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Lo spirito di Ida | Don’t treat the user like an idiot with tons of boring levels and repetitions and built-in frustrations. Experiment with exciting visuals, perhaps inventive typography and bright alluring colors, to create a unique personality. | https://medium.com/life-in-low-fi/lo-spirito-di-ida-61cb05eb1e3b | ['Davide Metrangolo'] | 2016-09-25 18:49:40.731000+00:00 | ['Monumentvalley Ustwo', 'Senza Categoria', 'iOS', 'Llinkpost', 'Blog'] |
10 awesome tips and tricks for Mac users | Change your volume and brightness in smaller increments on Mac
To do this on your Mac hold down the shift and option buttons on your keyboard and hitting those volume controls. When you do this you’ll notice that you’re not going down by one notch anymore. It’s actually much smaller increments so if you want to get your volume or even your brightness to a very fine level you’ll be able to do that with this.
Sign a document
When you don’t have access to a printer nearby and you need to sign a document. To do this, all you have to do is open a preview, maybe open up a PDF that you need signed. Go to tools in the menu bar, then annotate and then signature and then you can sign with the trackpad. But we know that’s gonna come out pretty badly so to the right of that you can see camera. Now with this camera feature all you have to do is sign a piece of paper with the signature. Then use the camera to scan it and take the text of your signature and throw it on to any PDF or document.
This is a real lifesaver if you don’t have access to a printer or scanner. Because it looks exactly like your signature since it is and you can place it wherever you want on the document.
Close Applications
Hit command, option and the Escape key. You will be able to close out applications within this little window. You can also go to Activity Monitor to close out applications but this is a hassle thing.
Mac Custom message on your lock screen
In case you happen to misplace something like your MacBook Pro, you can leave a message on where to call or a way to send the MackBook Pro in case someone finds it. Go to security preferences, security and privacy general. Then set lock screen message. If you’re using your Mac in a lot of public spaces definitely take advantage of this feature.
Mac Document Versions
If you are someone who works with a lot of documents you’re gonna like this one. Mac OS actually saves the previous versions of documents so that you can access them even after you’ve already saved. To be able to see all those versions all you have to do is hit the file menu, go to revert to and then browse all versions. This pretty much pulls up something that looks like time machine and you get to see all the different variations of the document that you made previously. If you want you can just go back to the one that fits your criteria hit done or restore.
Remote Control
If the remote user is on the internet then all you have to do is open up spotlight by hitting command and the spacebar, type in screen sharing and you type in their Apple ID. Then it’ll prompt them and ask them if they want to give permission for you to control their screen. Boom you’re able to control someone else’s screen right from your own computer. This feature is built into the operating system so no need to download a third-party software or type in any special keys.
Split Screen
A split screen on your Mac — this is actually pretty simple, all you have to do is hold down that little green button at the top left corner of most applications. With this you can actually send it to the left side of the screen or the right side of the screen or you can make it fullscreen. With this feature you’ll be able to use multiple applications very neatly side-by-side and this just makes it a lot easier to do work.
If you have to take notes and have a web browser open or something or maybe even pull up your calendar and maybe some other application. It is something a lot of people don’t use but they really should and you can even adjust the size if one is more important than the other.
Unit Conversion
You can do unit conversion using spotlight. To open spotlight hit the command and spacebar. You can type in what you’re looking for right there. So if I wanted to convert something like three thousand US dollars to euros, it would tell me that currently is twenty seven hundred eleven dollars and seventy cents in euros.
Accessibility Zoom
This basically allows you to zoom all the way in on your Mac screen. To access it all you have to do is, go into your system preferences, accessibility zoom and then you hit that very first option and with that you’ll be able to zoom in by pressing command option and the plus sign or the minus sign.
Safari Videos
If you’re a Safari user and you like to watch videos while you do something on your computer. You actually have the ability to do something like picture and picture on your computer. Right-click the video and hit enter picture-in-picture and with this you’ll get that little pop-up where your video goes to like the bottom of the screen.
You can actually adjust the size move it around place it wherever you need to and then you’ll be able to use another application while you’re watching your video. It doesn’t work for every website out there and I believe for YouTube you have to like click it twice or something so everywhere is a bit different but it is a cool feature to access. | https://medium.com/@janathapulse/10-awesome-tips-and-tricks-for-mac-users-bd5af330f892 | ['Koduri Sandeep'] | 2020-12-27 06:31:16.667000+00:00 | ['iMac', 'MacBook', 'Tips', 'Mac', 'Apple'] |
DIY Connected Espresso Machine: Archeology (Part 1) | Preamble
Years ago, back in 2015, when I started to learn Arduino, one of the first projects was a connected coffeepot. It got own web server serving a “rich” HTML page controlling the coffeepot from the Internet via REST API. Back in that time, it had a simple Ethernet connection and frightening breadboard installation.
CoffeeBot
Since then I had a gestalt (this article was started in 2018) to connect it to the Wi-Fi and to share my experience that can help others to enjoy making old things smarter and, eventually, to show how it’s simple to turn almost anything into the “IoT” device.
There is nothing really special in the expensive “smart” home appliances, so I hope with this series of articles you’ll get fun from connecting your “dumb” old coffeemaker/teapot/anything to the Internet.
I decided to split this material into a number of parts to be able to eventually finish the whole tutorial since it’ll have a lot of information. We’ll come to the HTTP REST API implementation, and also I would like to control this one with the help of Google Assistant.
However, this is an introductory part and it’s mostly about the coffeemaker hardware components. Let’s get it started!
Acquaintance
What I have is 10 years (= I don’t know) old De’Longhi espresso machine inherited from my parents’ lumber room. I even managed to find it on the De’Longhi website: EC 190.CD!
The Hero (or a guinea pig)
I suppose all machines of this kind type have similar hardware and the bad thing about it that it’s not automatic. On the other side, knowing how to make this type connected you can make smarter any kind of espresso machine. Maybe someday I’ll steal an automatic coffeemaker from the office and continue my tutorial (kidding).
So, my machine can heat water for espresso and make steam to froth milk for cappuccino. It also has a red light to determine when the boiler is working and a green light saying when you can start making your cup of delicious espresso. Aaand… that’s it. Not much, but however, this can’t stop me from connecting it to the Internet.
Breakdown
Head Explosion
After the removal of a couple of proprietary screws here and there, we see no electronics, just a web of colorful AC wires between components, toggle, and lights.
Water Pump
The first important component is a water pump connected with two blue wires and obviously has only two states: on and off. A water pump can be considered as the heart of the espresso machine because it creates pressure from the water tank to the portafilter and impacts most of the coffee parameters.
Water Pump
The blue pipe connected to the water tank and is a source, while the thin half-white/half-transparent pipe is a destination and connected to the boiler. The big transparent pipe is a back-haul for oversupplied water.
This is a vibratory pump made by ULKA and of a typical implementation for espresso machines. Please check this great video by billcrossland to see how it works: https://youtu.be/we9IZJ5tQFs
Boiler
The next point of our decomposition is a boiler. It’s connected with red wires, one of which has a thermal fuse incut to protect the boiler from overheating. Clearly, we better leave it in place.
On top is a steam valve to relieve pressure down to the milk frother. The valve is pretty tough, and I don’t know yet how to automate it.
Boiler
On the side, there is a port for water pipe and a holder for thermistors. The only thing it tells about itself is a mysterious “9090”… or “0606”.
Thermistors
Two thermal resistors are pinned to the boiler via some kind of thermal grease to improve heat transfer. I used a multimeter to determine how they work and found that thermistors are closed by default and open when the required temperature is achieved.
Turns out these thermistors are bi-metal, similar to that applied in teapots. Experiments showed the first of them has an operating temperature of 115 degrees C and the second has 125 degrees C — for espresso and frother respectively.
Lights
What else? Red and green lamps to indicate work modes have a cross-connection with other parts of the machine. I don’t think we will use them, because we don’t know their specifications, so it’s easier to replace them with LEDs to control right from a microcontroller.
Toggle
Well, the only part left is a toggle on the front panel. It’s also wired with other parts, but if we want to control everything programmatically, we need to connect it directly to the microcontroller as well. The toggle has four states:
off (neutral)
make steam (left)
boil (right)
pour water (far right)
I’m not sure if the far-right position keeps the boiler working while pouring water, but, after all, we can make it as we want. It has a couple of pins, so I armed myself with a multimeter to find out what’s going on inside.
Toggle Schematic View
Different states of the toggle close connection between different pins, and we can connect each of them to the microcontroller, but I had a slightly better idea.
We can solder them with resistors of different resistance and left only two wires with resistance depending on the toggle state, something like a rheostat.
Having such kind of potentiometer will allow us to use a single analog input to determine the toggle state. It took me a while to get things working properly, but here is the final scheme:
Toggle Resistance Scheme
Microcontroller
Now, what about the microcontroller? Initially, I built this project with Arduino Uno, but as mentioned earlier needed to connect it to the Internet over Wi-Fi. This is achievable by simply adding a Wi-Fi module, but a better idea is to use a Wi-Fi board as a self-sufficient controller.
A good candidate for that is NodeMCU — a five-dollar open-source IoT platform based on the ESP8266 Wi-Fi system on a chip. I already covered how to quickly start with NodeMCU, Arduino ecosystem, and PlatformIO IDE — actually, this was written when I switched the project to NodeMCU.
Assembled Controller Board
Next Steps
The nearest plan is to show how to:
Wire all the hardware components to the controller. Switch modes with the hardware toggle. Switch modes programmatically.
Those are fundamental items to continue with further improvements.
The project code is available here: https://github.com/loginov-rocks/Connected-Espresso-Machine — it’s not finished by the moment I write this article so I will work on this during the next episodes.
That’s all for today, see you next time!
Next part: https://loginov-rocks.medium.com/diy-connected-espresso-machine-relays-part-2-2a070d81ffd2 | https://medium.com/@loginov-rocks/diy-connected-espresso-machine-archeology-part-1-3d8c374b0f32 | ['Danila Loginov'] | 2021-06-05 16:16:09.499000+00:00 | ['Nodemcu', 'Connected Home', 'IoT', 'DIY', 'Arduino'] |
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Bringing Back Ancestor Reverence | Bringing Back Ancestor Reverence
By Dawn Osun Omilade
Your Ancestors Bring Unity, Peace, and Harmony to Your Life and Home
Our family is everything to us. We have connections with our family members we can’t even explain at times. Maybe you have a little brother who seems more like a grandfather (determined old man spirit) or a big sister that acts more like a distant aunt than a sister. Why do these things happen? We are returned souls to this experience and how assimilated into our family each time is different.
In the Yoruba tradition the dead are not buried in far away cemeteries. They are buried at home on their own land. Imagine being able to give your mother or father flowers whenever you wanted or knowing that you can go right there to ask for their guidance. The death of a loved one does not separate them from our life. Death is just a passage to another life called Atunwa. If we know we are coming back then we would prepare, live and leave this earth way differently than we do now.
My Aunt never said just goodbye on a phone call she would always say, “Bye for now”. In Yoruba culture if they are friendly with someone, they say Odabo — which means see you soon. My aunt has since transitioned to the realm of the ancestors, but I believe her “Bye for now” is just as poignant as the Yoruba “Odabo”. Odabo has its roots set in the meeting again sense and this meeting is not just physical. Meeting the person again may occur in dreams, imagination, prayer or a feeling of needing them to guide you. Reclaiming a part of lost heritage is also a call to bringing us back to reclaiming the memory and lives of our transitioned family members. Death does not set an end to anything! Death is a new beginning, a possibility to be born again.
The Pandemic of COVID-19 has brought death to the forefront of our minds. The need for us to heal our relationship with death is crucial. Here in the Western world death has been shoved into a closet for many generations over and now is staring you in the face. Most Western religions have done a true disservice to reverencing the dead. It leaves a huge gaping hole in families and healing grieving souls. The Christian Bible gives many references on giving reverence to our dead ancestors but yet in still Traditional Christian Churches frown upon it. Why? The British and Spanish Colonizers (many backed by Christian churches) began to rewrite doctrine regarding the word “worship and reverence” when the African slave trade and missionaries in Africa were setting the stage for chattel slavery. Thus attempting to remove all links back to Africa, breaking the slaves in, remodeling their minds and bodies and even causing epigenetics (gene changes)! Removing the very integral practice of ancestor reverence is like turning off the light in a section of your DNA in your very being, your very soul. Eventually spiritually you will be drained due to the lack of the spiritual ancestral link. You are left with a deep yearning for a connection that you are afraid will get you ostracized. But you are tired of just surviving and putting on a tough face every day. Your transitioned loved one needs you just as much as you need to turn on that light to see the truth. Ancestor reverence is your birthright. It was stolen from you as a kind of human experiment and disempowerment strategy.
Learning to mend your spiritual DNA (astral spiritual genetics) is a key practice. Death in Yoruba is called Iku. The word KU means “to die”. Death is a process of transitioning from one world into another. If you don’t acknowledge the existence of death, it is impossible for you to be freed from its imminent danger. Just like acknowledging gravity frees you from thinking you can fly and not get hurt. It is as simple as that.
The ancestors symbolize a part of your heavenly community, spiritual foundation — and thus spiritual development. They are symbols of unity, peace and harmony. You would invoke them to give you a better understanding of your direction in life, to be an intercessor for you and your family and your family interests. Reverence of your ancestors is especially important if you notice history is repeating itself: the same diseases, early deaths, infertility, inability to thrive in life, constant negative trials and tribulations. Your ancestors can help erase the problems of generations to come. How would you like to be the one that is known as the torch carrier that turned on the light in the spiritual DNA of your lineage? You can help prevent the passing on inherited negative spiritual traits to future generations.
Below are a few simple ways to give reverence to your ancestors:
You can set up a simple home “memorial” or altar to honor your lineage. Many cultures across the world do this; it is called a Jingili in parts of West Africa. This is one the most beautiful ways to invite peace and harmony in your life and home. Use a white cloth or an African print, picture(s) of only transitioned loved ones, candle, glass of water and anointing oil.
You can make an offering — the best way to do that is to give them what they liked the most while still alive. Even if that vice was their downfall. My dad smoked Marlboro 100’s in the red pack. For years I was against even the thought of putting a pack on the altar for him. Once I did it opened my approach to connecting with him, even made me laugh and remember things I had long forgotten.
You can prepare dinner at home for a group of people and dedicate it to your ancestors — this is called Sara(giving in honor of another) for the ancestors.
You may also have a priest who is versed in ancestor reverence prepare blessed items for your altar or even advise you on the set up of our altar.
Most people do not even think about their spiritual inheritance. Out of sight out of mind until you lose your mind trying to figure out what is wrong with you. Constantly staying in touch with your ancestors opens the telephone lines again. Once that line is open you start a positive circuit, a continuous flow of information- present (you), past (their spiritual knowledge), and future (improved outcomes and harmony). You have the right to go back and get it! Get their wisdom, get their knowledge, and get their understanding! Your astral-spiritual and physical-biological genetics are stored in your body and are with you wherever you are. Your ancestors are within you and with you wherever you are. You don’t need a special prayer or to speak in a foreign language. Pray to your ancestors in the way that you would if you were holding their hand or having that weekly phone call. No request is off limits to your ancestors especially ones that uplift the lineage of the family.
It’s time to bring back ancestor reverence, flip on the light, and see what you’ve been missing out on. No matter your ethnicity if you have been oppressed by the strategies of separation from your ancestors and disempowerment in any religion, then you should look into what your ancestors can bring to your life.
Dawn Osun Omilade is an ordained Priest of Osun
Ayurban Wellness provides coaching for Ancestor Reverence | https://medium.com/@omsimranjot/bringing-back-ancestor-reverence-6e3bfe2d6bba | ['Omilade Simranjot Kaur'] | 2020-12-27 17:04:46.420000+00:00 | ['Prayer', 'Ancestors', 'Church', 'Ifa', 'Spirituality'] |
On The 20th Anniversary Of My Mother’s Demise, And Why I Don’t Care So Much For Christmas… | On The 20th Anniversary Of My Mother’s Demise, And Why I Don’t Care So Much For Christmas Decorations
(A few notes in memory of my mother, who died on December 25, 2000.)
(Photos of my mother have either been misplaced, or succumbed to water and other destructive agents over the years. This is the last surviving picture.)
Dear Mom,
It’s been 240 months of absence, of a void, of what-would-have-beens. Success & an adventurous life do not cancel out the emptiness. Every win comes with an "I wish you were here", every loss with an "if only you were around to guide". My life amounts to little other than mementos of you.
On some mornings I feel like I have it all figured out, and on some evenings I feel like a ship with neither anchor nor rudder. Would certain mistakes have been avoided if you were here? Would my life have turned out differently? I guess we will never know.
I have spent one-thirds of the time since you left blaming you for not fighting to live, then spent a third making a life for myself, & a final third summoning the courage to process your absence. Will my elder brother ever recover? Will things ever be the same with your sisters? Honest to God, I can’t tell. Your siblings didn’t particularly crown themselves in glory in the weeks building up to your interment, but I don’t plan to discuss it this year.
I still don’t look forward to decorations on Christmas day, mom, and I still don’t try to eat jollof rice either; I have no idea what become of the pot you cooked two hours before you closed your eyes for the last time. I still have a dislike for kids who throw crackers; you may have still been alive if those loud things didn’t exist...
But I have stopped looking for you in the women that loved me, so I guess that is progress.
Dad found love again six years after you left. The union produced a child. She turns seven next month. You’d have loved her: she’s so adorable. Her mother is not perfect, but she’s alright. Who knows, both of you would have even made great friends...but we will never find out.
Mom, do you remember the small notebooks I used to scribble "novels" in? Ah well, they say I’m a successful author these days. A Google search of my name points to some awesome stuff I have done. Yea, there’s this thing called Google. You’d have figured it out, you were a schoolteacher, a good one at that. You might remember how we used to bond over your students’ CRK exam scripts, you always said you could go to sleep and leave me to mark so long as it was CRK.
I'm sure you'd be surprised why a lot of people joined you over there this year.
Ah well, there’s this thing called COVID-19 that just sort of took over the world & started affecting everybody. It’s in the air we breathe, so it’s hard to contain. It’s a wicked world, mom. You’d have been tired.
I know I read the Bible from back to front while you were here, but these days I’m not inclined to opening it, I’m not even so sure about believing what’s in there now. I feel He doesn’t listen, I feel he’s stopped thinking of me, just like you stopped coming to see me in dreams years ago. If it makes you feel better, the nightmares on Sunday nights are less frequent, compared to four years ago.
I’d have loved to mark this year’s anniversary in a big way, but all I’ve got is a bottle of brandy, an empty heart, and memories of Daddy screaming "my wife is dying" on that black Monday morning while you jerked on the floor, gasping for breath as your heart caved in. I hope the boy who threw those crackers is an astronaut now.
Would you have approved of today’s feminism? You were pretty kickass & independent yourself, so I’m guessing maybe. Would you hassle me for still being unmarried? You probably would; I have heard that I’m notorious for being kind and warm, but emotionally unavailable.
On days like this, I’m torn between “f*** you for not fighting harder to live” and “I miss you, and I hope we can talk soon”. Lagos nights are hardly silent, & far from holy, but I hope you stay sleeping in heavenly peace.
See you around, Nne. | https://medium.com/@chiemekejerry5/on-the-20th-anniversary-of-my-mothers-demise-and-why-i-don-t-care-so-much-for-christmas-9f86c49befa8 | ['Jerry Chiemeke'] | 2020-12-25 19:45:31.006000+00:00 | ['Christmas', 'Motherhood', 'Family', 'Prose', 'Death'] |
Kyber Network Integration — RX Wallet Now Supports KNC Token! | Integration of Kyber Network Crystal (KNC) tokens by Kyber Network into RX Wallet.
Kyber Network Crystal (KNC) Integration — Convenience at your fingertips
We are excited to announce the recent addition to the RX Wallet, KNC token! You can now easily transfer and manage your KNC assets from the RX Desktop Wallet.
KNC Token has been integrated into RX Wallet allowing users to access Kyber Network’s KNC Token within RX Wallet, this removes the need to switch between different applications to manage your assets.
RX Wallet — DeFi Applications Powerhouse
RX Wallet, the official wallet for the RiveX ecosystem, is a multi-chain wallet supporting a variety of assets from different chains including RVX, ETH as well as ERC-20 and WRC-20 tokens. RX Wallet is the core product and release for the RiveX ecosystem. It intends to bridge and integrate DAPPS not only from Wanchain but also from other ecosystems such as Ethereum, EOS, Binance Chain, Tron, etc.
How to enable KNC in RX Wallet
Simply click on the + ADD MORE button under your current assets to add the KNC Token asset. To send and receive KNC, click on the red and green arrows on the right-hand side.
RX Wallet overview and guide
For a full overview and guide on how to use RX Wallet desktop, click the link below!
About Kyber Network
Kyber Network’s on-chain liquidity protocol allows decentralized token swaps to be integrated into any application, enabling value exchange to be performed seamlessly between all parties in the ecosystem. Tapping on the protocol, developers can build payment flows and financial apps, including instant token swap services, erc20 payments, and innovative financial dapps — helping to build a world where any token is usable anywhere. Visit https://kyber.network/
About RiveX
RiveX is a chain agnostic interoperable layer-2 solution across different blockchain protocols. RiveX aims to empower the next generation of decentralized applications, decentralized finance and enterprise solutions. RiveX has comprehensive interoperable DeFi solutions such as RX Wallet which aims to integrate DAPPS from different blockchain protocols to enable an interoperable DeFi ecosystem within RX Wallet itself. The first DAPP which RX Wallet has already integrated is WRDEX. Another core product powered by RiveX is the world’s first cross-chain DEX called WRDEX.
👇 More about RiveX 👇
RX Wallet | WRDEX | Website | Twitter | Telegram | Medium | GitHub | https://medium.com/rivex-foundation/kyber-network-integration-rx-wallet-now-supports-knc-token-4ec47f8c52ea | [] | 2020-06-03 13:27:22.680000+00:00 | ['Integration'] |
8 skills of a UX designer in FinTech | 1. Learn the subject
You have to learn the financial services you are working on and the relevant terminology. For example, working with account receivables is important to know:
Invoice legal definition and meaning.
How fees are applied. E.g. there is a list of fees in Germany and how they are calculated. What does it mean for a designer? For instance, when creating a fee you should automatically calculate it based on an invoice amount. Oh, and there are different types of fees… but that’s another story.
Payment plan.
Payment deferment.
… and many more.
Having your head around the subject will help you to stand out among other designers during an interview process. For a deep understanding you will have an opportunity to learn the subject with the help of Subject matter experts on your project when hired.
2. User research and working with assumptions
User research is hard and expensive to do properly in a specific business area. It requires a set of skills and knowledge of the domain from a user. FinTech projects tend to be formal so it might be hard to even get your hands on actual users. Of course, the following recommendations should work along with proper testing techniques, not instead ☝️
Make yourself comfortable working with assumptions professionally. Learn how to generate assumptions based on ideation techniques and how to validate them. Set success criteria by which you will evaluate whether an assumption has succeeded or failed.
Learn how to generate assumptions based on ideation techniques and how to validate them. Set success criteria by which you will evaluate whether an assumption has succeeded or failed. Find a reliable source of information. In FinTech projects, it is common to have a person who knows the business processes of the project’s specific domain. This person might hold different positions in the company: Subject matter expert, Product Owner, Business analyst. And he/she will provide you the most valuable information about the business needs and the users.
In FinTech projects, it is common to have a person who knows the business processes of the project’s specific domain. This person might hold different positions in the company: Subject matter expert, Product Owner, Business analyst. And he/she will provide you the most valuable information about the business needs and the users. Test prototypes on your team. Of course, this should be held with caution and you should be able to separate biased opinions. However, your team members have soft knowledge about the business domain and can represent a learning curve of the product (which you can rarely test with external users). And don’t miss the chance to test new team members! They can provide a fresh look and you might be shocked by what they discover.
3. Stakeholder management
Stakeholders are busy people. In FinTech designers heavily rely on their input to continue working.
A designer has to clarify system requirements, user stories, metrics, KPIs and who-knows-how-many-other questions with people who know the subject in and out. A designer has to keep the process flowing by receiving the necessary feedback on time. You can master stakeholder management by incorporating the following techniques 👩💼👨💻
Communicate your expectations on when you need to get the feedback → this actually can help a lot.
on when you need to get the feedback → this actually can help a lot. When sending a document for a review, set up a follow-up meeting with the stakeholder. The agenda might be: “This is a follow-up meeting for the document (link) review. We will discuss your review notes and set our next objectives”. If a stakeholder doesn’t do a review, you can make a walkthrough of the document and gather his feedback directly at the meeting.
with the stakeholder. The agenda might be: “This is a follow-up meeting for the document (link) review. We will discuss your review notes and set our next objectives”. If a stakeholder doesn’t do a review, you can make a walkthrough of the document and gather his feedback directly at the meeting. This goes without saying, but still: always set up a meeting to make a prototype walkthrough and gather feedback on it.
Be proactive in gathering information from people and help them to give you this information. Help stakeholders to research the information if necessary. This is a great opportunity for you to learn the business.
4. Information architecture
IA complicated itself becomes even more complex in FinTech projects. You should be comfortable with analysing high level system concepts. Because you will need to create user friendly navigation for them and make information easily discoverable.
For further reading I recommend:
Information Architecture: For the Web and Beyond
A Guide to the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK Guide). I find it very important to get a head around business analyses but to a certain limit. So choose only relevant chapters 🤓
A concept of a core banking system from which one must design a main navigation (image altered intentionally).
5. Permissions and user roles
A bank branch operator after editing global interest packages across the bank affecting all customers.
The cost of a phrase “Oh, we forgot user roles” lies deep in the system architecture, involving multiple teams to fix it.
This aspect has to be taken into account as early as possible in the project. You might think that for a designer it is not such a big deal, but it may lead to a major redesign of a project.
Depending on the levels of permissions, a designer considers which features can be hidden or displayed in a different mode (Edit vs Read).
(Edit vs Read). How does the screen look like without those features ?
? Does the information architecture support all possible permissions? Can a user with lower permissions reach certain pages or are they blocked ?
? What happens if a user receives a link but does not have permission to view this information? The system can display a read-only form instead of an edit mode. You can show a convenient message that a user does not have permission to see the form of this customer account. Or should he even know that such a customer account exists?
Lay the foundation of user roles at the beginning and grow the complexity of permissions along the way.
6. Formatting and localization
How not following an ISO looks like :)
💰Decimal numbers formatting may be conventionally different in different countries. Further reading on a decimal separator and excerpt of ISO 31–0:
“Numbers consisting of long sequences of digits can be made more readable by separating them into groups, preferably groups of three, separated by a small space. […] Such groups of digits should never be separated by a comma or point, as these are reserved for use as the decimal sign. For example, one million (1000000) may be written as 1 000 000.00” (.00 added by author for clarity)
🗓️ Date formatting is challenging to define for international services. You may decide to use the local date formats for each country. However, with the rising globalization, this approach might be confusing for some people. Imagine a Ukrainian used to dd.mm.(yy)yy format using a German locale (date format yyyy-mm-dd) with an English translation (date format mm/dd/(yy)yy). Insane! Which date formatting to use: by locale or by language (either of which would be foreign for the user)?And even if you decide to use an international date format yyyy-mm-dd, it is still not clear what a month is and what a date is. On the bright side, the international date format brings consistency and is sorted well in a table.
💶 The currency was just a cute icon for me before coming into the FinTech. Soon I have learned that not only using icons for the currency is mostly wrong. But also that there are guidelines for currency formats and ISO 4217.
🌎 Country specific formats may include Customer number, Account number and Bank card number:
Customer number may be defined by a national ID number and is different in different countries. It also depends on the type of a customer: private or corporate. To keep a consistent layout and formatting you may consider adding a zero (0) in front of a customer number to have a maximum defined digits length. Example for a system supporting 11 digit customer numbers: 000450.59410, where 45059410 was the initially provided customer number.
may be defined by a national ID number and is different in different countries. It also depends on the type of a customer: private or corporate. To keep a consistent layout and formatting you may consider adding a zero (0) in front of a customer number to have a maximum defined digits length. Example for a system supporting 11 digit customer numbers: 000450.59410, where 45059410 was the initially provided customer number. Account number has different format and different algorithm of generation in different countries.
has different format and different algorithm of generation in different countries. Bank card number is defined by ISO/IEC 7812. It is important that a card number is masked when displayed or printed. Full card number can be displayed in certain administration systems for authorized users only.
7. Research government regulations
The answer is: maybe.
Usually, FinTech companies have a legal department that keeps everybody up to date about current and upcoming regulations. However it might not always be the case, or they might think that there is nothing to do with the design. Do your research.
In Norway and Australia, it is a legal requirement to satisfy The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 level AA for both public and private sector.
The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has to be satisfied by all companies who deal with the processing of personal data of EU citizens, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the EU or not.
8. Data visualization
Yes, you need to present numbers in an engaging and actionable way. I do recommend to create a library of flashy financial dashboards to get inspiration from. But take them with a grain of salt and better read the book Storytelling with Data on how to communicate data properly. | https://uxdesign.cc/8-skills-of-a-ux-designer-in-fintech-a44d38534d8c | ['Julia Bondarenko'] | 2019-06-03 08:48:38.029000+00:00 | ['Skills', 'Design', 'Fintech', 'Banking', 'UX'] |
A Scalable Magento 2 Architecture | A Scalable Magento 2 Architecture
Utilizing AWS ECR, Fargate, EFS, and Aurora
I write this post with mixed feelings as a company in my portfolio has recently decided to no longer on-board new Magento development projects due to various reasons beyond the scope of this post. However, we are still here to help with companies that are looking for a hand on designing infrastructure, maintaining the systems side of Magento environments, and migrating working Magento instances to the cloud.
For those of you who are not familiar, Magento is one of the most popular E-Commerce platforms used by e-tailers of all sizes. Perhaps it gained its popularity due to the fact that it’s an opensource project with a freely distributed community edition helping lots of companies build out powerful e-commerce websites quickly at extremely low costs. It has also in the past been one of the only few choices in its class that could efficiently handle large amounts of SKUs until the recent years where some of its competitors have caught up a bit. According to Wikipedia, there are over 100,000 stores globally that run on Magento and the software itself has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times. In 2018, Magento was acquired by Adobe for 1.68 billion US dollars, effectively becoming one of the members of Adobe’s brigade of web presence building tools.
As you can tell from the above, even though we always advice customers to build out their e-commerce sites the right way from the start with custom builds rather than using pre-built template based platforms for many very good reasons, it’s extremely easy for budget conscious businesses to be tempted to go with a template based platform to reduce up-front costs instead. Whether this is a good decision or not is yet another topic beyond the scope of this post. However the point is that because of this phenomenon, we have over the years done quite a bit of work with Magento and some of the other platforms like WooCommerce, Odoo, and even Shopify.
Background
Around two years ago, a friend’s company running 3 e-commerce websites on a single Magento 1.9 instance came to me and asked for some help with their site. Apparently, at the time, the site would keep on crashing especially during high season and that was causing them business opportunities. I took a look at it and it was a typical growth situation. Basically, everything was running on a single VPS that just wasn’t cutting it anymore. So without going into too much detail, we essentially decoupled their Magento instance to an AWS EC2 auto-scaling group mounting EFS shares (we talked about containerization but the in-house team wasn’t quite ready for such a big leap) and Aurora to handle the database along with slapping Cloudflare in front of the whole thing to do some CDN and caching. They then had a somewhat scalable infrastructure from there and a single point to upload media and configure magento for all EC2 web instances. Off we went on a launch and the problem was solved.
Magento 1.9 New Architecture
Fast forward to a few a months ago, Magento 1 using Paypal was falling out of PCI compliance and Paypal urged everyone to upgrade to Magento 2. So we regrouped with the client and discussed a plan of action. This time around, they were ready for containerization and AWS Fargate was at the same time finally mature enough for us to give it a run for its money. The hard part now is to migrate the Magento 1 data to Magento 2. This is the most painful part which I will definitely not cover here but let’s just say that we were able to successfully migrate all of the pertinent data over to a new Magento 2 instance running in Docker after a lot of pain and many sleepless nights. If anyone is thinking about doing this, I would strongly suggest you don’t go cheap and hire a strong firm that’s specifically focused on Magento with lots of experience doing migrations of this type. The difference is night and day.
The New Archtecture:
Now that we have a pretty solid Magento 2 instance running in Docker on our local dev environment with the migrated data from Magento 1, we are ready to throw this onto AWS. We first imported the database to Aurora and created the Redis instance. Then, we started up an EC2 instance called DevOps and ran the image with it to reconfigure it for using Aurora and made some of the directories on EFS to be test mounted by the container. After that, we committed the image and pushed it to a newly created ECR registry.
We are then ready to give it a run on Fargate, we created the cluster and task definitions so that the image we have prepared is launched to have 2 minimum containers with an auto-scaler that maxes out at 4 containers sitting behind an Application Load Balancer which are configs derived from our past traffic based estimates. So why Fargate you might ask? Here is my logic behind it:
No servers or orchestration infrastructure to manage Handles EFS mounting and launching/monitoring of docker containers for you via task definitions Load Balancer is automatically adjusted on launch and auto-scaling Overall cost reduction to only paying for what’s used compared to EC2
Of course, we reused the bastion host that has OpenVPN (external) and ssh (internal LAN only) enabled to allow our customers to configure Magento and upload images to EFS that persists across all containers. It will also serve as the gateway for the client to access DevOps for making docker image changes and accessing the new analytics system we will be installing after.
As mentioned, the client wanted to run some analytics on the data in Magento so it was only logical to create a read replica of the production database so that they can run an EC2 instance and install whatever they wanted to grab data and analyze with. So that’s exactly what we did.
And that’s it! We logged into Cloudflare, swapped out the CNAME of the domains to the new load balancer and went live. This sums up all the components of a modern scalable Magento 2 architecture as diagrammed above. There are more improvements that can be done or even components that’s already there which I didn’t really talk much about like varnish and maybe even CI/CD but what’s clearly within the diagram alone is already a solid enough foundation for general scaling and growth and definitely ready for you to add more or improve upon without any unwanted architectural issues.
If there are any questions or suggestions, please feel free to drop a comment below or get directly in touch! | https://hkdb.medium.com/a-scalable-magento-2-architecture-107f5fe7a813 | ['Jeremy Cheng'] | 2020-08-16 21:04:46.299000+00:00 | ['Ecommerce', 'AWS', 'Magento', 'Fargate', 'Cloud'] |
Why + was a smart naming move in streaming | Over the last couple decades I’ve worked on a numnber of naming projects. From companies to divisions to even an open source code project for Intel. So when Apple announced the name of their streaming service as AppleTV+ I was amused at what I considered a “meh” name. Then came Disney+, EPSN+, and the announcement of Discovery+. I was sneering at the seeming laziness exhibited in naming these new services.
Except I was wrong. Like, way wrong. Here’s why.
Brand equity has real value
To see why, we need to start with the concept of brand equity. You can think of brand equity like a bank. Some efforts deposit into it, others take out of it. When a company has a solid brand position and applies it consistently over time it deposit into brand equity. In equation for it might looks something like this:
The more consistent a company is over time, the bigger the deposit into the brand bank becomes. And the amount accelerates over time.
By the time upstart mobile phone network Cingular bought AT&T Wireless in 2004, AT&T Wireless, which started life as McCaw Cellular, had been around for seventeen years. The AT&T name had been around since the late 1800s.
Cingular, with it’s catchy name and bouncy logo “Jack”, decided that they wanted to fold the AT&T Wireless brand into Cingular.
I’ve written before about when a company should change its logo before and the same holds true for names. Why? Brand equity. Take Cingular Wireless for example.
AT&T and Cingular logos
On his way out the door to become the Brand Manager for Netflix, then AT&T Wireless Brand Wrangler, Gary McMath ran the numbers for Cingular on how much it would cost to replace the brand value of AT&T Wireless — $5 billion. Yes, that is five “with a b” billion. Undaunted Cingular moved forward with the plan anyway.
Then, in 2006, just $2 billion into their rebrand, they decided to just go ahead and stick with AT&T Wireless saving $3 billion more.
Why + adds so much to a name
Which brings me to why I was wrong to think the “+” naming scheme was anything but smart. Unlike Netflix, none of the streaming services launched by content creators are actually standalone businesses. They’re all tied to other, established entities. Entities that have built up, you guessed it, brand equity.
But the reason Disney+, AppleTV+, ESPN+, and Discovery+ are so powerful is five-fold:
1/ They leverage the brand equity of the established brands
2/ They indicate “new, different, and more”
3/ Visually, it is an open-ended equation which signals that they will add even more content as time goes on.
4/ Now that enough streaming services are using that naming structure, they are a shortcut for consumers to instantly know they are streaming offerings.
5/ The + symbol is universal which means they can have their service be available anywhere in the world and not have to worry about translation or trasliteration
Imagine getting that much benefit from just slapping a plus onto an existing name. Yet that is exactly what happened and why I was absolutely wrong. | https://medium.com/@kaizenbarry/why-was-a-smart-naming-move-in-streaming-7b6bb8c80a90 | ['Barry W. Enderwick'] | 2020-12-18 15:46:35.531000+00:00 | ['OTT', 'Naming', 'Streaming', 'Branding', 'Brand Strategy'] |
Four Cartoonists on The Biggest Lie of Their Lives | 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/four-cartoonists-on-the-biggest-lie-of-their-lives-9fb6df5913b0 | ['The Nib'] | 2020-12-10 15:51:08.177000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Memoir', 'Family', 'Caribbean', 'Comics'] |
New Research on the Wage Gap for African American Women: The “Double Gap” | The Roosevelt Institute and John Jay College of Criminal Justice published a new study that reveals important information about the wage gap for highly educated African American women in the workforce. Much has been written about the gender wage gap for women in general in the United States. Michelle Holder, the author of this study and assistant professor of economics at John Jay, points out that corporate profits have increased over the last few decades while wages in general in the United States have stagnated. In 2018, domestic corporate profits totaled $2 trillion while full-time workers’ (median) annual salary sat at $46,800. Holder notes that among the factors contributing to stagnant wages over the past few decades are globalization, technology, and decreasing bargaining power of labor unions.
