversations with independent workers, I’ve identified the most pressing challenges faced by gig workers that companies can help address. And these challenges aren’t limited to those in the gig economy. They’re problems that many Americans are currently struggling to solve.
Financial awareness. If you spend enough time in financial services, you’ll often hear the refrain that only about half of Americans are financially literate; I often hear that number go as low as 30%. And this isn’t some sort of “gotcha” question where consumers can’t answer a trick question about compound interest. Many of the gig workers I interview talk about how they have trouble controlling their spending because they really don’t have a good sense of what they’re spending their money on. They also express frustration that they need a better credit score, but they don’t know what factors really affect their score or how to get it where they want it.
Beyond the problems folks tell me about directly, digging a little deeper often reveals that consumers are paying high annual fees or interest rates on their credit cards. In many cases, there are better deals out there, but consumers don’t know what a “good” rate is, where they would seek out a card with more attractive rates, or whether they have the ability to negotiate the terms of the cards they currently have. More recently, I’ve also heard many consumers talk about their struggle with their monthly debt payments — especially student loan debt — having not been able to envision what percentage of their income would go to repayment when they decided to take on the loan or debt.
A little knowledge in the financial wellness space could go a long way. Consumers don’t need tomes of explanation about tax codes and investment strategies. They need just-in-time awareness of how they’re spending their money and how their choices will impact their life in the future.
Income stability. Many consumers will tell you that they simply need more money. It’s not that they don’t see the need for emergency savings or retirement investments, but rather that they simply have nothing left once they’ve covered the essentials. This problem is even more pronounced for gig workers, who may not have consistency in their income. For many gig workers, some weeks will be better than others, and there may even be stretches where they have no income at all. They regularly need to figure out how to cover their expenses until their next paycheck arrives.
This creates two separate challenges that can be addressed. The first is creating opportunities to increase income. Financial services companies help people save or invest money they already have, but they rarely focus on helping people increase their earning potential. That space has been heavily ignored by the industry. The second is in introducing better short-term credit and lending products. While this space has historically been home to predatory lenders, a number of startups have started introducing consumer-friendly products to help address this piece of the puzzle including Mission Lane (fair and affordable access to credit), Prosper (low-interest loans through P2P lending), and Upstart (fast and affordable loans for a broader audience).
Financial wellness providers can also differentiate themselves in this space by considering the emotional needs that exist as well. Beyond the need to increase or stabilize their income, nearly a third of gig economy workers landed in that position out of necessity, often having lost a job or faced a major life hurdle. For those workers, there’s often a desire to get back their old lifestyle, do more of the fun things that they have been forced to give up, or stop stressing about finances on a daily basis. While there may be functional solutions for those needs, recognizing the emotional struggle can go a long way toward building a connection.
Practical guidance. Even consumers who need to increase their income or its stability can often do more to save and avoid future hardships. For some, it’s simply about overcoming that initial hurdle; they need to get started. Here we’re talking about the 33% of Americans who have nothing saved for retirement. Once that first dollar is saved, the follow-on work will get a lot easier. Then there’s the next 23% of Americans who have under $10,000 saved for retirement, the 44% who couldn’t cover a $400 emergency, or the 43% of student loan borrowers who aren’t making payments toward their loans. These folks have often made some progress, but they need real guidance on how to set and stick to a budget, or how to determine where their money is going and what funds could be better spent. Those individuals need someone who can spend the time understanding their finances, lifestyle, motivations, and values to develop a concrete plan for how to turn things around.
The financial wellness space is a hot spot for innovation right now, but there’s still a lot of room to do more. By better understanding the different segments of the gig economy and the unmet needs within those segments, companies can generate real value for a big portion of the workforce.
Dave Farber is a strategy and innovation consultant at New Markets Advisors. He helps companies understand customer needs, build innovation capabilities, and develop plans for growth. He is a co-author of the award-winning book Jobs to be Done: A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation. | https://medium.com/new-markets-insights/the-rise-of-the-gig-economy-and-unmet-financial-wellness-needs-6a2cb865a312 | ['Dave Farber'] | 2020-09-08 13:59:14.072000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Financial Services', 'Business', 'Gig Economy', 'Fintech Startups'] |
Do You Need a Manager or a Leader? | Do You Need a Manager or a Leader?
It’s more than just a semantic quibble
The words leader and manager often are used interchangeably, and with that slipshod usage, their individual meanings can be lost. Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis are often quoted as saying:
“Management is doing the things right and Leadership is doing the right thing”
This points to deeper insights. Management is about making things happen. It is literally about manipulation. The words management and manipulation both come from the Latin word manus, meaning hand. If done well, there are efficiencies gained and improvements made in every aspect of what the manager’s organization is doing, but that success is circumscribed. Great managers are still working under constraints that have been given to them. They can be awesome but only with what is given to them. Leadership is about seeing beyond the confines and setting a vision for something better. The origin of the word is very different. It comes from Proto-Germanic, laidjana meaning to go. Leaders take their teams somewhere else.
When should you lead and when should you manage?
There are three key questions to ask, and if any of those are true it is s time to move from being a manager to a leader.
1) Do we need to make a change in order to grow or even survive the future?
Amazing managers can optimize and improve, but if the situation requires a change it is time to throw away the manual (another word that comes from the Latin, manus). For a change, you need a leader. On January 15th, 2009 as US Airways Flight 1549 climbed over New York City, the crew experienced a nightmare — a double engine failure from multiple bird strikes. Having quickly exhausted the procedures in the manual, there was no more managing left to do. Captain “Sully” Sullenberger made the decision to land in the Hudson River, saving all onboard the aircraft. Beyond being a remarkable feat of flying, it is an exemplary bit of leadership. Applying six-sigma, exercising management-by-walking -around, or even holding a brainstorming session, were not going to work. Only a Leader as Change Agent was going to save the day!
“In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn’t necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it.” — Seth Godin
Since most of us will not need to apply leadership in life and death situations, a useful question to ask is “What is the best I can hope to achieve with management tools?” If all was fully optimized and efficient and lean and all the other important terms of management, then where would you and the team be? This is a powerful question…if truly applied. First, it means that to be successful as a manager you must master the tools of management so it is possible to answer the question. Second, you must develop a true honesty with yourself about the ability of you and your team to hit the maximum value with these tools. That achievement is rare. Don’t bet on always being the best and hitting the near-impossible goal every time.
2) Are the people on my team able to drive change without me?
If you are the only one who can drive change, then, again, you and your team are limited by your abilities. It’s time to start coaching your team members to advance their own skills. Coaching is a leadership skill. Creating a high-performing jazz ensemble is a wonderful example. In this essay, David Berger, a high-school music teacher, gives a masterful example of management and leadership, particularly coaching. He talks about how jazz was traditionally learned from experienced players but in the high school setting, there is only one experienced player, the teacher. So he arranges the seating of the ensemble to allow them to better hear and learn from each other — management. He then goes on to describe how to help his bassist feel confident without an amplifier — coaching (a part of leadership). And then he further describes the changes that every other player can make now that the bassist no longer is amplified and drowning the other players out. It is a masterful example of Leader as Coach.
“A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.” — Rosalynn Carter
An insightful illustration offered by music performance is the difference between a symphony conductor and a jazz leader. A conductor needs to manage the performance all the way to the end. To be certain, conductors can be leaders, but on the stage, they manage. Note: in jazz, the term “leader” is used, not “conductor.” At the time of the performance, most of the active leadership is done. It all happened in rehearsals. The successful jazz leader has been coaching the ensemble so that they now can make decisions and adapt as the performance evolves. In the performance, only light leadership is needed. Done well, the result is a moving piece of art unmatched in other genres.
3) Do my people have Joy at Work?
A great manager will have laid out the skills each person on the team needs to be successful. A great manager will carefully define the competencies required for each job and then match employees to those jobs. A great manager will give instructive feedback about how each person on the team is doing and how the team is doing as a whole so that action can be taken to continually improve. All of that work is wonderful, but done at the top-level of managerial performance with the subtle and impactful conversations, it will not grow Joy at Work. Only a leader can provide the conditions that grow Joy at Work.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Whether it is research from 15 years ago or more recent popular books, growing Joy at Work is reported as elusive for so many. Why?
On the surface, growing Joy at Work is in tension with business profitability. The business is about the service or goods it produces, not about being a joy generator for employees, right? In the moment-by-moment decision-making that is true for every manager, the pressure is to handle the solution to the immediate problem. Growing Joy at Work for those on your team is great, but you have a problem to solve now! This is another distinguishing characteristic between the leader and the manager.
Managers solve immediate problems. Leaders solve future problems,
I’ve been conducting research into growing Joy at Work. There is far more to learn before publishing anything in an academic journal, but one pattern is clear. Leaders, who use change initiatives to not only get the work done but to advance their team’s culture, get to experience the benefits of growing Joy at Work. Those who are leaders in name but not intention, and who tend to shove change into their team, often experience the perils of being a change agent. There is a connection between change and Joy at Work. Each reinforces the other. Whether that reinforcement is positive or negative is created by the intent of the leader.
“There are many leaders in this world but few will ever feel the joy of true, virtuous followership.” — Roxanne Brown
Do you need a manager or a leader?
The answer, not surprisingly, is you need both to grow Joy at Work. A great manager can create a high-performing team that gets more efficient with every turn of the management screw. ut the business annals are rife with well-managed companies that flamed out because of lack of leadership. A great leader can avert disaster and lead the team to safety, but without a strong managerial system, the group will lurch from crisis to crisis. Great organizations need effective managers and inspired leaders to grow Joy at Work. | https://medium.com/swlh/do-you-need-a-manager-or-a-leader-c213ab9db6f7 | ['Edward Cook'] | 2020-08-10 11:06:23.251000+00:00 | ['Teamwork', 'Management', 'Leadership', 'Change Management', 'Joy At Work'] |
Looking for a shift to another technology? Get to know Power Apps | I started my career a bit differently than most programmers working at Xpand IT. Let me share with you a little bit of my story: I studied video games programming, and while there is a lot of field-specific knowledge that wouldn’t normally be useful for a normal IT company, the vast majority of concepts are the same, whether you are making the next GTA or a Snapchat clone. So, when I came to an interview at Xpand IT, and I was asked if I knew something called Microsoft Power Apps, I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. And even after having been explained, I wasn’t entirely convinced. I remember thinking at the time: “how can you build anything complex without coding?”… but I confess, it did pique my curiosity, so I accepted the challenge.
And let me tell you, I underestimated Power Apps. When I was making games, it took me a few weeks to have a playable demo that looked remotely like the design of the final game, and many hours of looking at code to figure out why my character was dying when he jumped on top of a chair. With Power Apps, I built a fully functioning app on my first week on the job.
I was surprised by how simple the platform is compared to what it is capable of. Don’t get me wrong: being completely honest, it is clear that Power Apps still has a lot to improve. There are numerous aspects still under development, but if you want to build an application with little to no code, or if you want to change technologies and start developing for web and mobile; or better yet, you are just like me, have just entered the tech world and you’re looking for a place to start, then Power Apps might be the perfect fit for you. But what exactly is Power Apps?
What exactly is Power Apps?
Power Apps is Microsoft’s solution for “building professional-grade apps the easy way.” With more than 200 templates available, from Budget Tracker to Trip Organizer, you will almost always find a template that you can adapt to your own needs. Another advantage is that if there is nothing available, making your own from scratch is just as easy, even if you have never programmed before. You will always need advanced coding if you want or need custom development or integration with other services. However, all you need to start building these applications is a passion for tech and a will to learn. That’s how simple it is, really!
You don’t even need to worry about having an Android and an iOS version because your app will run on both platforms without any extra configurations. If you have ever used Excel or PowerPoint, you will feel right at home as the user interface combines features from both of them, such as PowerPoint slides and Excel’s formula bar.
Another great feature of the Power Platform is Power Automate (previously known as Microsoft Flow), which is the “brains” behind Power Apps. With Power Automate, you can build automated workflows, from sending a notification to users when one of their files is updated to kickstarting approval flows when a form is submitted. And you have hundreds of templates, which you can easily adapt to all your company’s needs.
Power Apps and Power Automate combined are very powerful tools, either in the hands of someone new to programming to someone with decades of experience.
Challenges I faced using Power Apps
When I joined Xpand IT, I was the first Power Apps exclusive programmer. Others worked with the Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI), but I was the first one hired just for this job. And the fact that Power Apps is recent means that the documentation can be outdated or, in some cases, non-existent. But the community was there to help me. Most problems I faced were encountered previously by someone else, and when I posted my own issues, someone was there to help me out.
Now, Power Apps can’t do everything. For starters, it’s a business-driven platform, meaning it’s for internal company use only. Examples of this kind of internal-use applications include Expense Tracking, Stock Maintenance, or even Employee Timesheets. Being a business-driven platform means that your app won’t be available for public use; only users inside your company’s Office 365 will be able to access them. And there are some other things you won’t be able to do yet, as many new features are constantly under development or on Microsoft’s backlog, which you can contribute to and vote on features that you want to see implemented first. Still, I have always found a way to keep the client happy by adjusting their needs to what the platform is capable of at the moment.
Regardless of the challenges I faced when developing in Power Apps, I think Microsoft’s Power Platform shows a lot of potential and it’s definitely worth a try. Why?
5 Reasons why you should try Power Apps
1) Cross-Platform Support
With Power Apps, you design and create your app once and it is instantly available on all iOS, Android, and Web devices. No need to design the same app for different devices!
2) No need to go through an App Store
You don’t need to go through the hassle of getting your application approved on the App Store or Play Store since Power Apps already has an app where you have access to all the apps that you own or that are shared with you. This means that you can push updates to your internal users instantly, no waiting for updates or downloads!
3) Low-Code Approach
With the 200+ templates and the Excel/PowerPoint-like experience, even non-tech employees can create internal applications that can provide value for businesses.
4) Connect to other services
You can connect your app to different services using the 200+ connectors, so even if you are using a non-Microsoft product, it’s very likely a connector exists that allows you to automate your workflow using Power Automate. And if it doesn’t exist, you can create it — and integrate it.
5) Cut development time
With templates, visual designer and workflow automation, Power Apps accelerate development time drastically, leaving a lot more time for the customization and testing of your app. With the added time Power Apps offers you by cutting development time, you ensure your app can be deployed faster but you won’t need to compromise on quality or performance.
Conclusion
Since I started working with Power Apps I have created applications for different companies in various industries such as financial services, public transportation, retail, etc. I’ve also built applications for our company and for the use of my co-workers. I believe that my work and the applications I build with Power Apps make life easier for the people that use them.
Having said all this, I hope I convinced you to try Power Apps. It´s a very powerful platform that you can learn to use very fast, and it is under constant improvement, which means it’s only going to get better and better every day. You can start your journey here or take a look at existing templates here. And if you have any questions, just let us know — maybe we can help. | https://medium.com/xtechportugal/looking-for-a-shift-to-another-technology-get-to-know-power-apps-4c798cc792ec | ['Diogo Gomes'] | 2020-04-23 16:52:50.024000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Low Code', 'Tech', 'Careers', 'Microsoft Power Apps'] |
Cloudera Cluster Deployment Automation | Big Data can be defined using the famous 3 Vs — Volume, Velocity and Variety. One could think that such a notion would be of interest only to global behemoths, the likes of Google and Amazon. Nevertheless, during the last 10 years that we have experienced an unprecedented boom in software startups, many smaller to medium-sized companies have come to realize the merits of crunching the data they produce. Such a practice can lead to enhanced user experience, faster troubleshooting, and better decision making overall.
At Upstream we have chosen some well established open-source Apache-licensed platforms such as Hadoop, Spark and Kafka in order to handle the events that our applications produce. As part of our effort to evaluate various reliable engines for SQL processing over data stored in HDFS, we decided to try the Impala query engine.
Since the existing documentation regarding the installation process of the Apache-licensed Impala daemons was quite limited, we chose to install it using the version shipped by Cloudera.
Cloudera to the rescue
Cloudera is a US-based company which offers CDH (Cloudera Distributed Hadoop), an open-source platform distribution. At the heart of CDH lies Cloudera Manager which allows managing CDH clusters end-to-end, and is comprised of the following main components:
Cloudera Manager Server: An application that includes an Admin Console Web UI as well as an API and is responsible for installing, configuring and managing the cluster on which Big Data services run.
An application that includes an Admin Console Web UI as well as an API and is responsible for installing, configuring and managing the cluster on which Big Data services run. Cloudera Manager Agent: An application that is installed in each host of the cluster responsible for monitoring the host and managing the running services based on the instructions of the Server.