The author reports that the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that women in general experienced a gender wage gap in 2018 of 81.6 percent of men’s wages, while Black women working full time earned sixty-one cents for every dollar that white men earned. These simple numbers mask complex factors that play a role, such as occupational crowding based on sex, gender socialization, employer bias, historical exclusionary practices on the part of unions, and the “motherhood penalty.” Holder notes that African American women experience both a gender wage gap and a racial wage gap, which she names the “double gap.” She explains that the impact of the combination of these two types of discrimination on wages are probably not just additive but multiplicative for African American women. The purpose of this research is to quantify the double gap for highly educated African American women.
“African American women have held a uniquely entrenched yet peculiar place in the American labor force,” explains Holder, “since the first enslaved African woman” was brought to the United States to provide involuntary, unpaid labor within and outside of white households. After emancipation, African American women continued to labor as primarily agricultural or domestic workers. These occupations were the only ones open to them-occupations excluded from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies establishing Social Security and other benefits for workers.
Holder explains that her research takes an unusual approach and examines occupational wage differentials between African American women and similarly educated white non-Latinx men because non-Latinx men, as a demographic group, possess the best wage-bargaining power with employers. Holder’s research is based on the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS) database with a sample size of over 3 million. This research includes all twenty-two major occupation groups in the 2017 ACS sample and includes only participants who are
full-time employees of at least thirty-five hours per week
people employed only in the private, for-profit sector
non-Latinx persons
US citizens
Black women and non-Latinx white men with the same education levels, determined by the fiftieth and ninety-nineth percentile educational attainment levels of African American women in each occupation.
The education levels under investigation were probably a minimum of some college and a maximum of graduate level and postdoctoral education. The attainment levels of the Black women were used to establish the boundaries for comparison with the white men. The same attainment levels were then used to match white non-Latinx male workers in matching occupations.
Here are the research’s findings:
The aggregate wage differential between highly educated African American women and similarly educated white non-Latinx men in the United States in 2017 was $50.9 billion.
Specifically, African American women were underpaid in sales occupations by $9.1 billion.
Another large gap was for health practitioners. The annual wage gap was a differential of $49,683 compared to white non-Latinx men in the same occupations with the same levels of education.
The largest absolute pay gap, according to related research, is in the physician and surgeon occupational categories.
In conclusion, Holder states, “The findings from this research suggest that African American women’s labor power is largely undercompensated by employers, with tangible implications for income and asset-building in the Black community-as well as significant cost savings, in the tens of billions of dollars annually, for the private, for-profit sector.” We need government policies that hold companies accountable for these inequities. This is shameful. | https://medium.com/@annelitwinphd/new-research-on-the-wage-gap-for-african-american-women-the-double-gap-c508ba155867 | ['Anne Litwin'] | 2020-12-22 21:02:08.039000+00:00 | ['Gender Equality', 'Race Relations', 'Black Women', 'Equal Rights', 'Equality'] |
How to SAFe Agile to Benefit M&A Integration | By Anna Pinnes and Kison Patel
Introduction:
Our experiences suggest the larger the company, the more siloed the integration is. This is just one incentive to use Agile for integration practices. Now imagine you have multiple newly acquired companies that need to be integrated. Here again, Agile can be most helpful as Agile allows you to tackle the backlog in an efficient and cost-effective manner. SAFe Agile is specifically useful for integrating multiple companies at one time because it is “the world’s leading framework for scaling Agile” across enterprises.
What is SAFe?
SAFe (scaled Agile framework) is a framework for businesses that focuses on navigating “transformation challenges” in ways that allow for improved quality, efficiency, productivity, and employee satisfaction. More specifically, it is based on the following five competencies:
1. Team and Technical Agility
Teams are responsible for performing and delivering work of a very high quality and value. With this in mind, the teams have two main traits: team agility and technical agility. In terms of team agility, the teams should be small and cross functional. In addition, they must understand their roles and how their specific roles relate to the larger whole.
Teams are rallied around a common goal. Technical agility refers to the team members possessing the skills needed to create strong solutions and outcomes. The teams must also work quickly; therefore, rather than testing and identifying problems at the end of a task, teams test early and often. The overriding idea here is teams want to be sure new changes do not introduce new problems -this concept perfectly applies to M&A since potential risks and loopholes should be identified and addressed early.
2. DevOps and Release On Demand
This competency revolves around the idea that DevOps helps to establish a “continuous delivery pipeline.” The notion of the pipeline means that the business should be able to produce and release something of value at anytime. Exploration, integration, and deployment should be happening continuously.
3. Business Solutions and Lean Systems Engineering
Business solutions and team systems engineering are based upon 9 Lean-Agile principles. These principles ultimately allow for products of higher value to be produced more efficiently. The principles include:
Take an economic view
Apply systems thinking
Assume variability; preserve option
Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue length
Apply cadence, synchronize the cross-domain planning
Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
Decentralize decision making
These principles help provide a basis for coordinating large teams and making them efficient and productive.
4. Lean Portfolio Management
Here lean practitioners and leaders are looking to marshal strategy and execution through lean methods related to operations, funding, and authority. Lean portfolio management is a better fit than traditional portfolio management methods for the global economy and digital age — both of which contain high levels of uncertainty.
There are three collaborations that must take place in order to fully achieve lean portfolio management flow. These collaborations are: strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and Lean governance. With these collaborations, stakeholders are brought together and can get on the same page.
5. Lean Agile Leaderships
The role of a SAFe leader is to not only be extremely knowledgeable of SAFe’s lean agile mindset and methods, but also to model its thinking and behaviors. In fact, the team’s ability to adopt and implement SAFe ultimately falls back on the leader.
However, once this mindset and its methods are adopted, the work does not end. Rather, the leader must maintain the proactive process of looking to eliminate delays by identifying and creating ways to become more efficient. The journey never truly ends, which in turn, creates a very energized and motivated environment.
How to use SAFe to Integrate Multiple Companies at Once
The practitioners we spoke with praised the use of SAFe for a specific set of circumstances: when multiple legacy companies need to be integrated at once.
Here’s how they recommend using SAFe for this situation:
Develop committees and set up workstreams — in a unique way: First, develop your key committees: steering committee, operating committee, and integration management office. Then set up workstreams, but instead of using traditional business functions (i.e. “marketing”), divide these workstreams into process areas (i.e. “market to lead,” “lead to quote,” “quote to cash”). By focusing on process areas versus traditional business functions, you will have established the verticals that are accountable between all the acquisitions being integrated. It is important to note the above groups combine individuals from both the target companies and the corporate acquiring company.
Create and work through the backlog: Next, after the above groups collect their requirements and gap identification, they work together to create a backlog model, highest priority to lowest priority, focused on items to be migrated. This step helps make the approach more applicable, but also more Agile. For the backlog, tools such as DealRoom and Kanban can be very helpful.
Final Tips For Best Results, Be Sure To…
While the above development of verticals and backlogs should allow for successful workflows for the simultaneous integration of multiple companies, there are a few additional key ideas to assure success that our practitioners left us with:
Make sure people know about Agile — While the individuals involved do not need to be Agile experts, the more they know about and understand the principles and benefits of Agile, the better the workflow. Individuals also need to understand the rationale behind moving toward SAFe Agile, and it is the leader’s responsibility to clearly articulate this rationale and its corresponding goals.
Clearly define the scope -Simply put, be sure what is in/out of scope is established and clearly communicated to all committees and workstreams.
Align on a set of guiding principles and desired outcomes — The core team should establish a set of integration principles that will help direct the actions of the integration teams.
Create an end-to-end flow — This should be mapped out for all companies. More specifically, flow is one of the pillars of “The SAFe House of Lean.” In order to create value, a continuous flow needs to be established. A focus on flow ultimately helps avoid roadblocks and potential delays by identifying and dealing with them earlier in the process.
Conclusion:
Simultaneously integrating multiple legacy companies poses unique challenges for an acquiring company. These challenges are best addressed using SAFe disciplines because they offer concrete frameworks to assure a successful and cost effective integration. Finally, SAFe Agile boasts up to 50% increased employee engagement and 25%-75% increased productivity — two key factors of successful M&A practices.
Useful Links:
Agile M&A
M&A Integration
Don’t forget to share this post! | https://medium.com/m-a-science/how-to-safe-agile-to-benefit-m-a-integration-1e097f77cbae | ['Marsha Lewis'] | 2019-03-22 13:48:12.417000+00:00 | ['Mergers And Acquisitions', 'Software', 'Agile', 'Finance', 'Integration'] |
Unleash Your True Potential by Switching to a Growth Mindset | Unleash Your True Potential by Switching to a Growth Mindset
Many people don’t know their purpose in life and lack the self-awareness that is the key to unleashing full potential. Unleash means to release. Releasing yourself from things that are holding you back from the life you want. Did you know, the real magic begins when you step out of your comfort zone and embrace new challenges?
“Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone” — Shannon L. Alder
Our brain is a very powerful organ. It has the power to give us, what we believe. However, the mind is the muscle that requires training to become more acceptable and open to knowledge. There are two ways of approaching failure: learning from mistakes or giving up. Giving up is easy. But training the mind to look at failures as an opportunity to grow, to further improve and accomplish what we want to achieve, is not an easy task. The good news is shifting the mind to a path of learning and growth is possible through nurturing.
According to Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, there are two types of mindset- a Fixed Mindset and a Growth Mindset. People with a fixed mindset tend to assume that their traits: character, creative ability, and intelligence are static and believe that only talent leads to success. People with a fixed mindset give up easily and avoid challenges. While people with a Growth mindset have an underlying belief that success can be achieved with efforts and persistence. People with a growth mindset don’t see their traits as static but changeable.
Difference between a Fixed and a Growth Mindset
There are 5 tips that can help in cultivating a growth mindset:
1.Self-Talk:
Words matter. Be careful to not utter unkind words to yourself because your mind is always listening. Feeding your mind good thoughts leads to positive results. Positive self-talk boosts your self-confidence, improves mental health, motivates you, and helps you work through challenges. It also builds an optimistic voice inside your head that’s always looking for the bright side of the picture.
“Watch what you tell yourself, you’re likely to believe it” — Russ Kyle
2. Get out of your comfort zone:
Start doing things that you are not comfortable doing. Step out of the zone you have lived in avoiding challenges and enter the growth zone where your abilities are tested. Doing things out of your routine, learning something new, and facing your fears are a few of the things that can get you out of your comfort zone.
“You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone”― Roy T. Bennett
3. Create new habits:
According to researchers, it takes about 21 days to form or break a habit of medium complexity. Medium complexity habits include getting up early in the morning, meditating before heading out for work, preparing meals for the next day before heading to bed, or going to bed at a specific hour. We can create a new habit by practicing it in repetition, setting reminders, and tracking daily progress and achievements in journals.
“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going” — Jim Rohn
4. Ask people for help:
Asking the people you trust, to help you improve, to guide you, or to provide you with constructive feedback, is a brilliant way of tracking your growth and your mindset transition because then you can always go back and ask if they have noticed a change in you. Their advice is going to help you improve your skills and abilities to a much greater extent.
“Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new” — Barack Obama
5. Fake it till you make it:
Act out the qualities you want till those qualities become your reality. It is a phrase in Psychology about behavior modification that actually works because our body language shapes who we are. When we are acting out what we want to become, in the process of acting, we become what we wanted to be. For example, fake the consistency, or fake the work ethic.
“The more you see yourself as what you’d like to become, and act as if what you want is already there, the more you’ll activate those dormant forces that will collaborate to transform your dream into your reality” — Wayne Dyer
Out of these five tips, my favorite one is “fake it till you make it”. This tip has a powerful dynamic that I know can shape my personality the way I want. As our mindset plays a vital role in helping us cope with life’s challenges, today I am beginning my journey to a growth mindset by introducing positive self-talk and acting out the person that I want to become.
I believe that our success or failure is impacted by our believes about ourselves. So here I am, to urge you to start your day off with positive self-talk. Start talking today to yourself in the mirror as if you are talking to a child. Speak only kind words to yourself and avoid using demotivating words. Start working today to switch your mind from a fixed mindset to a growth one and add value to your life. Good luck unleashing your full potential!❤️ | https://medium.com/@rahmah-sarfaraz174/unleash-your-true-potential-by-switching-to-a-growth-mindset-f0a3f6a622f8 | ['Rahmah Sarfaraz'] | 2020-12-25 20:12:07.783000+00:00 | ['Growth Mindset', 'Unleashing Potential', 'Amal Totkay', 'Self Improvement', 'Transitioning'] |
The Scariest Day of my Life | The room was quite small. There was only a single bed in it — where my friend slept — and a “bed-drawer” on the floor, where I slept. We talked there for a while, before going to sleep…
Until we heard a loud noise, a “bang” coming from the room. As if someone was forced to win a door until it opened.
We froze in fear.
After all, the same day, earlier, we had found the door open! It was certainly the thief who tried to steal the apartment earlier… He had come back to finish his job!
I had the urge to check what was going on, but my friend was even more afraid than I was. He told us to be quiet and wait. If we didn’t hear any more noise, we could leave the room. Otherwise… Let the robber steal the house, but not to kill both of us.
We waited a few moments, hoping that no more sound would come from the living room…
But we heard another one, this time, coming from the kitchen!
It was the plastic of the loaf! The thieves were messing with our dinner!
To make matters worse, the maid’s room door had no key. We couldn’t even lock ourselves in there!
I got up from the bed and held the door handle up. It was the only way to keep someone out. My friend, terrified, sat on his bed… And waited.
We were silent, listening to the sound of someone touching the loaf’s plastic.
“I think they are hungry …” — I said.
“Be quiet… If they hear us, they will come here!” — he said.
If anyone came, we would certainly see. As I said, the door was translucent. We could see the shapes of our clothes hanging on the clothesline outside; if someone went to the maid’s room, we would see their shape there too.
And, at that moment …
We started to see the clothesline move!
It was obvious! Someone was there, checking the area!
I waited holding the doorknob, thinking about what I would do when they forced entry…
But the clothes continued to move… And no one came to the door.
Then my brain started to forget a little bit of fear… And I began to understand the situation: we had left the beach because it was too windy, it was going to rain. The window in the area was open for the clothes to dry… What thief would not force the door to a room in an apartment he was robbing?
So obviously, who was making the clothes move…
“It’s the wind!” I told my friend.
“Shut up, they’ll hear us!” he said.
“No, it’s the wind! I’m sure! The window is open; that’s why the clothes are moving!”
“And the bread?”
“We left the package on the table… The wind is making the plastic move! I’m sure… We are not being mugged! It’s the wind!”
Before my friend interrupted me, I got up and carefully opened the door. The clothes were really blowing in the wind. I went to the kitchen and saw that the plastic of the loaf of bread also swayed in the wind. I was already relieved when my friend came up behind me:
“What about the ‘bang’ we heard at the beginning? Like someone had broken the door?”
He was right! I had no explanation for this! But, as I had guessed so far, I decided to take a risk. I grabbed a machete from the kitchen and went into the living room. There was nothing unusual; the front door was closed and locked… What could have made that noise?
I then saw the list of things we should do before I left, which had been fixed on the wall by my friend’s mother. It was on the floor. And it was “bent.” I had already noticed this; with the sun, it had warped…
And then I solved the riddle.
The wind blew the list down and, as the paper was bent, when it fell to the floor “standing,” it made a loud noise.
A “bang.”
Even with the mystery solved, we still searched the entire apartment, both holding machetes…
With brave men like us, who would need help?
Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/the-scariest-day-of-my-life-4d8fa65cd086 | ['Juliano Righetto'] | 2020-12-27 17:01:54.102000+00:00 | ['Fear', 'Real Life Stories', 'Scary', 'Humor', 'Robbery'] |
Covid-19 tracker — Avishka dev | This is COVID-19 tarcker. you can watch latest COVID-19 news and others Developed By avishka dev
https://covid19tracker-seven.vercel.app
Avishka Dev | Linkedin | GitHub | Twitter | Facebook | https://medium.com/@avishkadev/covid-19-tracker-avishka-dev-2faafd8254b | ['Avishka Dev'] | 2020-12-09 13:24:31.971000+00:00 | ['Nodejs', 'Reactjs', 'Express', 'Mongodb'] |
How to Create a Modal Window with Python in Dash | Introduction
The Definition of a modal window:
“A modal window is a graphical control element subordinate to an application’s main window. A modal window creates a mode that disables the main window but keeps it visible, with the modal window as a child window in front of it.”
The workflow for making a modal:
Adding the modal callback
The code of the call back:
The modal code that you can copy and paste within your Dash app for creating the modal window within your Dash app:
Applying CSS
You need the right stylesheet to have a modal that is centred in the window. There are two options. The simplest one is:
Adding a css with the line:
app = dash.Dash(external_stylesheets=[dbc.themes.BOOTSTRAP])
2. The slightly more complicated but better adjustable one consists out of copying the code of the yellow accentuated css code for a modal window in this link and pasting it somewhere in your css file which should be in the folder assets within your Dash project folder (or you have to create or copy one from online).
Styling
After defining the id name of your modal you can choose out of a lot of different settings:
id="modal", # Give the modal an id name
is_open=False, # Open the modal at opening the webpage.
size="xl", # "sm", "lg", "xl" = small, large or extra large
backdrop=True, # Modal to not be closed by clicking on backdrop
scrollable=True, # Scrollable in case of large amount of text
centered=True, # Vertically center modal
keyboard=True, # Close modal when escape is pressed
fade=True, # Let the modal fade instead of appear.
Changing the size of the modal window takes an extra step, adjustment of the modal properties with a styling line:
id="modal", # Give the modal an id name
is_open=False, # Open the modal at opening the webpage.
size="xl", # "sm", "lg", "xl" = small, large or extra large
backdrop=True, # Modal to not be closed by clicking on backdrop
scrollable=True, # Scrollable in case of large amount of text
centered=True, # Vertically center modal
keyboard=True, # Close modal when escape is pressed
fade=True, # True, False
style={"max-width": "none", "width": "50%"}
And adjustment of the modal body dbc with a styling line:
dbc.ModalBody(
html.Div(children = "your modal here"),
style={"height": "30vh"}
)
vh stands for viewport height. You can see what viewport height is n this link:
How the end result looks: | https://python.plainenglish.io/how-to-create-a-model-window-in-dash-4ab1c8e234d3 | ['Kelvin Kramp'] | 2021-04-19 09:15:05.343000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Programming', 'CSS', 'Python', 'Dash'] |
Farming Smarter with AI in Africa | Can Artificial Intelligence be used for successful drought prediction in Sub-Saharan Africa?
Droughts — what we describe as regional periods of water deficits in some stage of the water cycle — are natural disasters that have become increasingly common over the last 30 years as a direct result of anthropogenic climate change [1]. Yet, the impacts of droughts are not evenly spread across the globe. With over 50% percent of world-wide drought occurrences between 2001 and 2011 taking place in Africa [2], and droughts leading to more deaths worldwide than any other physical hazard [3], mounting evidence suggests that they will likely have disproportionate impacts on the African population and economies.
For the estimated 33 million smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa[4], this is a prime example of how many of the most vulnerable people worldwide are experiencing the heaviest effects of climate change — right now. Advances in applying artificial intelligence (AI) to help improve the accuracy and accessibility of drought predictions may be able to change the depth of these impacts, as ongoing innovations are suggesting in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Far-Reaching Impacts: The Western Cape of South Africa
Take a recent case: Between 2017 and 2019, the Western Cape of South Africa experienced a period of drought leading to dam levels dropping to below 20% of their full capacity. Subsequent significant regional water restrictions decreased food production and led to the economic loss of billions of Rands in the Western Cape [5].
This, in turn, had a massive effect on the overall economy, given nearly a quarter of the total agricultural GDP of South Africa comes from the Western Cape. Food pricing, too, was impacted by the drought: The cost of staple crops such as maize rose, leading low-income households to spend up to 34% of their total income on food [6]. In addition to these direct economic costs, 25,000 jobs also disappeared from the national agriculture sector [7], leading to widespread, acute food insecurity across the country. The impacts, however, do not stop there.
Instances of drought like this also force increased spending on imports and disaster relief at a government level. Such spending results in depleted public funds for tackling other critical issues including inequality, poverty and unemployment, all of which are further exacerbated by drought. For example: Smallholder farmers in rural communities are heavily reliant on subsistence economies. Instances of drought and erratic weather conditions cause catastrophic effects on their livelihoods and food security as described in the recent case of the Western Cape and wider South Africa. These people are disproportionately affected as their livelihoods are particularly vulnerable to changes in climate and any existing food insecurity is made worse by inadequate infrastructure in rural areas [8].
Predicting Droughts: From Dynamical Models to AI
In searching for innovative, integrated solutions, Artificial intelligence (AI) presents one possible pathway forward. AI shows promise as a particularly useful tool in helping to combat the effects of drought as it can be used in the development of Drought Early Warning Systems (DEWS).
DEWS take in data that AI uses to predict future instances of drought, enabling farmers to make more informed cropping decisions. Before the implementation of these AI solutions, dynamical and statistical models were used that output seasonal predictions of either above-, below- or close to normal rainfall, but with no indication as to the details of the event (such as how long it will last or how severe it is predicted to be) [9].
On top of the forecasts from the dynamical models, the Effective Drought Index (EDI) would be used as a classifier to quantify instances of drought by indicating the extremity of a drought or a flood. While the EDI gives accurate details for past and current instances of drought, including their severity, duration and the available soil moisture in a given location, they are not useful on their own for drought prediction and thus provide little benefit to farmers.
Here is where AI enters the equation. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are algorithms that mimic the working of human neurons in the brain. ANNs operate by taking in training data at the input, classifying it and learning trends within hidden layers of neurons which are then passed to an output. Once they have been trained, they can then be used to make predictions by inputting unseen data. As such, they are extremely effective in taking in large amounts of data to solve complex physical systems.
For the purpose of drought prediction, the EDI can be used as the training data. The EDI is calculated using historic precipitation data and fed into an ANN in order to predict future EDI values and thus future instances of drought. This method was implemented in Kenya using 30 years’ worth of daily precipitation data from four weather stations, amounting to a total of 45260 records, to calculate the EDI input data. Obtained results from this study had accuracies ranging from 75%-98% [10]— an impressive improvement over previous prediction models.
Although the results obtained in the Kenya study were accurate — and this method for drought prediction is much more reliable and informative than previous dynamical models — there are still potential challenges. Most significantly, the data used for training the Kenyan model were only collected from four weather stations in Kenya. Such selective data inputs could result in the model predicting accurately for these specific areas but performing poorly when applied elsewhere. This is similar to only deciding whether to bring your umbrella on a walk by looking outside through one window: It may be sunny where you are, but you don’t know if it is raining in other areas.
A potential solution to this issue would be to input data into the model from a larger range of areas or ensure that data from the area where the prediction is being made is included in the training data for the model. However, due to a lack of data availability in many places across Sub-Saharan Africa, this is often not possible. This lack of data is a systemic problem for drought prediction in Africa given the ongoing sparse availability of climate data [11].
Prediction Roadblocks: Weather Data Availability and Accessibility
The precipitation data required for use in DEWS are sourced from classical weather stations, located across Africa. However, the coverage from these stations across the continent is sparse, creating an incomplete picture of Africa’s overall climate at a local level. These weather stations are also largely located in cities or along large roads. This results in what available coverage does exist being uneven and with nearly none available in rural areas where the largest number of smallholder farmers are located. To apply AI drought prediction with a higher degree of accuracy in these rural areas where it is most needed, this lack of data must first be addressed.
Image: Distribution of weather stations across Africa compared to Western Europe. The colour bar indicates the number of stations per 0.5° grid square (via Dinku 2019, GPCC Visualizer)
In addition to the availability of climate data disproportionately impacting those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, problems also exist around weather data accessibility, resulting in even less data being available for use in DEWS.
Many weather data sets, especially in Africa, are hard to access due to legal restrictions, high access costs, and, in some cases, the historical data remaining in non-digital forms [12]. Currently farmers across Africa rely on indigenous knowledge of weather indicators and mitigation strategies, which have been used successfully and passed down generations for centuries, to predict weather and inform farming decisions. While these are considered a valuable source of data that could be used more widely in drought prediction — especially when coupled with AI-based drought predictions — they presently remain an under-researched area [13].
These indigenous indicators alone, however, are insufficient to cope with the increasingly variable climate and instances of drought witnessed in recent years. Between questions of availability and accessibility, more local-level climate data across Africa is urgently needed especially given the continent’s susceptibility to extreme variability in climate conditions and subsequent negative effects.
Promise for the Future: Community-Driven AI Solutions?
The ITIKI Drought Prediction tool, founded by Muthoni Masinde based on her PhD research from 2012 and officially launched in 2019 [14], is one recent innovation seeking to combine indigenous knowledge and computer science methods to provide an effective and affordable drought prediction tool to smallholder farmers.
Photo: South African rural farmer working with ITIKI (via ITIKI Implementation Sites)
As a community driven solution, the project is designed to enable farmers in rural areas to get reliable drought forecasts with the goal of better informing their cropping decisions. Masinde’s ITIKI Drought Prediction tool uses the same method of calculating EDI to train ANNs in order to forecast drought, but also augments data from weather stations with localised weather sensors located in rural areas and additional indigenous knowledge. Examples of indigenous indicators include the sighting of migratory birds or the blooming of certain flowers may inform a prediction of weather events such as precipitation.
Unlike using AI or dynamical models alone, making the ITIKI Drought Prediction tool work requires the connection and participation of whole communities to provide the essential indigenous knowledge as well as set up and maintain remote weather sensors. A core premise of ITIKI is this focus on community relevance and involvement — something that too often goes missing when the technology itself is prioritised over its environment.
Photo: An example of a traditional weather indicator. The sprouting of Muthinuriu indicates that rain is two weeks away (via ITIKI)
The results from the ITIKI prediction tool are sent out via SMS and updated on a web portal, addressing previous access issues for farmers in remote locations. Results so far suggest that the accuracy of ITIKI’s forecasts is 70–98% [15], giving farmers additional, highly accurate information they can use to make their cropping decisions. This not only leads to increases in agricultural productivity and incomes, but also allows communities to develop better resistance to climate change and aids in other important tasks like improving school attendance, nutrition, and access to clean water. The ITIKI drought prediction tool is currently being used by thousands of farmers in Kenya, Mozambique, and South Africa — 70% of whom are women, who comprise a large number of resident smallholder farmers [16].
While a newer innovation, ITIKI serves as an example of how AI can assist community driven drought prediction solutions that prioritize the needs of local communities, valuing their indigenous knowledge as a solution and strengthening it through the tools of AI. The success of ITIKI indicates that AI tools have the potential to greatly aid drought prediction in Sub-Saharan Africa and warrant further interest from researchers and governments. However, it is important to keep the needs of those on the front-line at the forefront of any advances, ensuring they have a stake in and are benefitting from the new technology whilst still enabled to retain their traditional knowledge and autonomy. | https://medium.com/good-data-initiative/farming-smarter-with-ai-in-africa-73b5fa553fc | ['Good Data Initiative'] | 2020-11-12 09:06:14.307000+00:00 | ['Africa', 'Technology', 'Tech', 'AI', 'Science'] |
Getting to grips with data (2) | In our last post we discussed what we had learned in our ‘data pilot’ that had helped us understand our cafe programme more clearly. Categorising data; focussing on what was important and being more aware of the difference between feedback and outcomes data. All of this will help us as we progress to becoming more data informed, and we can use these 3 learnings in our wider team.
Yet when we stood back we realised we had learned even more about data, which will hopefully help us on our journey.
Don’t eat the elephant all at once, take small bites
This was by far our biggest learning from the project! About a month in, everything was feeling a little overwhelming. We had really productive initial meetings where we felt we understood the overall challenge, and we’d created a massive list of actions to be completed over a 3 month period. But we didn’t seem to be progressing on those actions. We were trying to focus on too much all at once.
We sat down and looked at what we had learned over the previous month that added to our understanding of the problem we were trying to solve. We realised it wasn’t just one problem. It was multiple problems — and we were trying to tackle them all at once! Challenges with how we store data; ownership of data; staff skills; connecting up data; having enough data to use….. You can’t eat an elephant in one go. We can’t change everything about how we collect, store and use data in one go. We needed to think smaller, prioritise, and take one measured step at a time. Our approach to collecting data is a good example, as we discussed in our last post — choose ‘just enough’ for what you need.
There were also things we started to do, and then stopped as we were running before we could walk. One of the key challenges we identified was that it was difficult for us to match up all the different types of data as they were stored in different systems. Simple we thought, let’s just move everything in to one place. As you might imagine, it’s not quite that straightforward. Lots of questions were thrown up about how different systems would interact and how we would ensure the data was accessible and useable.
So before we started down the rabbit-hole of re-organising our data systems, we stopped. We’ve only just started to understand key pieces of data we need to make good decisions. We haven’t even had enough time to collect and use it meaningfully. Now is not the right time to change the way we store data too. One step at a time……
Instead we looked at what we could do to improve data collection — and with support from Think NPC we re-designed our feedback form to pull together what had been an individual questionnaire for each cafe into one overall form. This has made it much easier for us to see more information in one place and is our first step in the right direction.
Don’t assume everyone understands or agrees on what ‘data’ is
Words used to describe data by staff at the Carers’ Centre
As odd as it sounds, undertaking a project on data has helped those who were involved understand in more detail what data actually is — or what we mean we say data. Sarah, our Wellbeing Manager reflected back to the start of the project:
“I was a little reticent to be involved. I was worried about what I could bring. I’m not that good at using excel or manipulating what I thought ‘data’ was. Now I know data is not just numbers and graphs, it’s all the information we use to improve what we do. I’m much more confident and excited about data now!”
Changing her perception has had a significant impact on the way she is using data within her team. It also helped us realise we assume everyone has the same perception of the word ‘data’ but that’s not true. People can perceive data as cold, emotionless, turning people in to numbers. We’ve come to see data as much broader than this. It’s about what we learn in conversations we have with users as well as surveys or questionnaires they fill in. It helps add context and increase our understanding of people’s needs and behaviours. Without this, how can we hope to place users at the centre of what we do?
We have more work to do sharing our understanding of data throughout the organisation and looking at how it can help us achieve better outcomes for carers. Part of this is looking at how we collect data. There are many more creative ways to collect data than simply sending users a survey, so how can we capture the information we need in the easiest, most effective way?
Screenshot of our new facilitator feedback form
One example is how we hadn’t been effectively recording the observations of cafe facilitators. Naturally, through discussions on phone, email or Teams they were sharing information about what was going well, what was challenging, and carer observations. This wasn’t recorded anywhere — but it’s a massive piece of the data jigsaw puzzle. So we created a place where facilitator feedback is stored. Now, we’re not trying to turn them in to robots who can only communicate with us through a specific form, far from it. They can fill in the form if they want to, but more often when Sarah, the programme manager, hears relevant information, she herself fills the form in so she knows this data is all in one place.
Planning is key
Our final piece of learning will be crucial as we start to use data more effectively within our decision making. It’s all very well collecting the right data, and storing it effectively, but if you’re not using it, it’s kinda moot. And that was one of our previous failings. We didn’t regularly encourage staff to reflect on data and what it was telling them within their teams. Data was for reporting to funders. Creating nice stats for the Annual Review. It wasn’t embedded in our daily practice. So we weren’t systematically using it to learn and change.
Now Sarah has a better understanding of data, she sets aside regular time in her diary to look at ongoing data for her services. A simple change, but something that we had in the past not encouraged or prioritised. Data is also at the heart of service changes and re-design she is looking to implement. Take planning around restarting our face to face work as COVID restrictions reduced at the end of summer.
In the past we would probable have gone ahead and made the decision to resume without collecting any data, or without thinking hard about the data we wanted to collect. but with the learning gained through the data pilot we took time to gather insights from carers to enable us to make an informed decision.
We used a survey to better understand carers’ preferences and feelings. We included questions to help us identify how carers would like to access cafes (e.g. online, by phone, face to face indoors/outdoors) as well as any barriers that might be present. We planned our current winter café programme taking into account the carer insights above, as well as user & engagement data, rather than going on anecdotes, gut instinct & luck.
It’s not just our data which is important
The final change in our thinking relates to the scope of data we are now looking at. In the past we have been prone to work in a bubble. Though we would look at key national statistics and resources, we weren’t proactive in learning from others, particularly at points of service development and re-design, to see how we could learn from data they were gathering.
Both as a result of becoming more aware of data, and through being part of the National Lottery Building Connections ‘cohort’ of grantees, we have started to see the value of sharing and collaborating with others on data. For example, as we started to plan resuming face to face activity, we gathered insights from our partners and other Building Connections grant holders to find out what they were planning and why. What their experiences were (some had already resumed face-to-face), the challenges, barriers and what had gone well. Essentially to learn from their mistakes or successes so that we could fine tune our own processes. And we did the same in return. Building up and sharing knowledge across the sector can only serve to strengthen what we offer and the outcomes we deliver to our beneficiaries. This has got to be a good thing.
The future
So, where do we go from here? Well, there’s lots to do in order to share this knowledge and the new practices learned across the teams. We need to think about how we measure our progress in using data and how we support each other to do this. The pilot has also had a significant influence on the development of an Outcomes Framework for the organisation as a whole. We’re starting the process of implementing this framework as we speak (in stages — don’t eat the elephant all at once!) and hope to see changes in the next 6 months. Finally, it’s given us cause to evaluate the tools we’re using around data. Now we’re more aware of what data means to us, are we using the right tools to collect, store and analyse? I expect more changes in the year ahead as we test and pilot new tools! | https://medium.com/banescarerscentre/getting-to-grips-with-data-2-4e0d0fa73369 | ['Janine Woodward-Grant'] | 2020-12-09 10:07:22.506000+00:00 | ['Digital Transformation', 'Carer', 'Data', 'Insights'] |
Basic Structure and its Politico-Legal Transformation in India: Introspecting Purpose and Volatility | About the Article
The Basic Structure Doctrine is an interesting and transformative connotation in the history of Indian Constitutional Law. There is no doubt that since 1973, this politico-legal doctrine has reflected the vision to preserve and emphasize on the integrity-centric behaviour of Constitutional Law espoused on the basis of the premise that the polity guaranteed and reckoned by the Indian Constitution has to be protected. Now, the Basic Structure is utilized as a juridical doctrine, which is often sought as a firewall between Arts. 13 and 368, with its own exceptions and relationships. On the other hand, if we assume that the Basic Structure Doctrine is not political, would also be fallacious — because as stated above, the conception — which was based on preserving the operative essentials of the Indian Constitution, which are substantially respected by the Supreme Court of India in the Keshavananda Bharti case under the politico-legal guise of civic nationalism, in opposition to the Congress Party’s amendments to the Constitution at that time — has sought transformation and some relevant backlash in the 21st Century. The article therefore covers an analysis of the legal and political policies revolving around the Basic Structure Doctrine in a nutshell. The authors intend to provide suggestions and criticisms to the impact of the Basic Structure Doctrine in 3 important frontiers — Legal and Doctrinal Evaluation, Foreign Relations and Sovereignty and Indian Nationalism.
The Basic Structure in the Indian Constitution: A Legal cum Doctrinal Evolution
While discussing the basic structure doctrine, the very first case that comes to mind is the Shankari Prasad’s case of 1951. The validity of the first constitution amendment act was into question on the ground of breach of fundamental rights under part III of the Constitution. The apex court held that power to amend the constitution including the fundamental rights were contained in A. 368 of the Constitution and an ‘amendment’ was not a ‘law’ within the meaning of A. 13(2). Later came Sajjan Singh’s case of 1965 where the validity of the 17th constitution amendment was into question. The court said that an ‘amendment’ included ‘amendment’ to all the provisions of the Constitution. In 1968 came the Golaknath’s case where the apex court prospectively overruled the decision in Shankari Prasad and Sajjan Singh. It held that an amendment was a law under A. 13(2) and if it violates any fundamental right, it may be declared void.
In 1971, the government came up with the 24th Constitutional Amendment and followed the Kesavananda verdict of 1973 which laid down the ‘Basic Structure Doctrine’. The verdict spoke about the limitations on the amending power of parliament under A. 368 and gave the concept of a Basic Structure in the constitution which cannot be amended. The 42nd Constitution Amendment came in the year 1976 in which clauses (4) and (5) were added to A. 368. These were stuck down in a subsequent case of Minerva Mills (1980). SP Sampath Kumar and L Chandra Kumar are two other important cases ruled by the Supreme Court which discuss the ‘basic structure’ at length.
How the Legal Face of the Basic Structure Stands Today?
The ‘Basic Structure Doctrine’ seems to be well settled but remains a source of unending antipathy. Much pondering has been done over the years on the ‘textual illegitimacy’ of the ‘Basic Structure Doctrine’ as it does not find a mention in the constitution. It gives the judiciary a power to impose its philosophy over a democratically formed government, which is famously referred to as the ‘tyranny of the unelected’. Judges are well respected people, but there is no shying away from the fact they are unelected.