Setting up a Cloudera Manager Cluster
The process of installing a Cloudera Manager Cluster consists of two steps:
The first one has to do with the installation of the Cloudera Manager Server and Agent services to our hosts. At Upstream we use the Ansible orchestration tool for OS-provisioning and software installation, hence it was the obvious choice for the implementation of this step. The second one has to do with the Big Data services installation (Hadoop, Spark, Impala etc.) via the Cloudera Manager Server. The easiest and best documented way for this is via the Cloudera Manager Server Web UI, a wizard-like intuitive interface that allows the user to select which service will be installed to which host, and perform the required configuration.
But what if apart from our main production cluster, we need to set up a second one for new feature testing, or a third one for performance testing? What if we need to spin-up a whole short-lived cluster just to look into the feasibility of a new idea? In such a case, the administrator has to manually repeat the tedious task of applying the required settings via the UI, adjusting them every time to the needs of the specific cluster.
That is where the Cloudera Manager API comes in handy. Since the step-by-step process of creating a Cloudera Cluster via the API is not clearly documented, and the API offers an overwhelming amount of options, we decided to investigate how to utilize it in order to produce a fully automated deployment procedure.
Utilizing the Cloudera Manager API
In order to showcase our approach of utilizing the API, we will provide an example of setting up an HDFS service that spans across three hosts, one NameNode and two DataNodes, by following discrete and intuitive steps.
We make the assumption that the hosts used in our demonstration have been setup with FQDNs host-master-fqdn , host-slave1-fqdn and host-slave2-fqdn respectively. As a prerequisite step, Cloudera Manager Agent service has been installed to all three of them, and a Cloudera Manager Server instance is running on host host-master-fqdn . Finally, the parcel including the software versions of the components we need to install has been successfully distributed and activated. A parcel is a Cloudera specific binary distribution format containing the program files, along with additional metadata used by Cloudera Manager. Cloudera Manager Server by default utilizes port 7180, which provides access to both the Web UI and the Rest API. All the following commands are issued on host host-master-fqdn . Note that the output of the issued commands corresponds to Cloudera API version 6.3.0. [API Ref]
At first we retrieve the API version, which is a prerequisite for the API calls to follow:
$ curl -XGET -u admin:admin http://localhost:7180/api/version v33
Cloudera Manager by default assigns a hostId uuid value to each host that runs the Cloudera Agent daemon and sends a heartbeat to the Cloudera Manager Server (abridged output to only depict the fields of interest):
$ curl -XGET -u admin:admin http://localhost:7180/api/v33/hosts {
"items" : [ {
"hostId" : "e7e98d00-e7d1-4ab9-a2be-5716e30c1346",
"hostname" : "host-master-fqdn"
}, {
"hostId" : "33376508-c3d8-452f-a0f9-f50f770c2bea",
"hostname" : "host-slave1-fqdn"
}, {
"hostId" : "412f8599-f5f4-4193-b454-5f42506011e6",
"hostname" : "host-slave2-fqdn"
}]
}
This hostId to FQDN mapping will come handy in various subsequent API calls, since Cloudera Manager recognizes hosts by their hostId.
A Cloudera Manager installation can orchestrate multiple clusters, but we use the convention of one cluster per installation to keep things simple. In order to add a new cluster named upstream:
$ curl -XPOST -u admin:admin -H "content-type:application/json" -d @cm-cluster http://localhost:7180/api/v33/clusters
$ cat cm-cluster {
"items" : [ {
"name" : "upstream",
"version" : "CDH6",
"fullVersion" : "6.3.0"
} ]
}
We add our hosts to the newly created cluster using the hostId values that were retrieved from a previous step:
$ curl -XPOST -u admin:admin -H "content-type:application/json" -d @cm-cluster-hosts http://localhost:7180/api/v33/clusters/upstream/hosts $ cat cm-cluster-hosts {
"items" : [ {
"hostId" : "e7e98d00-e7d1-4ab9-a2be-5716e30c1346"
}, {
"hostId" : "33376508-c3d8-452f-a0f9-f50f770c2bea"
}, {
"hostId" : "412f8599-f5f4-4193-b454-5f42506011e6"
} ]
}
The next step is to check the serviceTypes that our CDH cluster supports (output might differ based on CDH and parcels versions):
$ curl -XGET -u admin:admin http://localhost:7180/api/v33/clusters/upstream/serviceTypes {
"items" : [ "SOLR", "ACCUMULO_C6", "ADLS_CONNECTOR", "LUNA_KMS", "HBASE", "SENTRY", "HIVE", "KUDU", "HUE", "FLUME", "DATA_CONTEXT_CONNECTOR", "SPARK_ON_YARN", "THALES_KMS", "HIVE_EXEC", "HDFS", "OOZIE", "ISILON", "SQOOP_CLIENT", "KS_INDEXER", "ZOOKEEPER", "YARN", "KMS", "KEYTRUSTEE", "KEYTRUSTEE_SERVER", "KAFKA", "IMPALA", "AWS_S3" ]
}
In order to create the HDFS service the caller can pack all the relevant information (service configuration, roles, configuration groups) in one API call, but we choose to set up the service piecemeal to maintain simplicity and readability.
At first we enable the HDFS service in our cluster:
$ curl -XPOST -u admin:admin -H "content-type:application/json" -d @cm-service http://localhost:7180/api/v33/clusters/upstream/services $ cat cm-service {
"items" : [ {
"name" : "hdfs",
"type" : "HDFS"
} ]
}
Checking the available RoleTypes of our HDFS service will require the following call:
$ curl -XGET -u admin:admin http://localhost:7180/api/v33/clusters/upstream/services/hdfs/roleTypes {
"items" : [ "DATANODE", "NAMENODE", "SECONDARYNAMENODE", "BALANCER", "GATEWAY", "HTTPFS", "FAILOVERCONTROLLER", "JOURNALNODE", "NFSGATEWAY" ]
}
Our purpose is to assign the role of NAMENODE to host host-master-fqdn , and the role of DATANODE to our slave hosts host-slave1-fqdn and host-slave2-fqdn . Once again we utilize the hostIds that we have already retrieved from a previous step. We define a name for each role that we assign, by convention one that includes the name of the service, the role and an indicative part of the host FQDN. If such a name is not provided in the API call, Cloudera Manager will automatically generate one.
$ curl -XPOST -u admin:admin -H "content-type:application/json" -d @cm-roles http://localhost:7180/api/v33/clusters/upstream/services/hdfs/roles $ cat cm-roles {
"items" : [ {
"name" : "hdfs-NAMENODE_master",
"type" : "NAMENODE",
"hostRef" : {
"hostId" : "e7e98d00-e7d1-4ab9-a2be-5716e30c1346"
}
}, {
"name" : "hdfs-DATANODE_slave1",
"type" : "DATANODE",
"hostRef" : {
"hostId" : "33376508-c3d8-452f-a0f9-f50f770c2bea"
}
}, {
"name" : "hdfs-DATANODE_slave2",
"type" : "DATANODE",
"hostRef" : {
"hostId" : "412f8599-f5f4-4193-b454-5f42506011e6"
}
} ]
}
As a final step, we need to define the configuration that will be applied to our newly installed HDFS service.
Service configuration is separated into Service-wide and RoleType-wide configuration.
The distinction between the two lies in the fact that the former typically includes settings that affect multiple role types, such as HDFS Replication Factor, whereas the latter is a template that gets inherited by specific role instances, for example by each Data Node.
Service-wide configuration
As part of our example, we will update the value of the HDFS Replication Factor which is represented by the dfs_replication variable (it has a default value of 3):
$ curl -XPUT -u admin:admin -H "content-type:application/json" -d @cm-service-config http://localhost:7180/api/v33/clusters/upstream/services/hdfs/config $ cat cm-service-config {
"items" : [ {
"name" : "dfs_replication",
"value" : "2"
} ]
}
RoleType-wide configuration
Finally, we need to define the configuration that will be applied to each of our role types. For that purpose we make use of the roleConfigGroups resource of the API:
$ curl -XGET -u admin:admin http://localhost:7180/api/v33/clusters/upstream/services/hdfs/roleConfigGroups | jq '.items[].name' "hdfs-NAMENODE-BASE"
"hdfs-FAILOVERCONTROLLER-BASE"
"hdfs-SECONDARYNAMENODE-BASE"
"hdfs-DATANODE-BASE"
"hdfs-BALANCER-BASE"
"hdfs-GATEWAY-BASE"
"hdfs-JOURNALNODE-BASE"
"hdfs-HTTPFS-BASE"
"hdfs-NFSGATEWAY-BASE"
Cloudera Manager creates one roleConfigGroup per supported roleType using the naming convention <service_name>-<RoleType>-BASE . We can review the current value of our configured parameters (i.e. for NAMENODE ):
$ curl -XGET -u admin:admin http://localhost:7180/api/v33/clusters/upstream/services/hdfs/roleConfigGroups/hdfs-NAMENODE-BASE/config {
"items" : [ {
"name" : "dfs_namenode_servicerpc_address",
"value" : "8022",
"sensitive" : false
} ]
}
The call reverts only parameters for which we have overridden the default value. In order to review the full list of supported parameters (which can include dozens or hundreds of items) along with a short description for each one, we can append the view=FULL query string to the URL (output omitted for obvious reasons):
curl -XGET -u admin:admin http://localhost:7180/api/v33/clusters/upstream/services/hdfs/roleConfigGroups/hdfs-NAMENODE-BASE/config?view=FULL
We notify the Cloudera Server of the desired configuration values for both the NAMENODE and DATANODE role types:
$ curl -XPUT -u admin:admin -H "content-type:application/json" -d @cm-nn-config http://localhost:7180/api/v33/clusters/upstream/services/hdfs/roleConfigGroups/hdfs-NAMENODE-BASE/config $ cat cm-nn-config
{
"items" : [ {
"name" : "dfs_name_dir_list",
"value" : "/data/hdfs/namenode"
}, {
"name" : "namenode_java_heapsize",
"value" : "1073741824"
} ]
} $ curl -XPUT -u admin:admin -H "content-type:application/json" -d @cm-dn-config http://localhost:7180/api/v33/clusters/upstream/services/hdfs/roleConfigGroups/hdfs-DATANODE-BASE/config $ cat cm-dn-config
{
"items" : [ {
"name" : "dfs_data_dir_list",
"value" : "/data/hdfs/datanode"
}, {
"name" : "datanode_java_heapsize",
"value" : "1073741824"
} ]
}
The above calls do not introduce new configuration to Cloudera Server, rather than simply override the existing default values, and that explains the HTTP PUT method used (in contrast to the POST method of the previous steps).
Making the most of the API Functionality using Ansible
Ansible orchestration tool provides a vast collection of modules, which are standalone scripts that can interact with the local machine or a remote system to perform specific tasks. Modules can also interact with APIs, and it is customary for users to develop their own custom modules in order to handle such an interaction.
Since we chose Ansible to perform OS-level provisioning and Cloudera software installation, it was only normal for us to develop our own custom module to handle the communication with the Cloudera Manager API, and perform a fully automated configuration of Cloudera cluster and services.
Cloudera Manager 6.0 introduces a Swagger-based Python API client named cm_client that is compatible with all CM API versions, and replaces the cm-api one that is now considered deprecated.
In order to avoid such external dependencies, and also obtain a deeper understanding of the API functionality, we developed our module using the ubiquitous python requests library, based on the steps of the previous section.
The role of each host is declared in the INI-like static Ansible inventory file:
[hdfs-namenode]
host-master-fqdn [hdfs-datanodes]
host-slave1-fqdn
host-slave2-fqdn
The configuration that was applied step by step in the previous section is assembled using the below yaml syntax:
name: 'hdfs'
type: 'HDFS'
cluster: 'upstream'
config:
- name: dfs_replication
value: 2
roles:
- type: namenode
hosts: {{ groups['hdfs-namenode'] }}
- type: datanode
hosts: {{ groups['hdfs-datanodes'] }}
roleConfigGroups:
namenode:
- name: dfs_name_dir_list
value: "/data/hdfs/namenode"
- name: namenode_java_heapsize
value: "1073741824"
datanode:
- name: dfs_data_dir_list
value: "/data/hdfs/datanode"
- name: datanode_java_heapsize
value: "1073741824"
Since some configuration parameters require different values per deployed cluster, we utilize Jinja2 templating to enable dynamic access to variables:
datanode:
- name: datanode_java_heapsize
value: "{{ datanode_heapsize_bytes }}"
As part of our Ansible tasks, we first create a local copy of the configuration yaml file where all dynamic variables have been replaced with the desired values using the template module:
- name: Create Service configuration file from template
template:
src: 'hdfs/config.yml.j2'
dest: '/tmp/hdfs-config.yml'
delegate_to: localhost
This file is then provided as input to our custom module, which interacts with the Cloudera Manager API to perform the requested setup:
- name: Perform Cloudera Cluster setup (via the API)
api_custom_module:
conf_file: '/tmp/hdfs-config.yml'
delegate_to: localhost
Next steps
During the last few years Kubernetes has emerged as the de-facto standard workload scheduler in the cloud. At Upstream we are responding to the momentum behind it by deploying and managing our on-premises cluster, with the final purpose of transferring all our live applications to it, including our Big Data stack.
CDH does not inherently support Kubernetes deployments, yet Cloudera recently announced the CDP Private Cloud, designed to work with IBM RedHat’s OpenShift Kubernetes-based private cloud environment.
Combining the ability of the Cloudera API to simplify complex and intertwining configuration between Big Data services, along with the efficiency of resource-management provided by Kubernetes is a prospect that we are eager to start exploring and implementing in our workloads.
Conclusion
Based on the process that we have developed, in order to deploy a new Cloudera cluster from scratch, all the administrator has to do is to define which role each host will undertake in the Ansible inventory file, as well as specify the values of the cluster specific configuration variables, such as the desired java heap size per process.
The custom Ansible module takes care of the communication with the Cloudera Manager API, giving us the ability to not only perform a very fast first time deployment, but also safely update configuration values for an existing cluster, and ensure consistency across all hosts’ and clusters’ configuration.
References
https://cloudera.github.io/cm_api/docs/python-client-swagger/
http://cloudera.github.io/cm_api/docs/quick-start/
https://github.com/cloudera/cm_api/blob/master/python/examples/auto-deploy/deploycloudera.py
https://docs.cloudera.com/documentation/enterprise/latest/topics/cm_intro_automation_api.html#xd_583c10bfdbd326ba--7f25092b-13fba2465e5--7f17
https://docs.cloudera.com/documentation/enterprise/latest/topics/cm_intro_api.html#xd_583c10bfdbd326ba--7f25092b-13fba2465e5--7f20 | https://medium.com/upstream-engineering/cloudera-cluster-deployment-automation-82a987185f51 | [] | 2020-12-18 18:22:08.837000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Deployment', 'Ansible', 'DevOps', 'Cloudera'] |
Cat Neutering, a Good or a Bad Decision? | Education
Cat Neutering, a Good or a Bad Decision?
I know that most people regard cat neutering as a cruel act because your beloved cat has to go through a painful procedure of surgery. But this is for the better good, there are numerous benefits of neutering/spaying a cat, or even a dog. And people need to understand that neutering not only benefits your pets but it also benefits you too. But everything has its price, there are some setbacks of neutering/spaying too. We will discuss all the aspects so you can make an informed decision about your pet.
Female cats are spayed which means the removal of ovaries and uterus. Male cats are neutered which involves the removal of testes.
Positive Aspects of Cat Neutering/Spaying
Population control
By spaying/ neutering your pet you will contribute to birth control. Millions of pets result in being homeless due to the increasing population and many are euthanized. So you could prevent that.
Prevention of disease
When you get your female cat spayed before her first heat cycle, the risk of cervical, mammary, and ovarian cancer is greatly reduced. Removing the ovaries results in decreased levels of hormones that lower the cancer risks. The estrous cycle of a cat is the time when it comes into heat.
Neutering your male cat prevents testicular cancer and prostate problems.
Feline Leukemia and Feline AIDS are two diseases that are spread when a diseased cat bites a healthy cat, neutered/spayed cats do not have much urge to fight over a mate. Thus these diseases are prevented.
Less roaming around
When males and females go onto heat they have an urge to mate. They will run out of the house as soon as you open the door. They will try to escape and can get into all sorts of troubles outside. By neutering/spaying you can prevent this.
Reduction of inappropriate urination
Male cats urinate outside their litter box to mark their territory, it alerts other males that another male has marked his territory. The urine has a very pungent smell. Neutering a male cat eliminates its urge to spray.
Female cats secrete a vaginal fluid when they go into heat, this attracts males. By spaying your cat you can prevent this.
Reduce fights or disputes
Due to a hormonal system, unneutered male cats look for mates and defend their territory against other males. This results in territorial disputes when they come across another male, especially when a female cat is nearby.
Cost-effective when compared to breeding
The cost of spaying/neutering is less than as compared to caring for a litter. And caring for the litter requires a lot of responsibility and you need to give a lot of your time.