Fundamental Rights are the part of ‘Basic Structure’ of the Constitution. Two recent judicial pronouncements highlighted a conundrum which is worth discussing. The Kerala High Court in a monumental decision has held ‘Right to Internet Access’ as a fundamental right. The Court declared that the right to have access to Internet is a part of ‘Right to Education’ as well as ‘Right to Privacy’ under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. Later in Anuradha Bhasin, the apex Court refused to comment on the point expressing that issue was not raised in the petition before it. Secondly, the Apex Court itself has said in one of MC Mehta’s cases of 1986 that ‘Right to Pollution Free and Healthy’ environment is a Fundamental Right under Article. 21 of the Constitution but recently stayed a very important NGT order preventing the cutting of trees for a Highway expansion project.
Lately in a case concerning the liberty of journalist Arnab Goswami, the Supreme Court used its writ jurisdiction under Article 32 to allow him to be released on interim bail, which was disallowed by the Bombay High Court. In the very same week, when a similar matter was before a bench led by CJI SA Bobde, the bench expressed it’s disinclination towards extending remedies to the petitioner under A.32 and Bobde J. even went on to say that ‘they were trying Article 32 petitions’. The apex court’s registry has also been under the scanner for arbitrary listing of cases. When a matter was argued on the judicial side concerning the arbitrariness of the registry, an Arun Mishra J-led bench dismissed the matter imposing a cost on the petitioner.
Indian Nationalism and Basic Structure: A Policy Undertaking
Nationalism in India is not the same as it is seen in Western Europe and North America. Indian Nationalism has various colors and schools, which encumber MK Gandhi, Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Nehru, Madan Mohan Malviya, Savarkar and Bose, to mention for example. Now, the most argued form of nationalism in India — where the Indian Constitution is presented as a biblical document — is civic nationalism. Although adherence and respect to the Westminster form of parliamentary system, the Common Law system of judiciary and the American-European conceptions of rule of law in India is not problematic, provided that the application and maturation of the systems of power and competence applied are coherent and unrestrictive to the natural liberties of the people in the polity. Of course, the Indian Constitution — despite its various flaws (more in operability, less in substance) is a unique basic law as compared to other constitutions, but there is no doubt in agreeing with the fact that civic nationalism often, in the works by Nehruvian and Gandhian socialists, Ambedkarites and other moderate socialists in India — has been eulogized well on paper, if not on ground, which is why the Basic Structure and the concept of civic nationalism has to be rigorously assessed. Politically, the Basic Structure Doctrine has been eulogized and even misinterpreted by scholars and former judges wherever they wish to do so. For example, despite the fact that the Ministry of Home Affairs in the Government of India still has to publish the Citizenship (Amendment) Rules in 2020/2021 based on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 — many people have wrongly assumed the conception of secularism through the mere wording of the term ‘secular’ in the Preamble. Now, acknowledging but sidelining the fact that the Preamble of the Indian Constitution has been continuously and unreasonable eulogized as the ‘Thesis’ or ‘Edict’ of India as a constitutional state, mere indoctrination of such ideologically religious conceptions on a Constitution’s Preamble is not a smart and effective way to perpetuate scholarship and innovation in understanding what a Constitution resembles to the state to which it confers itself as a Basic Law. Now, people would cite so many judgments from a law cases repository and comment that the judges have reflected a sense of worship and honor to the Indian Constitution’s Preamble. However, that itself has to be seen with an anthropological outlook, or a blind and blunt outlook of such a trend in the judiciary is unacademic and counter-productive.
Let us take the example of the eulogy of the Preamble made in various judgments by High Courts and even the Hon’ble Supreme Court. What purpose does this eulogy or flattery merely serve to the operative aspects of constitutional and administrative law in India? Not much or maybe insignificant, because polyvocality in judgments in a Common Law system can easily affect the way judgments direct and state the legacy of ‘stare decisis’ in the system. That is reflective in the cases related to habeas corpus, the recklessly passed NGT orders on cracker ban, without clearly yearly prescriptions, misuse of Arts. 25–30 of the Indian Constitution when it comes to Temples and related institutions & even weird cases of judicial overreach in matters which should be dealt or left to the Parliament or the Executive.
The list is endless, but it is important to understand that a mature democracy like India, need not to imitate the aesthetic illusions behind understanding conceptions like judicial review, nationalism and even constitutional morality — because (1) doing it is a colonial hangover and culturally and practically at a policy level, blind and unreasonable; (2) sovereignty and constitutionalism even in international law, despite the fact that recognition and estimation of state practices can be contested and observed, are inviolable, where it is not the responsibility & liability of the precepts of law to share the sentiment completely to a post-colonial state like India; and (3) constitutions and the ideals around them mature, migrate and transform — and so mere eulogizing a set of biased and myopic undertakings of civic nationalism espoused by Ambedkar, Gandhi and rest would be unreasonable. That is the reason why the Constituent Assembly Debates and even the Privy Council decisions are not binding on any court of law in India, but are respected at best, even if the former is assumed to be a ‘moral guiding force’. However, at an anthropological level, works such as the Debates in the Constituent Assembly, the Privy Council decisions, the reports and works by the British Government serve as a historical blueprint (not compass) to explain how the Basic Structure of the Indian Constitution has transformed so forth.
Now, politics and law are not separate, but legal policy and ideological obscuration must definitely be seen separate, dissected and not indifferent. The reason is clean. The policy behind a law while is instrumental to execute and enact a law with some measure of success, ideological obscuration (a European problem, probably) — causes people to create schools of thought and opposition based on whatever ideological viewpoints they assume. Indian Nationalism suffers from the binary nature of policy-making and ideological obscuration — which is why the constantly fueled fear that Indian Constitutionalism is in danger looms through op-eds, reckless and careless orders and statements by academics, juries, advocates and even politicians to mention.
The Basic Structure Doctrine was a clarion call against the authoritarian wishes of the Congress Party, and this is a fact, considering the circumstances that were present. However, the Basic Structure Doctrine must be espoused with reasonability, and with a sense of diversity in unity first. It is pompous and unreasonable to impose the Basic Doctrine as an archaic idea with the politico-legal assumption that India is a socialist democracy, and it has not transformed economically, politically, socially, individually and anthropologically. For example — there is no doubt that the US Constitution’s First Amendment Rights are being opposed by the Democratic Socialists and Cultural Marxists, while the Republican Party and the Libertarians are in full support of Free Speech and the First Amendment against the Big Tech. However, neither Joe Biden, nor Kamala Harris can compromise two important ideological connotations of the US Constitution and Democracy, which Donald Trump has more or less upheld to some extent, which are — (1) the Judeo-Christian cult; and (2) American Exceptionalism. These 2 connotations have both merits and demerits, but this series of trends on the First Amendment shows that debate is welcome, provided that the basis is respected. Similar debate on something like (but not exactly Basic Structure) was started in the UK by Brexit Party’s Nigel Farage, when he stated in his party manifesto in 2019 about written constitution and abolishing the House of Lords, which after David Cameroon, has not been entertained so well by the Tories, and so not the Labour Party. Thus, debate and competition is always welcome, which shows that the Basic Structure should emphasize on diversity in unity, in order to strengthen the sovereign character of India, through by and for its people, rationally. It would be anthropologically tenable, and despite the reality that advisement would have to be taken, some stability in the public discourse would serve the Indian democracy more than before. In fact, India can outperform as a democracy in some aspects of governance, like avoiding identity politics, ideological obscuration and conflict politics, unlike the West and the Middle East. Economic transformation is a completely different avenue, but if the aesthetics of governance is matured and realized anthropologically, maybe India can, on the basis of its civilizational values enshrined in the Constitution, and the value chains it creates and shares with its people would serve best.
Basic Structure and the Realpolitik: An Indian Evaluation
To assume if Basic Structure as a politico-legal doctrine cannot affect realpolitik is wrong. According to the examples enumerated on the US and the UK, it would be clear for any student or reader of international relations to understand how internal politics affects foreign policy and international relations. From competition policy to human rights to transitional justice to AI Policy, the abstract idea of Basic Structure more at operative levels reflects the Indian polity. Take Secularism as a good example. India espouses Secularism in the United Nations as a substantive prowess to show how much it preserves and protects its minorities, whether of any kind (not just religious). Now, despite the fact that the Western media reflects India badly, it is not doubtful to believe that even India’s soft power tool of Secularism and the insurance of religious freedoms was not matured for a long time, until 1991. Adding to the geopolitical situation India faces with Pakistan, the role of civic nationalism, and cultural pluralism is clearly visible. Pakistan, as based on Muslim Nationalism, founded by Jinnah, suffers badly from the fact that whatever whimsical ideals its leaders had propagated to justify the partition in 1947 are losing anthropological purpose. Leave the issue of imagery and diplomatic couture: the current cabinet led by PM Imran Khan does not have even any credence to act reasonably and preserve or handle the ties it has or had with the Arab and European states. China’s influence on Pakistan’s economics, the failure of CPEC and an amazing statement by the Sindh Bar Council condemning the Pakistani Army over their interference after Safdar Awan arrest clearly shows what values they espouse, and how they seek human rights, rule of law and judicial review. In agreement with Quentin Skinner’s lecture on the Genealogy of States in 2009, where he clearly explains the usefulness of the ‘fictional’ theory of sovereignty through the example of Barack Obama’s version of the US in a globalized world, it is fair to assert the point that Basic Structure in spirit can be named, shaped, chiseled and even represented in whatever way possible. For Iran, the Basic Structure as an idea, not a legal doctrine in absolutism can be the system of the Assembly of Experts which causes the election of the Ayatollah. For the French, Laïcité can be somewhat near to what Basic Structure is in India. For Russia, despite years of Communism, the Christian Orthodoxy and the Romanovs still matter. For India, there are some unifying ideals, which are culturally, not monarchical, dogmatic or ideological: they represent the dissection of the notions of power and competence, and they espouse universalism differently. A piece of reference which can be taken into consideration is a recent article authored by J Sai Deepak for The Daily Guardian on Vedantic Universalism.
Basic Structure — in India — must not be utilized for judicial overreach, nor, should be aesthetically foreign. There is no doubt that India as a sovereign state has to mature and ripen its conceptions and understanding of sovereignty and constitutionalism like France and the US in their early years. Anthropology always speaks for itself; it is therefore important that to realize Basic Structure as a reasonable doctrinal feat in Indian Jurisprudence, we should avoid enfranchising sociological theories which endanger the operational autonomy of the Indian state to mature and transform itself, better than Europe, the US and even the People’s Republic of China. | https://medium.com/discourse/basic-structure-and-its-politico-legal-transformation-in-india-introspecting-purpose-and-18fc2549a09d | [] | 2020-12-23 18:47:16.679000+00:00 | ['Basic Structure Doctrine', 'Constitutional Law', 'World', 'India', 'Politics'] |
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🦋 TELEVISION 🦋
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 191s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 1950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[1] during the 1915s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 150s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (531i, with 909093 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3451513, 3451513 and 3334. Since 115, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, HBO Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 113, 39% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[3] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 1990s. Most TV sets sold during the 150s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-115s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 115s.[1][3][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 3.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 115s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 150s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 150s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 115s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
🦋 OVERVIEW 🦋
A subgenre that joins the sentiment type with parody, zeroing in on at least two people since they find and endeavor to deal with their sentimental love, attractions to each other. The cliché plot line follows the “kid gets-young lady”, “kid loses-young lady”, “kid gets young lady back once more” grouping. Normally, there are multitudinous variations to this plot (and new curves, for example, switching the sex parts in the story), and far of the by and large happy parody lies in the social cooperations and sexual strain between your characters, who every now and again either won’t concede they are pulled in to each other or must deal with others’ interfering inside their issues.
Regularly carefully thought as an artistic sort or structure, however utilized it is additionally found in the realistic and performing expressions. In parody, human or individual indecencies, indiscretions, misuses, or deficiencies are composed to rebuff by methods for scorn, disparagement, vaudeville, incongruity, or different strategies, preferably with the plan to impact an aftereffect of progress. Parody is by and large intended to be interesting, yet its motivation isn’t generally humor as an assault on something the essayist objects to, utilizing mind. A typical, nearly characterizing highlight of parody is its solid vein of incongruity or mockery, yet spoof, vaudeville, distortion, juxtaposition, correlation, similarity, and risqué statement all regularly show up in ironical discourse and composing. The key point, is that “in parody, incongruity is aggressor.” This “assailant incongruity” (or mockery) frequently claims to favor (or if nothing else acknowledge as common) the very things the humorist really wishes to assault.
In the wake of calling Zed and his Blackblood confidants to spare The Bachelorette, Talon winds up sold out by her own sort and battles to accommodate her human companions and her Blackblood legacy. With the satanic Lu Qiri giving the muscle to uphold Zed’s ground breaking strategy, The Bachelorette’s human occupants are subjugated as excavators looking for a baffling substance to illuminate a dull conundrum. As Talon finds more about her lost family from Yavalla, she should sort out the certainties from the falsehoods, and explain the riddle of her legacy and an overlooked force, before the world becomes subjugated to another force that could devour each living being.
Claw is the solitary overcomer of a race called Blackbloods. A long time after her whole town is annihilated by a pack of merciless hired soldiers, Talon goes to an untamed post on the edge of the enlightened world, as she tracks the huggers of her family. On her excursion to this station, Talon finds she has a strange heavenly force that she should figure out how to control so as to spare herself, and guard the world against an over the top strict tyrant. | https://medium.com/@rpixxalover2/full-eps-the-bachelorette-se-16ep-13-series-16-720p-355a9753b360 | [] | 2020-12-23 01:08:13.425000+00:00 | ['TV Series', 'Startup', 'TV Shows', 'Reality'] |
You Are NOT Broken | You Are NOT Broken
Nothing to heal. Nothing to fix. I am valuable.
That hit me like six trucks this morning while meditating.
Where the concept originated, I can’t say — can we ever? — but it was one of those treasures created from nothing, from nowhere, and everywhere at the same time.
I settled. When cosmic revelations like that happen, I’ve learned not to push. Epiphanies are like timid cats; if you rush over to pet them, they’ll just runoff. So I stayed there on the pillow, cross-legged on the floor, atop the ‘Shinning’ inspired rug in the room with the ominous ticking clock.
The concept intrigued me. Actually, it angered me. This wasn’t what I signed up for when I started meditating all those years ago. I came for the action, not the love story. And here was my mind tossing up something that attacked the excuses I’d relied on for so long, the misery I wore as some sick badge of honor. I struggled to believe it, but it didn’t disappear.
Nothing to heal. Nothing to fix. I am valuable.
The more I let the notion sweep over me, the more disarming it felt. Letting it in my Mind Palace was like letting in a stranger with a gun. But I did it anyway because good meditation is dangerous meditation. It welcomes the unknown, challenges the ruling class of the mind, and transforms the world instantly.
I began to chant: Nothing to heal. Nothing to fix. I am valuable.
I did my best to believe it. I left the baggage behind. I learned that fear and anguish, and doubt does not have to continue. And best of all, I understood something I never had before; I’m not broken.
If we’re talking strength, then it’s pretty clear that accepting the notion of no healing and no brokenness is going to take all we have. At least for most of us. We’re taught early on that our environment, childhood, and culture is what makes us who we are. And maybe so. But who’s to say we need to be broken by it? What if the past wasn’t something to overcome? What if the bad things that happened didn’t leave us in desperate need of repair but added to our ability to achieve?
Excuses are comforting. They remove responsibility. Life becomes mom and dad this, my boss and coworkers that, and if the world would only …! But excuses aren’t helpful, and it’s far better to take advantage of the power within you than to justify weakness. And that starts by accepting a future where there is nothing to heal, nothing to fix, and YOU are valuable. | https://medium.com/@joshmbunch/you-are-not-broken-f815cb4e8e8a | ['Josh Bunch'] | 2020-12-27 11:08:29.708000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Self-awareness', 'Buddhism', 'Self Improvement', 'Meditation'] |
High-Conflict Co-Parents Love Starting Holiday Drama. This Year, Please, Don’t Let Them. | It’s December 8th, 2020. John has been busy at work making year-end numbers and eagerly anticipates the approaching Christmas break. After a treacherous year for his sales department, he’s looking forward to closing out the year with his 10-year-old son, Noah, and a new girlfriend, Sara.
John takes his girlfriend Christmas shopping. They enjoy their first restaurant since March. As they leave for the evening, the social distanced Santa, light snow, and holiday music lighten the dread he’s felt for the last nine months. John feels almost…cheerful. Happy.
On the way to Sara’s apartment, “Caroline” flashes across John’s text notifications. Sara sighs. 10 months of dating and she knows how these exchanges impact John’s mood. For the rest of the evening, he’ll be annoyed, worried, and stressed. So much for Christmas movies and sex.
Noah’s mom, Caroline, is a high conflict addict needing a fix. John is like her reliable heroin supply. Caroline is also subconsciously starting a path of parental alienation and building a narrative that John is an unengaged parent. A court hearing to restrict his visits or ask for more child support is ahead. Retaliation for the new girlfriend.
The exchange goes like this:
John had no obligation to respond to this message.
Sara went to bed early. John pondered the exchange most of the night. Was she lying? Why would she do that? Did Noah feel abandoned? John had worried the divorce would impact him emotionally, like John’s parent’s divorce had done to him. For six hours he mentally backflipped over the meaning of the exchange and what to say to their son.
Caroline won a game John never wanted to play. And John let it happen. | https://medium.com/@tiffanymadison/high-conflict-co-parents-love-starting-holiday-drama-this-year-please-dont-let-them-9b98131b3471 | ['Tiffany Madison'] | 2020-12-15 22:34:58.921000+00:00 | ['Conflict', 'Communication', 'Parenting Advice', 'Parenting', 'Narcissism'] |
Cypherium | The Next Generation of Big Tech | The global economy is heading into unchartered territory. Records are being set each day, which should terrify most observers of the economy. Approximately 30 million people have filed for unemployment in the United States since the coronavirus pandemic, the most in American History. Many are comparing this economic climate to the 2008 Mortgage Crisis, while others argue that the only comparable period in modern history is the Great Depression of 1929.
For example, Ray Dalio, the billionaire investor of Bridgewater who famously anticipated and successfully navigated the 2008 financial collapse, warns that this will be a once-in-a-lifetime economic event. In a continuing series on LinkedIn called “The Changing World Order,” Dalio argues that COVID19’s ultimate impact on the global economy will be a seismic shift in the financial, political, and cultural pecking order of nations around the world. Dalio argues that the structure of debt on every level, from the personal to the national, has become unsustainable, and as such, we are poised to enter an entirely new economic age.
There is no doubt, however, that tech companies will continue to thrive. In fact, they are some of the least affected sectors of the global economy. However, as we enter our post-COVID world, it is important to imagine what changes will befall this industry, what kinds of businesses may succeed: what does the next generation of Big Tech look like?
Because of its relevance to every sector, blockchain will undoubtedly take on a large economic role. On-chaining everyday businesses will make them safer and more operable in uncertain times, and the financial importance of digital currencies and assets should now be obvious. But how exactly will blockchains enter the tech industry? Will they become subsidiaries of existing giants? Will they rely on killer dApps or facilitate a specific kind of legacy integration?
It is likely that “Layer 1” protocol-level blockchain platforms will lead the charge. The newness of the technology, combined with the extraordinary moment gives our industry the unprecedented opportunity to put our leading foot forward, instead of trying to sneak in through small openings in existing markets. Platforms that can support both enterprises and public transactions will have the opportunity to display their value to the widest audience. These blockchains will influence financial instruments, but they will also facilitate the building of apps that will facilitate all modes of economic activity. From B2B to supply chains, to retail and public goods, decentralized platforms will become integral to our sense of interaction itself.
This will, of course, give way to the presence of dApps and inventions that are not immediately apparent to us. Just as the mass adoption of hardware gave way to first-gen software, and years later, to the apps we use today, the adoption of decentralized tech bring about a future that cannot be immediately implemented, or even imagined.
One might speculate on the process of app development once protocol-level blockchain solutions become the next Microsofts and Googles of the world. For example, it seems likely that unlike many of the current tech giants, the next generation will be far less embroiled in the current structures of VCs, Wall Street, or the NYSE. Their valuations will necessarily come from the tech itself, from the users and use-cases. The ubiquity of the internet will catalyze change at new, breakneck speeds. Access to these protocols and apps will be a more democratic, popular process, wherein use and adoption will beget more use and adoption.
Very little is known about the next few years. We will most likely see a new generation of tech giants, and those companies and their technology will be powered by a renewed demand for change. | https://medium.com/cypherium/cypherium-the-next-generation-of-big-tech-e83038294ffa | [] | 2020-05-07 11:22:04.250000+00:00 | ['Google', 'Blockchain', 'Cypherium', 'Big Tech', 'Opinion'] |
Coffee Culture and Climate Change | Climate change can be difficult to wrap your head around. It is in one hand abstract and hard to comprehend something so fundamental a colossal. We as humans have difficulty envisioning things larger that our own experiences. It’s not our fault, it’s just how we’re built.
Unfortunately, our inability to see the big picture doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I live in England and it’s been a decade since I’ve seen a snow like the ones I saw as a kid. Demonstrable things in front of us are one of the best indicators of the health of our changing planet, and one thing that’s with many of us every day is coffee.
Latte art — yay or nay?
It’s estimated that 1.4 billion cups of coffee are made every day, easily making it one the most popular drinks on the planet. 400 million cups of coffee are drunk in the US every day, while the Finns drink the most coffee per capita, almost 11 kilograms per year by some estimates. For many of us, myself included, it seems coffee is an intimate part of our lives.
But our morning brew is under threat. Much of the world’s coffee is produced in the so called ‘Coffee Belt’, an area that can roughly be described to include land 30° North and 30° South of the Equator. This includes a hugely diverse range of countries from Brazil, Honduras and El Salvador, to Ethiopia, Kenya, India, Indonesia and Yemen, to name just a few.
The coffee belt
Despite its somewhat misleading name, 70% of the world coffee comes courtesy of one particular plant Coffea arabica or Arabic Coffee. This Coffee plant typically thrives in temperature of 64F — 70F (18C — 21C). While this moderate temperature is the optimum, it can survive temperatures as high as 73F (24C), though not for significant periods of time.
The real damage though comes once we hit 86F (30C). At this stage, the growth of the planet is stunted, it’s leaves begin to yellow and the plants themselves will struggle to survive or die outright. This, combined with insects and fungal infections that thrive in rising temperatures, puts coffee plants under real threat. Now let us look at the Paris Agreement. In summary, this was a gathering of world leaders on issues of climate change where a target of 34.7F — 35.6F (1.5C — 2C) above pre-industrial levels by 2050 was agreed.
This is an ambitious goal, but it really is the best-case scenario. But for Coffea arabica and for coffee lovers around the world, it could spell disaster. Remember that optimum temperature of 64F — 70F (18C — 21C)? While 73.4F (23C) would not outright destroy the plant, it would lead to significantly less productivity and an overall decrease in the viability of coffee as a cash crop. And that viability as a cash crop may be the deciding factor for the future of coffee.
An often-overlooked factor of climate change is that it will affect countries with a lower GDP, the so called ‘third world’, far more than those of us in the ‘developed world’. On top of that, countries closer to the equator, where there is less variation in overall yearly temperature, will feel the rising temperatures of climate change far more acutely.
Coffea Arabica
These countries are also some of the world’s top coffee produces and it is those stable yearly temperatures that allow them to grow coffee in the first place. As a crop, coffee is vital to the economies of these nations as they develop and emerge from the quagmire of colonialism. Coffee is not simply a drink to them, but, in some cases, the lifeblood of their economies.
But the emissions of high GDP, ‘developed’ countries half a world away will negatively affect the climate of these nations, which, in turn, will lead to a decrease in coffee production. In the worse-case scenario, coffee is no longer viable in these regions and so is abandoned for easier to cultivate cash crops.
What then is the solution? There is no singular answer. Diversifying the coffee plants themselves will certainly help. Many farmers are now looking into gene modification and selective breeding with wild coffee plants to produce plants that are more heat tolerate.
This is only a temporary fix though. The real answer lies in fighting climate change. Without this step, coffee will become prohibitively expensive, a luxury of the rich, before finally disappearing, and a six-hundred-year love affair will come to an end.
So next time you visit your local coffee shop or café, bring a reusable cup and maybe then we can all keep enjoying coffee for the centuries to come. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/coffee-culture-and-climate-change-c40224d75cd4 | ['Danny Kane'] | 2020-02-02 18:02:04.420000+00:00 | ['Food', 'Science', 'Coffee', 'Climate Change', 'Agriculture'] |
Freddy’s Nightmares episode review — 2.13 — What You Don’t Know Can Kill You | Original air date: January 7, 1990
Director: Ken Wiederhorn
Writer: Jonathan Glassner
Rating: 4/10
This episode starts promising enough, with the first story centered around a hypnotherapist who takes advantage of his female patients when they’re under.
He gets walked in on, though, and he’s in big trouble. But thankfully he has an out, as he now has a new patient who he convinces to kill the woman when he’s under hypnosis so that she won’t tell.
But then his business partner suspects him of this, so he has to hypnotize his new patient again to kill him. But he has dyslexia, so he ends up in the wrong room, killing his doctor.
To be fair, this was set up ahead of time, but it was set up very awkwardly. That having been said, it’s my favorite aspect of either of the two stories.
The second story follows up on the same patient after the murder he’s committed. He’s in the hospital with his girlfriend who referred her to the therapist, and she believes what he tells her that he was hypnotized to do it.
Since the cops are looking for him, she has an idea to perform a laser facial reconstruction surgery, so she has him pick out a face from some magazines and newspapers that match his facial structure.
The surgery is a success, but there’s one problem: he’s chosen the face of a mob hitman who’s wanted.
What follows is really by-the-numbers stuff. It isn’t tremendously exciting, suspenseful, or funny. It’s a fairly weak story, and a subpar episode overall. | https://medium.com/as-vast-as-space-and-as-timeless-as-infinity/freddys-nightmares-episode-review-2-13-what-you-don-t-know-can-kill-you-cc39df34e21a | ['Patrick J Mullen'] | 2020-12-23 00:37:56.693000+00:00 | ['Television', 'Horror', 'Tv Reviews', 'TV', 'Freddy Krueger'] |
Top 10 Resources To Learn Coding Free | Learn to Code - for Free | Codecademy
Learn the technical skills you need for the job you want. As leaders in online education and learning to code, we've… | https://medium.com/@programmerdeve/top-10-resources-to-learn-coding-free-fda3873ca413 | [] | 2020-12-14 07:54:03.053000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Programmer', 'Programming Languages', 'Programming', 'Coding'] |
Harvard Professors Come to Pinterest | “Leadership, at its core, is about making other people better as a result of your presence — and making sure that the impact lasts in your absence.” — Frances Frei, Harvard Business School
School was back in session at Pinterest this autumn. We had the honor of welcoming five Harvard Business School professors for a custom series made available to all Pinployees around the globe. Bookended by Frances Frei’s courses, our team had the opportunity to learn from some of Harvard’s finest faculty: Tom DeLong, Francesca Gino, Tsedal Neeley, and Amy Edmondson. The goal of the series was to enable Pinployees across all levels and functions to lead with excellence.
“I am so grateful for this series. It gave all of us a common language that we can use together as we are working to develop these concepts in ourselves. I made a post-it of the ‘trust triangle’ on our very first day, and have been referring to it ever since” reflects Kristen Scully, Program Manager at Pinterest.
The series took place weekly from September through November, and saw high participation — more than 1700 attendees worldwide. Each session ran for approximately 90 minutes, and topics ranged from leadership and meaningful collaboration to managing global teams and creating a culture of inclusion.
Keegan Carter, an Account Manager in our San Francisco office reflects: “The series offered me a glimpse into my life at scale as a more refined and impactful leader. The course showed me what habits, practices, and skill sets distinguish good leaders from great ones. And the communicative ability of the lecturers allowed me to understand how to become one of those people. This experience is one that I will cherish and consistently take with me along my journey.”
The courses helped Pinployees action our mission to “bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love,” because when we support each other and lead with empathy and inclusivity, we can bring the best possible experiences to our Pinners. Pinployees had the opportunity to connect prior to, during, and after the courses over a dedicated Slack channel, and to share their thoughts and feedback both publicly and anonymously throughout the series.
“Our intention behind bringing Harvard Business School professors to Pinterest to lead these sessions was clear: to enable our teams to be the strongest, most empowered, and most inclusive leaders possible. We are grateful this series allowed us to continue to transform our culture into one we are all proud of, and express deep gratitude to each of the professors and Pinployees who joined us” said Tyi McCray, Global Head of Inclusion and Diversity at Pinterest.
For more information on culture and careers at Pinterest, visit our Pinclusion blog, careers page, and Instagram. | https://medium.com/pinclusion-posts/harvard-professors-come-to-pinterest-7713d7a3d63b | ['Pinterest Inclusion'] | 2021-01-05 22:45:51.005000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Diversity', 'Management', 'Leadership', 'Inclusion'] |
UBC got listed on IDEX exchange | 🔥 UBC got listed on IDEX exchange!
https://idex.market/
IDEX is a decentralized exchange for trading Ethereum (ERC-20) tokens. IDEX combines the speed of centralization with the security of blockchain settlement.
❤️ https://idex.market/eth/ubc — the link to UBC/ETH pair.
👍 This is the THIRD exchange for UBC. Previously this week UBC started trading on COSS and LATOKEN exchanges.
💎 More exchanges and the product public release are coming! | https://medium.com/ubcoin-blog/ubc-got-listed-on-idex-exchange-583f1093aec1 | ['Ubcoin. Cryptocurrency Reimagined'] | 2018-09-24 16:38:39.215000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Ubcoin', 'Idex', 'Ethereum', 'Ubc News'] |
Shelter for the homeless around me (Amal Mega Project) | Pakistan is a third-world developing country that is going through so many problems. Some of the main problems are water scarcity; the lack of sustainable development projects; an increasingly unemployed youth population; the lack of focus on human development projects; a continuous reduction in the foreign exchange reserves; the increase in non-developmental expenditures and much more. It is so sad to say that we all just come up with problems, not solutions. As Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei says, “Identifying problems can be a solo sport, but finding solutions rarely is.”
Homeless people of Karachi
Children sleeping on the road
The problem that I came across is to help these people to at least have some space to rest at least. I have seen that they don’t have enough money to buy food for themselves but sometimes people provide the food when they pass by them. So what I observed is that the main problem is to provide them shelter.
Pakistan has 20 million homeless people. It is a really huge and difficult problem to solve but we can just try to help as many as we can. It is better to do something than nothing. Our honorable PM has already initiated a program for them named as Panah-Gah which they have launched in several parts of Pakistan. In this social cause, I think we can add value by helping people around us. You read right. The people around you, in this way we can help more and more people.
I really hope that I will be able to help them In Sha Allah. Even if I can provide it to even one person, I’ll be happy but I just need to start working for it. It was a good learning experience to know and understand what my community is going through. Due to the COVID situation, I was just able to look for people around my town. Doing something that will help them and at the same time will make them happy is what I want to have as an end product. | https://medium.com/@yehyasaghar/shelter-for-the-homeless-around-me-amal-mega-project-730087786522 | ['Yahya Ahmed Saghar'] | 2020-12-25 15:59:45.888000+00:00 | ['Shelter', 'Humanity', 'Homeless', 'Pakistan', 'Amal'] |
Generics in Swift | How would I describe the Generic in one sentence? well, generic is like a paint 🎨. it can be mixed with all the colors.
Generics
Generic code enables you to write flexible, reusable functions and types that can work with any type, subject to requirements that you define. Much of the swift standard library is built with generic code. Even though it sounds so hard to understand, (or is it just me here? 😅) you’ve been using it through working on iOS development because Swift’s Array and Dictionary types are both generic collections.
For example if you have some protocol SomeProtocol and you want to create a function that takes two parameters and it returns it. The function below only can work with the SomeProtocol type. What if you have a different type other than SomeProtocol? then you probably have to make another function which accepts different types as a parameter.
func hello(first: SomeProtocol, second: SomeProtocol) -> SomeProtocol {
//more codes..
}
But what if the function accepts any types without restrictions? then you don’t have to spend time to make another function work for that type. right? that’s what generic exist for us.
👉🏻 Generics allow you to create a single method that is customized for the type that invokes it.
function hello<T: SomeProtocol>(first: T, second: T) -> T {
//more codes..
}
The code above, the placeholder type T is an example of a type parameter. Type parameters specify and name a placeholder type, and are written immediately after the function’s name between a pair of matching angle brackets (<T>)
👉🏻 T is substituted for whatever type you use.
It’s not only limited to functions, but you can also implement generic in many other ways! as a type such as class, struct and enum as well. | https://medium.com/doyeona/generics-in-swift-ad408ba892e2 | [] | 2020-12-25 04:19:19.946000+00:00 | ['Swift Programming', 'Generics Swift', 'Generics', 'iOS App Development', 'Swift'] |
5 Destinations to Visit in Europe if you win the Lottery | 5 Destinations to Visit in Europe if you win the Lottery
5 Destinations to Visit in Europe if you win the Lottery
s a regular lottery buyer, you are sure to get lucky someday. Just imagine yourself hitting the jackpot and suddenly find yourself a millionaire or a billionaire! Why not make some planning beforehand as to what you would do with so much money. How about pampering yourself with a great holiday in Europe after winning a lottery? Well, you have indeed made the right choice if you are planning a holiday in the wide continent of Europe.
Milan
Start your trip with Milan, a great city loaded with many attractions. It is an expensive city to holiday in, but you should not worry about your finances once you win the lottery. Here you will have endless options when looking for luxury hotels, expensive restaurants, and rooftop bars. Enjoy exploring the city in Ferraris and Lamborghinis and shop at Via Sant’Andrea, Via Montenapoleone and Via Della Spiga, once you have seen numerous museums, famous monuments and Gothic cathedrals and churches.
Amsterdam
Do include a visit to the capital city of the Netherlands and explore its main attractions. Van Gogh museum is a must see. Amsterdam is a charming and delightful city to be in where you will come across incredible waterways, pretty bridges and trams. There is no shortage of excellent restaurants to get a varied gastronomic experience. Enjoy dining at the Dutch brown café or a luxurious grand café in the Dutch capital that boasts of more art masterpieces than any other capital city.
London
Millions of visitors visit the U.K. capital each year and walk on its historic cobblestone streets and get a taste of the best of world’s culture. The capital city is teeming with music, fashion, history, and politics. Enjoy first-rate concerts and operas and explore Albert Hall or the Barbican Arts Centre, and not to miss the Kensington’s museum or the Natural History Museum and Albert Museum. Lose yourself to Kensington Gardens and stay in some of the best luxury hotels for a rejuvenating stay.
Copenhagen
copenhagen
The Danish capital is being noted for offering top quality of life and is a popular holiday destination among the rich. This capital city is a governmental and financial center which is ranked as the third richest city in the world. Explore iconic colorful buildings and dine at top restaurants and awesome bars. Hire small fishing boats and do not forget to buy the famous Danish pastry from one of many fine bakeries in Copenhagen.
Paris
Why not visit the romantic capital of France that is loaded with famous tourist attractions such as the Louvre, Disneyland Paris and of course the Eiffel Tower. Paris is famous for its luxurious offers, and if you feel like, you could stay in one of the palaces that would make you feel like royalty. Plan a luxury vacation here under guided and private torus toe explore and understand the city. Paris is home to some top-notch spas and some of the finest restaurants in the world. No luxury holiday in Paris is complete without h a spa treatment or enjoying a sumptuous meal at one of these legendary French restaurants meal at one of these establishments. Every year, the legendary French company Michelin publishes a restaurant guide awarding stars to those deemed the best from
read more : https://worldtravellike.blogspot.com/2020/04/5-destinations-to-visit-in-europe-if.html | https://medium.com/@worldtravellike/5-destinations-to-visit-in-europe-if-you-win-the-lottery-87453b34f42a | ['World Travel'] | 2020-04-23 09:32:55.448000+00:00 | ['UK', 'Milan', 'Paris', 'Munich', 'Europe'] |
Love, What Is It? | Is the advice of a guru love?
Teal Swan
Suffering, it’s all around us. I believe we feel ours and the collective suffering. Teal Swan, whose advice is in the image above, is one healer and leader who is a signpost for my growth.
Most days, I align and float in the flow of awareness. Most days, a few intentional breaths ground me when injustice tares at me. Today might be one of those days, I tell myself to get ready for the day.
getting ready
Then I read an article here on Medium, and I feel the suffering of writers in this community, and I want to share Teal’s advice, and I don’t. Not with this particular writer. I don’t because I don’t know if it can be supportive, more likely it will add fuel for the suffering.
breathing
Instead, I take extra intentional breaths and let my soul send the soothing power of the breaths to the fellow author who is suffering today. The message is, you are not alone. You got this, I got your back, at least energetically. | https://medium.com/one-minute-life-hacks/love-what-is-it-578b406b79c1 | ['Corina Oana'] | 2020-10-28 06:10:19.937000+00:00 | ['Suffering', 'Guru', 'Breathing', 'Mindfulness', 'Love'] |
The Hustle Culture Transforms Gig Workers Accounting Needs | Working for a living is my lifestyle.
This is the mantra of the 21st Century phenomenon known as the hustle culture. Instead of working to make a living, hustle culture demands people work as a lifestyle. Although kicked off by the advent of the celebrity entrepreneur, it wasn’t soon until the average citizen made the decision that working for a living was, indeed, their actual lifestyle.
Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, famously tweeted that “nobody ever changed the world in 40 hours a week”, suggesting that people would need to work twice as hard in order to reach the upper echelons of success.
This new breed of entrepreneurs has seemingly enhanced the work ethic usually associated with the gig worker. The thing that separates ‘hustle culture’ from ordinary hard work and long hours can be summed up in one word: passion. Entrepreneurs, gig workers, small business owners, and others make their living by doing what they love every day. This is what keeps people motivated to work in the wee hours of the night or to sacrifice their weekends or other off days. Owning your own business comes with certain responsibilities that may seem like more work to some, but won’t feel the same if you’re the owner.