Negative Aspect of Cat Neutering/Spaying
Surgical risk
Everybody knows that Neutering/Spaying involves surgery. Even though this procedure is common but still there are some risks involved with this procedure. There are chances of developing infections but that is rare. Moreover, anesthesia is also involved which also has some risks.
There is a misconception that Neutering or Spaying may cause weight gain. But this is just a myth there is no scientific evidence about this. Lack of exercise and an unbalanced diet is the reason behind it. There is no relation between weight gain and neutering. | https://medium.com/creatures/cat-neutering-a-good-or-a-bad-decision-5c837bed2196 | ['Saqib Ali'] | 2020-12-06 16:02:57.273000+00:00 | ['Catholic', 'Cats', 'Felines', 'Cat Care', 'Education'] |
The MailPanda | Hello! Guys, today I’m going share my story with this product called “MailPanda” and how I used it to send a lot of emails at very low cost!
So first, let me introduce you what this MailPanda all about.
What is MailPanda?
MailPanda is a new product from Daniel Adetunji that will launch on December 16, 2020 at 10am EST. It is a fully featured email application based in the cloud, which enables you to send emails to an unlimited amount of subscribers.
MailPanda literally sky-rocketed my deliverability rate by over a 25% increase. The results were not expected but very satisfying. This is just a perfect mailing system.
I have review access to MailPanda and I really liked the look and feel of this email application. There are a number of other cloud-based email apps available but a lot of them are pretty clunky to use. MailPanda was great to use.
With MailPanda you are in full control of your email marketing. You can manage all of your email lists from your dashboard and it has the following useful features:
List subscribers
List segments
List forms
List pages
Custom fields
The list segmentation feature is very useful. You can use it to break up a large list into several smaller ones. It is also possible for you to synchronize with existing lists for example. It is essential that you have your subscriber lists just how you want them for the most effective email marketing.
If you have emails on any lists that you want to blacklist then you can easily achieve this with MailPanda. To create great looking landing pages there is an easy to use drag and drop editor. You can start with a blank canvas and design your own page if you want, or you can use one of the awesome done for you templates.
It has all of the features that an autoresponder service has that you would pay a monthly fee for. You can set up as many autoresponder campaigns as you want and there is a broadcast feature, which allows you to send a single message out to the subscribers that you want.
You can associate your own domains with email lists. This means that the emails you send appear to have come from your domain name. If you want to connect other external apps to MailPanda, you can create your own API keys to do this. For example, you may want to automatically create campaigns or add new subscribers for example.
Any SMTP service will work seamlessly with MailPanda for the sending of your emails. You can certainly use any of the following:
MailGun
LeaderSend
Mandrill
DynEmail
SendGrid
SparkPost
Amazon SES
You can also use the PHP “mail” functionality through your web host.
All autoresponder services these days such as Aweber, Get Response, Constant Contact and the others require you to pay expensive monthly fees. The more subscribers you have, the more that you have to pay every month. MailPanda provides the same functionality without the monthly fees.
The delivery rate of emails to the inbox is high with MailPanda. Having no restrictions on the number of subscribers and the number of autoresponder campaigns is a big plus. Using MailPanda should save you a lot of money with your email marketing.
There are some great looking, high converting templates included with MailPanda that you can edit very quickly for your own campaigns. MailPanda provides incredible value for a low onetime price. Stop paying monthly autoresponder fees now.
It is very easy to use MailPanda; you do not require any previous experience with autoresponders. Just follow these steps:
Login to your MailPanda account
Create an email opt in form using the supplied templates or upload your existing contacts to MailPanda
Choose the SMTP service you want to use and connect this to MailPanda
Set up autoresponder campaigns or send broadcast emails to your subscribers
You can send the emails immediately or schedule them for later
MailPanda has a whole host of features that will help you succeed with email marketing including:
With all of these features and more it is crazy to pay a high monthly fee to autoresponder service providers. MailPanda does it all and you only pay a low onetime fee for it.
High deliverability to the inbox
Import lists of unlimited size
Readymade high converting templates
No restrictions on the amount of emails you can send
Full email marketing analytics
Unlimited autoresponder setup
Subscriber segmentation
Single or double optin
Spam score check
GDPR compliant
Add any media to your emails
Video tutorials
There are so many features available with MailPanda. I pay a small fortune each month for autoresponder services and now I want to switch to MailPanda. What is the point of paying expensive monthly fees when you can have all of the features for a low onetime price? Right!?
MailPanda is one software I’d recommend to every newbie out there in the internet marketing space, there’s no better way to grow your customer service relationship aside from communication, and when it comes to email marketing/communication, MailPanda is just perfect for that. | https://medium.com/@imbadass1995/the-mailpanda-8c4e40772a03 | [] | 2020-12-15 12:13:20.840000+00:00 | ['Product', 'Domains', 'Email Marketing', 'Email', 'Marketing'] |
Keycloak & Spring Boot Disable CORS | It took me a while to achieve this, I think someone will need it
@KeycloakConfiguration
class SecurityConfig extends KeycloakWebSecurityConfigurerAdapter { @Bean
public FilterRegistrationBean corsFilter() {
UrlBasedCorsConfigurationSource source = new UrlBasedCorsConfigurationSource();
CorsConfiguration config = new CorsConfiguration().applyPermitDefaultValues();
source.registerCorsConfiguration("/**", config);
FilterRegistrationBean bean = new FilterRegistrationBean(new CorsFilter(source));
bean.setOrder(Ordered.HIGHEST_PRECEDENCE);
return bean;
} @Override
protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
super.configure(http);
http.addFilter(corsFilter().getFilter())...
.anyRequest().authenticated() } } | https://medium.com/@bugr4/keycloak-spring-boot-disable-cors-f36355a373ba | [] | 2021-02-10 09:46:18.766000+00:00 | ['Keycloak', 'Spring Boot', 'Cors', 'Spring'] |
Visualizing NFL Free Agency as a Node Network | The first wave of NFL games is in the books. Le’Veon Bell is a Jet. Odell Beckham Jr. had to turn over his blue uniform for a brown (Browns) one. How many players did your favorite team lose this offseason? Who did they pick up? Where’s everybody going?
Every year, hundreds of players switch teams and sign big contracts in a mass exodus called NFL Free Agency. If you’re just tuning in for the beginning of the NFL season, your team might look very different from when you last saw them.
How do you make sense of player movement across teams and see the whole picture? I wondered the same thing, so I created a node network to visualize all of NFL free agency on one page.
Demo: https://nfl-fa-2019.surge.sh/
Zoomed out node network of 2019 NFL free agency
The NFL offseason is an integral retrospective of a team’s performance when they determine how to rebuild or retool their rosters within the constraints of the salary cap. During this phase, general managers seek talent in the NFL draft and in free agency. Free agents are players whose contracts have expired and, as such, are free to sign with any team.
Free Agency 2019 OverTheCap
Currently, to understand NFL free agency you must sift monotonously through tabulated records of players. For example, the 2019 free agency table from OverTheCap lists each player along with their old and new teams. Finding information for a particular player is easy, but understanding why a team might have made certain decisions is lost in the rows and columns.
I wanted to know how many players the Carolina Panthers signed this offseason, how many they lost, and how much money they spent on their newly signed players. I wanted to see which teams are attracting top talent and which teams are losing it. With each player acquisition, I wanted to evaluate whether or not a team improved upon their weaknesses from last season. If a team struggled defensively, I wanted to know whether or not they looked to improve their defense by signing defensive linemen, safeties, or linebackers. Most importantly, I wanted to discover new insights and relationships hidden amongst the rigidity of the table structure above.
Essentially it boils down to one question: What is the best way to view all types of player movement and easily drill down on specific player information?
Simple Node Network
My answer is to visualize free agency as a node network. A node network is a direct representation of a graph, which is made up of edges (links) and vertices (nodes). Links are connections between nodes to show their respective relationships. This visualization is very tempting since it shows the flow of all players between teams and encodes various information into the size of the nodes and colors of the links.
But a node network comes with its own drawbacks. Searching for a particular set of nodes becomes difficult with large amounts of data. The network is often cluttered and requires a great deal of tedious tweaking and optimization, and encoding that much information makes a lot of assumptions about the audience, especially one that is not familiar with NFL lingo or semantics. However, it was still worth a shot. | https://medium.com/nightingale/visualizing-nfl-free-agency-as-a-node-network-d0b00e5ad4f2 | ['Advaith Venkatakrishnan'] | 2019-09-18 16:05:47.372000+00:00 | ['Sportsviz', 'NFL', 'D3js', 'Dataviz', 'Sports'] |
Outlier — Szukamy prelegentów. Tłumaczenie Outlier — Apply to Speak! | Sign up for The 'Gale
By Nightingale
Keep up with the latest from Nightingale, the journal of the Data Visualization Society Take a look | https://medium.com/nightingale/outlier-szukamy-prelegent%C3%B3w-ebbc42f006fe | ['Mollie Pettit'] | 2020-10-16 19:40:58.361000+00:00 | ['Conference', 'Dataviz', 'Data Visualization', 'Community', 'Outlierconference'] |
18 Tips To Help You Save Some Cash Everyday | 18 Tips To Help You Save Some Cash Everyday
Some people loathe frugal living as they associate it with poverty and lacking. But in all honesty, there is always more to do with money than the money that is available, and that is where frugal living comes in. It helps us save up some cash that can be channeled into the core expenses such as food, housing, clothing, education, savings and investments for individuals. If there is some left over, we can use it to entertain or treat ourselves.
Companies and businesses also need to audit their spending to maximize their profits and ensure they have more finances to plough back into their business to grow them. Saving also applies to them.
I admire the Dutch for their frugality among other things and I am very frugal myself.
Of course there has to be healthy boundaries between living frugally and being a miser. No one wants to be a real life Ebenezer Scrooge. It’s not a good colour on anyone and it’s not a way to live a fun, healthy and fulfilling life.
Here are some tips to help you save some extra coins.
Buy in bulk
Buying in bulk is always cheaper than buying items in singles. Rather than buy one bar of soap, if you can, buy the whole carton.
A big packet of salt will always be cheaper than five smaller packets in the same quantities.
Buying in bulk saves you from poverty tax where you are charged for every extra quantity you consume. Poor people end up paying more for goods because they cannot afford to buy them in larger quantities at one go.
There are several wholesale shops in many localities that sell goods in bulk and in wholesale prices too. Remember to buy commodities in bulk in the quantities that can serve you for stipulated time periods. Never buy perishables in bulk if you do not have appropriate places to store them as they will go bad and that will beat the whole purpose of buying in bulk in the first place.
Buy Quality
Rather than buy one item that will serve you but last for a shorter time period forcing you to purchase another one, you’d rather buy an item that will be expensive to begin with but will save you subsequent visits to the shops to purchase others.
Buy high quality clothes, handbags or shoes that will last you longer. Buy heavy duty high quality tires for your car or cooking pots that will take time before they wear and tear for your home.
This will also also save you on poverty tax and will be value for your money.
Wait for sale season
There are usually a lot of sale seasons throughout the year. It maybe Christmas or end of year sales, Mother’s Day sales, Easter or black Friday sales etc.
Plan to purchase items (if they can wait) during these periods because you will land on a good deal for the same price had you bought the item at other times in the year.
Book holidays when companies are giving offers and buy items when there is a buy one, get one free offer.
Buying in sale seasons requires a lot of patience though as during other times you may see an item that you like and maybe unable to wait for a few weeks or months to get it.
Sometimes the items on sale during these seasons may also not be the items you fancy and this can be frustrating making this tip not very reliable at all times.
Different shops also give out shop sales at their own timings too so look out for these. They could be celebrating some wins, anniversaries, opening new branches or closing old ones or even rewarding their customers.
Be careful here too as some of these items may be factory rejects, have dents or those that have been left on the shelves for too long by other customers. Make sure you inspect such items properly before purchasing.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Non branded items
Employees in packaging companies always let us in on some company secrets. The quality of products in some branded and non branded items is sometimes the same but retailers will charge you more for the branded items.
Some products such as sugar, rice, pasta etc fall in this category. Ask around for such items in your locality and buy the non branded items to avoid paying a higher price for the same quality of product inside the package.
Do make sure that what you are getting is still good quality for that price though.
Buy straight from the source
Avoid middle men as much as possible as they are in the supply chain to make a cut for themselves. Go straight to the source. Order supplies straight from the manufacturer or producer if they offer a good deal and avoid paying a higher price.
Rather than buy food stuffs or fruit and vegetables from the supermarket that have marked up their prices, go straight to the producer- the farmer. Visit local farmer’s markets where the prices are going to be lower for fresh and quality produce.
Photo by Shelley Pauls on Unsplash
Research
The ultimate way of ensuring that you are getting good deals is by doing research. This is particularly used when purchasing high value commodities such as property, houses, cars, home appliances etc. With the internet and with business adopting online systems, it is very easy to seek out the information you need in regards to quality, quantity and prices of commodities.
After doing thorough research on the internet, visit the shops you intend to purchase the products from to ascertain the information you got from the internet to avoid any last minute surprises. In the shops inspect the products thoroughly and ask as many questions as you can to the attendants to your satisfaction. After all, they are there to serve you.
Bargain
A lot of commodities are sold at fixed prices. But if you can get a shop that would be in for a haggle, don’t lose that chance to bargain for a lower price. It could save you up some extra change for fuel or a bag of groceries.
Some shops set their prices higher to allow customers room to bargain before settling on a final price.
Look out for after sale services
To avoid some of installation and maintenance costs associated with some purchases, buy from sellers that offer after sale services.
Do they offer free delivery, free installation, give free consultancy services, give a warranty if the product breaks down within a certain time period, etc. After sale services are very useful especially for high value or expensive commodities such as cars or home appliances.
Live within your means
One of the best tips for saving a coin is living within your means. Some people have called this bullshit advice as living above your means tends to push people to work harder in order to meet the short, but I disagree.
I’d rather have some extra money saved up for a rainy day or for investment projects, than to be able to ‘comfortably' pay all my expensive bills.
Resources in the universe are scarce and we should try to consume only what we need. Competition for and control of these resources is what leads to conflict. We can help ensure there is enough for everyone if we only consume what we need.
One of my life’s philosophies is to reduce consumption and never pile up things that I do not necessarily need.
You might disagree with me here, but don’t buy a car you can’t afford to fuel, a phone you can’t afford to fix in case it breaks down, a house who’s payments you can’t meet etc. Also never rent a house where you are always late to pay the bills. Never take your kids to schools you can’t comfortably afford to pay for. What’s the point of all that stress?
Cut your cloth according to your size.
Better on this one still, if you can, live below your means.
Avoid Debt Like The Plague
Debts are like quicksand. They stealthily suck you in. You will only realise how far deep you are when you can’t get yourself out.
And debts come together with their desolate relatives and their whole clan of misery. They also grow consistently burying you deeper into their clan of desolation.
Never take out debt to buy luxurious goods, or other stuff that you don’t really need. Starting a business with a debt can be tricky too as lots of business never make it to their second year which leaves lots of entrepreneurs in debt.
We live in an economic situation where having some debts is inevitable. Just be smart about what you do with the money that you have borrowed. The best situation is to put it in an income generating project to earn you money and to help you clear that debt.
Pay your debts too if you have to, to improve your financial situation and to avoid the pain and hustle of swimming in drowning debts.
Unplug unnecessary cords
Cut out unnecessary bills.
Do you have a subscription to a service that you don’t use on the regular? Cancel it. It could be a streaming service for entertainment, a membership to a gym or a club etc.
Do you pay for delivery for a product that you can pick on your way home? Cut that out too.
Also unplug cords in your house whose appliances are not in use to help save on electricity. It may be an empty freezer or fridge, a computer or television not in use etc. Also close your taps when you are not using them.
Fix broken stuff immediately
Fix the stuff that has broken down immediately to avoid the problem getting worse which might require you to incur bigger expenses fixing them.
Fix leaking taps, squeaky doors or broken cords immediately when you first notice the leaks or squeaks.
Go to the dentist when your tooth first chips or to the doctor immediately when you notice something is wrong.
Don’t procrastinate fixing stuff.
Cook at home
Buying food from restaurants is an expensive affair. For the price of a cup of tea of coffee, you could make three at home.
A plate of potatoes fries in a restaurant costs the same as a whole kilogram of them raw. These could feed you and your family for more than one meal.
Treat yourselves once in a while though, but make cooking at home a habit to help save up on food costs.
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
Carry from home
Are you going on a trip? Pack lunch, snacks or sandwiches from home to avoid the exaggerated prices of the same items while on the road.
Carrying lunch to work on the regular is also cheaper. When going to a movie, you can sneak in some snacks in your bag from home to avoid the highly marked up snacks available at the shops at the movies.
Grow what you can
You can keep chickens safely in your backyard to provide you with a regular supply of eggs.