Small business owners know that their jobs don’t end once the clock hits 5 o’clock. If you aren’t running business operations into the evenings, you’re thinking about new ways to improve your sales, talking to potential customers and vendors, or looking for ways to cut costs and increase revenue. Regardless of your situation as a business owner, one way to help establish a healthy work ethic is to keep your finances organized and in check. Here is where financial management services can help you achieve your success story.
Especially for the gig worker, dealing with multiple sources of income is the norm. The same is true about accounts payable, as there is a strong possibility of having various vendors that need to be paid for their services as well. Hustle culture might find you dealing with many vendors and clients over time, so having a centralized platform for financial management can help save time and stress. Services like Chime.com, Bill.com or Metaprise — Commerce Bank, to name a few, can help to handle your business finances and, conversely, take some of the stress off your role as an Owner. It’s worth checking out one of these time-saving services and thus provide yourself time to put a little life back into your hustle. | https://medium.com/@iMerchant/the-hustle-culture-transforms-gig-workers-accounting-needs-928d19c5b974 | [] | 2021-12-06 14:16:01.862000+00:00 | ['Accounting', 'Hustle', 'Freelancers', 'Gig Economy', 'Metaprise'] |
Pandemic Parenting: | Late Night Taste Testers
Stay at Home Mom Wins Amidst So Much Loss
My daughter shrieks in excitement, “Look, mommy! Look!” A notebook is shoved in my face where tiny green C’s march down the margins amid the various other scribbles and scratches. There it is. The letter C is clear and cascading victoriously and my four- year old is proudly dancing around like a prima ballerina at center stage. I high-five her while also reaching for the binky that has fallen out of my newborn son’s mouth before his whimpers become full-blown shrieks. His warm body is pressed against my chest in a quickly tied together carrying wrap and I can feel my shirt strangling me underneath it. He has been so suffocating with his constant need to be so close to me that they might as well put him back inside. Behind me, my two- year old son has scooted his highchair to the counter to reach the fruit snacks I told him he couldn’t have. He has a determination and stubbornness I don’t know whether to blame on his father or take credit for but it makes him a formidable opponent when it comes to saying no. I’m trying not to yell but it’s hard day 513 of this pandemic. It is easy to become overwhelmed this far in when I have lost my part-time bartending job to become a full- time stay- at -home mom and I have added a child to the mix. Not to mention, my Facebook friends have taken the time to turn their living rooms into Montessori classrooms or have their children in every play gym and art class activity. In the face of this, I could almost convince myself I am failing as a mother on the days my children watch CSI: NY and Forensic Files all day. We are well into the second year of this thing and the excitement of learning how to bake bread has faded into forcing me to stream an exercise video to the tv and work out with my toddlers crawling around me saying, “Mommy, can we work out with you?” I am grateful to be exercising at all after having two strokes, being unable to move half my body, and being in a wheelchair for the Summer and Fall of 2020. Wrapping up 2021, I am grateful for a lot of things, big and small.
For some, this pandemic has been like an extended vacation, but we are like the many for whom this forced vacation was not fun. Vacations usually don’t include the death of a grandparent, an aunt, two college classmates, and two strokes that put you in a wheelchair. Vacations don’t normally get you sober, although they might lead to a new baby. 2020 was not a vacation for me and I am sure it felt the same for anyone else who did not receive the stimulus checks and whose unemployment checks fizzled out to the unanswered phone calls of their local office. This year and a half of unemployment were painful for my husband, an audio engineer who depends on people gathering for concerts and conferences to get paid. The kids and I were initially grateful to get so much daddy time after being used to his long and crazy hours but soon became overwhelmed by the disruptions his presence gave our routine. I spent a year and a half putting off making a schedule because, “Woo, it’s pandemic times baby!,” to have toddlers stay up until 1 am and wake up at 8 am and I can’t seem to get to bed before four. I’ve been trying to fix this schedule since New Year’s Eve. Finally, he has started to get work again and my family has a routine for me to write on my chalkboard calendar in the hall.
This year was an enormous amount of pressure for everyone to learn a skill or start a business in 2020 so that in 2021 you could return to productivity. I was no different, ready to take on the world until I couldn’t feel my face. When I got sick, everything changed, and managing toddlers through pain and exhaustion gave me a crash course in faith, love, and how to count every lesson learned as a win. Every “pee-pee” that made it into the potty that I didn’t have to clean up; WIN. When my one and three-year-old became two and four and could really clean up after themselves by picking up all their toys; WIN. When we take naps on our own or sleep in in the morning definitely a win that made it easier for a chronically ill, pandemic burnt-out Mom toughing out her third pregnancy a lot easier. Or at least as easy as it could be for someone with hyperemesis gravid arum who would occasionally throw up blood. I spent nine months nauseous and those first meals after my third baby was born were major victories just because I held them down. My son also spent his first few days in the NICU, returning to the hospital a week after his discharge for breathing problems. Every weird, croaky, raspy breath he takes is a win and every loud cry hopes for strengthening lungs. My walker and my wheelchair lurk in my living room as hulking reminders of weeks of physical and occupational therapy I should still do because of lingering numbness in my feet and side. So my Facebook friends can have their play gyms and Montessori living rooms because we have our dance parties back when I have the energy, and CSI/ Forensic Files marathons when I don’t, and either way my children are learning and loved.
This pandemic has forced me to completely change how I parent my children and relate to my husband. Out of necessity, I have learned not to sweat the small stuff, worrying constantly if everything is Instagram or Facebook perfect. Sometimes everybody gets a bath and picks out their own clothes and gets their hair braided or twisted since I taught myself how to do that. Sometimes everybody eats cereal in their underwear. Both days, I have learned how to roll with what kind of day we’re having. Spending all of 2020 sick and teaching myself how to walk and toughing through the worse of my pregnancies, I rejoice in those small wins. My newborn son came home from the NICU after I cried for five days. My two- year old is potty training although there is sometimes pee on the floor. I taught myself how to cornrow and twist everyone’s hair so I do my husband’s hair for work and it has increased our intimacy. And today my four- year old drew a C. People are dead. 628,000 people at last count, including family and friends I miss every day. I am sober, alive, have an adorable new baby, can walk and dance again, and I can make you an amazing loaf of beautiful bread if you want one. If my children solve a crime today while I clean the house instead of what I think everybody else is doing, it is still a good day and I am still a good mother. They are fed, clothed, happy, safe, and can tell you what Luminal is. In this house, that is a win! | https://medium.com/@bygrant/pandemic-parenting-39d32fff7180 | ['Bianca Yvonne Grant'] | 2021-08-25 21:49:35.663000+00:00 | ['Pandemic', 'Small Wins', 'Parenting', 'Family', 'Moms'] |
Test Driven Development — XCTests (Xcode 10 & Swift 4) | TDD Cycle
There is no right or wrong way to develop mobile application or software. However, there are dozens of techniques and approaches that can make the process faster and the results — better. The test-driven development methodology (TDD) is one of them.
Being a very popular software development methodology, it is widely used by agile software development teams. It can significantly speed up the development process, and can make it more efficient and cost-effective in the long run.
What is Test-Driven Development ?
Test Driven Development is a way of writing software. At its core is a simple cycle: Write a test, write as little code as possible to make the test pass, and then refactor (tidy up) the code. It sounds deceptively simple, but it’s a powerful way to write your code.
How Test-Driven Development Works ?
At the beginning the test case obviously will fail because the code is not yet implemented. This phase is usually called the red phase. The developers then write the code to make sure the test case pass successfully and does not break any components or current test cases, the code in this phase does not have to be fully optimized and efficient. This phase is called the green phase. After this, the developer should refactor the implementation of the code by cleaning, maintaining the codebase and optimize the efficiency of the code. This cycle then should be repeated as new test case is added. Each unit of test should be made as small and isolated as possible to make it easier to read and maintain.
What are you going to build?
We are going to build a simple calculator with just 4 basic arithmetic functions (Division, Multiplication, Addition & Subtraction) in Xcode 10 and Swift 4. Since we know 20 + 10 = 30… if the function returns 30 the test will pass, otherwise the test will fail and we know we will need to fix our function.
Unit Tests Modules:
Many developers practice test driven development (TDD). TDD involves writing test code before writing the production code associated with that test. The purpose of Unit Testing is to divide the application into small little components and then test it. Each component should work independent of others, so we will also divide the app into 4 tests.
Setting things up:
Let’s create a new project in Xcode with include unit tests checkbox checked.
Include Unit Tests checkbox is checked
Take a look at the project in Xcode. These are the main files we are running unit tests on:
1. Maths.swift
The Maths.swift class contains the Maths engine, the core arithmetic functions that are going to be test in 4 components i.e Unit Tests.
2. MathsTest.swift
The MathsTest.swift class contains the XCTests (Xcode Unit Test cases). This class is inherited from XCTestCase.
Maths.swift class in detail:
In our Maths.swift class we have the Maths Engine, the core mathematical functions.
Here, we have 4 basic arithmetic functions:
1. Addition
2. Subtraction
3. Multiplication
4. Division
All functions described in this class takes two parameters as input (num1 & num2) and returns the relevant output.
MathsTest.swift class in detail:
As you can see MathsTest.swift class is inherited from the XCTestCase class.
If any of you are wondering what the “@testable import” statement does when you use it in unit tests, it basically imports your module and lets you write unit tests against its internal entities.
We have also created an object of Maths() class here named as math.
Unit Test (Test Cases / XCTests)
In our MathsTest.swift class we also have 4 Unit Test Cases for 4 different functions.
1. testAdd
2. testSubtract
3. testMultiply
4. test Division
Whenever a function in XCTest class is prefixed by test keyword then it automatically become a unit test. That’s why all the functions written in MathsTest.swift class are prefixed by test keyword.
Unit Tests also have a diamond shape in the starting.
XCTAssertEqual: Asserts that two expressions have the same value.
TIME TO RUN THE TESTS:
Let’s run the tests by pressing Command (⌘) + U, You’ll see that all the tests have been failed because in TDD the first step is to make the test fail and then make it pass and then followed by re-factoring. Whenever a test fails a red cross diamond appears at the declaration(starting) of the function.
IMPLEMENTING THE CODE:
Let’s go to the Maths class and write the all the functions according to maths logic.
As you can see the Core functionality of all functions are right according to Mathematics, let’s go back to MathsTest.swift class and run the tests again by pressing Command (⌘) + U.
You’ll observe that the all tests have been passed successfully. Whenever a test passes a green tick diamond appears at the declaration(starting) of the function.
CHANGING THE CORE LOGIC:
How about altering a function logic and testing wether the output remains same or the test cases we wrote above are actually correct and working.
Altered add function
Explanation:
The add function in math class has been altered and returns difference of two numbers instead of their sum. The test case should fail in this case.
Dry Run of add function:
num1 – num2 = result
10 – 20 = -10
result ≠ expected // XCAssertEqualFailed
-10 ≠ 30
Test Case Failure
As you can see the test failed because the XCAssert throw an error that expected and real result is not same, so we made a test fail just to make sure that the test case we wrote is correct.
XCTAssert
XCTAssert is one of a family of asserts for unit testing from the XCTest framework, and should only be present in Unit Test Targets (i.e. not in your application code). If the assert fails, it does not terminate the execution of the test harness or hosting application, but records and reports the failure.
XCTAssert Variations
XCTAssert has many other variations of the function that night make testing a bit easier. It all boils down to a bool… but you can certainly use some of the other options if you prefer.
Here’s all you need to do to get started with unit tests in iOS
Add a unit test target. A unit test target is a separate executable with a single purpose, running your unit tests. When you ship your app to the App Store, this test target is not included. Although it’s not recommended, you can have compiler errors or bugs in this target, and it won’t affect the product your deliver to the App Store. Import your app or framework module into the unit test target. Xcode has a handy import statement that makes this nice and neat. You don’t need to give all of your files membership in the unit test target like you used to. Write tests and run them in Xcode. You can write and run your tests in one place. Just hit command U and see what passes or fails.
There’s quite a lot more to discuss about Unit Tests. I just wanted to show you that unit tests aren’t some giant monster. Anyone can start writing them in just a few minutes.
Thank you for reading the article. You can find the source code here in my GitHub repository.
Happy Coding ! | https://medium.com/@owaisss10/test-driven-development-xctests-xcode-10-swift-4-eca3bf7041f2 | ['Awais Akram'] | 2019-06-19 10:52:31.357000+00:00 | ['Test Driven Development', 'Xctest', 'Xctestcase', 'Unit Testing', 'Swift'] |
Elements of Functional Programming in Python | “Object-oriented programming makes code understandable by encapsulating moving parts. Functional programming makes code understandable by minimizing moving parts.” : Michael Feathers
There are multiple programming languages in the world, and so are the categories in which they can be classified. A programming paradigm is one such way which tries to classify programming languages based on their features or coding style. A programming paradigm is essentially a style or a way of programming.
Most of the times, we understand Python as an object-oriented language, where we model our data in the form of classes, objects, and methods. However, there also exist several alternatives to OOP, and functional programming is one of them.
Here are some of the conventional programming paradigms prevalent in the industry:
Conventional programming paradigms: Content Source Wikipedia
Functional Programming(FP)
The Functional Programming Paradigm
As per Wikipedia, Functional programming is a programming paradigm, a style of building the structure and elements of computer programs, that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids changing state and mutable data.
The above definition might sound confusing at first, but it essentially tries to put forward the following aspects:
FP relies on functions, and everything is done using functions. Moreover, FP focuses on defining what to do, instead of performing some action. The functions of this paradigm are treated as first-class functions. This means functions are treated like any other objects, and we can assign them to variables or pass them into other functions.
what to do, instead of performing some action. The functions of this paradigm are treated as functions. This means functions are treated like any other objects, and we can assign them to variables or pass them into other functions. The data used in functional programming must be immutable, i.e. should never change. This means if we need to modify a data in a list, we need to create a new list with updated values rather than manipulating the existing one.
i.e. should never change. This means if we need to modify a data in a list, we need to create a new list with updated values rather than manipulating the existing one. The programs written in FP should be stateless . A stateless function has no knowledge about its past. Functional programs should carry out every task as if they are performing it for the first time. Simply put, the functions are only dependent on the data passed to them as arguments and never on the outside data.
. A stateless function has no knowledge about its past. Functional programs should carry out every task as if they are performing it for the first time. Simply put, the functions are only dependent on the data passed to them as arguments and never on the outside data. Laziness is another property of FP wherein we don’t compute things that we don’t have to. Work is only done on demand.
If this makes sense now, here is a nice comparison chart between the OOP and FP which will make things even more apparent.
Python provides features like lambda, filter, map, and reduce that can easily demonstrate the concept of Functional Programming. All the codes used in this article can be accessed from the associated Github Repository or can be viewed on my_binder by clicking the image below. | https://towardsdatascience.com/elements-of-functional-programming-in-python-1b295ea5bbe0 | ['Parul Pandey'] | 2020-01-21 06:25:42.977000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Lists', 'Functional Programming', 'Data Science', 'Programming'] |
Mixed-Race Musings | Mixed-Race Musings
Re-inspired by Mariah Carey’s and Lenny Kravitz’s healing and validating autobiographies — and why I love Barack Obama
I’m currently (and excitedly) working on a story to perform for The Moth. The story below was my initial direction, but we decided to try something different. Still, this piece means a lot to me because mixed-race identity is complicated when it comes down to it. In some spaces, I’m too preppy. In others, I’m Harriet Tubman. But the truth is, I’ve always defined myself.
I’ve spent a lot of my time on this earth trying to make people happy. From an early age, I learned that bringing people happiness was a good, celebrated thing. I remember the moment that my pre-school teacher said I was “one of the good kids.” I was just four years old, but I felt myself standing a little bit taller because I knew in my little life, I must have been doing something right. And in tandem with being good, I also wanted to “do good.” I put this in action during a kindergarten play in Queens Village, NY where I grew up. I was totally on-brand as a “sunshine” kid, and my classmate and I were supposed to come on stage and banish the clouds away by singing our sunny day song. Except, my classmate got stage fright and ran off the stage before we could finish. Eyeing my sobbing classmate and seeing my parents in the audience, I thought as quickly as I could to save the day. I sang both of our parts and yelled, “Don’t worry, I’m coming!” as I ran off to console my classmate. The crowd broke into applause and awws, and putting the production, and my classmate before me, made me feel like I saved the day.
Growing up in Queens, I was pretty much shielded from the racism that I’d learn about later in my life, thanks to my parents. Queens is the most diverse county in the world, and I got to grow up with a little bit of every culture. My best friend growing up was Irish; I listened to dancehall (thanks to my neighbors blasting Shabba Ranks and Patra next door) as much as I would Janet Jackson and the stories from my Teddy Ruxpin. It seemed like my first gen friends spent their Saturday mornings learning about the language of their cultures. I didn’t seem to encounter much racism, but even in this unusual Queens safe space, I was not shielded from colorism.
My mother is Black and Honduran, with dark skin and a bright smile — a smile that’s pretty much identical to mine. And my dad is Puerto Rican, what people today might call a white-presenting Latino. And together they had me, a composite of both of their sketches that caused wide-eyed stares, unexplained awe, and on the flip side, unexplained frustration. My parents split when I was very young. So I spent most of my time being shuttled around from elementary school and kids’ birthday parties to high school and eventually being shipped off to college, with my mom shepherding me the entire way. And even though we have that identical smile, that didn’t seem like enough for people to place me as her daughter. She was either my “nanny” growing up or my “friend” as I got older because it seemed odd to people for a dark-skinned woman to be the mother of a light-skinned child. I would smile politely and correct them at a young age, almost trying to will them into seeing that yes, this was my mother, and yes, I could belong to her. When I would visit my dad at Yankee Stadium, where he worked for years, it was clear that I was his daughter. But if any of my Puerto Rican and Italian cousins would join us while meeting new stadium people, they’d greet my cousins as my dad’s kids and then surprisedly recover when he introduced me as his child.
I set down my own gauntlet that no, I wasn’t going to become that “uppity light-skinned girl” that some family elders warned my mother I would likely become. That I wasn’t part of the problem. Because I wouldn’t let myself exist too loudly.
As I got older and my peers were assembling their own ways of dealing with differences, I was introduced super early to awkward comments. “So your father isn’t white, huh? He definitely looks white,” I’d hear.
So I started to just deny deny deny. I’d deny everything about my identity. If someone asked me if my hair was real, I’d tell them, absolutely not! This hair? Oh, I got it from the beauty supply shop, it’s #189. What are you? I’m a person. Where am I from? Queens. At 13, I thought this was brilliant. It was my way of being an ironic quippy kid, but really, the underlying goal was not to offend anyone with my identity. I set down my own gauntlet that no, I wasn’t going to become that “uppity light-skinned girl” that some family elders warned my mother I would likely become. That I wasn’t part of the problem. Because I wouldn’t let myself exist too loudly.
I had grown up with this being my normal that I didn’t even think to be angry about it. I’m an introvert by nature, and I never liked being the topic of conversation, especially when my existence was the topic.
Fast forward to college. I had been accepted to NYU, a school I didn’t feel like I was even good enough for, even though I had a stellar GPA coming out of high school. This practically Ivy League institution was a reach school in my mind, and I only applied with the encouragement of my guidance counselor — my plan was to go to a SUNY school that I’d likely get a scholarship to, and be as little a burden on my parents as possible. I was pre-med, partly because I was genuinely interested in medicine to heal people, and partly because I knew it would make my parents happy. And as a lifelong do-gooder, making them happy was priority #1.
But the West Village was definitely no Queens Village. I finally got why people kept asking if my mom was my nanny when I was young. Most of the Black women I’d see in Washington Square Park were pushing the strollers of white children or children many shades lighter than them. This was a dynamic that was so new to me, but not to many of my classmates. I noticed that only a few kids looked like me in any of my classes. Although I was usually one of the few actually from New York City in class, I was made to feel othered. But what’s different about college kids is that they broke it down scientifically, with actual percentage rates. And if they could break down stats, that means they had to be unequivocally right.
I tried to do the dance and keep up with my impossible balancing act while being overwhelmed with an intense pre-med track and double majoring in journalism. I got quieter and quieter in every aspect of my life. Aside from making friends with one classmate who is still my very best friend, Jing Jing Mei, who quickly set the bar of how she would be treated by telling our classmates, yes, she is from Brooklyn, and no, she did not have a recommendation for a dry cleaner. I stayed to myself in the library, with massive headphones on — listening to the ’80s soul music, hip-hop, and soca that made me feel like I was back home.
But this building pressure to not offend anyone by existing, wanting to declare a new major, and just hearing myself think and figure out who I truly wanted to be in this world became unbearable. In a literature class focusing on Caribbean identities, the dam broke. I’d mentioned that with my own Bahamian roots, I had related to the mindset of one of the protagonists of a book we were examining. A classmate told me that he found that to be surprising since the Black experience couldn’t actually be mine. “Come on, you’re light as Aaliyah. No one’s seeing you as this character.” I was stunned, but my first reaction wasn’t anger or a quippy comeback. It was fear. By identifying with this character, was I claiming an experience that wasn’t mine? Do I have the right to claim any of the boxes I’d been trying so hard to cram myself in, not to upset anyone, my entire life?
I felt so much shame. I wanted to immerse myself with stories about mixed-race identities. I wanted to bury myself in the pages of stories of people who may have been feeling the same shame and uncertainty. And I wanted to see how they made it right.
Right before Father’s Day in my junior year, I discovered Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams From My Father, on a random Barnes & Noble discount display. I didn’t think much of the author, considering I had picked up the book in the early 2000s when he was a Chicago senator, and there was no talk about a presidential run for the virtual unknown. My quest to “find the right way to describe myself” quickly transitioned into seeing my exact shame and insecurity projected back to me within his words. He talked about being the only child of a white mother and an African father, and how growing up in Kansas, he tried to learn about the blackness he couldn’t get from his mother and grandparents by watching Soul Train. He talked about being the “only one” in classrooms all over the country, and even in Thailand. He spoke about his present-day views when younger family members are targeted for being Black by police. He didn’t let some percentage rule change the way he identified as a Black man.
This book caused a gradual shift and lifted my insecurity boulder for the second half of my time at NYU. But I never challenged that classmate, and still, I rarely spoke up in class. I found myself spending less time in the chem lab and more time writing papers ferociously, and infusing them with as much culture as I could. My culture. The culture of the mixed kid from New York City, who deserved to walk NYU’s campus, and to tell her authentic New York story with no shame. I wrote about my Puerto Rican grandmother and how she used a meal to keep her family both nourished and united. The history within her cast iron pots passed down from generation to generation. I wrote about the authenticity of Notorious B.I.G., who, yes, entered the drug game just to feed his daughter, in a Bed Stuy that’s nothing like the gentrified oasis that has removed Brooklyn residents like him. They exist, and I exist, and New York City belongs to us. I wrote and wrote with the fire that I guess I was supposed to have as a Leo but never permitted myself to embody.
I told my parents that no, I did not want to be a doctor. I did not want to cram myself into this life I knew everyone wanted for me. I wanted to spend my life writing stories I was afraid to speak before so that young people could discover my words and know that no, they are not crazy for being so confused in a world that puts so much value in locking us in boxes no one, whatever race, should be forced to fit in.
Since then, a thing happened. Obama became president. I learned that we have the same birthday, and I would follow his steps as a kind and impactful leader and have them subtly guide mine as I became a working journalist. Just recently, we could also add Meghan Markle to the August 4 club, a biracial woman who’s self-made with a strong sense of identity and an even stronger mission for a better world. As she deals with scrutiny in a world not used to being confronted with her existence, I remind myself that speaking up with my pen lifts her up, and those like her.
I spent many years in knots about who I should be, until I started to untangle them and realized that only I write my own script. | https://jada.medium.com/mixed-race-musings-7dcb76e4e63c | ['Jada Gomez'] | 2020-10-16 17:10:39.754000+00:00 | ['Identity', 'Mixed Race'] |
Day 11 — Standing on the Shoulders of Giants | Day 11 — Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
This Sprint I’m focused on testing an idea to teach kids the skills to manage type 1 diabetes. But the first few customer discovery interviews this week surprised me. Parents just did not identify teaching their kids skills as a major pain point. Sure, they were doing it— and no doubt, kids were learning — but it just wasn’t a problem they were trying to solve.
But then I also realized my sample size only included young children who were recently diagnosed. What’s truly appropriate for a 5-year old to do? What skills should 5-year olds be building? And how does that differ from a 15-year old?
Lately I’ve been fascinated by the idea of a hero’s journey.
Image credit: Joseph Campbell
It’s a common storytelling technique, but I’m interested in it for how it relates to kids who are diagnosed with a chronic health issue. Their Call to Adventure is their diagnosis, and it sets them off on an epic journey.
But the adventure is filled with unknowns and obstacles that will test every part of them. For many families, it can feel like they’re alone in this horror story. But they’re not alone: the path they’re taking is filled with challenges other families have faced and are facing.
What if we could guide them along their journey?
So I went to Google…
I’ve been interested by this idea of teaching the right skills at the right time, and it turns out I’m not the first. There’s a ton of research into child development milestones, both generally-speaking as they relate to all kids and specific to type 1 diabetes.
Diabetes-Focused Milestones Research
I found a few really excellent publications tying age-specific diabetes milestones and call for a shared responsibility approach to care.
Each of the papers had slightly different approaches, but the same common theme of combining child development milestones, a family-based approach to care, and child self-care milestones. So I started to pull it together in a spreadsheet.
Pulling Together the Research
Source Research
General Chronic Care for Kids Research
Another frequently-referenced model I found evaluates the entire family in their approach as a way to evaluate outcomes.
Credit: Kathleen Knafl
Source Research
Child Development Research
Finally, there is a huge field of research on child development that is not specific to any single chronic condition, but which plays an important role into milestone development.
Credit: Erik Erikson
Source Research
What Now?
It’s just the beginning. Right now, this feels like a 10,000 piece puzzle is spilled out in front of me. But I’m looking at the picture on the box and I’m really excited to put it together.
See you tomorrow. | https://medium.com/@bobweishar/day-11-standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants-c8a2a91fafda | ['Bob Weishar'] | 2020-12-11 03:10:34.237000+00:00 | ['Founder Stories', 'Passion', 'Startup', 'Founders', 'Diabetes'] |
My Daily blog | It’s December 22nd somewhere in America, feeling kinda lazy today, so i decided to start a blog. I usually start my mornings with big dreams and all. But today no surge of inspiration came to greet me. As of this moment I have no daily routine, apart from by 12:30, I know I am going to go to the gym, going to hit chest and biceps, then come home to eat a bowl of rice, plantain and chicken. Before I go to the gym I am trying to create a website for my girlfriends birthday ! I have no idea where to start. So I have decided to make a system I can always fall back on when creating a website. I am not an expert, infact i have only created 2 websites in my dreams and none in reality. This steps are not for anyone to follow just me writing them down so I can follow them.
S teps in creating my first website 🤪
Create a google forms of the things i need to know about the website, call it V1 i.e Product, purpose, users, inspiration websites, users needs, users emotions, Name. There is probably more i need to know but this is all I can think of for now. Create a persona around the user. i.e. who the user is, what they like, what they don't like, why they are here. Create another google forms for the website elements call it v1_elem. i.e. number of pages, how much content will be on a particular page, images, sources of image, button , fun ideas, widgets. sketch out 4 different wire frames with pen and paper, but in my case a note pad that keeps disconnecting from my laptop. Visualize those wire frames using balsamic , i think it looks pretty cool on there. Create a style tile for different colors and fonts that will fit the wire frame. Create a prototype of the website using adobe xd. Rest for about a week test out prototype around apartment, friends and family. Now for the fun part. Hop unto visual studio code. Basically code the entire prototype using the skills you have learnt from HTML CSS and javascript Be scrappy lol ! Dont know why i said that google uses this word a lot. I like it Finally for the fun part. create the logo use photoshop no need to pay anyone you can learn photoshop on youtube. Buy a domain name. It is important to do this at the end not at the beginning. so you wont feel like your website already exists. infuse the logo and name into your website. Get a hosting and then push in your code. Go live. manage analytics a couple of days before her birthday. put the website address in an envelope along with a bottle of champagne. put both in a box and give it to her as a present. split earnings 80 20 you get 20 because its basically not yours lol ! let her manage it and see where it picks up from there. Success ! Now do it over again for a couple more clients and become a pro at it.
Wow,
This is a lot of steps I know, but it pays to be organized and you can tick off each step as you go to the next. Timeline for this really depends on you. “Ideas dont have a date.” But i will say dont try and make anything perfect, just do it and move on to the next as soon as you can. | https://medium.com/@mayowawo/my-daily-blog-b603ca4c1b9c | ['Mayowa Awojuyigbe'] | 2020-12-22 17:54:29.769000+00:00 | ['Website', 'Web Development', 'Web Design'] |
Why I Refuse to Shave My Legs | Why I Refuse to Shave My Legs
Even though I really want to. (Sometimes.)
Image by candelaria bulacio on Scopio (You try finding a photo of a woman with unshaven legs!)
It was 1989, the year of the Epilady. I was 13, a precocious little teenager, and I’d been harassing my mother all year to buy me one of these expensive beauty products for Christmas.
“I don’t want to waste my money,” she argued. “I know you won’t use it. It’ll hurt like hell.”
I laughed. My mother was so uncool. “It doesn’t hurt,” I insisted. “Haven’t you seen the commercial?” Avoid the pain of waxing, they said. The Epilady whisks hair from below the surface of the skin, leaving your legs smoother, longer. (I can still hear that confident, feminine voice all these years later.)
My mom was a softie when it came to gifts, though. If I wanted something badly enough, she’d get it for me, within reason. So that Christmas, I unwrapped my Epilady and felt like a grown-up woman for the first time.
I waited until the next day to try it, resting one foot on the edge of the bathtub, the way women always did in the commercials. Like an elegant swan…about to rip out her leg hairs by the roots.
I smiled, turning on the device. I could imagine my hairless legs, no longer marred by stubble. This was going to change my life and I’d finally feel beautiful and feminine.
I touched it to my legs and immediately felt as if someone was stabbing me with a dozen tiny needles. I pulled it back, staring at it in horror thinking it must be malfunctioning. Nothing appeared to be amiss so I tried again, and again was struck by the intense pain.
Dammit. I realized my mother was right and the commercial was a lie. This was not “whisking hair away.” This was “pulling it out by its roots.” And it hurt like hell.
I crept into my mother’s bathroom while she was brushing her teeth, wearing a chagrined expression on my face. “Does this have a return policy?” I asked, holding up the Epilady.
She took the toothbrush out of her mouth and glared at me. | https://medium.com/candour/why-i-refuse-to-shave-my-legs-616bb7bb38a0 | ['Yael Wolfe'] | 2020-02-26 15:31:05.192000+00:00 | ['Self Love', 'Women', 'Self', 'Feminism', 'Beauty'] |
Sulli Deal : selling Muslim women’s online … | What is Sulli Deal :
This is an app used to sell Indian Muslim women’s online. Sulli is a derogatory word used to refer to Muslim women by extremists. This app is used to target Muslim women mostly: students, artists, researchers, journalists, activists etc … This app was hosted by GitHub. Pictures of women taken from various social media handle like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook are taken and uploaded to this app. pictures are used for the online auction of these women on the app. auction is not real and used to harass these women’s.
How the app came to light :
The app came to light when these men started sharing their deal of the day on Twitter and it has since been removed by GitHub ( hosting platform, with a repository of open-source codes). this is not the first time Muslim women faced such constant harassment and rape threats by some hard-right groups. In may a youtube channel Liberal Doge Live whose real identity is reportedly Ritesh Jha, live-streamed the photos of Muslim women on the festival of eid with a noxious description in Hindi that read: Today, we will stalk women with our eyes filled with lust.
visit our website for full news : https://www.letsdoitnews.com/2021/07/sulli-deal-selling-muslim-womens-online.html | https://medium.com/@bepositiveforworld791/sulli-deal-selling-muslim-womens-online-626bffabb41d | ['Prashant Jangir'] | 2021-07-19 13:33:26.445000+00:00 | ['Sulli', 'Muslim Women', 'Deal', 'Indian', 'Harassed'] |
When Can We Stop Wearing Masks? | Photo by Anton on Unsplash
When Can We Stop Wearing Masks?
Vaccines are promising, but don’t toss that face covering just yet
From a scientific perspective, there’s no longer any question that face masks help prevent the spread of Covid-19, protecting both the wearer and others. So with optimism rising over vaccines that appear to be highly effective, one big question now is how long we’ll all be bound to cover our faces, especially since new cases and deaths continue to soar.
The answer: Longer than you might have hoped.
Key factors include how quickly a sizable majority of the population gets vaccinated, plus a big wild card: whether the vaccines actually prevent infection, either mostly or entirely, or merely prevent and curb symptoms while leaving an infected person still potentially infectious.
In the meantime, infectious-disease experts stress the ongoing importance of masks in a layered approach to prevention that still includes avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated spaces, washing hands frequently, then getting the vaccine when your turn comes.
“Even after being immunized it will be important for people to continue to wear masks until we hear that the pandemic is under control, many people have been immunized, and community levels of disease are at acceptably low levels,” says David Aronoff, MD, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “While vaccines will prevent symptomatic infection, we do not know whether vaccines will completely prevent infection in the first place, or prevent transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
Vaccines are never perfect
For comparison, the annual flu shot — more important than ever this year — is typically around 50% effective. It fully protects some individuals, and if a vaccinated person does catch the flu, their symptoms are likely to be less severe and of shorter duration than a nonimmunized person, and during that time they could still transmit the disease to someone else, Aronoff explains.
“I am hopeful that SARS-CoV-2 vaccines prevent infection and eliminate contagiousness,” he tells me. “But we need to behave as if they reduce symptoms, prevent severe disease, shorten the duration of viral shedding, and reduce but not eliminate contagiousness.”
Multiple Covid-19 vaccines are getting high marks from scientists not involved in their creation, including Eleanor Murray, ScD, assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University’s School of Public Health. But Murray echoes Aronoff on the notion that there’s more to learn before we know how high the high fives should go.
“The randomized trials showed us that the vaccines do a great job preventing illness, but haven’t reported on infection status,” Murray says in an email. “We will likely learn more about this over the next few months as more people get vaccinated, though, so hopefully we’ll have the answer soon. If the vaccine does prevent transmission, then we’ll need to wear masks until maybe about 70% of the people in our communities are vaccinated. If the vaccines don’t prevent transmission, we may need to wear masks longer than that.”
That 70% figure is a rough estimate of what it takes for herd immunity to significantly kick in, presumably slowing the spread of the virus because it begins to run out of people to infect.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-diseases expert, said on December 15 that an even lower level of immunization could start to slow the pandemic down by late spring or summer and potentially “turn this thing around” by the end of 2021.
“I would say 50% would have to get vaccinated before you start to see an impact,” Fauci told NPR. “But I would say 75 to 85% would have to get vaccinated if you want to have that blanket of herd immunity.”
Spring? Summer? Fall?
Fauci’s timeline depends on those vexing unknowns, however.
“There is a big if to this,” says Marc Lipsitch, PhD, a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Herd immunity thresholds cited by Fauci depend not just on the number of shots taken, but on whether the Covid-19 vaccines prevent infection, infectiousness, and transmission as well as, say, measles and mumps vaccines, Lipsitch tweeted December 15, or if they mainly prevent symptoms and have only modest effects on transmission, as is the case with vaccines for some other diseases.
It’s also not yet clear how rapidly vaccines will be deployed to the entire population.
“I don’t think we should stop wearing masks indoors, especially in spaces that we do not know what the ventilation/filtration rates are and that are crowded until the general public starts to get vaccinated, and that will not be until close to next fall, I suspect,” says Shelly Miller, PhD, an environmental engineer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies the indoor transmission of infectious diseases.
Until then, the importance of masking up is no less crucial — and far more so when in crowded indoor spaces and especially in poorly ventilated places, versus the comparatively lower risk outside with good airflow and proper physical distancing. Risk is also high if someone brings the virus home, and there are several ways to mitigate that challenge.
Since masks are here to stay for a while, here’s an in-depth guide to choosing the best face coverings and dealing with the many issues they present: | https://coronavirus.medium.com/when-can-we-stop-wearing-masks-e85aa174a325 | ['Robert Roy Britt'] | 2020-12-16 00:43:47.124000+00:00 | ['Vaccines', 'Pandemic', 'Covid 19', 'Coronavirus', 'Masks'] |
The Quest for Peace (II) | I tried
to find peace
but this fictional thing
kept eluding me
I tried
to find hope
but the world
had none left
to give
I tried
to get help
but everyone
I turned to
seemed to be masking
their own tears
I tried
to stop the pain;
to make it
go away
But it always seemed
to find a home
in my heart
I tried
to stay alive
but the thoughts
in my head
tasted victory
today. | https://medium.com/scribe/the-quest-for-peace-ii-a53a4fe82fe3 | ['Fọlábòmí Àmọ Ó'] | 2020-12-15 08:41:23.035000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Mental Health', 'Poetry', 'Suicide', 'Death'] |
Top Careers to Choose in Blockchain and Decentralized Ledger Technology (DLT) | Image Credit: Unsplash
As with many technologies, the blockchain and decentralized ledger technology are in high demand both by individuals and enterprises. With the vast ocean of opportunities it presents to individuals who seek to forge a profitable career out of it, institutions are equally leveraging it to key into the technology which together with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing and other revolutionary technologies have been touted to be the driver of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).