You can also place a beehive in your garden or front yard to attract bees that will make honey for your personal consumption.
Why maintain a lawn in your front yard or backyard while you can grow some fruits and vegetables to help sustain your food needs?
Gardening is also very relaxing, and there is so much joy to be derived in seeing your plants grow that eventually end up on your plate.
If you grow excess food, you can store it to consume it later, or you can sell the surplus to your friends or neighbours.
Due to the high usage of chemicals in commercial agriculture these days, growing your own food could help you reduce your intake of these harmful chemicals, which in the long run will translate to better health for yourself and your family.
Buy in season
Many commodities, particularly some fruits and vegetables, are seasonal crops whose supply peaks at certain points in the year. And when their supply is high, their prices tend to go down.
Buy such goods while in season as it will save you some cash and store them appropriately so that you will be able to consume them when the prices go up later.
It can also help feed your cravings for certain items. If you love mangoes very much, enjoy lots of them during mango season when they are cheaper.
Buy second-hand
Some second-hand products do function as well as new products. Consider buying second-hand items to save on costs. Watch out for quality, though, as poor quality, second-hand products can be a true pain and may end up costing you the same or even more than a new product.
Second-hand products such as cars, furniture or household appliances may give you good service, especially if in good condition.
Buy them from credible sellers and ask the sellers, especially if they are the previous owners, questions on why they are selling the items.
Factors such as relocations or upgrades are good reasons for selling products. Avoid buying products that are too old models unless you are buying them as collectables.
Also, avoid buying items such as clothing or furniture if they look dirty or unkempt as they may contain pests such as bedbugs that are a complete nuisance, a health hazard, and are hard to get rid of.
After buying second-hand items, make sure you clean and disinfect them thoroughly before bringing them into your home.
Also, make sure that you do not purchase stolen items as it could land you in trouble with the law. Be vigilant. Ask for proof of ownership when buying items such as cars, electronics, or other larger items so as to be in the clear.
Loyalty points
Several retail outlets and companies do offer loyalty point programs that help customers receive cash backs and free or discounted products.
Register for such programs to help save up cash when you redeem your points from such systems. Also, purchase consistently from outlets that offer loyalty point programs to help save some extra cash in the future. | https://medium.com/illumination/18-tips-to-help-you-save-some-cash-everyday-2b5294f46cd3 | ['Gal Mux'] | 2020-12-24 19:21:42.698000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Saving Money', 'Money Management', 'Savings Tips', 'Self'] |
Help! I Am Hooked On External Validation! | Help! I Am Hooked On External Validation!
A psychologist’s guide to valuing your own needs properly—and gaining new confidence in yourself Annika Lindberg Apr 27·12 min read
Image credit: tadamichi
‘But why can’t I just be happy with what I have….On the surface everybody thinks my life is perfect. Even I feel like I have it all ….but still I feel empty inside. Will I ever be able to feel happy and satisfied?’
My client, Monique, looked at me with despair. Her perfected exterior provided a powerful camouflage for her fragile sense of self. The realisation had finally hit home. No amount of beautiful clothes, admiration from men, jealous colleagues, or successful ventures at work were able to hit the spot. She still did not feel good about herself. Something deep inside of her was calling for her to change…
When External Validation Leads to Abandonment of the Self
As a psychologist, there is not a day that goes past without someone in clinic presenting with a lack of self-love and a deep-seated wish to feel better about themselves. To not feel so dependent on others. To not have to feel so insecure all the time. To stop comparing oneself to other people and envy their achievements.
If you are someone struggling with low self-worth, you might already have noticed that the ‘work’ you put into getting liked by others — is not paying off. You might even resent those who do less of ‘pleasing others,’ yet end up getting all the rewards.
With or without realising it, you might be stuck in an unhelpful pattern of people-pleasing, self-editing, and a perpetual ‘chase’ for things outside of yourself. Meanwhile, your emotional needs may be neglected or suppressed. The boundaries that should be in place to protect your personal needs may be non-existent, weak, and contact with the self and your heartfelt values diminished. You might not even know who you are.
If this is you, please do not worry. While feeling depleted and emotionally drained makes for some terrible feelings — it is important to understand that it is you and only you that is keeping yourself stuck. Even if it sounds harsh at first, there is also a sense of empowerment in knowing that you have what it takes to change and that you don’t need to wait for anyone or anything else to get it started.
So if this resonates, start by making a firm decision that you have had enough pain and that you need to change.
Poor Consideration of Your Own Needs Reinforces a State of Low Self-Worth
Being ‘needless’ might appear to make life easy at first. It does, of course, often make life easy for people around you. Too easy in fact. Sadly, operating without expressing or fulfilling your personal needs will inevitably lead to feeling as though you have let yourself down. It also goes without saying that other people will seem to disappoint you since their actions are unlikely to match your hidden needs.
Your true and authentic self cannot gain its full expression if you are not prepared to be honest and upfront about what you need in order to be happy. For most people, some of the habits that are based on low self-worth are barely operating consciously, and they may require that you put yourself under the microscope and open up to learn about yourself and your habits.
Excessive External Validation Seeking: A Bad Habit That Gets Acquired Early in Life
Excessive external validation goes hand in hand with low self-worth and a feeling that lacking the approval of others means something important about one’s own value.
The perpetual chase for other peoples’ approval may be a response that was acquired early in life. Growing up in a family with overly critical, emotionally volatile, addicted, or unavailable parents—or a lack of unconditional love—a child might learn early to adjust themselves, to suppress their own needs, and to ‘hyper-monitor’ their environment for other peoples’ feelings and opinions about them.
Constant appeasing of parental needs may become a way to keep unpleasant situations unfolding or simply to feel loved and ‘good enough.’ Early in life, the behaviours may even have made sense, if they helped you survive in your environment. In some circumstances (and also to avoid pathologising or passing blame on others) there is a totally benign reason for why emotional needs went unmet, such as many siblings, parental illness, or absence due to work.
There could, of course, be other reasons why some people start becoming overly dependent on external validation. Being keen to be liked by others and achieving approval and admiration from those around us is a completely normal need that most people have. But when we try to gain approval from others at the expense of our own internal validation, the balance has definitely tipped over. We should never have to abandon ourselves to be liked by others!
Whilst the effects of being hooked on external validation may seem fairly innocent on the surface, the impact is often more far-reaching than people would even dare to imagine. By continuing to operate as though you are a person who does not place a high value on yourself, you can be sure other people will follow suit and treat you the same.
At the end of the day, we have to teach other people how to treat us.
External Validation and Its Many Disguises. Which Ones Resonate With You?
Below is a small list of behaviours that can keep you stuck in a dependency on other peoples’ opinions of you. Are any familiar?
Checking for admiration online
Like a pigeon in a ‘Skinner-box’ pecking at a lever until the reward comes in, you check frantically on your phone for any sort of attention or approval. Could be “likes” on your latest picture on social media, a response to something catchy you posted, or any signs that you are being noticed and admired.
The disappointment if you don’t receive any is huge, but that doesn’t stop you from checking again and again. When something finally comes in, you feel like you hit the jackpot and delude yourself into thinking it was all worthwhile.
When in a state of deprivation, even small drops of adoration can feel powerful and get addictive. In reality, the shortage in supply has nothing to do with them, and everything to do with you not liking yourself enough to start with. The internet can be a slippery slope even for those who start out on social media with reasonable self-esteem.
Over-giving
You do lots of things for other people — sometimes way more than you actually want to. While much of it feels honest and as a true reflection of ‘who you are,’ from time to time you can’t help but feel bitter and resentful that others don’t do as much for you. You feel a bit taken for granted in general and cannot understand why those who are less giving and saying ‘no’ seem to be getting all the props. You watch them grudgingly as they ‘cash in’ on favours, attention, promotions, and ‘the best,’ most loving partners. This makes you doubt yourself further and leads to more over-giving, in a desperate attempt to win people over.
You often find yourself in ‘performance mode’
You have become so skilled at acting the chameleon with others, that you actually don’t know who you really are underneath. You tell yourself that there is no way you can be honest about who you are, or what your needs are, since previous attempts to show the world the true you — have never quite seemed to impress others.
For the record: often, the real reason for failed attempts has to do with the choice of audience rather than an actual flaw or lack in you.
You engage heavily in people-pleasing
Being too nice, too understanding, too accommodating, and constantly feeling a bit frightened to upset others or gain disapproval. You operate with a preoccupation of what others will think or feel about you, even if logically you can understand that their opinion should not be all that important.
You are known to say YES when really you would like to say NO
Saying NO feels almost impossible for you. Yet, you feel a little jealous of other people who comfortably decline things that don’t suit them. Sometimes you even bitch a bit about them… but inside, you wonder why they are able to ‘get away’ with it when you feel like you wouldn’t.
The real reason they are getting away with it is that healthy boundaries send out to the world a message of worthiness and value. The boundaries communicate:
‘I am not going to accept being treated badly, dumped on, taken advantage of, or anything else unpleasant. If people don’t treat me with respect, I am not going to stand for it, and I will walk away from it.’
You overshare ideas, views, opinions, etc., constantly
You do this not so much because you find it engaging, but merely because you are thirsting for approval, peoples’ agreement, and other forms of interest that might temporarily boost your feelings about yourself.
The trouble is that baring your soul for people who have not earned your respect or trust will make you feel vulnerable and ‘in need’ of a particular response in order to have your shared material validated. When this doesn’t happen, you feel twice as vulnerable and likely to think it must have been something you said.
You have a habit of chasing
Be it material things, academic accolades, money, or people, you often feel as though you have to work hard to get what you deserve. (Paradoxically, you still don’t feel you get what you deserve). You feel ‘hooked’ on the opinions of others, and you yearn for approval. You have little boundaries on what you would be prepared to throw in to get the desired effect, be it your time, money, efforts, or dignity. Anything goes.
At the end of the day, you feel a distinct feeling of ‘empty hollow’ when you reflect back on actions. Even if the discrepancy between input and output is in your face, the habit of chasing is so compulsive that you struggle to stop.
You compare yourself to others
And you try to identify traits, themes, and behaviours in others that you quickly replicate in the hope that it will be successful for you also. If nothing else, at least you might feel like you are working on yourself.
Rather than turning your attention to your amazing inner world and its creativity and uniqueness, you churn your energy into trying to ‘figure out’ what it is that others have done to succeed. Needless to say, this misallocation of your attentional resources will backfire badly. Not only are you making yourself dependent on other peoples’ paths, which aren’t necessarily suited for you, but you are also keeping your own abilities and skills ‘rusty’ and unused.
Short-Term vs. Long-Term Emotional Consequences of Validation Seeking Behaviours
In my work with clients, I often explain the difference between short-term vs. long-term emotional gains. Although it may be obvious for many of you, I find that this knowledge really is critical for change. Without this understanding, there is always a risk that the short-term effect gets interpreted as an accurate indication of whether a behaviour is useful or not.
Our emotional brain is constantly seeking short-term gratification. It knows of nothing worse than discomfort of any kind — and certainly does not like the idea of rejection and disapproval. These are states that could have got our ancestors into seriously negative situations, as they depended on belonging to the herd in order to survive. The trouble is that this part of our brain does not have any real intelligence or reason, and hence it will allow itself to be ‘programmed’ by the feeling we achieve short-term from any given behaviour.
One part that often gets overlooked is how the emotional brain warms not only to the things that feel good in the short-term but also to whatever action that results in feeling ‘less bad.’ At times of emotional struggle, it will gear you towards any actions that can relieve such feelings, for example by numbing, avoiding, or deflecting…even when the behaviours involved may be outright destructive in the longer term.
Even if the emotional part of the brain does not care too much for how behaviours make us feel in the long term, our higher self does! Trading in our long-term happiness (and sense of worth) for some short-term boosts provides a guarantee for unfulfillment. It’s a bit like going to the gym. If we want to see results, we have to be prepared to stay with the discomfort and the pain. If we stop every time the going gets tough — nothing will ever change.
5 Ways of Breaking the Habit of External Validation Seeking That You Can Commit to Right Now
1. Have regular self-care days (or just an evening/hour).
Taking good care of yourself is an act of self-love, and one that will make you feel treated and ‘honoured.’ By giving love and appreciation to yourself, your dependency on other people giving you their appreciation should gradually start to lessen. Even better, you might eventually be repelled by people who cannot value you properly.
Take care of yourself from the inside and out. Eat nourishing foods, drink lots of water, get your rest, watch something stimulating, have a massage, put on decent clothes even when you are not seeing anyone — do what makes you feel good about yourself and dwell in the feeling of being there for yourself! This is the ultimate self-validation.
2. Stop chasing!
Be it romantic partners, friends, jobs, or material things; the act of chasing has never helped any person feel good about themselves.
It keeps you stuck in a perpetual feeling of neediness, unworthiness, and a desperation to be ‘chosen’ and liked. In relationships of any kind, chasing ascertains a dynamic in which you are establishing yourself on a back-foot. In order to feel high value, you need to act as if you have value. Even if you don’t feel it yet, you have to think and act as if you do regardless. Eventually, the feeling will follow.
Does this mean you are no longer allowed to date, go on social media, or make bids for attention? Not at all. It simply means stopping yourself in the track when you can sense that your behaviour is driven by insecurity, neediness, or self-doubt. There is a huge difference between behaviours done without an expectation for a particular outcome — and those done with a feeling of ‘need’ luring in the background. If you tune in with yourself you will feel the difference.
3. Stop people-pleasing and ‘over-accommodating.’
Having no needs does not make you a better person! It just makes you far more likely to be taken advantage of, taken for granted, or viewed as someone who can easily be swayed, convinced, or is prepared to ‘shrink’ themselves to fit in with others.
This is not who you want to be, and you have to recognise that it is OK to be nice to people without giving up on yourself in doing so.
4. Commit to build your own worth by choosing to put the attention on you.
This requires a willingness to say NO to others and apply good boundaries by being prepared to let go of situations or relationships that no longer serve you well.
Although this might sound straightforward theoretically, this process tends to be challenging when faced with the draw of compulsive pleasing and clinging. When you change, some challenging emotions will surface, so whenever pain or anxiety arises, do know that this is not a sign that you are doing things wrong, but rather a sign that you are changing a habit!
When you pull away from the dependency on other peoples’ approval, you will notice a rise in anxiety. You might start doubting yourself and wonder if it is safer to return to the comfort zone of compliance with what others expect of you. Change requires you to take a leap of faith. You have to trust that you are worthy enough in yourself before you actually feel it. Have faith — and accept if you fall off the wagon from time to time.
5. Connect inwards and align your behaviour with your inner values.
Identifying your values can be quite a big job. If you have no clue where to start, you can begin by mapping your reactions, triggers, likes, and dislikes in day-to-day life. Take notes and look for patterns. Are there times when you feel particularly engaged? Or happy?
Likewise, there may be times when something makes you upset — ask yourself what happened and what it was about that situation that didn’t sit well with you. Our feelings can be powerful messengers of our inner values and preferences. Once you have started to build an idea of what your values and preferences are, try to make sure that you honour them by adjusting your behaviour according to what makes you feel like your authentic self.
Some of these steps might sound difficult and laborious. I would be lying if I said they didn’t require effort, but I also want to emphasise how amazing it feels when you start changing the habits that keep you stuck in unworthiness and pain. Keep a log book, and start tracking your progress. Even if you take it bit by bit, the rewards from being honest with yourself and honouring your needs will soon enough be self-reinforcing. | https://betterhumans.pub/help-i-am-hooked-on-external-validation-21d418db7881 | ['Annika Lindberg'] | 2021-04-29 15:09:10.893000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Codependency', 'Confidence', 'People Pleasing', 'Self Esteem'] |
Intelligently Generate Frontend Code from Design Files: Basic Component Recognition | By Boben
Background
In the Deisgn2Code (D2C) project, we usually extract metadata from design files using developer plugins of design tools such as Sketch and Photoshop. These plugins enable us to quickly extract native elements such as images, text, and shapes from design files. We then use these elements to build the frontend pages we need. However, many basic development components (such as forms, tables, and switches) are not supported by design tools. Although tools such as Sketch enable us to design the corresponding UI components flexibly, the DSL descriptions about UI components in Sketch are usually inaccurate. Therefore, we need to obtain accurate component descriptions in other ways. We believe that recognizing basic components through deep learning is one of the best.
Design layers in Sketch
D2C Recognition Capabilities: Technical Architecture
This article describes the basic component recognition capability in the material recognition layer of the frontend intelligent D2C project. This capability recognizes predefined basic components in images to help downstream technical systems optimize recognized layers’ descriptions. For example, it helps a downstream technical system optimize layers’ nested structure to generate a standard component tree and optimize layer description semantics.
Technical architecture of D2C recognition capabilities
Overall Solution
Similar to other algorithm engineering solutions, a D2C solution involves the entire process from sample collection to sample evaluation, model training, model evaluation, and model prediction.
Algorithm engineering pipeline
Sample Collection and Evaluation
A good sample set is essential for a successful model. The sample quality determines the upper limit of model quality. We can optimize the model to get close to this upper limit. We can collect samples from various sources.
The basic component recognition model described in this article rarely needs to recognize the context of components. Therefore, we generate samples by using code. We use UI class libraries commonly used in the industry to ensure sample quality during programming.
Before generating samples, we need to classify the components to be recognized. We must comply with the following principles when generating samples:
Generate as many sample types as possible with the same volume of each kind. Component properties and styles may affect the model’s generalization capability. Therefore, we must randomize the general style settings of the component library, such as the background color, width, height, and fillet within a reasonable range in order to generalize the component styles.
Consider designs such as text-on-image and image matting in specific scenarios. For example, when layers overlap.
Pad blank edge areas for line-box components (for example, the input field) with several pixels to prevent the model from learning edge features.
The following figure shows a simple sample:
A sample for basic component recognition
After generating samples, we need to evaluate their quality. We can perform operations such as data verification and category statistics calculation to assess the overall sample quality:
Check the tagged data for errors. For example, calculate a variance based on the tagged areas and background colors.
Calculate the statistics about the distribution of data across all UI types and check whether each type’s data volume is the same.
Model Selection
Based on a recent object-detection model report on PASCAL VOC datasets, we selected the YOLO One-Stage algorithm as the transfer learning algorithm for our basic component recognition model. This algorithm ranks first among the models listed in the report. We use this algorithm to do quick tests.
Data analysis results of object detection models
The You Only Look Once (YOLO) algorithm involves the following three steps:
1) Resize images to 416°¡416 (v3)
2) Learn the sample set’s classification features by training a convolutional network
3) Perform non-max suppression during prediction to filter boxes
YOLO uses a separate CNN model for end-to-end object detection. Compared with two-stage object detectors (such as R-CNN), YOLO is faster in training and prediction because it is a single-stage detector. It splits each input image into an S°¡S grid and enables each cell of the grid to detect whether there is an object whose central point falls in the cell. Each cell predicts the object’s bounding box and the bounding box’s confidence score. The confidence score indicates the possibility of a bounding box containing the object and the bounding box’s accuracy. YOLO integrates the prediction results of all cells to obtain the final prediction results. For more information about YOLO, visit the YOLO website.
During object detection for basic web components, we want the convolutional network to learn the features of each component type in the corresponding cell. Then the convolutional network will be able to differentiate between different types of components. Therefore, we must select component samples with different features to ensure that the convolution network will learn these differences.
Model Evaluation
When evaluating an object detection model, we use the mean average precision (mAP) to measure the accuracy of the model trained with a COmparing Continuous Optimisers (COCO) dataset. We can select the model prediction results of some test set data and compare the result with the ground truth of such data to calculate the average precision (AP) for each category.
Then we can draw a chart for categories with an Intersection over Union (IoU) higher than 0.5. As you can see from the chart, the detection precision for small objects is low because it was significantly affected by some text elements. In the future, we can enhance the detection performance for small targets when pre-processing the samples.
Model-evaluation result based on mAP
Model Prediction
We can optimize the training data that is used during model prediction to achieve better results. We can optimize the training data by resizing the images to a specific size during pre-processing. We use YOLO for transfer learning to do this. It resizes each input image to 416°¡416 for training and learning. The IoU result predicted by a model trained with resized images is much higher than that predicted by a model not trained with resized images (with a 10% better performance on the same test set).
We can use a model trained with resized images to predict the results directly based on the input images and get rough bounding boxes. However, if we want the bounding boxes of UI components to be precise, we must refine the bounding boxes in each image using OpenCV. The following figure shows the comparison of bounding boxes before and after refining.
Optimization of the model prediction result
Summary
Currently, the D2C project’s basic component recognition capability supports recognizing more than 20 types of UI components. In the future, we will invest more R&D efforts in the classification of refined samples and the measurement and expression of basic components’ properties. We will also standardize the management of model data samples for unified output. In the future, you can recognize some basic components and modify specific expressions based on our external open-source sample sets.
Original Source: | https://medium.com/@alibaba-cloud/intelligently-generate-frontend-code-from-design-files-basic-component-recognition-8d2ec14ca24 | ['Alibaba Cloud'] | 2021-04-25 10:09:15.202000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Deep Learning', 'Algorithms', 'Machine Learning', 'Alibabacloud'] |
The “ANYTHING” Trap | Realisations of an overthinker.
I don’t think I’m alone in struggling with problems of thinking too much. Then not knowing how to get out of my own overthinking.
…
You can’t do ANYTHING. You can only do SOMETHING.
This is a lesson I think I learned very late in life. It’s the “Anything Trap”. You’re probably familiar with it. It took me a long time to get out my head and realise it for myself.
It’s a bit embarrassing to write about in a way, as it makes me seem a little bit like an ungrateful prick. (“My life is so shit, I have so much choice!”)
…
Imagine you have 100 different paths in front of you and you can walk down any one of them. A different destination lies at the end of each path.
You can pick any path.
If you’re uncertain which to choose, feel free to stand at the tip of each and have a good look down and try to figure out what’s down there.
You can take a few steps down each too if you like.
But the problem with a few steps is that you only see what the beginning holds, so maybe it’s best to walk a mile down each of them.
But you can’t really do this with every path, there’s 100 of them!
So, you just have to select a few to try. But which ones? And what if walking a mile isn’t enough to really … know.
I mean, what about miles 2, 3 or 47?
You are completely free to do what you want.
Which path do you pick?
You can do anything.
…
The “Anything Trap” can seem empowering. This was the message that lots of people like me received growing up; that there is a world of possibility out there and I can do anything I want in life. There are so many things I can do!
It creates a strange “problem of progress”.
Indecision.
Indecision.
Indecision.
There is a paradox of choice. We seem to be drawn towards having more choice, but more choice often leads to less action, less creativity and a higher likelihood of disappointment with what has been chosen.
Really, the issue isn’t choice. The issue is fear. At least it was for me.
And a lack of guidance.
…
Actually it was shame.
Shame is special type of fear that is particularly toxic.
Why?
Because shame is synonymous with hiding. And hiding stops you learning.
I was afraid that choosing a particular thing would reveal that I wasn’t good enough, that I couldn’t do it, that I was a failure.
Best not to pick anything at all.
…
Instead I stayed in my head thinking about different paths. Imagining myself succeeding, playing out scenarios of triumph … you wouldn’t believe the incredible successes that I’ve … imagined.
…
Most people think of rumination as being purely negative. Just going over and over past events or negative thoughts about yourself. But that’s not my experience. My rumination also included moments of grandeur. There would be transitory experiences of being the most important person in the room. Of being unable to do anything wrong. Of being Invincible.
I think this is true of some other people too. And it can make rumination seductive.
It makes you believe that the solution lies in thinking the “right thoughts”. When the solution is actually about taking thoughts less seriously and finding some common sense.
One way to keep an addict gambling is to give him a win every now and again. It makes him believe that the solution lies in more gambling.
…
The learning path out of it has been an interesting one. I’m very lucky to have transcended a lot of where I used to be.
I’ve also got pretty skilled at helping other people out of traps that they’re thinking creates. I’ve helped many people now who have been let down by everything else they’ve tried. And I’ve celebrated their success with them as they’ve seen their life anew.
This is a path I chose and I’ve walked a loooong way down.
Gradually, eventually, I’ve got better at actually picking things.
Though I’m still learning. Still getting out of my head and into common sense.
Choose a path. Learn from experience.
Try, try, try.
…
This is an idea I’ve been musing:
You cannot achieve “anything”.
Nor can you succeed at “anything”.
You cannot believe in “anything” nor be “anything”.
Neither can you create “anything” nor learn “anything”.
You can only achieve something.
You can only succeed at something.
You can believe in something, be something, become something.
You can create something and learn something.
There has to be a SOMETHING.
That happens SOMEWHERE.
At SOME TIME.
…
I’ve just invested in 6 months of coaching. My intention is to expand my private practice. I’m not earning enough money at the moment. So, I’m starting somewhere.
I mentioned above I lacked guidance. That’s a lot of what I’m looking for.
I’m sure I’m going to experience discomfort. Feelings that I’m making the wrong choice in my business growth, that I can’t do it, that I’m wasting my time with various activities, and much else may come up at times.
My old “I don’t know what to do” thinking may come up. Thoughts of “but why do this when you can do that”, “what if this is the wrong choice?”
Those old songs you’ve heard on the radio many times.
It’s a chance to take that old thinking even less seriously.
After the call where I agreed to do the coaching I felt properly shit all day. Loads of feelings of old feelings of overwhelm and not good enough came up.
And that’s a GOOD THING.
It’s a sign I’m going somewhere new. Exploring an area where I can grow.
I also know that I thrive when I have no choice about something.
…
I hope there may have been something useful for you in this.
It’s all a part of being human.
Here’s to the future, choosing a path, and going further down it! | https://medium.com/@alastair-hill/the-anything-trap-72408af5d6fb | ['Alastair Hill'] | 2021-01-13 17:01:07.901000+00:00 | ['Psychology', 'Choices', 'Personal Development'] |
OpenShift Health Checks using Liveness and Readiness Probes | No one wants to work when they are unhealthy. The same goes for containers.
Basically, why should containers serve traffic when they are NOT healthy enough to do so?
This is where OpenShift Health Checks plays a critical role.
OpenShift Health Checks using Liveness and Readiness probes provides the perfect tool to make sure the incoming traffic is routed to healthy pods. And if you are still wondering why to worry about the containers, you would, at least, want to worry about your consumers. After all, if you send a client/consumer request to an unhealthy pod, your users are liable to get a terrible user experience.
Definitely, you don’t want that to happen in a production application.
In this post, we will implement health check for a dummy NodeJS application and using those endpoints, we will configure Readiness and Liveness probes in OpenShift Container Platform. | https://medium.com/@saurabhdashora/implementing-health-checks-in-openshift-325eaf61d634 | ['Saurabh Dashora'] | 2020-12-09 07:55:57.131000+00:00 | ['Containers', 'Openshift', 'Kubernetes', 'Cloud Computing', 'Redhat Openshift'] |
Clarity for Teachers: Day 32 | ‘All the tension you feel comes from being unclear. No one else is to blame.’
‘Who are you arguing with?’ Anna will say to me.
The fingers of my left hand are moving, tracing a little circle in the air, a wheel rolling along. This is a tell: it means I’m off in my head, rehearsing an argument over something that’s got to me. It’s been a while now, but in the first years that we lived together, she’d catch me like this often enough for it to become a joke.
All the tension you feel comes from being unclear. Really, all of it? No one else is to blame. Seriously, don’t I get to blame anyone else, even a little bit?
I think of the old cartoon: the voice off calling, ‘Are you coming to bed?’, and the reply, ‘I can’t, this is important. Someone is wrong on the internet!’
It’s so satisfying to be right — factually, morally, preferably both at once. Doesn’t it feel good having someone to blame? It’s like having a teddy bear, or a comfort blanket.
Do you ever catch yourself staging an argument in your head, protesting your innocence, insisting on your justification? (No? Maybe it’s just me, then…) And the worst thing is, it’s an unspoken accusation you’re protesting against and it’s coming from someone close to you — except that then you catch yourself, and you realise, the accusation is unspoken because it lives in your head, where you’ve put it into the mouth of someone you love, or into the thoughts you imagine them having. You’re arguing with your own sense of guilt, and probably being a nightmare to the other person while you’re at it.
One of the weird gifts of parenthood, I’ve found, is the way it wakes body memories of earliest childhood. When my son was still a baby, I’d feel the waves of anger and indignation when he got upset, the way the wails and the sobs would rise and fall and rise again, and I’d find myself vividly remembering how it was to be four or five years old, I guess, and to get so angry I had to be sent to my room. How the anger and the tears would ebb and then surge again, as I let myself ride another crest of self-righteous indignation, replaying the drama one more time, not quite ready to let it go.
There’s something demonic about drama. It possesses us, and our voices change, our eyes widen, our fingers start tracing invisible patterns in the air. I’m not describing some distant memory of my younger self here, either. This is not about how things were when I was five, or twenty-five. The last time I got properly caught on a wave of drama was last week.
People get hooked on drama, on being right and knowing who’s to blame, and there are days when I’ll take the bait. But I’m lucky these days to have friends and teachers who will help me catch myself before I get carried away, before the tension I’m feeling carries through into actions and consequences, before I take it out on anyone else. They’ll say things along the lines of what it says on this card.
It’s a bitch, this card. It spoils the party, the drama party in my chest, where everyone’s wearing a mask, and under all the masks there’s only me. And at that point, all that’s left to do is laugh — at myself, with my friends, at the joke it took me long enough to get.
Västerås, 17 April, 2020 | https://medium.com/how-to-be-clear/clarity-for-teachers-day-32-876f88bff02e | ['Dougald Hine'] | 2020-04-17 07:42:29.973000+00:00 | ['Clarity', 'Emotions', 'Advice', 'Drama', 'Arguing'] |
Applying Anthropology: Understanding Cities Qualitatively | My radical urban heroes, Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte, were journalists enthralled by people’s relationships with their cities — how people navigated their concrete jungles. Using systematic observations, these New Yorkers figured out what made people want to use and share public space, what built community, and which planning mistakes could drive life from an area. Through careful observation, good urbanists figure out how to make a city work for its inhabitants.
The greatest American Urbanists of all time were essentially great people-watchers.
Source: Kevin Curtis, Unsplash
The private-sector is already on board. As the Atlantic reported, ethnographic work — studying a society from the viewpoint of the subject — is becoming a marketing standard. Anthropologists attend birthday parties to see how people consume alcohol in groups and visit foreign countries to shift the message of unsuccessful marketing campaigns. Microsoft is the world’s second largest employer of anthropologists. Today’s marketers are moving past knowing which demographics buy their products to exactly why people buy and how they consume.
Anthropology 101:
When I took a cultural anthropology class, the clearest takeaway was this: every behavior and practice is rational in its cultural context — for cities, many behaviors can be explained by someone’s environmental context.
An NYC Case-Study
In the 1980s William H. Whyte published The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces and a film of his work with the StreetLife project, both of which are major influencers for architects and planners today.
Shot from StreetLife Project footage
New York City had been using tax incentives to encourage developers to include public plazas in their plans for skyscrapers . The problem was that these plazas were often empty — contributing nothing to the city. Whyte set out to study these more in depth. He by set up cameras, recorded the weather and time of day, and looked for patterns.
The design of plazas almost never provided places for people to sit and Whyte remarked that “the human backside is a dimension architects seem to have forgotten.” Parks and plazas are often remarkably inhospitable in order to discourage ‘undesirables’ and in turn, they discourage all foot traffic.
Ultimately, the most effective way to attract people, is with people. Dense areas get denser (and that is a great thing).
Three Tips for Your Own Research:
One. Forget What You Think You Know
Source: Gabriel Santiago, Unsplash
We all carry biases and assumptions in everything that we do. This can impact the way you study a city —for example, your volunteer work in a neighborhood may dictate what you think about its character based on a one time interaction. Even your politics can shape how you interact with the world around you.
Professional anthropologists struggle with this constantly. Walking into a situation assuming that the way you operate is more rational than what you see is called ethnocentrism (and we are all guilty of it from time to time).
At mySidewalk, we like the Nick Bowden Challenge: Before starting a project, make a list answering the following questions:
What are the things you assume and what are the things you are interested in finding out?
As you conduct your project, reference the list from time to time. Ask again and again if your biases are clouding your view of your city.
Two. Be Systematic
Source: Jay Wennington, Unsplash
Paying close attention to one neighborhood will help you understand how people interact in that neighborhood. However, those observations cannot be generalized for the whole city.
You might find that public spaces are packed during the business lunch hours, but that tells you very little about the neighborhood’s vitality at night.
Only systematic and well-sampled observations will help you understand your city. Think back to designing a science experiment in 3rd grade and you’ve pretty much got it. Make sure you are covering multiple areas that vary in socio-economic status and that you record your observations, along with any additional variables, with careful consistency.
Three. People are Experts of Their Own Experience (Just Ask)
Source: Mladen Milinovic, Unsplash
When anthropologists examine a new culture, they spend lots of time upfront working to gain people’s trust and establish credibility. Once they have built solid relationships, they begin to shadow and interview people central to that culture in order to understand it.
If you are working within your own culture, it will be much easier to establish credibility. Of course people will be willing to talk to leaders, activists, and journalists trying to make their cities a better place.
There is also a strong disadvantage to working within your own culture — you will take important details for granted. That goes back to recognizing your biases. If you have the luxury of working with someone with a different (non-American or rural) background, include them in your research to gain a fresh perspective.