With Blockchain ranking as the most sought after hard skill in 2020 and this new decade whether you’re surfing through Google or LinkedIn, the race seems to be on by those who would want to build a career out of this industry but have questions like “Which Career is the best to major on in Blockchain?” whether asked on Google or Quora. This article presents a list of career options to select from as an aspiring professional. The interesting part is that all these skills can be employed to work remotely from home especially at this moment where organizations are now beginning to understand the necessity of remote work with the global outbreak of the Coronavirus in 2020. I must state however that this list is not in any way exhaustive and would, therefore, appreciate if you can contribute by commenting on other careers, I might have missed out you think deserves to make the list.
Cryptocurrency Trade Analyst
Cryptocurrency, no doubt is the most popular application of blockchain and decentralized ledger technology. Bitcoin as the first successful case of cryptocurrency after numerous attempts at launching a digital version of currency failed, has seen widespread acceptance in popular quarters whether the global economy or within political spheres. With the unabated proliferation of other forms of cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Ripple, EOS and even TRON, there has been a constant growing opportunity for those seeking to make meaning of the “wild west” as it is often called. As a Crypto Analyst, you need to be vast in the concept of digital assets trading. You must be very conversant with Technical Analysis (TA) and Fundamental Analysis (FA). Crypto like other asset classes has what makes them tick. Market sentiments, Project Team expertise, Events as they unfold within the industry among others contribute to the growth or death of any cryptocurrency. As an analyst, you should learn how to trade these digital assets even in extreme cases of volatility which has remained as one of the enduring characters of cryptocurrencies. Knowing which exchange to trade, navigating your way around either centralized or decentralized exchanges when to open and close a trade, which cryptocurrency project has a short, medium- or long-term prospect or even a mix of any of these falls under your purview. Margin and Futures trading is also handy expertise that is very much in huge need within the industry.
With several job openings advertising opportunities with the ability to trade coupled with hands-on risk management skills as a major part of the job description, it is without doubts those with this skill should be able to make decent fortunes for themselves if they land good gigs.
Traditional financial institutions such as banks like JP Morgan have been reported to have rolled out its cryptocurrency strategy by launching the first US bank-backed cryptocurrency which is a detour from its earlier hard-line stance where its CEO, Jamie Dimon called bitcoin “a fraud”. There has to be something very interesting in this industry. This, therefore, should interest anyone who intends to build a career and become a cryptocurrency analyst. As a dedicated career pursuer, you should familiarize yourself with several cryptocurrency projects. There are well over 5,170 cryptocurrencies reported by Coinmarketcap as at the time of publishing of this article. This directory is a good place to start with as it reports in real-time the gains & losses, market cap, the daily and historical trade volume of these cryptocurrencies and several other useful indicators that will aid your work as a Cryptocurrency Trade Analyst.
Community Manager
As you may well know, no project operates in a vacuum, this is very true for cryptocurrency projects which depend hugely on its army of community. Cryptocurrencies are on a frantic race for mass adoption which means efforts whether technical or promotional are being made to ensure the right persons hear and also use crypto for their daily transactions. Building a grassroots community has been the norm. Crypto projects and Startups constantly grow their community across several social media channels to help their goal of wide adoption. This means there is always the demand for those who possess the social and technical skills of managing these communities.
As a Community Manager, you are saddled with responsibilities such as: Manage Telegram — keep it alive with conversations around the specific project and industry happenings, post in Forums/ Facebook groups, Subreddits, working closely with other community managers or ambassadors to help portray the specific project in good light, work with project teams to get major announcements/Press releases out on all major crypto forums/finance forums, blogs, social media channels, and must have experience launching community initiatives such as bounty programs, ambassador program, creating an event series and writing email newsletters, etc. In a nutshell, you must ensure virtually no question goes unanswered within the community whether you’re responding with original answers or links from the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) repository.
Knowing your way around proper and friendly construction of conversations is a huge need. Also knowing how to minimally program chatbots comes in handy. Becoming an expert at using TTDR is a must. By the way, TTDR stands for Telegram, Twitter, Discord, and Reddit. These are platforms that drive high volume day to day traffic on cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects. Having a decent following on these platforms for yourself is also a huge plus. Most projects employing a community manager to help with the maintenance of their community on Twitter, for example, tend to favour a twitter user with decent followership. Reddit records 330 million monthly active users and has features such as Subreddits. As a community manager who will most likely be tasked with the responsibility of sparking and maintaining conversations across a project’s Reddit channel and other public channels on Reddit, it is important you familiarize yourself with how Reddit as a platform works.
Not to forget Discord, the popularity of this platform is beginning to show remarkable growth which used to be thought of as a platform exclusive for gamers. Discord possesses cool features such as creating channels as you have on Slack, and just like Telegram, it permits the linking of other tools such as website, social media accounts for its updates to be gotten by the community in real-time on Discord without having to switch applications. It also has Voice Channels where platforms can organize meetings and AMAs (Ask Me Anything), a popular activity observed by most cryptocurrency projects. This is a cool feature that will contribute to user adoption of Discord platform, especially among tech-savvy crypto community and enthusiasts.
Copywriter
Organizations are constantly on the lookout for those (individuals or corporate agencies) who can write articles or short-form essays that can eventually land the next sales. A typical copywriter takes a client’s advertising brief and generating original copy ideas that grab the attention of the target audience. This can include straplines, slogans, body copy, jingles, and scripts. This is what copywriting entails. As a copywriter who understands basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques, a professional play on words, you can build a career around the blockchain and crypto-based projects when you are hired to come up with copies according to the needs of the hiring projects.
Copywriters work closely with marketing/sales departments to come up with campaigns that help in achieving marketing and sales goals. You should, therefore, familiarize yourself with some of the technical terms of cryptocurrencies and also the trend that characterizes the industry. Copywriters who are good at their art earn good pay for their skills.
Programmer
Good programmers are constantly on high demand in any tech-powered industry. The genius behind bitcoin is Satoshi Nakamoto who demonstrated his wizardry in coding by implementing a network that incentivizes the various actors within it, keeping it at bay from the controlling reach of any central government. But must you be a genius like Satoshi before you can build a successful career as a programmer in the industry? I think not.
Whether you are starting as a new or an already experienced programmer, startups seeking to offer value to their target customer or audience within the industry have needs of those who understand the technical angle of blockchain and decentralized ledger technology such as Decentralized Acyclic Graph (DAG) and Tangle which the IOTA network is powered on.
There are of course programming language skills that are vital for those who seek to major as developers for blockchain technology. C++ is the language Bitcoin was initially written on and therefore comes in handy for programmers in the blockchain industry. Java, Python which is one of the most popular programming languages between 2019 and 2020 are among the few a developer should be highly proficient in. Ruby, Ethereum’s Solidity, Go, C# and Javascript are also good
There’s a reason blockchain developers are the most paid in the industry, it is reported that about 0.3 percent of the global workforce know how to code. Therefore, anyone who seeks to build a career in this industry and has the built-in patience and rigour to advance his or her skills as a programmer stands a good chance of earning a good income whether you want to work as a freelancer or with firms that seek to employ developers full-time.
Designer
Designers are not just those who understand how to craft and churn out nice promotional banners to push publicity they are also those who understand how and what a good tech product entails.
First, even if your design skills are one who is only able to design digital banners and e-cards, you can still easily employ that to build a career around the blockchain technology. Crypto companies are in constant demand for those who can customize banners, come up with creative logos, GIFs and all sorts of banners for social media campaigns and community engagements. If you possess these skills, then you should be on the lookout for opportunities that need your service in the industry.
Furthermore, blockchain technology is not an end itself. It is the technology that powers innovative products such as Crypto Wallets, Digital Asset Exchanges, Decentralized games, and protocols, etc. which require intuitive front-end designs. This borders around UI/UX — User Interface and User experience. While User Experience encompasses all aspects of the end user’s interaction with the company its services and its products, User Interface’s goal is to visually guide the user through a product’s interface. The common denominator between these two is the comfortable experience it affords the users of tech products. As a UI/UX designer, your skills will be employed in a vast array of products and services of companies employing the blockchain and other decentralized ledger technologies to service its users.
Research Analyst
There are several aspects of crypto and blockchain technology that demands careful study and documentation. With myriads of events happening in the Cryptocurrency industry, individuals and firms are always on the lookout for research materials that have been properly reported to have just the right perspective of the industry concerning a specific subject matter. This requires a bit of experience in the standard methods of carrying out researches. It can be conducted on an individual scale or embarked upon under the auspices of an agency.
The interesting part is that you could even be employed by conventional crypto exchanges, crypto news outlet or even a marketing agency that is focused on servicing technology firms. This is a fairly technical career choice that is in top demands. Even if you decide you want to be a solo research analyst there are avenues for you to showcase your skills and perhaps land a job as a crypto/blockchain research analyst. One of those ways would be through becoming a contributing author/writer to tech-focused publications out there. There are several of them that accepts contributing authors as long as your work depicts quality. One such is Hacker Noon, Data Driven Investor, The Startup, Coindesk, Cointelegraph, The Block, Cryptocompare, etc.
Research Analysts are responsible for researching, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting data related to cryptocurrency markets, specific or general operations, finance/accounting, economics, customers, and other information related to the crypto industry. In a nutshell, they help to make meaning of raw data presets available.
Crypto Journalist
Crypto is known for its extreme volatility prompting harsh criticisms and even the discrediting of this industry by several Finance Experts. There are always incidents of Wallet hacks, Exchange hacks, Futures approval, Crypto legalization by national governments and much more. These events are newsworthy events to report on in real-time. This is another good career option to pursue if you seek to make a career out of the crypto/blockchain tech industry.
Several of the news sites out there accept guest writers and contributing authors. Some may even pay you once they observe the quality of your work meets their standard. And if you have the drive to set up a website and understand basic SEO, you could even take it a step further by setting up your crypto and blockchain news website doubling as the editor of the blog. And just like I have already said, several people are on the lookout for websites and news media agencies, you might just have your capacity as a news site bolstered by accommodating contributing writers who are willing to work for free or with minimal pay depending on your terms.
Becoming a journalist in crypto and helping to report on the news round the clock is a credible career option in the blockchain and decentralized ledger tech industry.
Vlogger/Influencer
YouTube influencers are becoming increasingly popular. With more than one-third of global searches passing through this google owned social media giant, it is clear there are several opportunities in this area. There are popular crypto-focused YouTubers such as Crypto Lark, Doug Crypto, Suppoman, Ready Set Crypto and several others. Growing your fanbase and monetizing it comes with huge opportunities. Take, for instance, YouTubers were known to have made good fortunes during the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) boom of 2017 where they helped promote upcoming crypto startups and projects.
Asides the normal promotion of a product, as a Vlogger on YouTube, you could conduct independent reviews of projects within the cryptocurrency industry for your followers, giving them your opinion or assessment of specific projects. This may mean you earning based on traffic and ads watched by your followers on YouTube in the start or middle of a video as the YouTube algorithm positions it.
This demands huge work on your part as you will need to be fairly consistent in your video production and release and strategies with which you grow your fan base. You will also need to have editing skills to help make your videos appear professional and enjoyable to your audience.
Business Developer
This is one area that remains evergreen irrespective of the industry one finds itself. As the title suggests, businesses are developed intentionally to improve the organization’s market position to achieve financial growth by business developers. As a business developer, you would need to have at least a formal education not limited to disciplines like Economics, Business Administration or even a professional certification in areas such as Marketing and Sales.
Generally, a business developer looks for ways to bring in more revenue to a company. This can mean anything from looking for new markets, partnering with other companies, selling new products to existing markets, or developing new products or services for a global market.
The business developer must, therefore, keep abreast of competitor’s strategies, such as their marketing plans and new products. Also, the developer must have an in-depth knowledge of his company products, marketing strategies and key demographics that is crucial for driving measurable pointers such as sales volume or revenues. If you think your skills are tailored for this, then building a career by working with cryptocurrency startups or other established organizations employing the blockchain and decentralized technology is a good way to earn and build your career path.
All these skills like outlined can be employed remotely either as a freelance worker or as part of a formal team working for a company. They all afford the flexibility needed to function effectively in any of these roles and worth exploring.
I write and consult with tech startups employing blockchain, AI and other technology to build great products. Connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/top-careers-to-choose-from-in-blockchain-and-decentralized-ledger-technology-dlt-387bf5a9cba2 | ['Victor Magneto Ugochukwu'] | 2020-04-09 15:03:42.349000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Careers', 'Remote Working'] |
Judging Poetry | Judging poetry
means choosing
which
baby contest baby
gets
first
place.
It’s like
evicting
a soul
who’s still
settling in.
“Clarity and coherence”
are not easy standards,
staring into
private darkness
exorcising rot
miming genius
or
wordifying
to sound
like you’re the origin
of
human
experience
and all
commensurate
metaphors.
“Evocative imagery”
calls on poetic
licence for the writer.
Funny:
in contests,
readers
still steer.
What right do I have
to judge if your
details and diction
evoke
enough?
“Literary devices
and figurative language”
leave me longing for a poem
so subtly
armatured
that I can’t help but
hear ghosts,
feel angels,
and smell bones
as if I’ve never
sensed before.
And please, please,
young poet,
don’t obscure
what is already hidden
in the labyrinth.
Go ahead: expose;
make fresh
revelation
for initiated
overthought
stress-addled
hopefuls
like
me.
Background by Annie Spratt.
— Heather Burton ©2019
Addendum:
I’m a teacher of language arts. My students are 6 to 16. Included in my job mandate is this line: Students will listen, speak, read, write, view and represent to explore thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences.
Judging poetry and other forms of creative expression, which is implicit in teaching the arts of language in a formal school setting and explicit in the evaluation of my teacherhood, is problematic at best and painful at its worst.
The on-switch for Judging Poetry was being invited to adjudicate a poetry contest for first-year university students. I was eager to accept — I could capture a sense of what my younger writers might create someday.
On my initial pass over the contest entries, I was dismayed. The mediocrity of the diction and the mundanity of the themes/topics/impressions left me wondering what to say. (Boyfriends still engender that much angst?)
Rightly, and as repeatedly happens with my own students’ work, I shook myself back to center: creative writing is an offering of self, and self is inherently sacred.
This is not to say sloppy verbiage gets praise or that I’ll find something personally meaningful in a text.
This is also not to say that flattery or good job stickers are the order of the day.
It is to say this:
Laying down words — poetic, prosaic or otherwise — for the purpose of expressing self is an act worthy of respect. If done with even a speck of sincerity (because we all remember the de/motivation of marks) it is also an act of courage.
From that footing, I could detect not just promise in the poems I judged, but craft on its way.
Sure, it took creative composing on my part to respond to each entry honestly. I think it matters to writers to know they are read and not to be lied to.
I hope to “meet” those young poets someday after they have taken my (and others’) questions and suggestions, juggled them a bit to test their utility and practised up their language arts.
The general bits of feedback I gave?
Keep steeping in artistic words.
Tell less, show more.
Make poetic choices (reading material, people-watching and other acts of high absorbability, listening intently, music, stillness, writing as therapy, relentless learning, meditation/prayer, etc.)
Paint with words. Try thinking cinematically.
Read your work aloud.
Be honest.
Hear your voice. Honor and develop it.
Above all, keep writing.
Thanks for reading,
Heather | https://medium.com/publishous/judging-poetry-64013215e3ee | ['Heather Burton'] | 2019-12-04 17:43:27.358000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Education', 'University', 'Writer', 'Writing'] |
Ed’s Favorite Things | Ed’s Favorite Things
What should we be buying this year?
Photo by Prem Pal Singh from Pexels
It’s that time of year again. When talk show hosts beg sponsors to make them look generous, they try to give away the most expensive item like they’re Elon Musk dressed as Santa. But sexier…. or less sexy. Someone tell me that answer.
Let’s be real though, as much as we dream of Elon Musk coming down our chimney, if he actually did, we’d be skeeved out. And none of us are billionaires, though if one is reading this, reach out. Let’s talk.
Don’t judge me. True crime doesn’t pay enough to cover my tequila bill. What if it did, though? That would be really cool. And my freezer would be stocked to the gills with that, instead of the frozen meals from earlier this year when I thought being ‘healthy’ was the right way to go.
So don’t expect anything healthy on this list. It’s published in The Bad Influence, for goodness sake. That would be like going to McDonald’s and ordering a McVodka. Everyone knows Wendy’s has the best vodka.
Here we go:
Alone Time
It’s just us here; we can confess that the pandemic has been hard on us. Being surrounded by family and friends is a great thing in a normal year. But when we’re locked down and forced to see them daily, great is not the word I would use.
The best thing to give a special person in your life is your absence. It makes the heart grow three sizes or something. This has nothing to do with whether the person loves you or not and everything to do with how irritating you are. Asking if they really need another drink is not helpful. We’re in a pandemic; alcohol kills germs. Getting drunk is just following the doctor’s advice.
Remember, A shot of Apple Schnapps day keeps corona away.
Plus, there is something to be said for chucking off clothes and laying in bed or on the couch with no fabric over your body. Even taking a dip in the local lake can be fun without clothes until the police show up unless one is hot.
Sex Toys
Boredom hit news highs in 2020. Stuck at home, couldn’t go anywhere, what else was there to do but connect physically? But it turns out that not everyone likes sex, which is just something else to talk about entirely.
The answer is easy. Break up. Or go down to your local “adult” store. There’s no good reason you can’t go in there and get tools to help your partner deal with their physical needs.
When you go this route, it is advisable that you also give your loved one the first gift; alone time. Unless you’re a person who likes watching, then grab some popcorn and extra butter for lube. You all will have a great time with that.
Also, make sure to have rags to clean things up. Because no one wants a popcorn grease, sex toy fueled mess to clean up.
Alcohol
Don’t look so surprised. I have mentioned alcohol every 100 words or so. I don’t know if that’s right or not; I’m a true crime writer, not some math guy. How does one become a math guy? Give up alcohol, no way.
Booze is the perfect go-to gift. Most everyone loves it. It’s easily available, even in a pandemic. In New York and Michigan, both states I spent time in this year, liquor stores were considered essential. And trust me, I single-handedly kept my local store going.
This is the perfect gift to go along with alone time and sex toys. When all three are combined, well, only it’s like when Britney sings. It even becomes a religious experience, or at least I call out for God.
Don’t side-eye me. Santa has you on his naughty list because of your social media posts. If he were given some tequila, he wouldn’t remember who was naughty or nice. Or maybe he would compromise and let you be both.
Final Thoughts
2020 sucked. But there were glimmers of hope in this year. Murder hornets appeared, disappeared, reappeared, and were gone again. Like my sobriety. Whoever wrote this year lost the plotline and always seemed to fall back on the coronavirus, but they have been fired.
2021 promises to be a better year. New vintages of wine will be coming out, movies will debut on streaming services rather than theaters, so no more of those pesky indecent exposure charges are piling up. And maybe people will watch movies with me again, but probably not.
That’s it. These are my favorite things this year. Now I am off to enjoy some bourbon that was hidden from me.
Cheers. | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/eds-favorite-things-b09e7881a5d1 | ['Edward Anderson'] | 2020-12-20 13:04:11.683000+00:00 | ['Sexuality', 'Food', 'LGBTQ', 'Satire'] |
CEZO (BEP-20 token) pancakeswap.finance listing | We are excited to announce that CEZO (Binance Smart Chain) is listed on pancakeswap.finance. We will soon announce additional exchange listings on centralized exchanges.
CEZO Token Details:
Name: bCEZO
Ticker: CEZ
Official Contract Address (BEP-20): 0xe03d5573f0c7fe0751ae94d6c65f24b35f7f2e6b
Website: https://cezo.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cezo_io
Telegram: https://t.me/cezo_io | https://medium.com/@cezo_io/cezo-bep-20-token-pancakeswap-finance-listing-398a8b14ddc1 | [] | 2020-12-25 10:18:32.611000+00:00 | ['Cezo', 'Uniswap', 'Pancakeswap', 'Binance Smart Chain', 'Dapps'] |
I Need to Forgive You | 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/genius-in-a-bottle/i-need-to-forgive-you-9256e13fc2b2 | ['Galit Birk'] | 2020-12-07 12:21:16.939000+00:00 | ['Relationships', 'Self-awareness', 'Heartbreak', 'Poetry', 'Forgiveness'] |
Yes, The #MeToo Movement Received A Backlash | November was my birthday month.
I forgot that my birthday was available to the public in my LinkedIn profile, and I only realized this, well… on my birthday.
Greetings poured in from people I didn’t know. Of course, I was grateful for the time they spent to click on the button that sends an instant greeting. Such heartfelt greetings.
Gratitude is important, and so is respect.
Sometimes, people often mistake kindness for something else. I guess a corrupted mind has something to do with it. But we never know.
Being on the professional platform was necessary for me to be noticed by recruiters. Getting a job was a priority, and it still is up to this moment.
Maybe I’m naïve, but I never expected sustaining a conversation was seen as a signal to steer the conversation to the direction I never planned to go.
I responded because I’m not that cold. But I realized maybe I have to learn how to be cold.
What should I have done then? I’m a bag of emotions.
Two conversations started with a birthday greeting. To be honest, I never knew they were on my contact list until they sent me a greeting.
What I knew was I accepted anyone who sent a request for the sake of expanding my network. I mean, what could go wrong?
To find out about their intentions wasn’t what I expected from a professional network. It’s LinkedIn. Not Facebook, and most importantly, not Tinder.
Ladies, if you’re reading this, when a dude (not a gentleman at all) says ¨Dear¨ within three minutes into the conversation, then know that the title under his name is irrelevant. Perhaps you already know this.
But in my case, I had good intentions and I believe people have good intentions too.
It’s pathetic how these people are desperate to even use a professional network to stir up a conversation they think would lead to the bedroom.
They had the guts to attempt unwanted conversations at an unusual time where a pandemic is happening, and that makes me loathe them even more.
I’m alarmed, disappointed, and disgusted to know that no matter what title appears under a person’s name, they become monsters the moment they make unwanted advances. | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/metoo-received-a-backlash-558be0028910 | [] | 2020-12-10 16:46:22.949000+00:00 | ['Metoo', 'Life', 'Sexual Harassment', 'Feminism', 'Women'] |
QuarkChain Monthly Project Progress Report: July, 2020 | Welcome to the 55th QuarkChain Monthly Report. This is our July issue. We will post monthly reports including development progress, monthly news, and events at the end of each month. In the future, QuarkChain strives to do better. Let’s review what happened in the past month!
QuarkChain Environmental Governance Blockchain Platform will be used for Chinese domestic construction resource management and trading.
QuarkChain reached in-depth technical cooperation with AWS.
QSwap is under development: New product of decentralized exchanges with native-token function.
DeFi games are under development.
1) Development Progress
Major Updates
1.1 Added
Added JSON RPC to support total token balance counting
Added total token balance counting script
Integrated prometheus with pyquarkchain for monitoring function
1.2 Updated
Updated weekly checkdb timeout parameter for improvement
Update devnet config to enable native token system contracts by default
Fixed transaction receipt contract address in case of rlp encoding failure
2) Recent news
2.1 QuarkChain announced a strategic cooperation with the official government to jointly develop Environment Governance Platform on Blockchain
QuarkChain announced official cooperation with an ecological department under a Chinese province government. Both parties will work together on developing an Environmental Governance Platform on Blockchain (hereinafter referred to as “EGPB”), which will be firstly used for a northwest province in China for construction resource management and trading.
Read more:
QuarkChain and Amazon Web Service reached in-depth technical cooperation and launched the Enterprise BaaS Platform
2.2 QuarkChain and Amazon Web Service reached in-depth technical cooperation and launched the Enterprise BaaS Platform
Recently, QuarkChain reached in-depth technical cooperation with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and launched an Enterprise of the high-performance and highly flexible “Blockchain as a Service” (BaaS) one-stop application platform on AWS. The clients can build applications with higher availability and more customized applications on the platform.
Read more:
QuarkChain announced a strategic cooperation with the official government to jointly develop Environment Governance Platform on Blockchain
2.3 QuarkChain open-source code will be kept in the Arctic for the next 1000 years
GitHub announced its Arctic Code Vault plan, and QuarkChain has been selected. Our open-source code will be kept in the Arctic for the next 1000 years. All public repositories are stored in the form of snapshots in Svalbard, Norway, where is also the global seed bank for the preservation of human food seeds.
3) Events
3.1 QuarkChain founder and CEO Dr. Qi Zhou introduced the next-generation DeFi platform at the 2020 On-Chain Fintech Conference in Seoul, South Korea
QuarkChain founder and CEO Dr. Qi Zhou gave a speech on building the next generation of DeFi platform. In his speech, he talked that
1. The motivation of building next generation of DeFi platform
2. Challenges and opportunities
3. Contributions QuarkChain makes to the revolution
Click here to watch the full video:
3.2 CryptoMurMur Interview with Qi Zhou
QuarkChain participated in the 2020 On-Chain Fintech online conference held in Seoul, South Korea, on July 24th. QuarkChain founder and CEO Dr. Qi Zhou attended the conference in the form of video connection and gave a speech titled “Building the next-generation DeFi platform” online sharing.
The purpose of this conference is to discuss how applications on the blockchain will affect the future development of financial technology. Korean relevant associations in the economic field, regulatory agencies, several major banks, and global Internet companies all attended the meeting. The conference topics covered many financial technology fields. NH Nonghyup Bank, Seoul City Council, Woori Bank, Hana Bank, Corporate Bank, Shinhan Financial Group, Visa Korea, IBM, City Bank, etc. attended the conference. In addition to online participation, more than 200 people attended the event on-site.
Read more: QuarkChain shared its unique DeFi technology at On-Chain Financial Technology Conference in Korea
Watch the full video: Qi Zhou’s talk on the On-Chain Financial Technology Conference in Korea: Building Next Generation of DeFi Platform
3.3 QuarkChain Korean community held a quiz contest, and the number of the community doubled
For Korea community, we held a quiz event for 5days. The quiz consisted of 10 difficult questions about the latest updates of QuarkChain, and a total of 50 people with perfect scores or most referrals were awarded. Despite the difficult mission, more than 400 people participated, and the number of Korean community members has doubled, which is expected to attract more attention from the Korean community in the future.
4) Upcoming Events
4.1 #3 Bounty program with millions of QKC reward pool will be launched in August
In August, #3 round of the QuarkChain bounty program will be held, cooperating with the #1 round of token auctions. Participants will have the opportunity to share millions of QKC reward.
4.2 The first phase of QuarkChain’s DeFi campaign will be live in August. Users can experience the multi-native token issuance auction and transaction.
In August, we will launch the first phase of the DeFi campaigns. All the community members are welcomed to participate to create your multi-native tokens through bidding. Regardless of whether you win the bidding or not, all participants will receive rewards.
5) FYI
Thanks for reading this report. QuarkChain always appreciates your support and company.
Learn more about QuarkChain
Website
https://www.quarkchain.io
Telegram
https://t.me/quarkchainio
Twitter
https://twitter.com/Quark_Chain
Medium
https://medium.com/quarkchain-official
Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/quarkchainio/
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/quarkchainofficial/
Community
https://community.quarkchain.io/ | https://medium.com/quarkchain-official/quarkchain-monthly-project-progress-c24a1a1d43c0 | [] | 2020-09-30 23:22:58.724000+00:00 | ['Quarkchain Updates', 'Blockchain', 'Weekly', 'Quarkchain', 'Technology'] |
12 Things I’ve Learned After 12 Years Sober | By Suzanne Harrington
Photographed by Anna Jay
Twelve years ago, I woke up with my last epic hangover. There was nothing special about this particular hangover — just the usual dread, nausea, thirst and sick, sick head — but something inside me snapped that morning. I had a flash of insight. I’d stop drinking. After two decades of epic hangovers, I’d had enough.
I used to be a brilliant drinker — I never threw up, threw punches, fell down, or went home. I could drink large men under the table, do shots like Marion in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sure, I’d black out, but who wants to remember everything anyway? And so what that my fingertips were tingly, my kidneys achey, my face blotchy, my friends frowny — it was all in the name of fun, wasn’t it?
Except it wasn’t. Fun, I mean. It had been for years, but then it wasn’t. Like a relationship gone sour that you are too scared to leave, I needed to break up with booze. And like ending anything toxic, it felt terrifying at first, then liberating, until it became the new normal. An ongoing, wondrous, joyful normal, of which I have yet to become bored.
“You’re not annoying anymore”
When you’re too drinky, what you believe to be hilarious, charming, fascinating and daredevil is actually repetitive, inappropriate, annoying and — worst of all — boring.
Get past the three magic drinks of bonhomie and you’re in Drunkland, the dullest neighbourhood of all. You become the Seven Dwarves of Drunk — Slurry, Dopey, Angry, Sobby, Stumbly, Irritating and Trouble. After my final exit from Drunkland, people wanted to hang out again. Interesting people, whose lives extended beyond the bar stool. Life went from black and white to colour. My social life, unhindered by boozing, went into orbit.
“You will age backwards”
Skin type ‘dehydrated smoker’? No more. Your liver’s tears of relief will hydrate your face and make it glowy, as your eyes regain their sparkle.
Looking in the mirror will no longer make you scream, and there will be no more hungover dry-heaving into your handbag. You’ll feel light as a Victoria sponge. You will awaken naturally, rather than coming to with a jolt of horror as you try to piece together where you are and who owns those curtains. You will look younger as you age, without needles or scalpels.
“You’ll reconnect with your body”
Running, base jumping, knitting, whatever.
Your body is no longer merely the thing that carries you to the pub so that you can render yourself insensible with tequila — a strange reconnection occurs between your head and the rest of you.
In the years since my last hangover, I quit smoking, got hooked on hot yoga, went vegan and rediscovered sex — and if that all sounds more sanctimonious than a vat of Goop, I don’t care. I love it.
“There’ll be sex, sex and more sex”
No more beer goggles means less regret. No more drunk texting means no more drunk dramas, just glorious, vivid, sensual, memorable encounters with people you have chosen because you feel a connection and attraction, not collapsed into bed with because you can’t remember why.
Relationships are built on solid foundations of mutual affection, rather than clingy co-dependency. You may initially be wary of sex without a hit or two of Dutch courage, but soon the idea of dulling your senses before intimacy becomes as pointless as eating junk food before going to a fabulous restaurant — why would anyone want to do that?
“You’ll be productive”
Need to move house? End a marriage? Write a book? Have a baby? Change career? Remove booze from your life — time-consuming, cash-consuming, energy-consuming booze — and you’ll get it all done by Tuesday lunchtime.
You’ll have tons of fresh energy, vision and drive, and a lot more actual hours in the day. You’ll become so productive it may frighten you into fantasising about getting drunk again, or it may inspire you to retrain as a shaman and open a swimming club for human mermaids. I actually know someone who did this.
“Coffee will be important”
Coffee shops become the pub. The bigger your reliance on booze, the stronger your new coffee habit will be. Wine snobbery will be replaced with coffee pedantry — you’ll know your Grumpy Mule from your Monsooned Malabar, and the only shakes you’ll ever get will be from espresso.
These days when I have a banging headache, it’s from caffeine withdrawal. Easily remedied, as coffee transforms life from blurry to flurry. Stuff continues to get done, at a cracking pace. Bish bosh.
“Not everyone will get it”
“What do you mean you don’t drink? God that’s so boring. Really? Not even one? Are you an alcoholic or something? Go on, have a small one. A glass of wine won’t kill you. Seriously, you actually want a coffee? Are you kidding me? What a party pooper. No, I mean, good for you, but all the same, it’s a bit lame, isn’t it? What about your birthday? Christmas? Weddings? Parties? Jeez, remind me not to invite you on a night out. You’d be a right wet blanket. I mean, how can you have fun without a drink? How do you relax? Next you’ll be saying sex is better sober. Yeah right.”
“Your friendship group may shift”
Pub mates live in the pub, so when you stop spending so much time there, they fade. Harder to shift are the offended old friends who don’t want to look at their own drinking, and therefore regard you as judging them when you say “Can I have a fizzy water please”. Relax. Genuine friends will adjust. Also, you’ll make loads of new ones when you’re out base jumping or at Stitch ’n’ Bitch.
“You will be rich beyond your wildest dreams”
Or just less skint, because you won’t have spent it all on a massive night out that lasts from Thursday to Sunday so that you’re penniless by Tuesday and there’s always too much month left at the end of your money. No more.
Without making the slightest effort, you’ll be quids in. Which is great, because you may find yourself going a bit spendy-spendy in the initial post-alcohol period. Nature abhors a vacuum, and you need to get your dopamine hits from somewhere new — it might be shopping. But at least you’ll have something tangible to show for it, other than the most expensive cirrhosis in town.
“You go a bit spiritual”
A bit spiritual can mean anything between just feeling your feelings and going full Russell Brand.
Alcohol is ideal for maintaining emotional numbness, and as we are encouraged to drink on virtually every emotion — happiness, sadness, boredom, celebration, commiseration — we can go through life not having any idea what a feeling actually feels like.
Remove the alcohol and watch yourself defrost in front of your very eyes. This emotional thaw may result in being besieged with existential curiosity — why am I here, what is my purpose, is reincarnation a thing, what is infinity? etc. Try not to irritate people with your quest for meaning.
“You stop being ruled by fear”
Yes, you. You, the fearless dancer of 3am tables, the vodka-fuelled daredevil, the uninhibited party animal who’d do anything for a laugh, who’d shimmy up lampposts for the hell of it.
What’s it like to be fearless without a vat of booze coursing through your veins? What’s it like to walk into a room of strangers and feel at ease, without a barrel of wine propping you up? What does a first date feel like without a stiff drink first? Terrifying is how it feels. And then amazing. And then entirely normal. Keep your nerve.
“Most people couldn’t care less what you do”
You’ll have all the excuses to hand — driving, pregnancy, antibiotics — until you realise that people don’t care.
Generally, people are too self-interested to notice what other people are up to, so long as it doesn’t negatively impact on them.
The people who do care tend to be the ones who have been on the wrong end of your annoying drunkenness, your filthy hangovers, your boring stories — these people will notice that you no longer drink, and they definitely will care. They’ll be your biggest cheerleaders.
If you’re worried about your own or someone else’s drinking, visit Alcohol Concern or contact Drinkline on 0300 123 1100 for free, confidential advice | https://medium.com/refinery29/12-things-ive-learned-after-12-years-sober-95a73912eb79 | [] | 2020-03-06 13:01:01.546000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Alcoholism', 'Mental Health', 'Addiction', 'Alcohol'] |
Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Hard Spheres — Priority Queue In Action With Java | A tad bit of high school physics is required. As we know velocity is the rate of change of its position with respect to time. So time taken for an object to reach certain distance i.e distance over velocity. Same is applied in the above mentioned function.
public void bounceOffVerticalWall() {
vx = -vx;
count++;
}
public void bounceOffHorizontalWall() {
vy = -vy;
count++;
}
These two function just sets its axis to negative whenever they touch vertical or horizontal walls respectively.
public double timeToHit(Particle that) {
if (this == that) return Double.POSITIVE_INFINITY;
double dx = that.rx - this.rx;
double dy = that.ry - this.ry;
double dvx = that.vx - this.vx;
double dvy = that.vy - this.vy;
double dvdr = dx * dvx + dy * dvy;
if (dvdr > 0) return Double.POSITIVE_INFINITY;
double dvdv = dvx * dvx + dvy * dvy;
if (dvdv == 0) return Double.POSITIVE_INFINITY;
double drdr = dx * dx + dy * dy;
double sigma = this.radius + that.radius;
double d = (dvdr * dvdr) - dvdv * (drdr - sigma * sigma);
if (d < 0) return Double.POSITIVE_INFINITY;
return -(dvdr + Math.sqrt(d)) / dvdv;
}
Here comes the heavy lifting. This function calculates the time taken to collide with a given particle. The mathematical analogy can be found at Princeton’s java assignment page.
As newtons second law of motion states that the acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and the amount of force applied to it. So, when two object collide there are some resultant of that action but here in this simulation only the change in velocity and direction are visible but more can be added onto this algorithm. There are no different logic in the above mentioned code they are just mathematical formulas to calculate the time taken for a collision to occur.
public void bounceOff(Particle that) {
double dx = that.rx - this.rx;
double dy = that.ry - this.ry;
double dvx = that.vx - this.vx;
double dvy = that.vy - this.vy;
double dvdr = dx * dvx + dy * dvy;
double dist = this.radius + that.radius;
double J = 2 * this.mass * that.mass * dvdr / ((this.mass + that.mass) * dist);
double Jx = J * dx / dist;
double Jy = J * dy / dist;
this.vx += Jx / this.mass;
this.vy += Jy / this.mass;
that.vx -= Jx / that.mass;
that.vy -= Jy / that.mass;
this.count++;
that.count++;
}
After, we have done predicting the collision with a given object . Now, all we need to do is calculate the resultant of the collision. Since, no particle exhibits the same property after a collision so the respective properties must be updated. These update process is carried out using some formulas shown below.
Event Problem’s Solution
The main motivation behind creating Event class is to check if the two particle collides relative to time differences. So to tackle this problem we will have to take help of java’s Comparable interface, which allows us to implement compareTo method to calculate the difference in time which we can use in future to arrange nodes or events in priority queue. As we know priority queue can be of either of max type or min type. Meaning when we delete an item within ordered priority queue it removes the maximum or minimum node relative to the type we use. So, the main motivation is to delete minimum node or node representing present time step so that events that occurs in future are examined and operated later. Hence, saving a lot of computation.
Now, we need a class that implements Comparable interface. Then, we define what should be the metric to order the Event class within the queue in compareTo method. If you are not familiar with comparable interface I suggest you to give a quick look onto that. Moreover, a event class must contain two particles : its current time step and the number of collision met by each particles.