Enter: The Data-Piece
Source: Gabriel Garcia Marengo, Unsplash
The only guarantee in social science is that no one can ever be 100% sure that their findings are correct. Qualitative work (also known as descriptive work) is very important to get an in-depth understanding of how a neighborhood functions. Quantitative work (think data) can help with understanding the bigger picture about what kind of people make up a city’s demographics.
Crunching the numbers will help you determine if you actually looked at a representative sample of your population. For example, if you know that 30% of your city is living in poverty, but 80% of the neighborhoods that you studied were affluent — it is time to create a more representative sample.
Your Turn
Source: Matthew Brodeur, Unsplash
Whether you are adding more crosswalks, designing a park, or adding new housing, a brief study of how people really behave will help you plan more effectively. For example, if you notice that people are more likely to use parks with sidewalks crossing diagonally through or that people avoid fenced-in areas (people do) then you can create a more popular and usable space.
Knowing who you are serving and how they interact with their environment will empower you to design places that remain relevant to your city for decades. We can’t wait to hear about how a little people watching transforms your next project!
Like this article? Subscribe to our newsletter to read more like it here. | https://medium.com/community-pulse/applying-anthropology-understanding-cities-qualitatively-b7386ef43674 | [] | 2016-12-28 22:34:00.789000+00:00 | ['City Planning', 'Urban Planning', 'Anthropology'] |
#FlashbackFriday — The Miracle | Almost famous cartoonist who laughs at her own jokes and hopes you will, too. | https://medium.com/@marcialiss17/flashbackfriday-1e3fedbc74be | [] | 2020-12-18 15:37:31.108000+00:00 | ['Family', 'Humor', 'Comics', 'Cartoon', 'Grandparents'] |
The God-Man Fan Club vs. the Satire of… Clod-Man! | Sign up for Taking Stock of COVID: New comics from The Nib
By The Nib
New comics from Matt Lubchansky, Keith Knight, and Niccolo Pizarro. Plus How Seniors Are Living With COVID-19. Take a look | https://medium.com/the-nib/the-god-man-fan-club-vs-the-satire-of-clod-man-40d12d38d664 | ['Ruben Bolling'] | 2015-02-07 01:10:07.949000+00:00 | ['Religion', 'Humor', 'God'] |
Accelerated Face Detection on a cluster of a 8 Alveo FPGA cards | Automatic Object Detection using machine learning is one of the most promising technologies in the domain of video classification and detection. Object detection in video is computationally intensive task that requires huge amount of processing power. Hardware accelerators, based on FPGAs, can provide the required processing power to increase the throughput of the application and at the same time to reduce significantly the latency.
InAccel, a world-pioneer in the domain of FPGA-based accelerators, has released today an integrated framework that allows to utilize the power of an FPGA cluster for face detection. Specifically, InAccel has presented a demo in which a cluster of 8 FPGAs are used to provide up to 1700 fps (supporting up to 56 cameras with 30 fps in a single server).
Viola Jones face detection algorithm is a widely-used method for real-time object detection The Viola–Jones object detection framework is the first object detection framework to provide competitive object detection rates in real-time proposed in 2001 by Paul Viola and Michael Jones. Although it can be trained to detect a variety of object classes, it was motivated primarily by the problem of face detection. It uses Haar-like features, which are inner products between the image and Haar templates. A face candidate is a rectangular section of the original image. As images may have faces of different sizes, an image pyramid is constructed by downscaling the image by a constant factor. This multiscale representation of image is then searched for all possible 25×25 faces. The inner product of Haar features requires the sum of different rectangular sections of the downscaled image.
Nitish Srivastava et al. from Cornell University have presented an implementation for a Xilinx Zynq device. Based on this implementation InAccel has released today an integrated framework targeting the Xilinx Alveo cards that allow to scale out the Face detection application in a cluster of 8 Alveo U200 FPGA cards providing a great performance for video applications.
FPGAs are adaptable hardware platforms that can offer great performance, low-latency and reduced OpEx for applications like machine learning, video processing, quantitative finance, genomics, etc. However, the easy and efficient deployment from users with no prior knowledge on FPGA was challenging.
InAccel provides an FPGA resource manager that allows the instant deployment, scaling and resource management of FPGAs making easier than ever the utilization of FPGAs for applications like machine learning, data processing, data analytics and many more applications. Users can deploy their application from Python, Spark, Jupyter notebooks or even terminals.
In the case of face detection, InAccel FPGA manager was used to scale out the application on a server with 8 FPGA cards. The software developers do not need to change at all the original code and the FPGA manager was used to serialize the request from the video streaming and dispatch the job to the FPGA cluster. Using 8 FPGAs, we managed to achieve up to 1700 fps on a single server. That means that a single server can support up 56 cameras (assuming 30 fps) in a single server and still the CPU processor is free for additional processing (supporting more than 56 videos assuming 30fps).
This application can be further scaled-out to multiple server through the Kubernetes plugin. For example, scaling-out to 8 servers it can support up 13,600 fps on a cluster of 8 servers (64 Alveo U200 FPGA cards). The platform was deployed in a cluster provided by VMAccel.
The platform is available for demonstration purposes. If you are interested to deploy your application with multiple FPGA cards or run your applications on the cloud, contact us at [email protected]. | https://medium.com/@inaccel/accelerated-face-detection-on-a-cluster-of-a-8-alveo-fpga-cards-5b2711e71f8b | [] | 2020-11-02 12:27:12.146000+00:00 | ['Fpga', 'Jupyter Notebook', 'Object Detection', 'Face Detection App', 'Deep Learning'] |
How to Ensure Equal Access to Abortion, and How We Failed Women | The Women’s March on Washington
I think pro-choice folks need to start by admitting that our efforts to ensure equal access to abortion through the courts has been a failure. We underestimated the lengths that Republicans (and their religious allies) would go to to restrict the right to an abortion.
Instead of trying to persuade people on the topic, we assumed that a strategy of litigation and Supreme Court precedent would deliver the desired outcome. We dismissed opponents’ deeply-held (if wrong) beliefs and hoped they would change over time. We assumed that many of the laws of gravity governing social progress would apply to this issue as well — the “long arc of justice” argument.
Of course, this has proven to be a huge miscalculation.
The progressive wing of American politics has been mostly content with fighting for justice in the courts, instead of doing the hard, grassroots work necessary to delivery victories “in the trenches”. Whether at the state, local or federal level, most of our progressive failures could be easily resolved by legislation. But because we’ve been super afraid of losing swing voters (a false economy if there ever was one), we have given our politicians countless passes and focused our investment on the courts.
For example, these issues could have easily been resolved by federal legislation at any of the times in the past 30 years that Democrats controlled Congress and the Presidency:
Voting Rights (holiday, timing, access, etc)
Abortion Rights
Gay Rights (including employment non-discrimination)
Police Brutality
Immigration Inequity
Just to name a few. I can’t count how many times in the past generation my friends and I have anxiously awaited a court decision we hoped would bring some progress (and sanity) to the United States. In contrast, I don’t ever recall us being similarly engaged with a legislative session. This was a huge mistake.
So now, we have a mess. Three states have effectively banned abortion, setting up a conflict where the Supreme Court may overturn Roe v Wade and roll-back the right of women to safe, legal abortion. Never mind that this right has been chipped away over decades. We are about to lose the “air cover” in our war for reproductive rights.
What to do now?
Firstly, we need to concede that our approach has failed. We must conduct a full accounting of what went wrong and develop a new strategy.
This new strategy must be legislative, not legal. The great weakness of the conservative movement is that its general legal framework is to remove the courts’ oversight over the economy. This by definition empowers the legislative branch, and is the best way for us moving forward.
We also need to let these states fail at their experiments. The idea that we should be riding in to rescue stupid people from themselves is one of the greatest weaknesses of the progressive movement today. Some balance between individual responsibility and the great society are necessary, and no more so than situations where people have consistently voted against their own interests.
I know we need to protect the rights of those without a voice, but we must empower them to fight back rather than fight their battles for them. Though it’s a bumpy comparison, we will never engender regime change in North Korea from the outside. Our only hope is to empower internal actors to take power from their rulers. The same basic premise should apply to those parts of the United States that are today’s underperforming, regressive backwaters.
That is to say, the women of Georgia must lead the charge to reform their state, and the best thing for us to do is to empower them. This can take the form of funding, training, tools, federal legislation, etc.
As it relates specifically to the current state of affairs in reproductive health, I think our best option is to ensure a safety valve for women in those affected states. We need to invest in border-town abortion clinics in safe states and provide transportation assistance for women to get to those clinics for treatment. We can also fly people around the country if needed. Frankly, this would also shift the economics and health outcomes of the discussion in a positive way.
In 2015, there were 700,000 abortions performed in the United States. Assuming 20% of these happen in states with extensive restrictions, that’s approximately 140,000 procedures. At $1000 each, including transportation, it’s $140Mm.
In 2016, Hillary Raised $1.2Bn for her election campaign. I think we can find the money to deliver these services.
So let’s setup an “abortion railroad” and get women around the country the health services they need regardless of their state of residence. And at the same time, let’s work on resetting our strategy nationally.
We need to come out swinging. Instead of trying to appeal to the center with soft language (“pro choice”), let’s be unabashedly, loudly and proudly pro-abortion. Let’s energize and empower political movements inside the states to shift the tide. And let’s focus on winning races at the local, county, state and Federal levels to set a legislative agenda that will drive this country forward.
We can stop this tide, but we must admit failure, change course and build a movement to do it. | https://gzicherm.medium.com/how-to-ensure-equal-access-to-abortion-and-how-we-failed-women-6623836a1b60 | ['Gabe Zichermann'] | 2019-05-15 16:03:42.828000+00:00 | ['Progress', 'Politics', 'Reproductive Rights', 'Abortion', 'Progressive'] |
The Dreamforce ’15 Dreamfest | This year’s, Dreamforce is going to rock, with a KILLER Dreamfest.
The moment that we have all been waiting for happens on Thursday evening when attendees ascend upon Pier 70 in the Dogpatch to experience an all-star musical lineup including Foo Fighters, The Killers, and Gary Clark Jr.!
Location: Pier 70
Rooted deep in history, set among the old shipyards of San Francisco, unique in raw beauty, the buildings of Pier 70 evoke images of a bygone era and stir the imagination. Rustic exteriors, massive steel beams inside, these buildings are now being re-purposed for one-of-a-kind events, like the Dreamforce Dreamfest.
And make sure to come hungry! We’ll have delicious food and beverages available at every stage.
Big Time Bands
We are excited to welcome Foo Fighters, The Killers, and Gary Clark Jr. to the Dreamfest!
While most are familiar with the Foo Fighters and The Killers, but what do you know about Gary Clark Jr.? Get this: he is a guitar prodigy, a Grammy winner, and will be releasing his 4th album, The Story of Sonny Boy Slim, just days before his Dreamforce performance, on September 11th. Get psyched to experience his musical performance, influenced by blues, jazz, soul, country, as well as hip-hop. You don’t want to miss Clark’s musical trademarks: distorted guitar sound and smooth vocal style — compared to guitar icons like Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan. His playing is a powerful and inspired mix of blues roots with contemporary soul and hip-hop, and when he’s rolling at his best, Gary Clark, Jr. shows us what the blues sounds like in the 21st Century. Don’t miss one of the best performers I have ever seen.
Schedule
6:45PM Shuttle service begins to Pier 70
7:00PM Doors Open
7:30PM Gary Clark Jr. — West Stage
8:30PM The Killers — East Stage
9:45PM Foo Fighters — Center Stage
11PM Dreamfest concludes; shuttle service provided to all conference hotels and Moscone. UCSF Benefit Afterparty with will.i.am & MC Hammer begins!
Throughout the entire night, you can go inside the warehouse for a thoroughly enthusiastic dance party!
Key Tips for the Dreamforce Dreamfest
Hear more about the Dreamfest from Stacey Kashubeck, Director, Strategic Events
TOP TIP! If you have a favorite band, go there first. But don’t worry, we will be showing every performance on viewing screens throughout the venue.
TIP 1: Bring your conference badge — this is your ticket to the event! Full conference credentials (card, holder and all) are required for entry.
TIP 2: Bring your ID. California Law requires that bartenders check your ID if you are fortunate to look under 30.
TIP 3: DON’T bring your laptop, backpack or selfie stick! Attendees are strongly encouraged to return to their hotels to drop off valuables prior to boarding the Dreamfest Shuttles. We are expecting a large turnout and will not have coat check services available at Pier 70.
TIP 4: Dress warmly, bring layers and wear comfortable shoes. The Dreamfest takes place outdoors on the water at Pier 70. Be sure to bring layers as the fog can roll in, making for a cool San Francisco evening!
TIP 5: Transportation options are available.
Shuttles will be provided from Moscone and all Dreamforce contracted hotels to Pier 70, departing at 6:45pm.
Public transportation is another easy way to get to Pier 70. Take the Muni T-Line to the 23rd Street Station where you will be directed to the Dreamfest entrance.
Ubers and taxis are required to drop all guests off at 23rd and Illinois Streets. Guests will be directed to the Dreamfest entrance 1 block away.
Parking and bike valets are not available in the neighborhood. Street closures will be in effect to accommodate event transportation plans.
TIP 6: Have an Expo+ Pass and want to attend Dreamfest? Please visit The Concert for Kids website to see how you can purchase a ticket while supporting a great cause. Limited availability. | https://medium.com/dreamforce-15/the-dreamforce-15-dreamfest-a93675efd421 | [] | 2015-09-14 20:48:01.232000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Salesforce', 'Dreamforce'] |
Indie Authors Can Now Sell on Google Play | Indie Authors Can Now Sell on Google Play
Until October 2020, it was beyond difficult for indie authors to be accepted to sell their books on Google Play. Now we’re all accepted. Tessa Schlesinger Dec 24, 2020·3 min read
Getting in early is the key to success. It’s been barely two months since Google Play began to accept applications from indie authors, and now is the time before its oversubscribed.
The process to apply is simple. You are asked for an email address, your website, and your bank details. I’m not sure if you have to have a website. I have a really grotty one, and I’m still waiting to find the magic web designer who is going to make it function and look like a million bucks.
It’s also possible that Google checks out that you are an author. Generally if you are recognized as an author, they will give you an author panel (which I still haven’t completed), but anyway.
Unfortunately, if you live in a third world country, you will not be able to have your payments paid directly into your bank account, so you will have to set up an account with Payoneer.
Google Play books are available in seventy five countries (there are 196 countries in the world), and the app has two billion users. It’s a great market.
How to Publish Your EBooks to Google Play
Uploading your book to Google Play is quite different to uploading it to other online bookstores. For a start, you can’t upload in MS Word. You have to upload in either PDF or ePub. Google Play does not convert the ebooks for you so if you convert in PDF, they will sell them in PDF, and if you upload in ePub, they will sell them in ePub. That’s a bit of a problem because I don’t know any writers who have ePub software. However, it averages about $25.00 for the software, so if you’re selling well in PDF format, you might want to invest in ePub software. If you upload the books in both formats, according to my chat with Google Books, you will sell more. You can also activate DRM which I advise. I have too many of my ebooks downloading freely on the web. That’s why I never give away free books on the web anymore. Once they’re out there, hackers easily enable them to be available free elsewhere.
Unlike other sites, Google Play does not ask for a specific size for the book cover illustration. You can upload any cover (I would stick with the size that KDP recommends), and they will publish that cover as is. Book covers must be in PNG, JPG, or PDF format.
Your price will be converted automatically to other currencies if you chose to sell to all the countries that Google Play caters to. Google Play also provides an excellent tutorial for how to upload your ebooks, plus they have an outstanding chat service. That is very unusual for Google, and I am inclined to believe that they’re hoping to challenge Amazon and Apple in the booksales field.
If You’ve Never Written a Book Before…
If you write content with ease, you might want to consider writing ebooks. I’m not going to tell you that marketing them or selling them is easy. It’s not. I can tell you that Indie ebooks are outpacing recognized authors, probably because as indie authors, we’re a helluve lot less expensive. And just because we haven’t gone through a traditional publisher doesn’t mean we can’t write well.
If you’re keen on learning how to write a book, tell me in the comment below, and I’ll consider writing an article on the main criteria for writing books that sell. | https://medium.com/born-to-write/indie-authors-can-now-sell-on-google-play-2f0173b23a0 | ['Tessa Schlesinger'] | 2020-12-24 16:01:52.395000+00:00 | ['Writer', 'Money', 'Writing', 'Authors', 'Indie'] |
What Is Elon Musk Doing With His Money? | Elon Musk recently just became the second richest person on the planet and in light of that and the attacks on him by Robert Reich for being a billionaire along with some false claims, I wanted to point out what Elon is actually doing with his money and how it impacts you — yes you.
“I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.” — Elon Musk
How It Began
Elon’s first company was Zip2 and he received $22 million for his part of the company when it sold back in 1999. With that, he started X.com which at the time was an online financial service and payment company with $10 million from the sale of Zip2.
A year after that, it merged with another company, Confinity, which had a money transfer service that is now a household name: PayPal which was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion. Elon received $165 million from that.
SpaceX and Tesla
Elon’s dream is to make humans a multi-planetary species and he is often mocked for this — even after the successes SpaceX has had with recently sending NASA astronauts to the ISS twice.
Tesla is another story of the struggle to success and this is where Elon’s net worth really began to take off. There were a few times where Elon almost lost everything, but Reich doesn’t mention that.
The Boring Company.
Another one of Elon’s companies is The Boring Company which was borne out of the frustration of sitting in traffic. “I am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging,” Elon tweeted.
Neuralink
Neuralink is a neurotechnology startup that is working toward integrating the human brain with A.I. This sounds really sci-fi, but so does building rockets from scratch because you couldn’t find an engineer who wanted to work with you — -as in the story of SpaceX. The goal of Neuralink is to help humans merge with software in order to keep up with the advancement of A.I.
If you think Neuralink is sci-fi, then what do you think about the fact that you can store data on a quartz crystal? I’m not talking metaphysics, but science. Researchers at Southampton University were able to write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Newton's Opticks, the Magna Carta, and the Kings James Bible on a quartz disk that could store up to 360 terabytes of data.
The point I’m making is that you can pretty much do anything if you put your mind to it.
Elon’s Wealth.
Elon’s wealth, as he has said in that quote above, is often poured back into his companies. He started his companies as ways to solve various problems that affect not just him, but all of us. One issue is that what if we faced an extinction event and had to evacuate to another planet? This is why he founded SpaceX.
Not all of his wealth goes into his companies — probably a good 98% of it, but the guy has to live. Food, housing, and existing are not free in our society. And let’s not forget Elon's own charity.
The Musk Foundation gives primarily to renewable energy research and advocacy, human space exploration research and advocacy, pediatric research, science, and engineering education.
Helping People In Need.
Hurricane Laura Aftermath.
Living in Louisiana has its perks but also its risks — however, this is home for me. During Laura, I was high and dry in Baton Rouge but the storm-ravaged our state. Many were left homeless and without basic food, water, and communication for a month. In the heat.
Those of us online took to Twitter to express our shock and outrage over the fact that the mainstream media refused to cover the humanitarian crisis in Louisiana.
A few days later, two of the charities I’d been promoting tweeted that The Musk Foundation, which is Elon’s charity, donated substantial amounts to help with hurricane relief. He donated to four that I know of and you can read more about that here.
L.A. Fire Department Firefighting Robot
Back in October, the L.A. Fire Department unveiled its RS3 firefighting robot that can be used in fighting large-scale scenarios such as commercial fires, hazmat incidents, and even oil refinery fires. This isn’t the only time Elon has helped the LAFD Foundation either.
Flint Water Crisis
Although the government dropped the ball on this one — -it’s not Elon’s responsibility to provide Americans with clean water — Elon picked up that ball and came through for Flint. Elon’s donation helped Flint Schools replace all of its water fountains with new water stations and water filtration at all of the city’s schools. That’s not all he did.
Elon personally went to the school to encourage the students there and gave them all computers. The donation of over a thousand computers was to help students with their education. He spoke to the students and encouraged them to dream big.
“I had a really strong sense of curiosity, which I think is a powerful thing and I really encourage you to, if you are curious about, really allow your curiosity to flourish,” he said while announcing another donation of $400,000 that was put in the hands and imagination of all of the Flint 7th and 8th-grade students.
Planting Trees
Last year, Elon donated $1 million to plant trees for $1 per tree to MrBeast’s campaign. MrBeast was raising $20 million to help fight climate change by planting more trees on every continent. I’m not sure if the money for this came from his foundation or not — but the point is that Elon is using his money to make an impact on humanity as a whole.
Elon Musk Is A Top Donor Of The ACLU
In 2018, Elon responded to someone on Twitter who asked him about donating to the ACLU to help the organization in its work with helping migrant children separated from their parents. Elon pointed out that he was one of their top donors and the ACLU backed him up.
There are other instances where he’s helped when asked to do so. He’s helped provided ventilators during the pandemic when the nation was running out, he even told me he’d try to get them here to Louisiana — before our state began to succeed at flattening the curve to the point we didn’t need them.
What Is Elon Doing With His Wealth?
Elon has often used this phrase, “preserve the light of consciousness.” I believe this is what he is doing with his wealth. And by creating SpaceX, Tesla, Boring, Neuralink, his foundation — he is solving problems that impact humanity on a level that many don’t even think about.
Each person often sees the world from their own perspective. Elon Musk sees the world in its entirety, including the potential problems that would affect us as a whole, and realizes that without humans, that light of consciousness could fizzle out.
The fact that he is using his wealth to solve problems, help others in need, and encourage them when they're down as he did with me back in 2018 — these and more are not just preserving that light, but making it glow brighter. So bright that 150 years from now, people will still see his light long after we are all gone.
Conclusion
It should be noted that many often choose to keep their charitable donations private. I’m sure Elon’s donated to more than we know — and Reich probably has, also. I assume this is the case as I do want to believe in the best of people. Maybe I’m a fool, probably.
However, my goal here was to point out that the idea of Elon Musk as some evil billionaire hoarding wealth while everyone is starving is wrong. Yet this is what Reich is doing. Reich knows his fan base rather well — just like Trump knows his.
It should be stressed, though, that Reich is also in that 1% that he seems to abhor. No, he’s not a billionaire, but his net worth is $4 million according to this website. And this website pointed out that Reich made 36% more than the average CEO and charges $40K an hour for speeches.
I’m not attacking Reich, here — everyone has their hustle. Some make more money than others, even. But Reich, who is a millionaire, in my opinion, isn’t as poor as his base is — his base who cheer him on as he bashes billionaires and the one percent. And according to this website, Reich could very well be in the top one percent that he hates so much.
Always research things and don’t take what people say as the truth. Even this article — feel free to do your own research. | https://medium.com/@johnnacrider/what-is-elon-musk-doing-with-his-money-9b873360a966 | ['Johnna Crider'] | 2020-11-25 00:35:47.299000+00:00 | ['Charity', 'Tesla', 'Humanity', 'Spacex', 'Elon Musk'] |
Start creating a technical analysis trading web or mobile application in minutes! | This tutorial will get you started creating the frame of a web or mobile trading application/bot in minutes. I will be using free trading data from the Coinbase Pro API but you can use any exchange data be it for cryptocurrencies, forex or any traditional stocks.
Libraries we will need?
create-react-app (quick start React.js front-end application)
(quick start React.js front-end application) express-generator (quick start Node.js back-end API)
(quick start Node.js back-end API) coinbase-pro (library for interfacing with Coinbase Pro API)
(library for interfacing with Coinbase Pro API) technicalindicators (library for trading technical indicators)
(library for trading technical indicators) axios (library to retrieving data from the API)
(library to retrieving data from the API) react-bootstrap-table-next (library for rendering the results)
So let’s start with creating our backend API in Node.js.
% npx express-generator api
% cd api
% yarn <-- OR npm install
% yarn start <-- OR npm start
This will fire up your backend API on http://127.0.0.1:3000 which you can open up in your browser. We will change this later on to port 9000 not to conflict with React which will also want to run on port 3000.
% yarn start
yarn run v1.22.5
$ node ./bin/www
GET / 200 251.272 ms - 170
GET /stylesheets/style.css 200 2.337 ms - 111
GET /favicon.ico 404 9.496 ms - 1222
You then need to add the “cors”, “coinbase-pro” and “technicalindicators” libraries to your project. I use “yarn” but you can use “npm” as well, which ever you prefer.
% yarn add cors coinbase-pro technicalindicators
The reason why we add “cors” is because our requests from our React application on “http://127.0.0.1:3000” will be blocked making requests to our API on “http://127.0.0.1:9000" by default.
If you are not familiar with CORS this is the definition from Mozilla:
Cross-Origin Resource Sharing ( CORS ) is a mechanism that uses additional HTTP headers to tell browsers to give a web application running at one origin , access to selected resources from a different origin. A web application executes a cross-origin HTTP request when it requests a resource that has a different origin (domain, protocol, or port) from its own.
In your “express-generator” project edit the ./bin/www.js and make the following change to the listening port from TCP 3000 to 9000.
< var port = normalizePort(process.env.PORT || '3000');
> var port = normalizePort(process.env.PORT || '9000');
Then edit the ./app.js and make the following changes…
! under var express = require('express');
> var cors = require('cors'); ! under var app = express();
> app.use(cors()); < var usersRouter = require('./routes/users');
> var marketdataRouter = require('./routes/marketdata'); < app.use('/users', usersRouter);
> app.use('/marketdata', marketdataRouter);
Rename ./routes/users.js to ./routes/marketdata.js and replace the contents with the following…
var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router(); const CoinbasePro = require('coinbase-pro');
const publicClient = new CoinbasePro.PublicClient(); const EMA = require('technicalindicators').EMA; /* GET market data */
router.get('/:product', function(req, res, next) {
const product = req.params.product; const granularity = 60 * 60; // 1 hour
const numSamples = 200; // last 200 hours const coeff = 1000 * 60 * 60;
const startDate = new Date();
const startTemp = new Date(startDate.setHours(startDate.getHours() - numSamples));
const startTime = new Date(Math.round(startTemp.getTime() / coeff) * coeff).toISOString();
const endDate = new Date();
const endTime = new Date(Math.round(endDate.getTime() / coeff) * coeff).toISOString();
const options = { start: startTime, end: endTime, granularity }; publicClient.getProductHistoricRates(product, options)
.then(response => {
const data = [];
const closes = []; response.reverse().map(function(value, key) {
closes.push(value[4]); const ema12Data = EMA.calculate({period : 12, values : closes});
const ema12 = Number.parseFloat(ema12Data[ema12Data.length - 1]).toString(10); const ema26Data = EMA.calculate({period : 26, values : closes});
const ema26 = Number.parseFloat(ema26Data[ema26Data.length - 1]).toString(10); const object = {
date: new Date(value[0] * 1000).toISOString(),
low: value[1].toString(10),
high: value[2].toString(10),
open: value[3].toString(10),
close: value[4].toString(10),
volume: value[5].toString(10),
ema12: ema12 !== 'NaN' ? ema12 : '0',
ema26: ema26 !== 'NaN' ? ema26 : '0'
} data.push(object);
}); res.send(data);
})
.catch(error => {
res.send(error);
});
}); module.exports = router;
That should be enough to get your basic API working. I’ve included the EMA12 and EMA26 technical indicators as an example but there are many others included in the technicalindicators library. Just as an aside I could not get this library working with React and React Native. I used @d3fc/d3fc-technical-indicator instead which worked very well. It’s not as comprehensive as the node technicalindicators library but still very good.
I recommend reading my other article “Technical analysis and trading crypto currencies for profit” which will give you a nice introduction into the various technical indicators and how to use them.
So now that our backend API is working we need to create our React.js application.
% npx create-react-app mediumtutorial *** INSTALLATION PROCESS ***
I will be using “axios” to retrieve the data from the API and “react-bootstrap-table-next” (React Bootstrap Table 2) to display a table with the data. So let’s install them now…
% cd mediumtutorial
% yarn add axios react-bootstrap-table-next bootstrap
Start your React.js application…
% yarn start
If you open “http://127.0.0.1:3000” in your browser (if it doesn’t load automatically), it should look like this by default.
Replace your ./App.js with this.
import React, { Component } from 'react';
import BootstrapTable from 'react-bootstrap-table-next';
import axios from 'axios'; import 'bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css';
import 'react-bootstrap-table-next/dist/react-bootstrap-table2.min.css'; class App extends Component {
state = {
tableData: []
} componentDidMount() {
axios.get('http://127.0.0.1:9000/marketdata/BTC-USD')
.then((response) => {
this.setState({ tableData: response.data });
});
} render() {
const columns = [
{ dataField: 'date', text: 'Date'},
{ dataField: 'high', text: 'High'},
{ dataField: 'low', text: 'Low' },
{ dataField: 'open', text: 'Open' },
{ dataField: 'close', text: 'Close' },
{ dataField: 'ema12', text: 'EMA12' },
{ dataField: 'ema26', text: 'EMA26'}
];
return (
<BootstrapTable keyField='date' data={ this.state.tableData } columns={ columns } striped bordered hover />
);
}
} export default App;
When you open “http://localhost:3000” in your browser an API call will be made to the backend to retrieve market data for the “BTC-USD” market including the EMA12 and EMA26 technical indicators. It will then be rendered using React Bootstrap Table 2. | https://medium.com/coinmonks/start-creating-a-technical-analysis-trading-web-or-mobile-application-in-minutes-6ee2c6293401 | ['Michael Whittle'] | 2020-12-28 16:38:58.642000+00:00 | ['Nodejs', 'Technical Indicator', 'Trading', 'React', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
PrintX Pro Reviews & opinion of Portable Bluetooth Thermal Printer | What is PrintX Pro?
PrintXPro is a complete and portable Bluetooth thermal printer which is designed to print and save a physical record of digital photos. Printx pro allows you to print easily all your digital memories at home without having to visit any printing store. It’s easy to carry around and connects easily to get started.
The complete thermal printer prevents the risks and difficulties of replacing and refilling ink each time it’s depleted. PrintX pro is equipped with Bluetooth connectivity that allows you to connect nearly any Bluetooth-enabled gadgets. This allows you to print your favorite images in high quality and size.
Importantly, PrintX Pro is portable and can easily fit into your pocket. This makes it easy to move around wherever you go. A great supplement for your digital camera, this printer works instantly and saves time and printing expenses. Besides, it works well for both amateurs and professionals.
Print everything you need with PrintX Pro the most complete portable printer.
PrintX Pro is the mini portable bluetooth printer that will allow you to have photos in your hand instantly, or any document up to 5.8cm that you may need. It’s as simple as having a Polaroid, but with the ability to also print text and other files instantly and wherever you are.
The PrintX Pro portable bluetooth printer is the easiest to use
This new printing system is very easy to install and use, as it does not require cables. You just have to install the software and connect the device from which you want to print images to the PrintX Pro portable printer via bluetooth. It can be paired with several devices, and is compatible with computer, tablet and smartphone.
Now you can take selfies and photos with your family and friends, and print beautiful grayscale photos with the PrintX Pro mini portable bluetooth printer for a nice memory.
Additionally to this, you can print files in pdf, gif, jpg format and send texts and backgrounds with which to also have Stickers, labels, notes, etc.
Features of the PrintX Pro mini portable bluetooth printer
It is the lightest and most reliable printing system in its category.
Its reduced dimensions allow you to use it anywhere.
It is very easy to use, and compatible with Android, iOS, Windows, Ubuntu, Apple and everything type of computers, tablets and phones.
It has a print size of up to 58mm.
You can print all kinds of paper, even adhesive labels.
No ink required, the thermal primer system will allow you to use the device without additional costs.
The print quality in grayscale is very high, with photographic definition.
In addition, it has a long battery life and fast charge that you can use for a long time without problems. ¡
Free shipping worldwide.
Guarantee of 100% satisfaction with the product.
Visit PrintX Pro Official Website to Order Today!!!
Does it actually have a guarantee?
printx pro comes with the right international guarantee. the product is protected with a assure of three hundred and sixty five days over all forms of production defects and if there may be any, the product is replaced by using the agency with the carrier group being sent at the door of the person.
How can people buy printx seasoned?
printx seasoned transportable thermal printer may be sold from the legit website of the product. the product is available at Free Shiping For a Limited Time ! >> Click here and those need to go to this website and order the product. it’s far lower priced for all and gets introduced on the doorsteps of consumers all over the globe at an inexpensive transport charge.
>>CLICK HERE TO BUY PrintXPro FROM OFFICIAL WEBSITE<<
Printx seasoned package covered:
1* pocket printer
1*usb records cable
1* photographic paper
1* training
How to use PrintX Pro Mini Portable Thermal Printers?
You can download a Free APP from Google by searching” Peripage” for your PC or Mobile.
Free iOS APP, just search the “Peripage” on the APP Store
Connect any type of smartphone easily and quickly with the Pocketprint™through Bluetooth within a few seconds.
Frequently Asked Question
Can other Apps use the PrintX Pro to Print?
Other Apps need to be compatible with the printer technically, we will work with them and release the function in the future.
Does it need ink cartridge?
No need, the printer head heats the thermal paper coating dot by dot and creates text or picture.
Can it have color printing?
It can use mono-color thermal paper such as blue, red, yellow, pink. There are color photo printers in the market
PrintX Pro Reviews: Is Smart PrintX Device A Scam Or Real?