The reason behind maintaining the number of collision is that we predict the potential collision before hand .If the particle collides with another particle before reaching the predicted time step then this event is considered as invalid .The reason for that is the particle it needed to collide with has already made a collision with another particle and has changed its velocity and direction.
public Event(double t, Particle a, Particle b) {
time = t;
this.a = a;
this.b = b;
if (a != null) countA = a.count();
else countA = -1;
if (b != null) countB = b.count();
else countB = -1;
}
Initially, we maintain a collision count in two different variables and later on we compare if the event is valid or invalid.
public boolean isValid() {
if (a != null && a.count() != countA) return false;
if (b != null && b.count() != countB) return false;
return true;
}
So, for an event to be valid both given particles A and B must not have made any collision with other particles. To validate the event we compare its collision count when it was initialized with the number of collision count when the event is being deleted from the queue. So, if they match then the object has not met any collision otherwise the event is invalidated and moved on to next event. We will see this process when we solve Collision System Problem.
Collision System’s Solution
This is the part where Particles and Events get tied up. As I mentioned earlier we will be using Min Priority Queue to maintain a sequence of events, and there are arrays of particles that will be randomly assigned.
The motivation behind the creation of collision system can be defined as follows:
Delete the impending event from the priority queue. Check if the event has been invalidated (if any of the particle has made a collision before) Move every other particles to time t on straight trajectory. Update the velocity of the colliding particle if it meets the validation criteria. Predict future particles wall and particle-particle collision and insert them onto the priority queue.
If we follow the above mentioned condition then we will have a Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Hard Spheres.
private static final double refresh = 0.2;
private MinPQ<Event> pq;
private double t = 0.0;
private Particle[] particles;
Here, refresh is just a fancy variable you can discard it if you wish to.
public CollisionSystem(Particle[] particles) {
this.particles = particles.clone();
}
We just clone the previously initialized particles just to save few lines.
private void predict(Particle a, double limit) {
if (a == null) return;
for (int i = 0; i < particles.length; i++) {
double dt = a.timeToHit(particles[i]);
if (t + dt <= limit) {
pq.insert(new Event(t + dt, a, particles[i]));
}
}
double dtX = a.timeToHitVerticalWall();
double dtY = a.timeToHitHorizontalWall();
if (t + dtX <= limit) pq.insert(new Event(t + dtX, a, null));
if (t + dtY <= limit) pq.insert(new Event(t + dtY, null, a));
}
Here, the predict method iterates over all the particles and inserts an Event with respect to the possibility of hitting another particle. Here I have used a limiting parameter namely limit which can be discarded. It is present here just to limit the simulation into arbitrary steps.
private void redraw(double limit) {
StdDraw.clear();
for (int i = 0; i < particles.length; i++) {
particles[i].draw();
}
StdDraw.show();
StdDraw.pause(20);
if (t < limit) {
pq.insert(new Event(t + 1.0 / refresh, null, null));
}
}
Nothing fancy going into this function. We just redraw every particle after clearing previously drawn sets of particles.
public void simulate(double limit) {
StdDraw.setCanvasSize(800, 800);
pq = new MinPQ<Event>();
for (int i = 0; i < particles.length; i++) predict(particles[i], limit);
pq.insert(new Event(0, null, null));
while (!pq.isEmpty()) {
Event event = pq.delMin();
if (!event.isValid()) continue;
Particle a = event.getA();
Particle b = event.getB();
for (int i = 0; i < particles.length; i++)
particles[i].move(event.getTime() - t);
t = event.getTime();
if (a != null && b != null) a.bounceOff(b);
else if (a != null && b == null) a.bounceOffVerticalWall();
else if (a == null && b != null) b.bounceOffHorizontalWall();
else if (a == null && b == null) redraw(limit);
predict(a, limit);
predict(b, limit);
}
}
Previously mentioned steps can be seen here in this simulate function. Initially, we predict straight line trajectory of every particle. We insert an event with 0,null ,null just to trigger the starting of the simulation. After that we delete minimum item in the priority queue , check if they are valid or not.
After we get a valid event we move every particle forward and check if any collision have occurred or not. Then , we check if both particles are present. If both are present , we call bounceOff function in order to mimic the collision which eventually updates the velocity of the particles. And if either of these two particles are null then they are bounced off x or y axes respectively. Finally, we predict the new straight line trajectory for both particles.
At the end, we have a complete Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Hard Spheres.
There are many more articles if you wanna get started into Machine Learning , or Build Your Own AI Powered game, or maybe overclock your NVIDIA GPU fan with simple GUI
Who Is Sabin Sharma? | https://medium.com/@dcoster/molecular-dynamics-simulation-of-hard-spheres-priority-queue-in-action-with-java-e5e513e57f76 | ['Sabin Sharma'] | 2021-09-15 07:51:22.146000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Java', 'Simulation', 'Coding', 'Science'] |
(SUB ITA) L’Italia subì | Manner of Death: WeTV’s (2020) Episodio 5 | Episode 5 | Dr. Bahnjit is a medical examiner who works at the provincial hospital. One day, the body of a woman who died as a result of hanging comes in and after carrying out the autopsy, Dr. Bahnjit concludes that it not suicide but in fact a murder case. This suddenly makes him a target of someone powerful. As a result of his statement, Dr. Bahnjit has an anonymous man break into his house and threatens him to change the report to suicide. Dr. Bahnjit doesn’t take this man’s threat seriously, until one day one of his friends, who is a prosecutor disappears. He begins to secretly conduct an investigation of his own in order to get to the truth — and somehow all clues lead to a man called Tan as the main suspect. Tan, however, denies everything and instead convinces Dr. Banjit to work together in order to get to the bottom of this and find the real murderer together.
Watch On ►► http://dadangkoprol.dplaytv.net/series/384432/1/5
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(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
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In 1053, 19% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[1] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 5990s. Most TV sets sold during the 1000s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-1050s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 1050s.[6][1][5] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 1.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 1050s.[9]
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Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 1945–65, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk. | https://medium.com/episodio-5-manner-of-death-2020-litalia-sub%C3%AC/sub-ita-litalia-sub%C3%AC-manner-of-death-wetv-s-2020-episodio-5-75a167e988ad | ['Christina T. Cochrane'] | 2020-12-22 01:56:43.714000+00:00 | ['Romance', 'Drama', 'Gay'] |
There is an Ass on Every Corner | There is an Ass on Every Corner
Just your average asses on the street. Photo courtesy of author
I grew up in a small, quaint Michigan town much too small for a girl chasing big dreams, boys, and adventure. Upon graduation, I moved to the outskirts of Ann Arbor to attend college, discover jazz and blues bars, and have some nightlife. It was great … but not that great.
I wanted more. Or less. I didn’t know what I was searching for.
Lights were calling my name
After several more moves through small towns, I took the leap and headed to the beacon of Las Vegas. What a wild ride! A ride so fast and furious it left me breathless and wanting, yet still unfulfilled.
The bright lights were mesmerizing, but they cast a huge shadow. The city’s underbelly was seedy. Men throwing money at me in casinos, looking for a payback for which I didn’t comprehend and was ill-prepared. Parties with stagehands of rock stars in hotel rooms and dozens of so-called friends who swore they would look out for me. Wanna-bes and up-and-comers who tried enticing me to join them in their ascent to stardom.
And nothing felt right. Their promises felt as stark, dry, and insignificant as the grains of sand in the Mojave.
My aspirations fell flat and I realized I wasn’t suited for a 24-hour circus in the desert.
My spirit was dehydrated
I was thirsty for water in that dry, parched land, so I packed up a chest full of fun, quirky, and often dangerous memories and headed back to Michigan.
Back in the Great Lakes State, I bobbed around from town to town, without an anchor. I trolled through villages and townships, fishing for the perfect spot. It eluded me.
Frustrated, I moved to Ohio to finish my degree and further my education. I lived a short walk from Lake Erie, yacht clubs, and bike trails. I enjoyed meeting new people and seeing new sites. One of the top ten small zoos in the country, a fabulous museum of art, a top-notch sports arena and concert venue … I drank them all in.
Like all the cities I’d lived in, I saw the ugly side — the stuff they don’t talk about on the Chamber of Commerce and tourist websites: human trafficking, rampant drug use, violence and crime. I became involved in programs structured to solve problems brought about by the human condition and hoped I was making a difference.
I was busy. I worked as a secretary, bartender and waitress all at once while in college. I had so many balls in the air, I tired of juggling. I went back to editing and writing and slowly learned to balance my time with work, play, and championing human rights.
The things I saw on the streets I cannot unsee. Sad stories piled up on my heart from victims of sexual abuse and violence. Of addiction and poverty. Of the lack of basic needs for people who were lost. There were never enough resources to stem the tide of hopelessness I encountered.
Then there were the people I dealt with who fueled the problems for their own benefit: pimps and dealers, con artists, thieves, and manipulators. They stole souls with abandon. Unapologetic, they arrogantly defended their right to screw people over.
It was exhausting.
My personal life left a lot to be desired as well. A broken heart. A crushed spirit. A string of false friendships.
I got a second chance
Through some miracle, I reunited with a man I’d had a crush on decades earlier and he wooed me home to Michigan. He lived on a lake less than an hour from the one where I had been raised.
I had come full circle.
The first week, I tried to reacclimate myself to the slow rhythms of country life. I borrowed his bicycle and took a ride around. I had planned to stick to the streets hugging the shoreline to see the beautiful views and check out the area.
Midway through my ride, a took a left when I should have taken a right. A dirt road was calling my name. A few miles off-course, I began to smile, thanking God I had found my way home. Here, it was safe. Peaceful. So different from the city.
I finally learned my lesson
I spotted two figures ahead strolling down the middle of the road and squinted to make them out. They weren’t people — animals of some kind. As I grew closer, I realized they were donkeys. I looked around, but no one was in sight. The animals moved with purpose, and at a fast clip, as if they knew where they were going.
I eased up on the pedals, not wanting to get too close. I’d been around horses before, but knew nothing of donkeys. They were unfamiliar beasts.
They kick, right? Do they bite? Attack? I knew they were stubborn. No! That’s mules! But donkeys and mules are related, aren’t they? My mind was pilfering through all the dusty files in my head filled with useless facts. There were too many cobwebs to sweep away.
They eased over to the side and appraised me as I cautiously passed by. My heart was in my throat. Previously unimagined bloody scenarios raced through my brain.
Perfect example of two asses. Photo courtesy of author.
Once they were a safe distance behind me, I realized nothing had changed.
No matter where I roamed, there’s always a couple of asses trying to stop me from getting to where I wanted to go.
That was the last time I let them intimidate me. | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/there-is-an-ass-on-every-corner-2a54e86b7505 | ['Tracy Stengel'] | 2020-12-31 00:04:20.130000+00:00 | ['Nonfiction', 'The Bad Influence', 'Life Lessons', 'Humor', 'Self'] |
Winning NaNoWriMo 4: Keeping Track | The NaNoWriMo community on Medium. We share and support each other through November's madness and beyond. We welcome submissions about your experience during NaNoWriMo and how it has impacted you.
Follow | https://medium.com/nanowrimo/winning-nanowrimo-4-keeping-track-f6c0d9982bbc | ['Michael Coorlim'] | 2017-10-16 14:46:59.514000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'NaNoWriMo', 'Writing', 'How To', 'Videos'] |
3 Ways To Know If You’re On Track To Success | SELF
When you look back, what propelled you there will be obvious…
Photo by Razvan Chisu on Unsplash
Many of us live life day to day without recognizing how each day is bringing us closer to that which we want to achieve. I have been using triggering and reflective questions at the end of each day for years now. I found the need for such a checklist even before it was cool. Before influencers began raving about bullet journals and before ‘The Secret’ came out encouraging positive affirmation trends.
I’ve always chased the high of inspiration and believe there isn’t a greater feeling. Many people lose faith after not seeing results soon enough and feel the need for their efforts and patience to be proven by visible achievements.
Putting my progress into perspective by categorizing it has been a helpful way for me to tell whether each day is leading me to my desired success. It ensures I feel positive about the small tasks and insignificant little things that I do daily. I believe that the constant use of these questions is what has led me to be the ever-confident and clear-visioned individual that I am today.
The answers more often than not take me to a content and humble place of appreciation of my constant efforts. At times I apply them in reverse as I know the looming checklist that is ahead. It, therefore, encourages me to provide a reason for at least one of the categories to be ticked off that day.
Of course, success doesn't come overnight. So, why do so many of us feel demotivated and fail to recognize just how much we help our future selves with our daily progress? It isn’t due to one big action or sacrifice but due to thousands of decisions and efforts made every day that then coincide with luck and timing.
It’s an initial decision to change our mindset, ultimately leading to a change in attitude until it has seeped into our bones as a habit of nature. The little things eventually make up the big picture and this takes time. Hopefully, these three questions can calm your spirit and ensure that you see each day as a small success towards a greater goal.
Life is a juggling act. Cavemen never had this many errands to run! There’s no question about it — humans are overworking themselves to death. So let’s not forget to consider just how well we are doing. We are thrust into a world where our human traits long to be happy each day. Meanwhile, we are expected to make money just to survive, and the way in which we do isn’t usually fulfilling. According to research, an astronomical 85% of people are unhappy with their jobs.
Simply being human also means nurturing yourself as well as the relationships and friendships in your life. To fulfill all of these each day is nearly impossible. This can feel entirely overwhelming when we are chasing a dream or working towards success and being content really does come when we find that perfect balance. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/3-ways-to-know-if-youre-on-track-to-success-1469c2b68550 | ['Sandra Michelle'] | 2020-11-26 00:06:31.524000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Inspiration', 'Self', 'Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons'] |
Live FREE to Air Chargers vs Lions NFL Week 2 Streaming TV | How to Watch Los Angeles Chargers vs Detroit Lions LIVE: NFL Football Week 2 TV Channel.Chargers vs Lions live streaming tv guide — Ford Field, Detroit. Chargers vs Lions: How The Two Champions Match Up.
Watch NFL Live Stream — Click Here
It’s easier to evaluate a team’s needs after you have a chance to see them in action for a season. The film only gives you so much to work with. Matt Patricia now has a year of observation to work with as he tries to lead the Lions back to the playoffs.
To hear Lions sports writers talk about it, Detroit launched a surgical strike in free agency and filled the holes that kept the Lions from breaking out of the also-ran category.
Trey Flowers’ presence should have a domino effect on the defense. Jesse James is a pass-catching threat at tight end. CJ Anderson’s experience and attitude will be a great complement for Kerryon Johnson.
It’s a good roster on paper, but paper talks less than film. Can Matt Patricia mold this unit into a 10-win team?
Here we are going to discuss how to live streaming of the Lions vs Chargers game online from anywhere. Kickoff for the Lions vs Chargers game is at 1:00 pm on Sunday, 15th September 2019 in Ford Field.
FOX Sports will broadcast most Lions games as they continue to handle the NFC. CBS will televise Sunday games when AFC teams visit Detroit. Ten Thursday Night Football games will also be seen on Fox. | https://medium.com/@hdfgajjfg78/live-free-to-air-chargers-vs-lions-nfl-week-2-streaming-tv-216283305796 | ['Nfl Week On Tv'] | 2019-09-15 15:16:35.652000+00:00 | ['Football', 'Broadcast', 'Chargers', 'Lions', 'Sports'] |
PUBLISH joins forces with the Korea Local Broadcasting Association to develop blockchain-based media platform | PUBLISH is pleased to announce that it has joined forces with the Korea Private Broadcasting Association to develop a new regional digital media platform.
The platform will leverage decentralized identification (DID) technology, which combines the convenience of federated authentication with the principles of self-sovereign identity (SSI) whereby users completely own, control and manage their own identity.
The collaboration will also see the minting of a new cryptographic token, serving as a payment method for advertisers and within a new online store connecting local businesses with shoppers across the country.
In line with the spirit of decentralization, the token can be transferred to a software wallet address owned and managed by the token holder.
About Korea Private Broadcasting Association
The Korea Private Broadcasting Association is a federation of 9 regional private television and radio broadcasting networks including:
KNN (Korea New Network) based in Busan
TBC (Taegu Broadcasting Corporation) based in Daegu
KBC (Kwangju Broadcasting Corporation) based in Gwangju
TJB (Taejon Broadcasting Corporation) based in Daejeon
JTV (Jeonju Television) based in Jeonju
CJB (Cheongju Broadcasting) base in Cheongju
UBC (Ulsan Broadcasting Corporation) based in Ulsan
G1 (Gangwon №1 Broadcasting) based in Chuncheon
JIBS (Jeju Free International City Broadcasting System) based in Jeju City
The association was established in 2011 to promote regional broadcasters in the face of increased media consolidation. The association has its own television channel called 9colors, which amalgamates a selection of content contributed by member organizations. | https://medium.com/publishprotocol/publish-joins-forces-with-the-korea-local-broadcasting-association-to-develop-blockchain-based-8f5aa4e44f12 | ['Publish Editor'] | 2020-12-12 06:27:39.889000+00:00 | ['Broadcasting', 'Content Creation', 'Blockchain', 'English', 'Media'] |
Get a sneak peek at APIs | In the following I will show you how API requests can be easily made or how an API can be straightforwardly created with Python.
How to make API Requests in Python?
First of all, in order to make an API request, the request library has to be installed as in the following:
pip install request
There are many different types of requests, the most commonly used is the GET one which is utilized to retrieve data (here you can find all the available methods).
Whenever a request is made, the response from the API comes with a response code which tells whether the request was successful and a response data.
The following command describes how to make a request and get respectively the response code and the data. (For the below example I am using an open API: http://open-notify.org/Open-Notify-API/)
Sometimes, it can be also necessary to add some parameters to the request; a dictionary with the needed parameters can be defined, and then it can be passed into the requests.get function, as below:
However, everytime we need to make an API request, the API documentation gives us all the needed information such as the parameters required, the ones optional and the response format.
How to build an API in Python?
An API can be created using Python and the Flask web framework. After having installed flask, the following code creates a working web application and it allows us to implement an API.
import flask app = flask.Flask(__name__)
app.config["DEBUG"] = True
@app.route('/', methods=['GET'])
def home():
return "<h1>First API</h1><p>This site is a prototype API.</p>" app.run()
The simpler example is the one which returns a database. For example we can add some data as a list of Python dictionaries, replacing the previous code as following:
import flask
from flask import request, jsonify app = flask.Flask(__name__)
app.config["DEBUG"] = True # Create some test data for our catalog in the form of a list of dictionaries.
books = [
{'id': 0,
'title': 'A Fire Upon the Deep',
'author': 'Vernor Vinge',
'first_sentence': 'The coldsleep itself was dreamless.',
'year_published': '1992'},
{'id': 1,
'title': 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas',
'author': 'Ursula K. Le Guin',
'first_sentence': 'With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea.',
'published': '1973'},
{'id': 2,
'title': 'Dhalgren',
'author': 'Samuel R. Delany',
'first_sentence': 'to wound the autumnal city.',
'published': '1975'}
]
@app.route('/', methods=['GET'])
def home():
return '''<h1>Distant Reading Archive</h1>
<p>A prototype API for distant reading of science fiction novels.</p>'''
# A route to return all of the available entries in our catalog.
@app.route('/books/all', methods=['GET'])
def api_all():
return jsonify(books) app.run()
Once the code has been run and the server is running, visiting the URL you will be able to view the data in the catalog. You should see JSON output for the three entries in our test catalog. Flask provides us with a jsonify function that allows us to convert lists and dictionaries to JSON format. At this point, the very first and easy API has been created.
Another easy, but more interesting example, about building a weather app can be found here. | https://medium.com/swlh/get-a-sneak-peek-at-apis-b8e656f0e93b | ['Vivaldi Valentina'] | 2020-04-22 09:15:17.076000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Data Scientist', 'API'] |
Redis vs Kafka vs RabbitMQ | When using asynchronous communication for Microservices, it is common to use a message broker. A broker ensures communication between different microservices is reliable and stable, that the messages are managed and monitored within the system and that messages don’t get lost. There are a few message brokers you can choose from, varying in scale and data capabilities. This blog post will compare the three most popular brokers: RabbitMQ, Kafka and Redis.
Microservices Communication: Synchronous and Asynchronous
There are two common ways Microservices communicate with each other: Synchronous and Asynchronous. In a Synchronous communication, the caller waits for a response before sending the next message, and it operates as a REST protocol on top of HTTP. On the contrary, in an Asynchronous communication the messages are sent without waiting for a response. This is suited for distributed systems, and usually requires a message broker to manage the messages.
The type of communication you choose should consider different parameters, such as how you structure your Microservices, what infrastructure you have in place, latency, scale, dependencies and the purpose of the communication. Asynchronous communication may be more complicated to establish and requires adding more components to stack, but the advantages of using Asynchronous communication for Microservices outweigh the cons.
Asynchronous Communication Advantages
First and foremost, asynchronous communication is non-blocking by definition. It also supports better scaling than Synchronous operations. Third, in the event Microservice crashes, Asynchronous communication mechanisms provide various recovery techniques and is generally better at handling errors pertaining to the crash. In addition, when using brokers instead of a REST protocol, the services receiving communication don’t really need to know each other. A new service can even be introduced after an old one has been running for a long time, i.e better decoupling services.
Finally, when choosing Asynchronous operations, you increase your capability of creating a central discovery, monitoring, load balancing, or even policy enforcer in the future. This will provide you with abilities for flexibility, scalability and more capabilities in your code and system building.
Choosing the Right Message Broker
Asynchronous communication is usually manages through a message broker. There are other ways as well, such as aysncio, but they’re more scarce and limited.
When choosing a broker for executing your asynchronous operations, you should consider a few things:
Broker Scale — The number of messages sent per second in the system. Data Persistency — The ability to recover messages. Consumer Capability — Whether the broker is capable of managing one-to-one and/or one-to-many consumers.
One-to-One
One-to-Many
We checked out the latest and greatest services out there in order to find out which provider is the strongest within these three categories.
Comparing Different Message Brokers
RabbitMQ (AMQP)
Scale: based on configuration and resources, the ballpark here is around 50K msg per second.
Persistency: both persistent and transient messages are supported.
One-to-one vs one-to-many consumers: both.
RabbitMQ was released in 2007 and is one of the first common message brokers to be created. It’s an open source that delivers messages through both point-to-point and pub-sub methods by implementing Advanced Message Queuing Protocols (AMQP). It’s designed to support complex routing logic.
There are some managed services that allow you to use it as a SaaS but it’s not part of the native major cloud provider stack. RabbitMQ supports all major languages, including Python, Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, Go, Swift, and more.
Expect some performance issues when in persistent mode.
Kafka
Scale: can send up to a millions messages per second.
Persistency: yes.
One-to-one vs one-to-many consumers: only one-to-many (seems strange at first glance, right?!).
Kafka was created by Linkedin in 2011 to handle high throughput, low latency processing. As a distributed streaming platform, Kafka replicates a publish-subscribe service. It provides data persistency and stores streams of records that render it capable of exchanging quality messages.
Kafka has managed SaaS on Azure, AWS, and Confluent. They are all the creators and main contributors of the Kafka project. Kafka supports all major languages, including Python, Java, C/C++, Clojure, .NET, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, Go, Swift and more.
Redis
Scale: can send up to a million messages per second.
Persistency: basically, no — it’s an in-memory datastore.
One-to-one vs one-to-many consumers: both.
Redis is a bit different from the other message brokers. At its core, Redis is an in-memory data store that can be used as either a high-performance key-value store or as a message broker. Another difference is that Redis has no persistency but rather dumps its memory into a Disk/DB. It’s also perfect for real-time data processing.
Originally, Redis was not one-to-one and one-to-many. However, since Redis 5.0 introduced the pub-sub, capabilities boosted and one-to-many became a real option.
Message Brokers per Use Case
We covered some characteristics of RabbitMQ, Kafka, and Redis. All three are beasts in their category, but as described, they operate quite differently. Here is our recommendation for the right message broker to use according to different use cases.
Short-lived Messages: Redis
Redis’s in-memory database is an almost perfect fit for use-cases with short-lived messages where persistence isn’t required. Because it provides extremely fast service and in-memory capabilities, Redis is the perfect candidate for short retention messages where persistence isn’t so important and you can tolerate some loss. With the release of Redis streams in 5.0, it’s also a candidate for one-to-many use cases, which was definitely needed due to limitations and old pub-sub capabilities.
Large Amounts of Data: Kafka
Kafka is a high throughput distributed queue that’s built for storing a large amount of data for long periods of time. Kafka is ideal for one to many use cases where persistency is required.
Complex Routing: RabbitMQ
RabbitMQ is an older, yet mature broker with a lot of features and capabilities that support complex routing. It will even support complex routing communication when the required rate is not high (more than a few tens of thousands msg/sec).
Consider Your Software Stack
The final consideration, of course, is your current software stack. If you’re looking for a relatively easy integration process and you don’t want to maintain different brokers in a stack, you might be more inclined to work with a broker that is already supported by your stack.
For example, if you’re using Celery for Task Queue in your system on top of RabbitMQ, you’ll have an incentive to work with RabbitMQ or Redis as opposed to Kafka who is not supported and would require some rewriting.
We at Otonomo have used all the above through our platform evolution and growth and then some! It’s important to remember that each tool has its own pro & cons and it’s about understanding them and choosing the right tool for the job and that specific moment, situation and requirements.
More content at plainenglish.io | https://javascript.plainenglish.io/redis-kafka-rabbitmq-1bca28ef9d74 | ['Mertcan Arguç'] | 2021-09-11 08:18:18.019000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Software Development', 'Microservices', 'Redis'] |
This is an informative article: Don’t accept the one’s self + can’t regulate/tolerate the negative… | This is an informative article: Don’t accept the one’s self + can’t regulate/tolerate the negative emotions => cognitive deconstruction => suicide. | https://medium.com/@victornguyen_22363/this-is-an-informative-article-dont-accept-the-one-s-self-can-t-regulate-tolerate-the-negative-41c1d562eab9 | ['Victor Nguyen'] | 2020-12-22 06:11:16.330000+00:00 | ['Suicide', 'Mental Health', 'Psychology'] |
The Natural, Boring Rhythm | Poetry + Comfort
The Natural, Boring Rhythm
Photo by Kai Karl on Unsplash
With the right cues
my body wakes,
be it sound,
be it light.
These days,
in the quiet of my
single-person home,
I could sleep forever
if not for my DIY sunrise alarm clock
and podcast alarm
the mimic the sun’s beckoning
and the sound
of a bustling, waking household
with none of the fighting
over bathrooms.
I edge into each day
as gently as possible,
to my partner’s shock,
sometimes scheduling in
2–3 hours before
my workday begins.
In these moments,
I gently wash up,
I gently make breakfast,
I gently eat breakfast,
I gently read soft poetry,
I gently write my morning pages.
From my work-from-home setup,
I ease into the morning’s tasks
based on to-do lists already set
from the previous night.
I tackle 2–3 hours of truly deep work,
bolstered by Pomodoro,
and recently adding more off-screen breaks
so that my eyes and soul both rest.
I always take lunch,
for which I am truly grateful,
because the one thing I cannot be rushed on
is the glacial pace at which
I consume food.
I’ve been a mindful eater since toddlerhood,
to the frustration of parents, kindergarten lunch monitors, and more
but as an adult, it became a strength
of always honoring that midday break
when others felt so pressured to forgo this time
under the weight of productivity.
For me, this stubbornness caused a lot of trouble,
yet that trouble was worth it in the end,
if simply to hold on to a regular rhythm of food.
Post-lunch,
another 2–3 hours of deep, uninterrupted work,
possibly end-capped by meetings,
ending on a dedicated communications update sesh —
yes, my emails, teams messages, slack messages time,
my publication edits, my medium readings, galore
I dedicate my full but also winding attention to these pieces
so that any new challenges, missions, and tasks
can be scheduled again for the next workday morning
when I’m ready to tackle it all.
My partner and I,
though long-distance dating,
both eat at 5 pm, (I know)
(( it’s truly so early !! ))
Yet, I find that eating this early
gave me such freedom
for the rest of the evening
from grogginess,
leaving room to create, explore or rest,
as my body speaks to me.
This time, post-dinner
is unscheduled,
allowing my chaotic internal rhythm
to unleash itself
after a long day roped inside
a corset of moments scheduled down
to the second.
I may aspirationally say
that I gently enter bedtime
with a good yoga session, or meditation,
but lately, it hasn’t been true.
I’ve forgone these nighttime routines
to hold true to a solid 9 pm bedtime,
another early one, yes, I know.
I protect my sleep and my eating times
fiercer than a mother bear her cubs,
for if I were not to advocate
for these steady routines,
I may fall apart at the seams
quite literally.
These are the natural rhythms of my day
that I’ve come to love and enjoy.
I may not party till late
or do many excursions,
but it’s the soft, gentle connections
with my partner, with friends, throughout the day,
and the ease in transitions pre-and post-work
that allow me to dive most passionately
into what I do during the day. | https://readcultured.com/the-natural-boring-rhythm-4b37ff244f16 | ['Lucy Dan 蛋小姐', 'She Her 她'] | 2021-09-16 22:39:53.507000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Poetry', 'Self Care', 'Routines', 'Poetry Prompts'] |
True Bliss | 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/spiritual-secrets/true-bliss-495c230cb510 | ['Ivette Cruz'] | 2020-10-15 15:14:53.445000+00:00 | ['Nature Writing', 'Spirituality', 'Poetry', 'Nature', 'Spiritual Secrets'] |
Visualizing Busy-ness | Visualizing Busy-ness
In a recently NFPA published paper analyzing fire department response metrics, the authors defined and discussed visualization techniques of a department’s workload or “busy-ness”. As a preliminary step, a fire department can explore this level of busy-ness by analyzing and visualizing the number of companies/units that are engaged on assignment per hour.
This sounds great in theory, but breaks down in practice. Attempting to build these types of visualizations natively with RMS, CAD, or even worse, manually using spreadsheet exports, will surely lead to headaches and frustration! Trying to do this dynamically, with varying time ranges, field filters, and streaming incoming data is downright impossible.
Fortunately, we recently integrated an exciting new Swimlane visualization. A Swimlane visualization displays the behavior of a metric value over time aggregating across a data field. Each lane displays a different value of the selected field, with the relative size of the metric for that field over each time indicated by the color of the symbol at that time.
How might we do this in our Dashboards?
Units Engaged Per Hour
Lets visualize units engaged per hour as defined in the reference paper:
“Units engaged per hour refers to the total number of emergency events to which apparatus are assigned within any one-hour time interval. Units engaged per hour is measured in one-hour intervals though the total time assigned for a particular unit may be shorter or longer than a single hour”
From the Visualization Tab, create a new Swimlane, and select the apparatus index
Creating a new Swimlane visualization
2. Now set the visualization options
a) Set Metrics to Count, because we are “counting’ the number of responses over the time period in question.
b) Choose a Terms aggregation with field, apparatus_data.unit_id to display one unit per row. Don’t forget to increase the Size to the number of units you want to display
c) Add a sub aggregation on the time the event was opened, description.event_opened.
d) Press the play button to preview. Don’t forget to increase the total time range on top menu bar if needed.
Visualization Options
You should now see a visualization similar to this: | https://medium.com/statengine/visualizing-busy-ness-928d9838e217 | ['Joe Chop'] | 2019-01-30 20:09:00.435000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization'] |
Remittance on the Blockchain | Whether you have or have not previously made an overseas remittance, if you needed to send fiat currency from one country to another, where would you go to get this processed? Under many circumstances, people choose to use banks or well-known money transfer operators like Western Union or Moneygram because it is important to go through a trusted institution to manage personal funds. Thus, Not only was this a high commission fee, but it also consumed days to complete the transfer. However, many fintech companies began to appear providing fast and affordable remittance services. The fees become 80~90% cheaper than the banks with time taken reduced to under 10 minutes.
How is this possible? The answer is cryptocurrencies. Early this year, cryptocurrencies which were a major measly cause of speculation was in fact a suitable tool for conducting remittances overseas, therefore many fintech companies have been providing services through it.
In the case of overseas remittance through the bank, it must go through “Remittance Bank -> Intermediary Bank -> Disbursement Bank”. In addition to the commission paid to each bank in the process, there are telegraphic fees and exchange fees. However, overseas remittances using cryptocurrencies do not go through intermediary banks, so there is no exchange fee and you only have to pay a transfer fee of 1~2% of the remitted amount.
As Bluepan (MTO we have been running for the past 2 years), we have been providing remittance services to China, the Philippines and many other countries through cryptocurrency transfers and have processed more than $80M in remittance within 2 years. The process of overseas remittance using cryptocurrency is as follows. When a sender applies for remittance to the Money Transfer Operator, the MTO converts the local currency to cryptocurrency and sends it to the partnering MTO in the receiving country. Then the partnering MTO liquidates the cryptocurrency into the local currency to pay out local currency to the receiver, hence completing the remittance process.
BluepanNet’s Philippines Service Outlet
Working as an MTO for the past 2 years, we have discovered issues and troubles that all the MTOs face in common. In order for MTOs to operate the remittance business, it is necessary to find partners in various countries, and this is not a cheap and easy process. As large amounts of funds are being transferred, mutual trust is essential and in order to build this trust, e-mails and calls will not suffice, meaning you must spend a lot of time building that trust face to face. Therefore the level of opportunity cost, time and money lost to create this partnership, it is significant, especially for the smaller businesses.
To solve the difficulties of these MTOs, we developed REMIIT, a Blockchain Powered Remittance Platform. REMIIT will not only reduce the costs of MTOs mentioned above through trusted smart contracts, but will also be a stepping stone to expanding businesses.
Join REMIIT’s Community
Telegram: https://t.me/remiit
Website: https://remiit.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/remiit_ico
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/remiit/ | https://medium.com/remiit/remittance-on-the-blockchain-aa163d2b7916 | ['Team Remiit'] | 2018-11-14 03:23:09.576000+00:00 | ['Remittances', 'Remiit', 'Blockchain', 'Market', 'Bitcoin'] |
Skinner’s Teaching Machine | B.F.Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviorist, and author. He propagated his own theory of learning, which was primarily based on his beliefs that humans do not function on free will and rather changes in human behavior are a response to external events that occur in the environment. A response produces a consequence such as defining a word, hitting a ball, or solving a math problem. When a particular Stimulus-Response (S-R) pattern is reinforced (rewarded), the individual is conditioned to respond.
Skinner Teaching Machine. Source.
Based on these very ideas, Skinner in 1954, came up with something called a teaching machine. The whole idea behind which was to teach classroom subject such as maths, spelling etc. using a mechanical device that would also surpass the usual classroom experience.
He believed the classroom had disadvantages because the rate of learning for different students was variable and reinforcement was also delayed due to the lack of individual attention. Since personal tutors for every student was usually unavailable, Skinner developed a theory of programmed learning that was to be implemented by teaching machines.
The teaching machine was composed of mainly a program, which was a system of combined teaching and test items that carried the student gradually through the material to be learned. The “machine” was composed of a fill-in-the-blank method on either a workbook or on a computer. If the student was correct, he/she got reinforcement and moved on to the next question. If the answer was incorrect, the student studied the correct answer to increasing the chances of getting reinforced next time.
Thus, we see that the whole idea was not just to replace teachers with machines in order to gain efficiency, but was heavily based on Skinner’s learning theory of the response/reward mechanism. Skinner also noted that the learning process should be divided into a large number of very small steps and reinforcement must be dependent upon the completion of each step. He believed this was the best possible arrangement for learning because it took into account the rate of learning for each individual student.
Skinner proposed that machines based on his theory of operant conditioning could not only be used to teach school subjects but also to promote the development of behaviors that Skinner called ‘Self-Management’. The skinner learning machine and his theory of stimuli-response behavior theory have given birth to the modern concepts of ‘Adaptive Learning Systems’.
One of the biggest challenges in the field of education is to provide individualized and tailor-made programs for each individual on a massive scale. And lately, it's being realized that this is not possible with the traditional approaches. The field that is emerging as an answer to this problem is that of adaptive learning systems. Adaptive learning or also known as adaptive teaching uses algorithms to give constant feedback, make observations and deliver customised resources which address the needs of individual learners.
So we see that the whole idea of creating a system of teaching based on individual needs and behavioral psychology principles of conditioning which came into the limelight with Skinner’s teaching machine is now taking new forms with adaptive teaching and e-learning. | https://medium.com/history-of-education-timeline/skinners-teaching-machine-f3f0edaa6346 | ['Abhishek Solanki'] | 2019-09-10 15:05:27.738000+00:00 | ['Adaptive Learning', 'Systems Thinking', 'Education'] |
Service Worker Lifecycle | THE Lifecycle
Register Service Worker Script
To initiate the Service Worker lifecycle, we first need to register our service worker script (serviceWorker.js) in the JavaScript(main.js) which is linked to the landing page(index.html) of your application.
The below-given code is to check if ServiceWorker API is available in your browser. If the API is available, we can register our service-worker script.
Code that Registers your Service Worker script
Service Worker Lifecycle (Source: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/primers/service-workers)
Install Event
This is the first event the Service Worker gets and is called once per service worker. It means, once a new or updated service worker is registered, it will be treated as a new service worker and it will get its own Install event.
In the Install step, we can cache the static assets. Static files such as media assets (images, audio files), CSS files, static HTML pages can be cached after creating cache storage. This step is essential as the requests made being offline will be intercepted by the service worker and served with the files cached during this event.
Code for Install Event
In the Install event, we pass a promise to event.waitUntil(). We can log the messages corresponding to caching and Install event completion. The cache is created with open(cacheName) and the files are added to the cache with cache.addAll(cacheAssets).
Activate Event
After the Install event, the Activate Event must be called to have the Service Worker intercept the requests from that point of time. The current page which registers the service worker script won’t be controlled by the Service Worker installed. We need to reload the page to get it under the service worker’s control.
Activate event, is the place where we can manage the cache created by the old service workers. We can delete the previous caches created by older versions of Service Worker.
NOTE: Creating new caches for every script update is generally done by developers. So we need to change the name of our cache for every service worker script update.
Code for Activate Event
We pass a promise here to event.waitUntil() which performs cache management. In the above code, if any cache with name other than current cacheName exists, it will be deleted.
After the Activate event, the Service Worker will control all the pages that fall under its scope. The Service Worker will handle “fetch” and “message” events if the site is loaded being offline. If the connection is idle, the requests would be served by the server, and Service Worker will be terminated. | https://medium.com/walmartglobaltech/service-worker-lifecycle-20333ccd570a | ['Swapnil Ramdas Chavan'] | 2020-11-30 21:09:35.072000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Offline Web Apps', 'Progressive Web App', 'Web Development', 'Service Workers'] |
Beginning your Blockchain Journey — A List of Projects you could do. | Blockchain has come a long way since being initially unveiled by Satoshi Nakamoto. And though it is still counted as a “nascent technology”, the developer community has quickly adapted to this tech and this has seen quite a few fascinating projects coming to fruition.
If you are a beginner in this field and wish to fill up your resume with a truckload of projects, you have arrived at the right place. Here’s a list of projects that you could make and build your skills.
But before you proceed, please make sure that you build a full end-to-end application and not just a piece of code which would demonstrate your familiarity with the subject. The reason is simple, a full-stack solution with a well-defined interface is more attractive than just seeing lines and lines of code. Case in point, writing Solidity smart contracts is easy and demonstrates your skills in the programming language as well as in Blockchain. But a more complete approach would be to make an interface using React or Angular and using Web3.js to communicate with the Blockchain Server.
So, without further ado, here is a list of projects that you could make on Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology in general.
Supply Chain Management Projects:
1. Tracking Land Ownership via Blockchain.
Land ownership is one of the most classical examples where Blockchain can be used. This can be done to not just display the current owner but also to keep a record of change over ownership of a plot of land. Being transparent and decentralized in nature, these records can easily be used to settle disputes as well as get the whole record of ownership of a land, thus, also settling tax claims. Design a Blockchain project which realizes this model.
2. Design a Blockchain-based platform which checks for Counterfeit Medicine.
It is estimated that more than 250,000 children die each year because of Fake Malaria Medicine. The statistics grow worse every year. This is a serious concern for Pharmaceuticals as it not only hampers their repute but also the overall trust of a Customer. Blockchain can address this by uniquely tracking the origin of not just the medicine but even the components of the medicine. If successfully designed, such a Blockchain platform could help eradicate Medicine Mafia and even Middlemen who sell fake medicine. Could you help in successfully building such an innovative and modern System and help in this fight?
3. Secure Medical Data Records.
Medical Records of a Person can tell the person’s life story. A seemingly boring Medical Record is enough resource for misuse as it can be used to administer the lethal dosage. At the same time, forged medical records are not unheard of. Because of its immense use in Supply Chain Management and use of Cryptography, this problem can be solved by designing a platform where
a) User Data would be encrypted. This would mean that even private data like User Medical Record can be uploaded without worry.
b) Medical Records can be tracked. This would essentially eliminate the risk of Forged Medical Records being presented to the Doctor by the patient with an ulterior motive.
4. Blockchain-based verification for authenticity of Wine.
“A person is only as good as the company he keeps and the wine he drinks.”
The saying might seem comical but it’s true. In fact, just like the Pharmaceutical Industry, Wine Industry is plagued by Forgery. This could mean that a local brand might sell their wine illegally terming it as an “International or Imported Brand”. It could also mean that a locally made wine can be shipped with the name and tag of an International Brand (similar incidents have been reported in Pepsico and Leher Pvt. Ltd). Design a Blockchain System to address this problem and explain how it might be useful for the students living in Mess ;) ).
5. Meat Tracking System with Blockchain.
How often have you heard about meat from another animal being sold as edible meat? For people living in Kolkata, this is not so uncommon. “Bhagarer Mangsho” is a term used for Dog meat which was sold as Chicken Meat and this led to quite a situation in Kolkata.
Similar incidents have been reported around the World. Conversely, it can be detrimental to a Food Outlet selling food made from authentic meat to be accused of using the wrong meat. Examples can include Dominoes being accused of mixing Beef in their Chicken Pizza. These incidents have communal implications as well. By designing a Supply Chain Management Tracking System for Meat Industry, such problems can be alleviated as the source of the meat can be easily confirmed along with the preservation techniques and expiration date of the Meat.
InterPlanetary File System Based Projects:
6. Build your Portfolio site and Host it on IPFS.
IPFS or InterPlanetary File System has been for quite some time now and offers Decentralized Permanent Storage. The extensive use of Hashing of files also prevents unintentional duplicates from being stored. Study this storage system. Because this storage is free and permanent, this could essentially offer “Free-hosting” of Static Websites. Make your own Portfolio site and then host it on the IPFS. It counts as one of the easier projects to do but can demonstrate practical usage.
7. Decentralized Renting for Hard Disk Space.
The IPFS is a literal example of this. But can you design a DLT or Blockchain which would track which user is renting out which hard-disk space and what is being stored by observing the hashes (here a record of hashes is enough, you cannot really guess the content of a file using the hash of the file)?
Here’s a list of resources you can read-up on, Thanks to vasa for the list!
Intellectual Property Projects.
8. Tracking rights and shares of a Company.
Shares of a Company being traded publicly or the rights of the Board of Directors can be tracked and maintained by the use of Blockchain. Though seemingly simple, this kind of system can help to settle disputes arising out of ownership of shares and rights given to the Board of Directors when they join. As the state of the Data in the Blockchain is immutable, the disputes can be settled without the evidence being in question.
9. Blockchain-based tracking of Rights for Painting.
Assume there is an Organization which acts as the maintainer of records for Painting and Sculptures. Any painting being sold would have to register with the organization which would recognize the copies in circulation and authenticity of the High-value Painting sold in auctions. This data can be visible to everyone and is easily auditable. Design a Private Blockchain Solution for this classic problem statement.
10. Blockchain-Based Piracy Detection of Movies.
Piracy is a serious concern for Movie Industry. Be it Hollywood, Bollywood or Tollywood — piracy causes losses which amount to Billions to this Industry. But what would happen if every third-party vendor would have to upload a hash of the movie they are selling or something on the lines of that which would be used to uniquely identify the movie and its origin? These decentralized records would be visible to the Original Rights Owner of the Movie and would help curb the sale of pirated movies. There can be more modifications to this basic idea. A permissioned Ledger would help address the problems.
A similar idea can be implemented to put a check on piracy in the Game Development Industry, Music Industry and other fields where Intellectual Properties are concerned.
Ethereum Projects for Noobs:
11. Decentralized Election System.
Voting and Crowdsourcing are the 2 most common applications of Blockchain. There have been many projects on it. It’s even used for introducing students to Solidity Programming for Ethereum (you can check it out on the official documentation page). This can be a good starting point but doesn’t really count that much. Either way, can you implement a similar system with a twist of your own?
12. Simple Auction using Ethereum.
Again, a very common application with huge resourcefulness. Auction on Blockchain is a basic example and many frameworks use it to ease new learners into the field. You can make an auction for Car (check out Hyperledger Fabric or Convector Suite for even easier way), Bidding (Ethereum Official Documentation) and more. The hard part is to bring in your own twist into it and making it more efficient.
Conclusion.
In conclusion, I would like to state that there is a lot of scope in this field but only if you have your basics clear. You need to have a solid grasp over Cryptography, Decentralized Databases and a sense of where implementing these solutions would bring the best results. You cannot just implement a Blockchain or DLT anywhere you want (also, understand the basic difference between a Blockchain and a DLT).
As mentioned before, whenever you try to make a solution, make sure you build a complete one. Writing smart contracts doesn’t count as complete. Show your skills as a developer by making a full-stack solution. That would give you an edge over others.
Last but not least, never be afraid of reaching out for help. There are great developer communities (not just Stack Overflow) and tons of resources from where you can learn. Good Luck! | https://medium.com/@abhik99/beginning-your-blockchain-journey-a-list-of-projects-you-could-do-fa82848dbe4b | ['Abhik Banerjee'] | 2019-09-29 16:22:42.003000+00:00 | ['Projects', 'Supply Chain Management', 'Ipfs', 'Getting Started', 'Blockchain'] |
Am I Write | Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
I wrote and I wrote,
Then I wrote some more; ask why?
I Am a writer | https://medium.com/@clvnlsstr/i-am-write-7d48ce90b11e | ['Calvin Lassiter'] | 2020-12-24 21:56:01.686000+00:00 | ['Writer', 'Purpose', 'Writing', 'Haiku', 'Gifts'] |
Benefits of Creating a Kickstarter Video | Benefits of Creating a Kickstarter Video
Kickstarter is an American crowdfunding platform that funds creative projects. With a mission to “help bring creative projects to life,” the platform, which is also a public benefit corporation, funds projects from around the globe in a range of areas such as music, films, video games, and technology.
What is a Kickstarter Video?
Kickstarter works by entrepreneurs or teams posting their projects on the platform’s campaign pages to attract investors who will fund their ideas or products.
A Kickstarter video helps showcase your innovation or creative idea to people. Through the video, you can introduce the concept, demonstrate how it works, and appeal to investors to fund it. A well-created video is a powerful tool to reach and move people to action to support your campaign.
What You Gain by Creating a Kickstarter Video?
1. Stand out from the crowd
A Kickstarter video helps you stand out from the crowd considering the platform’s popularity where thousands of people pitch their ideas. If you look at the statistics from Kickstarter itself, 48 percent of the campaigns raised using a video were funded. In contrast, only 26 percent of projects without a video attained their minimum goals. A video enables you to powerfully convey your idea without the need to spell it in so many words.
2. Wider reach
With quality and compelling Kickstarter video, you can scale up awareness creation of your project by sharing the video on multiple platforms. A broader reach will enable you to convince as many people about your innovation and ultimately contribute to your campaign’s success.
Conclusion
For exponential returns on your campaign, a perfect Kickstarter video is a tool you must endeavor to create. Even though you can get your campaign funded on Kickstarter without having a video, the platform advises that projects with engaging videos command a higher success rate. | https://medium.com/@jsphmuchiri3/benefits-of-creating-a-kickstarter-video-37fcc5a7368 | ['Joseph Muchiri'] | 2021-01-23 11:01:49.790000+00:00 | ['Crowdfunding', 'Kickstarter', 'Kickstarter Campaign', 'Video Marketing'] |
You’re very welcome, Pallvi! Thanks for reading! | Bylines in Publishers Weekly, the Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard, others. One Sister’s Song (novel). Not Nearly Everything You Need to Know About Writing (ebook). | https://medium.com/@karendegrootcarter/youre-very-welcome-pallvi-thanks-for-reading-49f916e88890 | ['Karen Degroot Carter'] | 2020-12-20 14:27:50.179000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Reading', 'Writing', 'Authors'] |
Why I Write | How it started
I wrote my first prose lines at the age of 20, almost 7 years ago and I barely remember what led me to this brave act but here I am. I started my Medium journey in July this year because I really wanted to share my thoughts with a community that understands what it means to be careful with your soul. By putting on paper how you feel, what you see, your deepest desires you start to see the world with other eyes. However, at the same time, writing helps me exercise my English grammar.
As a clinical psychologist, I always want to spread the kindest words for my patients, just because they need to understand that sometimes a word said at the right time changes a life. It wasn’t easy for me to start to share my thoughts with a community that doesn’t know me, but at the same time, I find out that this is the best way to understand me better.
I don’t follow any rules, I just follow my heart in terms of writing. Actually, I think that is no rule book for writing. When the poem comes from the bottom of your heart, the reader can really feel and also imagine what kind of soul the writer has.
Desire to be heard, I write about everything, from love, peace, soul, friendship, to even fantasy, just because I know that out there are some people who need to hear a poem that interferes with their state of mind. I start to believe that my second name is empathic. In our age is so important to understand the needs of the other and if you can, to help them.
I am more on the poem’s side and I remember how my heart jumped when I sended my first poem to a publication and after 2 hours I received an email that MY POEM was accepted and published, Francine Fallara made my day. That little thing motivates me and opens up my eyes that I can really do this, to write, because everyone needs to be heard.
I write because it gives me a free state of mind and I want to become one of the writers who let a mark on someone's soul. It feels so good dancing with words. I want to inspire, to heal others' souls, and to understand what life’s about.
Perhaps through writing, I have the opportunity to improve the relationship between the soul and the mind. | https://medium.com/blueinsight/why-i-write-d15f90c8b4a2 | ['Alexandra Androne'] | 2020-12-21 13:15:14.523000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Writer', 'Poet', 'Blue Insights', 'Thoughts'] |
Brain Actives Brain Supplement :Full Review | Since many people are now addicted to having brain supplements, it comes with no surprise that every company is producing supplements with their own qualified formulas. Nutriprofits is also a leading brand which has created Brain Active capsules which aren’t only for increasing brain activity, but also for enhancing your memory and to increase your concentration span.
What is Brain Actives?
Brain Actives is the best food supplement with high quality ingredients to support your brain for high performance.Vitamins, Niacin is included along with folic acid which is a type of B vitamin that helps our body to produce new cells and regenerate the older ones, other than that brain active proprietary blend, L-Tyrosine, Choline, caffeine, naringinetc are involved. Other than that, rice flour and magnesium, are involved which helps strengthen brain muscles and also, these capsules are made from plant cellulose.It also helps to boost your body functions and cope up with task that includes heavy exertion and loss of energy. The natural formulation doesn’t produce any harm to your body. The pills can support you with improved focus and concentration that makes you highly cognitive.
Gives you excellent energy.
Improves endurance.
Increases focus and concentration.
Supports high cognition.
Strengthens learning ability.
Stay alert and active.
Gives positive mood.
Increases motivation.
Brain active Nutrition Facts:
Brain active contains the following ingredients:Ashwagandha Root Extract (Withania somnifera) [5% Withanolides] — KSM-66®; Magnesium Hydroxide — Aquamin™ Mg; Capsule Shell — Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose; Natural Caffeine Anhydrous (Coffea robusta); Bacopa Monnieri Herb Extract (Bacopa monnieri) [50% Bacosides] — Bacopin®; Theacrine — TeaCrine®; Rice Bran Extract; Gotu Kola Leaf Extract (Centella asiatica) [8% Triterpenes] — Centellin®; Cyanocobalamin (Vitamin B12); Calcium D-Pantothenate (Pantothenic Acid); Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6); Black Pepper Fruit Extract (Piper nigrum L.) [95% Piperine] — BioPerine®.
What Does Brain active Do?
To say this product works wonder might be an understatement, because literally many people have sent out positive reviews and shared their stories of how amazingly this supplement worked for them. Brain active sharpens and enhances your focus even after a tough day or in exhausted moods, which is why many people prefer these over any other supplement. Moreover, it boosts up your neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine which helps elevate your mood in stressful situations or in feelings of anxiety and nervousness.
This product is really effective in cases of slow brain responsiveness because the improved formulas have been created in such a way to enhance your brain function, so use it as per doctor consultation and you will notice a better change in you.
Who can use Brain Actives?
The Brain Actives supplement is the best brain performance enhancement supplement that can benefit anyone. And some of them are:
Competitive athletes. Driven professionals. Physical athletes. Game Hackers. Police and other defense personnel. Any demanding occupation.
Is Brain Actives FDA approved?
The FDA does not certify dietary supplement products, such as Brain Actives. However, Brain Actives is manufactured in an FDA registered facility that follows GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) guidelines.And the Brain Actives Manufactured in USA.
Is Brain Actives a good product?
Brain Actives has been taken by thousands of folks with no reported side effects. Unlike toxic medications, everything inside Brain Actives is natural. You might experience some nights where you don’t want to go to sleep when your energy levels soar through the roof! And you might have friends pestering you and asking what you’ve been up to look so good…but we trust those are minor annoyances.
Direction For Use:
Recommended daily allowance — 2 capsules — washed down with 300 ml of water preferably 30 min. before meal.
Brain active Product Warnings:
Do not exceed the recommended daily dose. Do not take as a substitute for a varied balanced diet or a healthy lifestyle. Not suitable for children, pregnant or lactating mothers. Do not use in cases of cardiovascular disease or hypersensitivity to caffeine. Balanced diet and healthy lifestyle are essential.
Purchase of Brain Actives:
The Brain Actives is available for purchase only online from its official website to ensure that you can get the real things. Making it from this official site will allow you access of special non-public prices with discounts. You can get the bottles in an affordable price and each bottles contains 60 capsules that lasts for a month. It is safe with non-chemical ingredients to improve your brain health effectively.
For Visiting Their Website >>Click Here<<
Money-Back policy:
The product is scientifically backed and the creator behind this supplement is more confident about the results of the product. You can try using the supplement for 90 Days. If you think you are not satisfied with the results. The creator offers 100% money back policy without any questions asked. You can get your refund within a few hours.
Conclusion
The Brain Actives is the inotropic food supplement that has high quality ingredients to support its cognition, concentration and improve energy levels. It supports mental and physical effort with high efficiency. It is preferred for anyone and its influence can result highly in cognition demanding professionals. Once you consume it regularly, you can seek overall body improvement without loss of energy. You can enjoy your lifestyle with high energy, positive mood and never miss any of your memories. Get the best results of improved brain activity with a natural remedy. | https://medium.com/@blueskysee/brain-actives-brain-supplement-full-review-c34e7b1517b2 | ['Jack Santa'] | 2020-12-08 14:25:14.450000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Food Supplement', 'Supplements', 'Brain Supplement', 'Brain'] |
How Hromadske Radio put women first in its coverage of the COVID-19 | In a nutshell
Reliable COVID-19 news and human interest stories kept Ukrainian citizens in the capital and the east of the country up-to-speed during the pandemic.
What is Hromadske Radio?
Established in 2013, Hromadske Radio is a public radio station based in Kyiv, Ukraine. It is one of Ukraine’s few non-commercial and non-governmental news talk radio stations and online media platforms and employs 70 full and part-time journalists and other staff.
Broadcasting 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the station reaches its listeners via satellite and its own broadcasting network covering six regions across Ukraine. With 15 transmitters of its own, it has the potential to reach about three to five million people in up to 25 cities and towns. Transmitters are not easy to obtain as they must be licensed by the government and are restricted to certain frequencies and power levels. Many Ukrainian stations in the Donbas region are jammed by Russian channels, meaning that they hear Russian-based broadcasts over the same frequency.
Hromadske’s audience is evenly split in terms of gender, especially in the Donbas region of Ukraine where conflict has taken place with the Russian Federation since 2014. According to data from 2018, its radio audience here is 47% male and 53% female. Most of these listeners tune into its FM frequency, as do those from Kyiv, which is made up of 58% men and 42% women, according to data from 2017. New demographic data about its audience is being collected this October.
Hromadske podcast on a story of a Kyivan who contracted the coronavirus.
In addition to around 110,000 weekly listeners via FM radio, listeners can also access Hromadske online through its website and mobile app, which were redesigned last year. As well as live programming, the website acts as a repository for over 100 different Hromadske podcasts on everything from reasons to travel to Ukrainian music to how to verify the information. Some are longstanding and have hundreds of episodes while others have a short run and have already come to an end. The podcasts are released via its website and via other podcasting platforms. Hromadske’s combined monthly web and podcast audience is around 200,000 to 300,000, depending on the month.
95% of Hromadske’s revenue comes from international donors, including the likes of National Endowment for Democracy, International Renaissance Foundation, the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and Pact. These donors are keen to financially support independent outlets like Hromadske Radio as their presence is deemed hugely important for protecting the interests of Ukrainian civilians in a media environment at risk from influence by oligarchs. The other 5% of revenue is from listener donations and renting out its studio for recording to external clients. Hromadske has plans to gradually decrease the share of international donor money over time and to gain more listener donations to support its work.
Despite the introduction of a number of reforms since 2014 to increase transparency around media ownership, Ukraine is still ranked 96 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders. Political tensions between Kyiv and Moscow over the annexing of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014 continues to have an effect on media coverage in the country. In 2017, a ban was imposed on Russian journalists and Russian-owned news outlets. A year later, any assets that Russian journalists had in the country were frozen as part of an extension of sanctions, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Since then, Ukrainian broadcast media can only air 30–40% of Russian content, despite the fact that much of the country is bilingual.
How did Hromadske Radio handle the COVID-19 crisis?
At the beginning of the pandemic in March, the editorial team included some COVID-19 related content in some of its existing broadcasts. However, it lacked funding for specially made programmes focusing on the pandemic. It was impossible to attract commercial funding for this, so the team applied for grants, which meant there was a delay launching the shows that it wanted.
The Social Distance show hosted by Tetyana Troshchynska as the host.
In April, at the height of Ukraine’s pandemic, the team started producing a twice-weekly show called Social Distance Talk Show. Funded by two donors, the hour-long show covered the social and medical aspects of COVID-19 featuring experts including doctors, psychologists, health workers and teachers. For example, one show looked at the experience of a man who successfully recovered after COVID-19 while another looked at kids in lockdown and the time they were spending online. In addition to airing on its FM station, a podcast version was released on its website, as well as SoundCloud, Spotify, Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts. As the case numbers dropped in July, the team decided to scale back production to once a week.
Hromadske Radio launched two additional COVID-19 shows in May to inform listeners about different aspects of the pandemic. A daily rubric— COVID-19 News in the Morning — went out every weekday during the morning show with the relevant information about the coronavirus and key public health messages released by the Ukrainian government. In the evening drive time slot, listeners could hear the daily COVID-19 radio news bulletin, including the latest government data on the number of positive cases in Ukraine and its death toll. The same bulletin was then published online as a news publication and a podcast on the website.
With women making up more than half of Hromadske Radio’s FM listeners and website audience, the team decided to create a podcast about women’s experience during COVID-19 that also aired on its FM station. ‘The Female side of Quarantine’ concentrated on personal stories of everyday women dealing with situations arising from the pandemic. For instance, one segment examined domestic violence during the lockdown, while another looked at how a mother of a two-year-old girl coped during her quarantine experience.
Since April, Hromadske Radio has run a campaign urging its audience to verify the information and be aware of COVID-19 stories that might not be true. Audio clips broadcast several times a day explain reputable sources of information and explain why it is important to listen to advice from the medical authorities. Other topics include why you should observe the two-metre social distancing rule and why it helps to wear a mask. These clips are also posted to social media. The aim is to help Ukrainians understand how the information they consume can help stop the virus’ spread.
Hromadske received plenty of feedback from its audience during this period, mainly via incoming calls received by sound engineers and guest administrators and funnelled through to hosts and studio guests. There is also a significant number of comments that come through social media, particularly Facebook, (45,000 followers to date) Twitter (41,700 followers ) and Instagram (50,400 followers). The interest in COVID-19 meant that, at the height of the pandemic, Hromadske’s website received 307,400 unique users in April 2020 and 491,700 page views.
Hromadske Radio secured three new COVID-19-related grants during the first half of the year; one that the team applied for and two from organisations that contacted the station looking to support its work. These grants were especially important given the station was not able to generate its usual level of advertising revenue due to COVID-19-related economic downturn. Unlike other independent outlets in other countries, Hromadske didn’t see an uptick in donations from readers. Face-to-face events for fundraising also had to be suspended and will potentially be moved online.
Face-to-face events for fundraising also had to be suspended and will potentially be moved online. Face-to-face fundraising events, which count for 1% of Hromadske’s annual budget and take place up to four times a year alongside fundraising campaigns, have also had to be suspended due to the pandemic. These events usually support online crowdfunding campaigns — such as the campaign last year to buy an FM license from the government — and feature talks with the radio station’s most popular journalists as well as the editor-in-chief. Held in Kyiv, about 30 to 50 people typically attend such events. These will likely move online in the second half of 2020.
How has COVID-19 changed the future of Hromadske Radio?
The editorial team will concentrate more of its broadcasting on healthcare-related topics in the future. The Ukrainian public is increasingly interested in health because of the unsatisfactory level of healthcare in some regions and the fact that efforts are being made by the Ukrainian government to reform the sector. Subsequently, and pending further funding, Hromadske is considering producing specific health-related shows. It will also invite more medical specialists onto its general interest shows to answer questions and talk about timely health issues.
Hromadske will continue to rely on more remote work for its operations due to the increasing number of confirmed cases in Ukraine over the last few weeks. Everyday activities will continue to be done online and meetings and conferences will use Zoom and Skype. Some reporters and presenters will continue to voice shows from home, though it depends on microphone and audio quality. Hromadske Radio will continue to use its studio for live shows and presenting the news.
In terms of revenue, Hromadske Radio plans to increase other income streams in order to become more sustainable and less dependent on grants. In April 2020, following a successful crowdfunding campaign, Hromadske launched a new commercially viable frequency in Kyiv. The new frequency is available on car FM receivers and will be monetised via advertising and sponsorship sales. This will not be straightforward given the fact that the pandemic has hit the advertising industry in Ukraine. For ethical reasons, Hromadske’s editorial board also took the decision not to run advertising from the alcohol or gambling industries, which are the main pillars of the Ukrainian radio advertising market. Many other Ukrainian media organisations find loopholes to this advertising ban and air those ads anyway.
What have they learned?
“Hromadske Radio understood that the challenges are also opportunities. To our surprise, we learned how to do most of our pre-production meetings and some interviews remotely. ”
Kyrylo Loukerenko, executive director and co-founder of Hromadske Radio | https://medium.com/we-are-the-european-journalism-centre/how-hromadske-radio-put-women-first-in-its-coverage-of-the-covid-19-40d180fe9608 | ['Tara Kelly'] | 2020-07-29 10:57:03.053000+00:00 | ['Resilience', 'Radio', 'Case Study', 'Covid 19', 'Journalism'] |
Purchase of Automobiles in India — An Avoidable Need | “Why do people buy automobiles?” we googled.
The first article which came up gave a very clear answer, that is to fill the mobility gap and provide freedom. The other one said it’s a matter of prestige for many and the third one mentioned that it gives working professionals a sense of security and authority over their commute and travel. While on one hand, reasons like societal status are valid for Indian society but Millenials do not find this reason worthy enough of bearing the ownership hassles of a vehicle. On the other hand, when consumers are buying vehicles due to reasons like mobility gap and authority over their commute, it is certainly an avoidable need if the existing commute problem can be solved.
We say the purchase of automobiles as an avoidable need. Quite ironical, isn’t it?
Let’s begin by discussing why it’s a need. The reasons are the talk of all metro towns every single day. As soon as someone steps out, after getting denied for an auto ride by many auto wallas, he starts walking the 2 km stretch to catch a bus to work, the broken infrastructure and poor connectivity to affordable commute are seen. He sprints and manages to reach the bus stop almost panting and sees the bus leaving. The next bus is scheduled to come to the bus stop only after 20 mins. “Sigh! Why can’t we have buses every 5 mins”, he thinks that availability is serious trouble. He waits for 20 minutes, tries to hop on the already overcrowded bus but fails. Tries again before the bus leaves the stop but doesn’t dare enough to risk his life by hanging at the bus door. Eventually, waits for the next bus while begging auto wallas all this time to take him to his destination. Somehow, manages to get into the next bus and reaches office only after the half-day is over because by now the traffic on the road has increased multifold. He gets frustrated and buys a vehicle the next day. This is a classic example of the prevailing mobility gap in India as even after having many commute options like public transport, private ride-share options and many more, some are unaffordable, some aren’t safe enough and some have unavailability issues. Thus, the lack of right mobility option paves the way for buying a personal vehicle.
So, obviously the dire need to buy a vehicle is there but consciously we should avoid buying private vehicles. Because if everyone in the country of a population of 135 crore buys a vehicle, the situation of Indian roads and traffic conditions are going to get deteriorated immensely. With a current total of over 20 crore vehicles on the road, there is hardly any space to drive on the roads and the pollution is increasing every passing day. So, the addition of private vehicles on the road isn’t going to help anyone.
“The total private vehicles move only about 4% of people but contribute to 20% of vehicular pollution and occupies 70% of road space.”
All in all, buying a private vehicle is not going to be the solution of above-mentioned problems as it will land us in the vicious circle of commute problem. To address the mobility gap, people start buying personal vehicles and then the infrastructure required for commute deteriorates further leaving the mobility issue unsolved. So if we are to fill the mobility gap, the only solution should either be asset sharing wherein different people utilize the asset at different times according to their need without burdening the roads or ride-sharing when people pool vehicles and commute.
The avoidable need for purchasing the automobiles in India can indeed become avoidable if we plunge to own our mobility instead of vehicles. | https://medium.com/@ONNBikes/purchase-of-automobiles-in-india-an-avoidable-need-54407c3460d4 | ['Onn Bikes'] | 2019-07-16 11:53:38.882000+00:00 | ['Mobility', 'Electric Vehicles', 'Urban Perspectives', 'Transportation', 'Automotive'] |
RWBY ~ Vol 8 EP. 7 TBA FULL — EPISODES | Episode 7 || RWBY ~ Vol 8 EP. 7 TBA FULL — EPISODES
RWBY
The story takes place in the world of Remnant, which is filled with supernatural forces and shadowy creatures known as the "Creatures of Grimm." Prior to the events of the series, mankind waged a battle of survival against the Grimm before discovering the power of a mysterious element called Dust, which allowed them to fight back against the monsters. In the present day, Dust is used to power magical abilities and weapons. Those who use these abilities to battle the Grimm are known as Huntsmen or Huntresses.The series focuses on four girls, each with her own unique weapon and powers. Together, they form team RWBY at Beacon Academy in the city of Vale, where they are trained to become Huntresses alongside team CRDL (pronounced "cardinal"), team JNPR (pronounced "juniper"), team SSSN (pronounced "sun") and team CFVY (pronounced "coffee").
Title : RWBY
Episode Title : TBA
Number of Seasons : 8
Number of Episodes : 7
Genres : Action , Adventure , Animation , Anime , Fantasy
Networks : Rooster Teeth
Status: Returning Series
Quality: HD
The Great Christmas Light Fight : Season 8 , Episode 1 || FULL EPISODES | On Series The Great Christmas Light Fight Season 8 Ep 1 Episoder : features the hero in action scenes that display and explore exotic locations. The subgenres of adventure films include swashbuckler film, disaster films, and historical dramas-which is similar to the epic film genre. Main plot components include quests for lost continents, a jungle or desert settings, characters going on a treasure hunts and heroic journeys in to the unknown. Adventure films are mostly occur a period background and may include adapted stories of historical or fictional adventure heroes within the historical context. Kings, battles, rebellion or piracy are generally observed in adventure films. Adventure films may also be combined with other movie genres such as for example, science fiction, fantasy and sometimes war films.The Great Christmas Light Fight Season 8 French : The coverage of sports as a television program, on radio and other broadcasting media. It usually involves a number of sports commentators describing the events because they happen, to create “colour commentary.”
❏ TELEVISION ❏
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 88s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 88s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[8] during the 88s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 2020s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (81i, with 202081 intertwined lines of goal and 120202020) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 120208881, 120208881 and 8. Since 2020, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, ABC Video, iPlayer and ABC.
In 881, 81% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[8] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 888s. Most TV sets sold during the 2020s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-2020s.[8][8] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[8] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 2020s.[8][8][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 8.8 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 2020s.[1]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as eartABC und TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 2020s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 2020s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 2020s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
❏ OVERVIEW ❏
Additionally alluded to as assortment expressions or assortment amusement, this is a diversion comprised of an assortment of acts (thus the name), particularly melodic exhibitions and sketch satire, and typically presented by a compère (emcee) or host. Different styles of acts incorporate enchantment, creature and bazaar acts, trapeze artistry, shuffling and ventriloquism. Theatrical presentations were a staple of anglophone TV from its begin the 88s, and endured into the 88s. In a few components of the world, assortment TV stays famous and broad.
The adventures (from Icelandic adventure, plural sögur) are tales about old Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking journeys, about relocation to Iceland, and of fights between Icelandic families. They were written in the Old Norse language, for the most part in Iceland. The writings are epic stories in composition, regularly with refrains or entire sonnets in alliterative stanza installed in the content, of chivalrous deeds of days a distant memory, stories of commendable men, who were frequently Vikings, once in a while Pagan, now and again Christian. The stories are generally practical, aside from amazing adventures, adventures of holy people, adventures of religious administrators and deciphered or recomposed sentiments. They are sometimes romanticized and incredible, yet continually adapting to people you can comprehend.
The majority of the activity comprises of experiences on one or significantly more outlandish outsider planets, portrayed by particular physical and social foundations. Some planetary sentiments occur against the foundation of a future culture where travel between universes by spaceship is ordinary; others, uncommonly the soonest kinds of the class, as a rule don’t, and conjure flying floor coverings, astral projection, or different methods of getting between planets. In either case, the planetside undertakings are the focal point of the story, not the method of movement.
Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 8888–2020, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk. | https://medium.com/@eric-ybrown956/episode-7-rwby-vol-8-ep-7-tba-full-episodes-1341bfd35821 | ['Eric Ybrown'] | 2020-12-19 09:29:12.100000+00:00 | ['Anime'] |
What lies ahead? | 8/1/2020 16:39 (PST) Location: USC Village
I moved to L.A. about a week ago and I’ve enjoyed the little things thus far. I notice a 360 change in my faith and patience. I’m overly gracious about where my life is headed right now. Not only am I thankful for life’s simple necessities like water, health, shelter, clothes, and food but I’m also grateful for my whirlwind way of arriving here. Don’t worry, I’m well adept at dishing out spark notes so just sit back as I explain how it all went down…
Well..I moved here during the double pandemic, a wicked combination of police brutality in both of my home states and the serial killer we all have become accustomed to knowing, COVID-19. My prayers go out to Breonna Taylor’s family as we all sit and watch with hope that the murderers are held responsible for their sick behavior. Anyway, I started the moving process pretty late compared to societal standards. To provide a brief timeline, I left my job on February 28th, 2020. Our good friend COVID popped up in the middle of March, I finished my yearlong research project in May, wrote a play, rehearsed it along with a virtual performance in the same month. On top of that, graduation was annoyingly ringing my doorbell.
By odd circumstances I was able to pay rent for March through May, although I was your typical broke college student. I began apartment hunting in late May with a little over $600 to my name. It somehow transformed itself into 300 something. Oh yeah, I forgot that I took that trip to L.A. in June. I guess that’s how we got there.. Meanwhile my lease was set for termination on July 23rd. Now it’s late June and still no apartment and oh yeah I’m jobless. I filed for unemployment back in April. For some odd reason I kept up with my weekly vouchers although I was receiving zero return on my investment. Somehow my faith didn’t decay although my evidence of believing was lackluster at best. If you’re into astrology and all that stuff, I happen to be the world’s most typical Aries, which means I crave independence and thrive on stubbornness. | https://medium.com/@cjh1990s/what-lies-ahead-164e1a165801 | ['Jamil Hudson'] | 2021-01-21 05:54:16.375000+00:00 | ['Unemployment', 'Los Angeles', 'Pandemic', 'Faith', 'Stimulus Package'] |
Silent Joan | Silent Joan,
Lived by secret words,
Slept on a broken Winter bed
Her grief lay undisturbed.
The dawn birds never sang
and Hope’s music never played,
Strong alcohol swayed feeling,
Her abuser felt the same.
Silent Joan understood
that poverty was like,
No rainfall in the forest
but a firebreak
for all time.
The ranger had an idea
Why her dog could
not be found.
While Silent Joan
saw heaven
from a blood flow
six feet down. | https://medium.com/illumination/silent-joan-155b3a1e5e88 | ['America Zed'] | 2020-12-17 07:11:30.248000+00:00 | ['Poetry On Medium', 'Abuse', 'Grief', 'Poetry', 'Death'] |
The rules are wrong | Women are ushering in an age of “corporate disobedience” but getting fired for it. What should be done about it?
I knew what I was doing was against the rules. But he was smiling, so I knew it wasn’t wrong. The rules were wrong. — Arya Stark, GoT Sn7 Ep 6
I’ve been (finally) catching up on Game of Thrones when I got to this episode when the amazing Arya said these words to her sister Sansa about her father cheering her on in her secret archery practice. I’d applaud them any day, but just a few days prior to seeing it I’d read the news of Dr Timnit Gebru, a respected ethical AI researcher, being fired from her leadership role at Google. The news struck me unexpectedly and I’ve been trying to make sense of it ever since.
Dr Gebru was working on a paper (with others) about the shortcomings of AI as it exists today. Not least of these shortcomings include significant opportunity for racial and gender bias. As a gross oversimplification of what happened, Google, who stands to benefit greatly from advances in AI, didn’t want the paper published, and Dr Gebru protested. This was considered such an urgent issue for the company that Dr Gebru’s access to the corporate network and her employment were terminated while she was on vacation. The issue is complex and I encourage you to read the many articles and discussions about it happening in real time in the media and on Twitter.
This incident is important on its own but what struck me was that it came on the heels of another firing, this time from Facebook (where I work), of Sophie Zhang, a data scientist who was critical of the company’s lack of action to combat political misinformation globally. And that firing came just a few months after the firing from Amazon of Maren Costa (who I’ve known for many years) and Emily Cunningham, who stood up to the company on climate change and other issues. These incidents come, of course, after Susan Fowler blew the whistle on her and others’ sexual harassment at Uber in 2016, which ended up taking down the leadership there. And in the midst of Rebekah Jones’s home being raided by armed law enforcement in the wake of her firing from the State of Florida for refusing to alter the state’s COVID-19 data.
I am in awe of each of these women's bravery and dedication to their causes. But what strikes me about the first three incidents is that they chose to speak out about these issues, rather than having the issue happen directly to you and to be brave enough to speak up like Susan Fowler. And that they work for corporations, rather than for elected officials who we can hopefully vote out, like Rebekah Jones. I’m focused on these three incidents because of this, and because I think there is work we can do to change this narrative.