PrintX Pro is a finished convenient printer that causes the client to print and save an actual record of computerized memories. As said in PrintX Pro audits, the printer is a finished warm printer that evades the dangers and challenges of supplanting and filling ink in it. PrintX Pro accompanies a stunning Bluetooth availability which permits you to associate practically all devices accompanies Bluetooth network and encourages you print your #1 pictures in extremely progressed quality and size. PrintX Pro is versatile to such an extent that it fits in your pocket and you will have the option to haul it around anyplace and use it in a flash without visiting any store for this purpose. Also, this PrintX Pro is truly appropriate for both beginner and expert use, the fundamental bit of leeway of this PrintX Pro is that it can save a great deal of valuable time which is needed for a typical printing reason. | https://medium.com/@hafizurbdhafiz24/what-is-printx-pro-99e30f91637 | [] | 2020-12-27 06:11:38.794000+00:00 | ['Print', 'Gadgets', 'Review', 'Print X Pro', 'Gadget Review'] |
Educational Justice Starts with Equitable Family Engagement | Question
Convene a leadership group to initiate the process. Why are we doing this? Who do we need to work with? What questions do we have and how will we use what we learn?
Prioritize
What data or process will best help us attend to equity and answer our question?
Engage
Draw on cultural brokers and existing leaders to reach out to stakeholder groups and invite their participation.
Make Sense
Share data. Collaborate with stakeholders who participated in the survey design to make sense of it. What does the data tell us? What other questions do we have?
Strategize
Reconvene and expand leadership group. What did we learn? What are the next steps?
Act
Change policies or practices. Leverage new relationships. Discover new questions for further inquiry.
Choose Your Survey Design Leadership Group Wisely
When Erin Okuno and Mindy Huang of SESEC and Jondou Chen, UW College of Education set out to convene a representative survey design group, they intentionally recruited members who would represent and amplify the voices of Majority families in southeast Seattle elementary schools. The survey co-designers described families in the following terms:
Dominant: Being in a position of systemic power and privilege. More specifically, exerting control over educational practices, policies, and research to reinforce hierarchies between social groups. White | Full-price Lunch | Non-Immigrant | Primary English Speaker Majority: Being in a position of democratic potential and possibility. More specifically, transforming educational practices, policies, and research to support historically oppressed and overlooked social groups. Person of Color | Free or Reduced Lunch | Immigrant | Primary Non-English Speaker
The final group consisted of caregivers, representatives of southeast Seattle community-based organizations and schools, and community members who were committed to working towards educational justice in southeast Seattle schools.
“I loved seeing the group of people that Erin, Jondou, and Mindy had put together at that table. They did that community engagement work to inform which questions we should be putting on the survey and then made sure that the survey was going to reach the right groups of people,” said Divanji.
Despite all the thought and intention that went into bringing in diverse partners to design the survey, there were still blind spots. “The first time we did the survey, we forgot to include middle and high school partners,” says Okuno. “The majority of the survey results that year came in for elementary school families. Midway through the process I went ‘duh.’” They learned from this oversight, and made sure to include middle and high school partners for the second iteration of the survey.
At the first meeting, the leadership group reflected on questions including: Why are we doing this? Who do we need to work with? How will we use what we learn?
By placing an emphasis on shared values and relationship building from the very beginning of the process, the group set the tone for an equitable collaboration.
Don’t Let Partners Become Proxies
It can be tempting for school administrators to define “family engagement” as talking to the leaders and staff of community organizations. While consulting with organizational leadership is critically important, it is not the same as taking the time to engage directly with families.
“Executive Directors should be a starting point for connecting, listening, and relationships, not the end point,” says Dr. Ishimaru. “Otherwise, they turn into what a colleague of mine calls a ‘proxy’ for actually talking to the parents in their schools or districts.” Let the relationship with the community-based organization become a starting place for you to initiate more frequent and authentic conversations with families.
How to Engage Community in Equitable Collaboration
To collect the data, they distributed paper surveys in 10 languages: Amharic, Chinese, English, Oromo, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Tigrinya, Vietnamese. Survey designers and partners worked together to connect with families in-person and answer questions as they filled out the forms. They also used an online survey form published in the Seattle Times.
The success of the survey can be credited to SESEC’s dedication to building relationships and trusting partners as experts in their understanding of their own communities. As SESEC Communications Manager Mindy Huang describes in her blog post, There’s No Magic Bullet:
“Graham Hill asked for online surveys to be available so families could be routed to the computer lab after parent-teacher fall conferences. Partners volunteered at school events to help families complete the surveys. Powerful Schools YMCA handed out paper copies of the survey and stamped envelopes for families to take home and mail back. CISC ran focus groups where they talked through the survey with their families and explained the survey to parents. SESEC recruited and provided a stipend to a multi-lingual Somali parent in the New Holly neighborhood to recruit East African parents to complete the survey. Emerson Elementary collected surveys in conjunction with the school’s data summit.”
During remote learning we can’t do as much in-person but there are still opportunities for folks to interact. Meal and resource pickup times have become the main tool for in-person communication with families.
Remember that universal approaches don’t work — ask your families of color, immigrant families, world-language speaking families, etc. what they want school to look like, and involve them in the planning process.
How to Make Equitable Family Engagement Part of Your Professional Practice
As COVID infection rates increase this winter, educators and administrators can learn from the success of other schools to incorporate equitable collaboration research practices and connect with families from a distance.
For example, at the beginning of COVID school shutdowns, an assistant principal at a local middle school in Dr. Ishimaru’s network had staff call every single student’s family and ask specific questions about their distance learning circumstances. That information was then recorded in a Google spreadsheet that all of the educators could access.
“You could look in that spreadsheet to find the individual kid and get some sense, but then also you have a systematic way to look across and you could group them,” said Dr. Ishimaru. “These are some of the things that are going on, that’s the actionable research.”
Learning from home is rife with potential: Potential to make meaningful connections and improve student learning, and potential to cause harm through cultural incompetence.
“On the one hand, there’s a way in which teachers could build in ongoing inquiry and relationships into their everyday practice as they’re teaching,” said Dr. Ishimaru. “And on the other hand, teachers have to be careful because we have done very little to really prepare them or the families. It raises all kinds of issues with power and culture and assumptions and all these kinds of things.”
For example, some educators may assume that the parent is the only appropriate person for them to consult with about a student’s progress. They may need to expand their ideas about family and talk with an older sibling, grandparent or aunt and when engaging in those conversations, to listen. No, really listen.
“All of us think we’re good listeners, right?” said Dr. Ishimaru. “But often we bring a set of assumptions and frameworks to what we’re hearing.” Dr. Ishimaru emphasizes the importance of developing the capacity to listen for connections between the granular details families are sharing and deeper structural inequities. Families are unlikely to use the jargon that well-intentioned educators and organizers are primed for, so it’s up to the listener to process the insights and knowledge families can offer about their own children and apply them to change school structures and practices.
Listening well can only take you so far. It’s also to whom you’re listening.
“Last week I ended up moderating a call for working parents from a large public organization,” says Okuno. “Without meaning to, the white women started to dominate the call. I had to facilitate hard to quiet them and make space for the POCs to have a chance to share. Teachers and principals need to be mindful about who they are hearing from and reacting to.”
Evolving Research Practices at foundry10
Inspired by this experience, foundry10 is actively working on ways that we can be community responsive by both listening deeply to students, educators, families, and acting on that information. We learned a lot from our participation in the SESEC family engagement survey design process, and we’re working on ways to incorporate some of those practices into our own work including:
Sharing data back with participants in accessible ways.
Getting information into the hands of people that can act on it.
Continuing to learn and listen from communities we’re connected with.
Working to center marginalized students and families in our programs, research, external sharing, and philanthropic work.
Prioritizing relationship-building with youth and educators and the folks who interact with them directly.
“The approaches of our different CBOs and schools may not work for yours or others elsewhere,” writes Huang in There’s No Magic Bullet. “That means you just have to find another one that does, not try to shove your constituents into a box and force it. Relationships don’t work that way. Humans do not work that way. Our communities have not survived and thrived under these conditions by trying to live that way. To be culturally competent and live true to our values of community, we strive to understand and honor the nuances that each and every individual and group brings to the table.”
We want to hear about your equitable collaboration practices. What’s worked in your community? Connect with us at [email protected]. To learn more about foundry10, follow us on social and subscribe to our monthly Newsletter.
Twitter: @foundry10Ed
Facebook: @foundry10
Instagram: @foundry10
Linkedin: foundry10 | https://medium.com/the-foundry10-voice/educational-justice-starts-with-equitable-family-engagement-ce24e702fb95 | [] | 2020-12-09 17:28:08.026000+00:00 | ['Equity', 'Research', 'Data', 'Education', 'Schools'] |
Contemplating a Potential Brooklyn Subway Expansion | In a city faced with a crumbling subway system and a plethora of infrastructure issues, it goes without saying that numerous ideas are on the table regarding the fixture of these issues, but none have seen the light.
Enter Brooklyn. As New York City’s fastest-growing borough, Brooklyn is home to most of the city’s charm and charisma. But it’s also home to the majority of the city’s subway lines. Despite this, a large portion of the borough is unserved by rapid transit, with the only public transit option of the residents of the affected neighborhoods being slow, overcrowded buses.
The reality of the situation is that there are numerous neighborhoods and hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who simply do not have access to effective public transit, and advocating for change is one thing, but receiving the change is another. Unfortunately, it seems that change in this subject is unlikely to occur, as there are multiple projects on the table that would bring subway service to these areas, but haven’t even become close to a reality.
Let’s take a deep look at those projects, and assess their probabilities.
Utica Avenue Extension
The Utica Avenue Extension, or simply the Utica Avenue Line, is one of the major proposed subway extensions which would benefit Brooklyn. It would bring subway service to the transit-impoverished neighborhoods of East Flatbush, Flatlands, Mill Basin, and Marine Park. First proposed in 1910, the line has remained all but a dream for over 110 years.
The line, which would be served by the 4 train, would stretch from the 4’s current southern terminus at Eastern Parkway and Utica Avenue, and run underneath Utica Avenue (as the name implies) south to Flatbush Avenue, where it would terminate at the vast Kings Plaza mall, which is unserved by the subway and would greatly benefit from subway service.
The plan is arguably the closest of all the plans to becoming a reality, but is still a far ways off. The Utica Avenue Extension was once again proposed in the MTA’s 2015–2019 capital plan, but since Mayor Bill De Blasio called for a study of the line in 2015, not much has sprouted since. In early 2020, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams assembled a group of residents and representatives to assess the potential transit options along Utica Avenue, including the subway extension, but of course, that hasn’t led anywhere.
Utica Avenue is currently served by the B46 bus, which carries over 50,000 people daily and is the city’s second-busiest bus route. Although subway plans underneath the avenue haven’t really surfaced, the bus line was converted to a Select Bus Service express route a few years ago, and bus lanes were added along Utica Avenue to accommodate this. Still, however, the bus line does little to improve transit along the avenue, something the subway line would.
Like the rest of the city’s infrastructure projects, the likelihood of the extension ever becoming a reality is rail thin. The MTA has a tendency to start projects it can’t complete, and the fact that it is already deep in debt doesn’t help the case for improving Brooklyn’s transit woes. According to YIMBY:
Unfortunately, transit advocates and politicians alike are skeptical that the Utica Avenue line will ever materialize, between the MTA’s budget struggles and its inability to finish incredibly expensive projects like the Second Avenue subway or East Side Access.
Clearly, the MTA has its priorities upside down. While extremely beneficial, the Second Avenue Subway is only about 20% complete, and its future is in doubt. Plus, with Manhattan already served by numerous subway lines (including the Upper East Side, which, while home to only one subway line — with three services), the areas of Brooklyn which these proposed lines would serve are currently not served by the subway at all, and thus, are in more dire need of service than the Second Avenue Subway provides.
But let’s face it, if France can build an entire subway system loop conisisting of 68 stations for $48 billion, and the MTA needs $51 billion to build four stations for the Second Avenue Subway, then the state of subway expansion in New York wasn’t looking very bright from the start, if we’re being honest here.
The Utica Avenue Extension would work fine on its own, but couple it with the other proposed subway extensions for Brooklyn, and you have a real solution. The Utica Avenue Extension is only one piece of the puzzle. The second piece would be the Nostrand Avenue Extension, coupled with the Flatbush Avenue Extension to Kings Plaza. The finishing product would look something like the following picture.
The Nostrand Avenue Extension (2 train, red), coupled with the Utica Avenue Extension (4 train, green, far right), and the Flatbush Avenue Extension (5 train, green, center) connecting them would finish it off.
This leads us into our next proposed subway: the Nostrand Avenue Extension.
Nostrand Avenue Extension
Unlike Utica Avenue, Nostrand Avenue already has trains running underneath it, but they stop halfway through the avenue’s length. The final station for both the 2 and 5 trains, which run under Nostrand Avenue during their southern portions, end at Brooklyn College, leaving the rest of the avenue, and the neighborhoods it runs through, in the dust.
Plans to extend the subway to Sheepshead Bay surfaced in 1929, when the line was intended to be extended. As stated in a September 16, 1929 edition of The New York Times, the line was to extend underground to Kings Highway and then become elevated the rest of the way, similar to other lines in South Brooklyn, including the Culver and West End Lines. The report stated:
The Nostrand Avenue line was planned to be extended in 1929 as part of the IND Second System. The line would have been extended as a subway to Kings Highway, and then as an elevated line to Avenue S at the cost of $7.4 million. South of Avenue S the line would continue to Voohries Avenue on a four-track structure shared with the proposed Utica Avenue Line for $3.2 million.
Of course, these plans, like the elevated line, never surfaced. Although the city continued studying the plan and creating new proposals for it through the 1960s, 1970s and beyond, the plan simply never came to fruition. The plan was again reimagined in August 2016, when the Department of Transportation examined the possibility of developing the line. However, if you guessed that nothing has come of that study since, you’d be right.
If you guessed that the Nostrand Avenue Extension still doesn’t exist to this day, you’re right.
Finally, there is the Flatbush Avenue Extension, or simply the Flatbush Avenue Line, which is another proposal. This one is less of an official proposal and more of an extra connector between the two lines. Say both the Utica and Nostrand Avenue Extensions were to be built, the 2 can run along the entire Nostrand Avenue Extension, while the 5 would use the Flatbush Avenue Extension to connect to the 4, terminating with the 4 at Kings Plaza.
The Flatbush Avenue Extension would bring subway service to the Flatlands neighborhood, which is currently unserved. It would also help improve land value in these areas, as these areas are some of the borough’s last affordable areas to live in, having been spared from the rapid gentrification of the borough’s northern areas. However, it appears that most of the official proposals don’t actually include the Flatbush Avenue Extension specifically, but rather are a combination of the listed proposals in some form or another.
Red Hook Line
There are other proposals to bring subway service and expansions to other neighborhoods of Brooklyn, such as Red Hook. Another neighborhood which is unserved by the subway system and is often called a transit desert, Red Hook was officially considered by Governor Andrew Cuomo, who in 2018 ordered an evaluation of the construction of a new subway line in the neighborhood. Cuomo stated of the proposal:
Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood is full of untapped potential, and with this proposal, I am calling on the Port Authority to accelerate consideration of relocating its Red Hook maritime activities to free up this waterfront for more productive community use. I am also calling on the MTA to take steps to improve transportation options to Red Hook, including studying the potential of a new subway line to connect Red Hook to Manhattan.
The subway line, as indicated by Cuomo, would run from Manhattan to Brooklyn, rather than being an extension of a line already in Brooklyn, such as the G, which does not serve Manhattan. Multiple proposals for an extension were contemplated by transit enthusiasts, including an extension of the 1 line which currently terminates in Battery Park. The 1 could be extended to serve Liberty Island and Governors Island, before terminating in Red Hook.
However, these proposals are shaky, as Red Hook is located in a low-lying, flood-prone area, which could impact the subway should a flood occur. Land barriers and flood gates would need to be built to minimize the impact of a flood, but this would jack up the cost of an extension even more, leaving the Red Hook extension unlikely to ever be built.
It is an unfortunate reality that these proposals, the proposals for subway extensions to better serve areas of Brooklyn which are unserved, will most likely never see the light. However, it is important to recognize these projects and ponder the impact which they would have on the city and its residents. These proposals have laid flat for decades, and as such, their completion remains unlikely.
New York is the city where dreams are possible. But these dreams, the dreams that would directly improve the city itself, unfortunately might not ever be. | https://medium.com/@chris6d/contemplating-a-potential-brooklyn-subway-expansion-97c85c57b33d | [] | 2020-12-23 19:02:49.661000+00:00 | ['Transit', 'NYC', 'New York', 'Transportation', 'Brooklyn'] |
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