I do kinda wonder why this is happening now, but I believe we can chalk it up to the extraordinary circumstances of this year and the inordinate amount of gaslighting we’ve endured over the past few years. What I am most wondering about is why these huge, powerful tech companies found the need to try and silence these women? What was so threatening?
That all four are women is, I believe, no coincidence. That they were deemed “inconvenient” I have no doubt. For each, the stated reasons for firing “fit” neatly into the rhetoric of corporate policy and their human resources departments. Anyone who has had to navigate similar issues as a manager or individual can recognize the argument behind their terminations. As I followed Maren and Emily’s saga, I knew the policies they were violating were not different from similar policies at other tech corporations I’ve worked at, for example. But these women were also called whistleblowers or, in Dr Gebru’s case, were hired to work on the very issues they were ultimately fired for. Each of these corporations also have airtight processes in place to channel such concerns. But, those of us who have had to navigate such issues also know that these systems are not exactly in place to protect us as individuals. They exist to protect the organization, first and foremost. And, once a person is deemed a “problem” it is not hard to find a way to show them the door.
Still, the question remains: why were these women seen as so dangerous that these companies felt the need to get rid of them? They were all talented and well respected in their fields and communities. Maren Costa was a principal designer at Amazon who, I happen to know, was being groomed for even higher seniority not long before her ouster. Sophie Zhang was more junior and earlier in her career, but by all accounts respected by her peers and clearly in a position where her discipline of data science was of particular value and high visibility. Dr Gebru is a pioneer in her field, and her credentials and accomplishments are well documented. And the issues they were raising most would agree are important to address, no? Certainly a reasonable outlet for their passion regarding these issues, coupled with their considerable talents, could be arranged to the benefit of both. Or so you’d think.
I believe the reason lies in the double-edged sword of the very passionate (read: feminine) way in which they couched their positions, and their unabashedness in challenging and defying the powers that be (read: masculine) in their respective organizations.
These women each expressed their motivations in extremely personal terms. Maren Costa, after she was fired over Zoom, was asked by her son, who was in the next room during the call, if she had any regrets. She told him “No, I don’t. Not at all. I’m doing this for you.” Sophie Zhang wrote in the 6,600-word memo she posted on her last day of employment at Facebook that “I know that I have blood on my hands by now.” And Dr Gebru said in an email to her co-workers shortly before she was fired that she felt “constantly dehumanized” at Google. These are not abstract issues for these women. They are matters of life and death for them and their families and loved ones.
Many of us would agree that the issues these women are fighting for are important, and indeed the companies they worked for had made pledges or statements supporting these same causes. Many of us would, in fact, say that these issues are urgent, especially in the context of this year. These women expressed just how urgent they are to them, as women, as mothers and as conscientious people watching what they felt was unconscionable neglect or inaction by the companies they worked for. They made clear that what the companies were doing was not nearly enough for them, their families, and their communities, and that they saw through what seemed like lip service to these most critical issues. They each showed that they would stop at nothing to fight for what they believe in. But rather than harness that energy and passion into real progress and corporate leadership in these areas, in each case these companies saw it as a threat.
So what to do? I have some thoughts. At the risk of being obvious, I’ll start with how women are perceived and treated within organizations like these:
Hire and listen to the women in your org and make them leaders . For all three of these companies women are in the minority within the employee base and even less women are managers or executives (for both Amazon and Google management/executive numbers hover around one quarter). All have made improvements recently and have pledged to do better, but the pace is glacial, and this is no longer acceptable. The only way to understand how to handle women willing to fight like this is to have equal or more representation in the higher ranks as well as in the rank-and-file. Make it a top priority to aggressively change this dynamic.
. For all three of these companies women are in the minority within the employee base and even less women are managers or executives (for both Amazon and Google management/executive numbers hover around one quarter). All have made improvements recently and have pledged to do better, but the pace is glacial, and this is no longer acceptable. The only way to understand how to handle women willing to fight like this is to have equal or more representation in the higher ranks as well as in the rank-and-file. Make it a top priority to aggressively change this dynamic. Stop treating outspoken women as toxic psychopaths who need to be “dealt with.” If you’re a woman in the working world who has ever spoken her mind, you have surely gotten feedback or heard whisperings about your abrasiveness or toxicity, or about how people are intimidated or even afraid of you. It can be a minefield to navigate, and it’s frustrating at best. If you go further and speak out loudly, continually, and higher up the leadership chain or even publicly about your concerns, and you’re a real problem. The cost of not speaking out is being talked over, mansplained to, and having your ideas co-opted. It’s unfair and needs to stop at the day-to-day level so we can normalize when and how women speak up and out and take strong opposing views to the status quo. In order to listen to women, we need to hear them regardless of the how and without putting such labels on them.
There’s also changes in the way we do business that can help here:
Humanize your data . Having worked in tech companies for most of my career, I know how important data is. It’s a good thing in general, but the data often does not tell the whole story. There can be gaps or data missing outright, but more importantly it all represents people, even the outliers. Much of the time the long tail represents issues that are relatively benign, like a set of people who can’t/don’t/won’t use a certain feature. Other times, like with what Sophie Zhang was working on, it affects who governs the citizenry of small republics. And in the case of Dr Gebru’s work, the way the data models are handled and their size have a significant impact on entire classifications of people. In between are people who are unable to take advantage of tools to the benefit of their own knowledge or for driving their small business. The importance of understanding the gravity of this kind of impact cannot be overstated. Make it a practice to incorporate humanity to go along with the data, and incorporate it into the decision-making process.
. Having worked in tech companies for most of my career, I know how important data is. It’s a good thing in general, but the data often does not tell the whole story. There can be gaps or data missing outright, but more importantly it all represents people, even the outliers. Much of the time the long tail represents issues that are relatively benign, like a set of people who can’t/don’t/won’t use a certain feature. Other times, like with what Sophie Zhang was working on, it affects who governs the citizenry of small republics. And in the case of Dr Gebru’s work, the way the data models are handled and their size have a significant impact on entire classifications of people. In between are people who are unable to take advantage of tools to the benefit of their own knowledge or for driving their small business. The importance of understanding the gravity of this kind of impact cannot be overstated. Make it a practice to incorporate humanity to go along with the data, and incorporate it into the decision-making process. Break out of the yearly and quarterly fiscal-cycle view. I worked for a few retailers during my career, and watched while future-looking plans and investments were scrapped as the result of missing expectations for the last quarter. These plans were often tech or innovation projects that are long-term bets. I felt this was short-sighted, but that is the way retail has always worked, quarter to quarter. Some retailers have been able to break out of this cycle and are surviving and moving forward because of it. For businesses that are less tied to the quarterly results, they are still tied to relatively short-term financial growth. Issues like climate change, racial injustice, or gender equality, however, do not follow these cycles. Changes regarding racial injustice, for example, have moved slowly over generations. Studies like this one show the effect of inaction on climate change over the next 80 years. Companies must be able to embrace a certain amount of abstraction regarding these issues and look at and talk about a longer-term cycle of investment, return on investment and even reductions in profits in order to address these issues effectively.
Finally, walk the talk, dammit. As I mentioned, many feel these issues are urgent, and recent events especially show just how urgent. As a corporation who makes statements or policies supporting work on these issues, you need to mean it. All of it. Lip service will not cut it. | https://medium.com/@sandrafaucett/the-rules-are-wrong-c93e6b62d5cc | ['Sandra Faucett'] | 2020-12-30 19:37:36.655000+00:00 | ['Whistleblowing', 'Racial Justice', 'Misinformation', 'Women In Tech', 'Climate Change'] |
Lessons I Learned Dealing With Extreme Fear While in the Hospital Operating Theatre | Lessons I Learned Dealing With Extreme Fear While in the Hospital Operating Theatre
In moments of panic, your life is reborn.
Picture by Jason Lloyd-Evans
“Come this way. We need to check your blood pressure.”
This is a sentence that has haunted me for the last 5 years. Before I enter the hospital operating theatre each year, I get to hear it.
This sentence is a mental trigger. It triggers extreme fear in me. It’s the sentence where I begin to panic, my hands start shaking, I feel sick, and my heartbeat goes through the roof.
Everything changed yesterday.
As I entered the hospital waiting area ready for my procedure, I sat there and began to daydream. What if this regular visit to the hospital didn’t need to be so unpleasant?
I began to think how one could take a moment of extreme fear and turn it into something different. These are the lessons you can take away and use to beat fear and overcome panic.
You’re stronger than you think.
The walk to the nurse’s office made me make a split-second decision. “Today is going to be different,” I said to myself.
I had nothing to lose. Every other visit to the hospital was a disaster. The worst that could happen is what occurred every other time. I repeated in my head “you’re stronger than you think.” I knew that phrase to be true because I began collecting evidence to back it up.
Many years ago I wrote a list of all the times I had beaten fear and triumphed. I thought about the dot points on that list. The evidence was overwhelming. I was way stronger than I gave myself credit for. It was time to use that forgotten strength.
The nurse went to test my blood pressure. (This part never goes well.) Getting my blood pressure checked reminds me of a fear worse than death: needles. I wanted this time to be different. While the blood pressure game occurred, I started talking finance to the nurse. We had an interesting conversation to act as a distraction. It didn’t work.
“All the talking made your blood pressure explode. Let’s do it again in silence.”
The second attempt meant I had to be alone with my thoughts. I made a conscious decision to let the test be a success and it was. It was a tiny success — but it was a success worth focusing on during a day where my world normally collapses into a state of panic.
Lesson: Use evidence of your prior courage to defeat fear. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/lessons-i-learned-dealing-with-extreme-fear-while-in-the-hospital-operating-theatre-75cdb0946cd4 | ['Tim Denning'] | 2020-12-23 14:03:24.455000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Inspiration', 'Self Improvement', 'Life', 'Psychology'] |
Art Auré Aims To Empower With New Single, “Keep On” | Photo courtesy of James Canty
Meaningful music intertwined with purpose is a method of creation that will never cease to disappear. Artists such as Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and Lauryn Hill created timeless masterpieces from the pits of their soul and gave listeners literal food for thought. Singer-songwriter Art Auré is following in the same footsteps as her former predecessors with her new single, “Keep On.”
“Keep On” is a song centered around encouragement and liberation. The video follows suit with Art showcasing her powerful vocals amid an all-black background. Art sings with intention and grace, which is apparent throughout the entire visual.
Photo courtesy of Domo Jenkins
The inspiration for “Keep On” stems directly from her personal life. She was diagnosed with Endometriosis, a gynecological disorder, that she’s lived with her entire life. She recently went through a procedure that was challenging to overcome, even affecting her singing abilities. But through healing, she came up with the concept for “Keep On.”
“I was tired of fighting almost every day, so I decided to proceed with my laparoscopic surgery procedure,” said Art. “The healing process after the surgery was a challenge. I could not use my abdominal muscles for months. I had to train myself to sing from my diaphragm all over again. I didn’t think I could fully recover, but I just kept going. Throughout the healing process, I had lots of time to create new music. The very first song that I wrote after my surgery was “Keep On.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic and various injustices around the world also served as inspiration for the powerful single. “There are a lot of things going on in the world right now,” said Art. “I want to use my art as a platform for empowerment and change, and I intend to always do that. All of my music is positive and empowering. This is not a trend. It’s something that I stand for. I want everyone to digest “Keep On” and use this song to uplift them.”
Check out the visual for “Keep On” below:
To find out more about Art Auré, CLICK HERE.
To stream “Keep On,” CLICK HERE. | https://ellingtonandre7.medium.com/art-aur%C3%A9-aims-to-empower-with-new-single-keep-on-ac1732ff7b3e | [] | 2020-07-12 15:34:25.408000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Social Media', 'YouTube', 'Entertainment'] |
Twitter Bot or Not | Twitter Bot or Not
Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash
Whether you’re on Twitter or stay away from social media altogether, these platforms affect us all — from shaping public discourse to entertainment to spreading information.
The existence of bots on these platforms has gained a lot of attention in recent years, and yet many people are still unaware of or misunderstand their presence and purpose on platforms like Twitter.
And so it’s important that we start with a simple working definition of a bot:
A Twitter bot is a software bot that controls a Twitter account via the Twitter API. It may autonomously perform actions like tweeting, retweeting, liking, following, unfollowing, or direct messaging other users.
Bots are designed for a variety of purposes: they can be creative, helpful, informative, and even funny.
There are, of course, more nefarious bots — bots that can spread misinformation or scam other users. The presence of these bots can degrade our experience on these platforms and worse: our trust in one another.
Instead of bucketing all bots into good or bad, I think developing bot awareness is key to preserving social trust and the integrity of these platforms. And so with that in mind, I wanted to create a tool that could help Twitter users and spectators alike become more bot aware: Twitter Bot or Not.
Users can enter in any Twitter handle and see the probability of that account being a bot based on a dozen or so account-level features (more on that to come). These predictions are intended to provide the user with peace of mind with regards to who they’re following or interacting with.
I developed a supervised machine learning classification model using Python, the sklearn library, and XGBoost, and then built a simple app using Flask that I deployed on Heroku. In this post, I’ll walk through a few of the steps that went into developing the model and the app. All of the code and notebooks can be found on my GitHub. | https://medium.com/@scrapfishies/twitter-bot-or-not-cc2ad52b36ba | ['Chris Doenlen'] | 2020-11-04 15:01:41.583000+00:00 | ['Twitter', 'Twitterbots', 'Flask', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning'] |
Thank you mom | I never got the chance to thank you while you were with us so as we approach the anniversary of your loss to cancer I think it’s time to finally thank you for all you have done for us and for making me the man I am today.
Thank you for always being there when we needed you even though you worked two jobs most of my childhood you were never to tired or busy for us when we needed you. Working 3rd shift in a factory than coming home and getting ready to work 1st shift at the dry cleaners no one would have held it against you if you were to tired when we needed you.
Thank you for letting me choose my own path, not forcing religion on me but letting me make up my own mind on the subject.
A huge thank you for always holding me accountable and never blaming others if I did something wrong or failed at something. Thank you for not blaming the teachers if I did bad in school or blaming my friends if I did something wrong at home. Holding me accountable for my own actions helped make me who I am today and able to accept responsibility for my actions good or bad.
Thank you (and my father) for showing me what true love is, for 50 years you were still best friends and it showed. You never fought (at least not in front of us) and even when you did disagree you showed compassion for the other side of the argument. Showing your children that there are some things more important than money and I hope someday I’m lucky enough to find 10% of what you guys had.
Finally thank you for never letting us know how bad things were when they were bad, you took on all the stress yourself and I’m just now realizing how hard that was. Not once growing up did I ever think we were poor and in danger of losing our home or having utilities shut off even though now I know we were. You took that all on yourself along with my father and never let it show to us kids, you let us be kids.
While I was mad that you hid your illness from us for so long (until it was to late) I now realize why you did it. You’re whole life you put others ahead of yourself and you feared that not working and losing health insurance would mean your husband (our father) wouldn’t be able to get the care he needed. Right until the end you put everyone else ahead of yourself, I only wish I had noticed you were sick sooner.
Finally thank you for being a fighter, when given a 5% chance of surviving the infections and health issues after your cancer surgery you not only came home but fought to be with use for 3 more years even though you were in obvious discomfort and going through chemo and radiation.
You made me the person I am today, I hope I have and will continue to live up to your expectations. Thank you so much for being you and we miss you every day. | https://medium.com/@RealStreicher/thank-you-mom-53ff5942fc0e | ['Jimmy Streich'] | 2019-07-15 13:27:38.522000+00:00 | ['Medical', 'Family', 'Love', 'Cancer'] |
Trading metals | Trading metals
Summary: When trading metals online, there are two markets to consider: the silver and gold markets. These two markets are offered by forex brokers as well on top of the classical currency pairs and offer tremendous opportunities to find profitable trades.
Because the brokerage industry is so competitive, forex brokers are trying hard to differentiate from one another. This is being done either through the overall products that are being offered (currency pairs, metals, CFD’s — contracts for difference, indexes, etc.,) or through breakthrough in execution, technology, spreads, or both.
There are not many things a broker like CornèrTrader can add to make a competitive offer as the overall products being offered are more or less the same. What makes a difference in these instances is the customer satisfaction and how clients in general are being handled.
Coming back to trading metals online, gold and silver are traded the most even though some brokers are offering some other options like palladium, copper, etc. The reason why gold and silver are so popular comes from the fact that they are liquid against the US dollar.
In other words, there is always a counterpart at the other side of the trade and no matter the size of your trading, these markets will take it with not a single issue. Moreover, the supply and demand chain is not that short-ended as in the case of other metals offered for trading and this let’s fundamental factors like economic news to be incorporated when trading them.
The symbols for trading gold and silver are XAUUSD in the case of gold and XAGUSD in the case of silver. They are being both denominated in US dollars and this is normal as the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency.
Traders should pay a lot of attention when trading the two metals online as there are many things to consider.
Firstly, the digits in the case of the XAUUSD are different than the ones to be found in the silver pair. Therefore, a classical quotation for the XAUUSD will show, for example, 1312.05, so two digits, while the one for the XAGUSD will always have four digits, like 18.9654.
This is important because the difference between the ask and bid price, or the swap, is different from the two metals and sometimes it may make sense to trade gold and other times silver is recommended.
Secondly, always look for the correlation degree between the two metals. Taking a long trade on gold on a US dollar news and a long trade on silver on the same US dollar news is like taking two trades in the same direction on gold. This is overtrading and the two metals are not supposed to be traded like that.
The idea is to find a trading platform that allows to plot charts on top of one another, chose a common time frame and simply plot the two metals to see if they are correlated or not. If the correlation degree is quite high (and it is), look to trade the two metals when they diverge on a common US dollar news. This is the only way they could be traded in different directions at the same time, as they will tend to strive to get back getting correlated again.
Thirdly, use oscillators to find divergences when trading the two metals online. It is most likely that divergences will be common on the two charts. However, from time to time, gold may diverge and silver not, or the other way around, using the same conditions for both of them.
What to do in such a situation? Simple look at the correlated charts and trade the pair that is not confirming the divergence in the direction of the divergence seen on the other pair.
Silver is being considered gold’s little sister pair and often the returns of the two metals are different. For example, if for some reason both metals are bullish and move to the upside, one may jump 1% and the other one 3%. They moved in the same direction alright, but the size of the moves was different.
Last but not least, the idea behind trading silver and gold is to try to avoid trading them at the same time. This means to avoid opening a position on both of them at the same time, not to avoid trading them in the same direction.
Let me give you an example. Assuming both gold and silver are bearish. It makes no sense to trade both of them on the short side at the same time as it is like taking two different trades, at the same time, in the same direction. This is overtrading and a trader should avoid this by all means.
What a trader needs to do is to take the trade on one of the two metals, either gold or silver, and then wait for market to reach the target. If this is not happening and market goes against the original trade, the thing to do is to short the other one with the idea that a better entry has been found.
Such an approach is extremely popular in the US where regulators are forcing brokers to use the FIFO (First In First Out Rule). Using the example from above, instead of taking two trades on the same metal and then being forced to respect the FIFO when it comes to closing them, one should take a trade on the gold market and another on the silver one to avoid such troubles.
From a technical point of view there is no difference when trading metals online or trading a currency pair, and this is one of the reasons why forex brokers are offering metals to be traded. Same indicators can be used, with the same interpretation, and it is just like trading a currency pair.
The main difference comes from a fundamental perspective as metals are influenced by other things that are not necessarily influencing the currency market, like supply and demand and safe haven status. | https://medium.com/@dwaynebuzzell/trading-metals-4c142c212717 | ['Dwayne Buzzell'] | 2016-10-14 14:28:31.655000+00:00 | ['Trading', 'Stock Market', 'Forex'] |
Alexey Navalny is a secret agent of the Federal Security Service of Russia | He deceived all Russians, penetrated the circles of the opposition and secretly destroyed it. The greatest agent of the Federal Security Service of Russia Alexey Navalny.
Circumstances that must be mentioned about Alexey Navalny.
1) His father Anatoly Navalny (as Wikipedia writes) is a military man, who works in Moscow;
2) The journalist of “Current Time” Timur Olevsky was fired for telling about the connection of Yulia Navalnaya’s father with the special services.
3) Russian state media such as “Russia 1”, Channel One, NTV, and also Vladimir Putin tell about Alexey Navalny that he is a foreign agent, works for the West etc. Don’t you think they are misleading the Russians? What if they deliberately create the image of Navalny as a foreign agent to cover up his work for the Federal Security Service? It seems to me that this is exactly what happens.
4) Navalny’s neighbor is an agent of Federal Security Service of Russia as Alexey told in the investigation, which was published on his Youtube channel. He spoke of him as his enemy. But what if this neighbor lives next to Navalny to cover and protect him?
5) Putin does not pronounce Navalny’s name. What if he does it on purpose so as not to pronounce the name of his colleague from the special services?
6) Since 2011, all opposition has mysteriously disappeared in Russia. There was nothing left of her. There are no rallies, and even if they are held, they are ineffectual, there are no alternatives in the elections, Putin is re-elected, the Constitution is changing, etc. Maybe this is all the merit of Navalny and without him the opposition would have achieved success long ago?
7) “To defeat evil, I must become a greater evil” wisdom says. What if this is the case: in order to defeat the opposition of Russia, the Federal Security Service need to send their own person into it, who will destroy everything there?
8) What if the agents of the Federal Security Service of Russia flew for years to the cities Navalny flew to, because they covered him and carried out their assignments, etc?
Why should the Federal Security Service agents chase Navalny in different cities for 3.5 years when his neighbor, according to Alexey says, is an agent? He could have just poisoned Navalny in his own house.
Without a doubt, Alexey Navalny is an agent of the Federal Security Service of Russia who specializes in secretly infiltrating the opposition and destroying it from inside. | https://medium.com/@stivenkenington/alexey-navalny-is-a-secret-agent-of-the-federal-security-service-of-russia-87135bd62ef6 | [] | 2020-12-22 20:01:36.617000+00:00 | ['Investigation', 'Alexey Navalny', 'Oppositionist', 'Russia'] |
My history and cartoonist journey | I was born in Florida, but I found it too hot, so at 4yrs old, I moved my parents to Rhode Island. My favorite pastime was drawing, and in the sixth grade, I discovered my real talent potential. A classmate of mine told me he would pay me one dollar to draw a picture of our teacher.
Because it was a lot of money, I rushed to my task. He was happy, I was rich, and the teacher, who immediately recognized herself, was furious! She must have been impressed because that same day, I got to meet the principal.
Junior High School was where I really started my cartooning career. I drew for the Junior High School monthly newspaper. At the time, my friend, Rob, and I shared a paper route, which is where I dreamed about becoming a professional cartoonist.
We talked about it all the time, but he was very negative about the idea. He often said I would never get published, and I decided to prove him wrong. With a handful of cartoons strapped to my bicycle rack, I rode three miles to my local newspaper, the Warwick Beacon.
I walked into the lobby as if I knew what the hell I was doing (I didn’t). In fact, it was probably my stupidity and tenacity that got me the opportunity to meet the publisher, John Howell, without an appointment. He graciously lied to me and said I had some talent, and if I would polish up a few cartoons, he’d be glad to publish them for me. I went home and “polished” away.
I returned a week later with some polished cartoons that I thought were funny, and to my surprise, he agreed to publish them. Apparently, the readers shared my sense of humor because within a month, my comic feature, Andy’s Antics, was established.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was very fortunate to get considered for publication at that age. With a deranged sense of confidence, I submitted my comic strips to more newspapers, magazines, and syndicates. The Providence Journal awarded me with the title “Best Of” for [years], which blew my mind.
Being published in the Providence Journal and Warwick Beacon created even more opportunities for me, such as drawing a billboard for the number one radio station in Rhode Island, 92ProFM.
And illustrating a children’s book with a former cheerleader for the New England Patriots.
In the late ’90s, I moved back to Florida. Unfortunately, “life got in the way” of my drawing for a while. After several years I felt the urge to begin drawing again. I drew editorial cartoons part-time for the Scripps owned Stuart News, Port St. Lucie News, and Vero Beach Press Journal.
The exposure from the newspapers opened up more opportunities, such as creating cartoons for the annual ArtsFest and working with clients like the YMCA.
Florida was still very hot and occasionally had these bad storms called hurricanes, so in 2008 I moved to Atlanta, Georgia. As the newspaper industry declines, traditional opportunities for cartoonists are virtually non-existent. Fortunately, the internet and social media make it possible for cartoonists and creative people to share their work with the world.
That’s where I am today — drawing cartoons on virtual paper to be consumed digitally. I hope you enjoy them, and if they make you laugh, I hope you consider buying me a coffee, or purchasing some merchandise. At the very least, please share them with your friends.
Want even more access to my work? Join my community on Patreon, where I share the good, bad, and the ugly of cartooning. | https://medium.com/andy-anderson-cartoons/my-history-and-cartoonist-journey-afb87d06d65a | ['Andy Anderson'] | 2020-01-26 19:50:26.838000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Comics', 'Cartoonist', 'Cartoon'] |
Weight Loss | Weight Loss
Meticore is an overall peculiarity in the normal weight reduction supplement industry (that is esteemed at more than $24 billion every year in 2020) due to its morning digestion setting off fixings that work to upgrade low center internal heat levels to ideal levels, considering quick fat consuming properties to work at expanding cell action normally. Known as a spearheading answer for solid digestion support, Meticore has as of late turned into the subject of stunning discussion that all shoppers should be completely mindful of prior to turning out to be genuine Meticore clients today. Since Meticore is the very first classification making supplement that is explicitly intended to target slow digestion using eight high profile fixings, it has prompted a ton of awful and tremendously dreadful events to work out as phony Meticore pills and trick protests to emerge. Due to the undisputed Meticore weight reduction recipe’s capacity to expand the temperature of your inner cells as the essential advantage, there have been a great deal of modest knockoffs and deceitful fakes to surface online trying to bait in clueless shoppers who might somehow not have the foggiest idea about any better. Fortunately, you are doing your own due persistence and will peruse this Meticore audit in full to not just comprehend the reason why it’s the top selling weight reduction digestion sponsor on the planet in 2021, yet in addition see the feasible alerts as a whole and purchaser be careful provisos required not to encounter negative incidental effects, have no unconditional promise nor any straightforwardness as far as testing the elements for immaculateness, strength and generally speaking quality.
Meticore is a morning digestion trigger that is detailed to target low center internal heat level aftereffects, for example, metabolic lull, weight gain and a large group of other imperfect wellbeing issues. No other commercial center on the web, Meticore is at the highest point of the fat consuming weight reduction supplementation diagram in 2021 because of its select elements of eight unique super food supplements that have some expertise in raising center internal heat level normally.
Furthermore as many definitely know at this point, weight reduction supplements are extremely common inside the broad enhancement industry that did more than $24 billion dollars in 2020 alone. It isn’t difficult to get why; north of 70 million individuals all around the world experience the ill effects of weight, while another 30 million are viewed as overweight. What’s more heftiness is a serious issue, by the same token. Being overweight accompanies many negative secondary effects that can prompt untimely maturing and a large number of other tricky issues to emerge. Certain individuals who are large may foster Type 2 diabetes or coronary illness, two sicknesses with moderately high death rates. To put things all the more plainly: getting in shape for certain people is unquestionably an immeasurably significant issue.
Individuals in the conventional clinical industry offer a couple of primary perspectives with regards to the most effective way for people to shed pounds and become better. The fundamental way of thinking behind most weight control plans is the idea of a “caloric shortfall.” A caloric deficiency happens when you devour less calories during the day than you consume. No compelling reason to pressure — you consume a set number of calories consistently simply by breathing, processing, and existing. However, two different ways that individuals increment their caloric consume while diminishing admission are abstaining from excessive food intake and working out.
We should make one thing clear from the earliest starting point: practicing and eating less junk food reliably is the main ensured technique for shedding pounds. Be that as it may, we don’t fault perusers who are baffled with these exceptionally essential weight reduction methodologies. Truth be told, a few dietitians are starting to disclose to their customers that eating regimen and exercise alone probably won’t be the way to supportable and great weight reduction.
One extra component in the accomplishment of any weight reduction routine might be the digestion. Our digestion is a substantial cycle that fundamentally decides how quick (or how lethargic) we consume calories. Certain individuals have an elevated ability to burn calories; they can eat the entire day and exercise little yet get thinner in the long haul. Tragically, the converse is additionally evident. Certain individuals have particularly sluggish digestion systems, and eating only a tad cycle of food can kill their odds of making the desired caloric shortage.
There are one or two different ways that individuals with slow digestion systems can attempt to accelerate this significant body work. Working out consistently and drinking a lot of water are two regular choices that have been demonstrated to be viable for some buyers. Be that as it may, numerous people all around the world are additionally going to enhancements to attempt to work on the adequacy of their weight reduction schedules.
Meticore is one enhancement in this hazardous present day weight reduction recipe industry. Like we said above, weight reduction supplements are inconceivably normal in the bigger enhancement market. In any case, this doesn’t imply that all enhancements are really powerful; many trick recipes exist inside the elective wellbeing industry. It’s difficult to say whether or not Meticore is a compelling weight reduction arrangement without investigating its fixings, the science behind it, and the organization producing it.
Is Meticore a helpful weight reduction help? Or on the other hand is it one of the many trick items pervading the advanced elective wellbeing industry? Our aide should give you all the information you want to settle on an educated choice with regards to Meticore and its makers.
What is Meticore?
The center way of thinking behind Meticore is that the body’s center internal heat level is a gigantic supporter of “unexplained weight gain.” As clarified by the web specialists’, the center internal heat level is one more method for alluding to the “center temperature of your inward cells.” The exploration referred to by Meticore observed that a low center internal heat level can add to a more slow digestion. As we explained in the above area, a more slow digestion will regularly make it more hard for you to get in shape, in any event, when you work out as hard as possible and diet with high consistency.
Utilizing a mix of generally normal fixings, the Meticore equation purportedly assists with expanding your center internal heat level. Accordingly, clients of Meticore could possibly truly work on their advancement toward a better and more manageable weight. The authority Meticore site is loaded up with convincing stories and engaging logical realities, uncovering that individuals utilizing the enhancement can “supercharge” their digestion systems.
We were dazzled with the fundamental characteristics of the Meticore recipe. The site asserts that it is totally normal, veggie lover well disposed, liberated from GMOs, “totally protected,” not resilience shaping, and liberated from all energizers. A few buyers may at first rebate the significance of keeping away from energizers in their weight reduction supplements. We trust this to be an error. Energizers quite often accompany their own craving smothering aftereffects. Yet, the disadvantage is that energizers can cause resilience and reliance, making them difficult to stop, particularly later broad use.
Meticore is unique. The enhancement obviously contains just normal fixings that have been experimentally demonstrated to assist increment with coring internal heat level and amplify the proficiency of the digestion. Moreover, the site likewise guarantees that this enhancement is bundled inside an office that has been endorsed by the FDA and given the Good Manufacturing Practices, or GMP, characterization. Fabricating offices for Meticore work inside the U.S.
The Meticore site is loaded up with moderately reasonable data about both the item and its employments. The makers of Meticore committed a few pages of web duplicate to responding to the absolute most significant inquiries that shoppers probably have about their brand name supplement. Specifically, seriously love the site’s admonition that clients who shed pounds too quick should diminish the recurrence of their utilization of Meticore.
Meticore is accessible on the authority item site, and ought to never be purchased on other internet based retailers like Amazon, EBay or different stores. We suggest purchasing straightforwardly from the Meticore website to keep away from tricks and phony pills flowing on the Internet, for a couple of reasons that we’ll clarify more meticulously during the areas beneath. For the present, perusers ought to have the option to comprehend the fundamental reason behind this digestion helping supplement. It utilizes a wide range of fixings to work on the digestion systems of clients by raising their center internal heat level. The enhancement is being advertised essentially on the web, and its assembling cycle guarantees just the most nature of fixings bundled in a safe and GMP office based here in the United States of America.
Meticore Ingredients
Honestly, we don’t anticipate that you should purchase any enhancement without a careful clarification of its fixings. We don’t by the same token. Our article group comprehends that the single greatest element in the viability and authenticity of a given recipe is the fixings that it employments. Beside the actual fixings, we’re keen on organizations who unveil the exact measurements of each compound found inside their protected equations.
Weight reduction equations are normal, yet it’s hard to track down weight reduction supplements with obviously expressed fixing records. We scoured the web to present to you the most forward-thinking data conceivable with regards to the extraordinary equation being promoted by the organization behind Meticore.
Here is a nitty gritty rundown of Meticore’s center fixings:
African Mango Extract. This normal weight reduction fixing is regularly called by its logical name, Irvingia gabonensis. Supplements all around the weight reduction industry utilize this normal regular concentrate, which has been shown by some logical investigations to assist individuals with getting in shape speedier and better.
Turmeric. Just one review referred to on the Meticore site joins curcumin turmeric to weight reduction, yet the relationship between the two is grounded inside mainstream researchers. There’s abundant proof that curcuma
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Mail me for details “[email protected]” | https://medium.com/@businesswme88/weight-loss-6a219a53aa74 | ['Kashiram Gattani'] | 2021-12-30 23:41:41.493000+00:00 | ['Workout', 'Gymlife', 'Weightloss Fitness', 'Healthy Lifestyle', 'Weightloss Journey'] |
Rallye do Vidreiro 2020 | Hi there, we are amplified creations® and we are a creative team of creators (yay for redundancy). | https://medium.com/ampautomotive/rallye-do-vidreiro-2020-9aa8f3db902e | ['Amplified Creations'] | 2020-10-12 10:46:38.802000+00:00 | ['Rally', 'Automotive', 'Rallye', 'Cars', 'Photography'] |
Indie Web3 Fashion Collector DAO 02: Copyright Cartel: 0 (CC:0) | The next archetypal buy side DAO launching under the Patrons Platform and is… Copyright Cartel: 0 (CC:0).
See the full documentation for the DAO here.
View it live on the Patrons platform here.
Stay up to date on Twitter here.
The Copyright Cartel: 0 (CC:0) DAO is a dedicated Web3 Creative Commons DAO, focusing specifically on indie fashion and other creative derivative markets for cultivating well capitalised open source.
This DAO exists to accelerate the entire creative world to the long overdue, very near future when control over creative works no longer ruin so many lives. Ultimately, this is due to the abuses Copyright Cartels and the fake promise that a certificate on paper of permission from them will mean any more than pennies for original creators.
Ultimately, information wants to be free, and web3 allows for new models of monetisation when creative people can do whatever the hell that they want with each others ideas.
Finally backing our ideals with real profit.
This DAO was instigated as a collaborative effort between F₃Manifesto and TECHN0M0RPH — two indie web3 fashion designer realms.
Both realms previously made a commitment for all content produced and released under their labels to be completely CC0 i.e. anyone can do whatever the fuck they want with any of it.
Core Activities
Every week at least 10 creative works and items will be open sourced to the Meta Source Vaults — either items that are produced internally by or in collaboration with the DAO, or items collected that are already CC0 compatible (Changing the flow of capital).
Fashion and other creative derivates will be actively generated from CC0 content and then sold as NFTs.
Efforts will be made to allocate resources from the DAO Treasury to buy and open up the rights to previously closed source content, files and information i.e. FBX source file etc.
The DAO will buy, collect and elevate creators in web3 that are fully embracing IP freedom through their released works.
Educational content will be continuously released by the DAO about IP in web3 and new creative worlds without walled gardens.
Join the DAO
Purchase a membership NFT from the DIGITALAX Patrons platform here.
Each membership NFT is priced at $10,100 USD equivalent in ETH. There is no limit to the amount of membership NFTs that can be bought. Each NFT offers governance and coordination in the DAO across voting and treasury market allocations and activity.
Contribute to the DAO through a CC:0 NFT Auction or Other Sale Event.
Besides outright purchasing a membership NFT, and in order to cultivate more artists and creators joining this cause, membership to the DAO can also be attained through a creator or other backer organising and manifesting a fashion related Creative Commons project, whereby the final creative piece is auctioned off or sold as an NFT, and the proceeds from the sale go towards the DAO treasury.
This federated model of countless DAOs learning from and mutually assisting each other through hypergrowth network effects is far better than any one DAO to rule them all, let alone one DAO to collect mostly the old symbols of corporate luxury, wealth, and power (which is unfortunately all that we have today).
Stay tuned as more collector DAOs flood the indie web3 fashion space! | https://medium.com/@digitalax/indie-web3-fashion-collector-dao-02-copyright-cartel-0-cc-0-a084c5028f62 | [] | 2021-12-30 17:48:28.319000+00:00 | ['Web3', 'Web3 Fashion', 'Metaverse', 'Dao', 'Open Source'] |
This is a super simplification of a complex issue | This is a super simplification of a complex issue
When a freshly divorced person is asked this question I wonder what would take it up by 1…
A guy who has just been in an accident what does he want to take it up by 1…
A president who has just lost the elections what does he want to take it up by 1…
Interesting ideas any one… . | https://medium.com/@drtusharagrawal/this-is-a-super-simplification-of-a-complex-issue-215882c9389a | ['Dr Tushar Agrawal Orthopaedic Surgeon'] | 2020-11-27 14:48:20.712000+00:00 | ['Elections', 'Divorce', 'Happiness', 'President', 'Accident'] |
Best Branding and Logo Design Examples for Inspiration 133 | In most cases, a logo is something personal. Some people who start a business only think of creating something personal. So, the name is personal. It might carry the owner’s name. As a result, the logo will be the same. There are many instances when people create a business without branding in mind. The branding part comes in later when they know that they can already afford it. And it is usually done by a professional brand design company.
In any case, both still work with the right branding principles. These principles are connected to the idea that your business has to stand out. That is why you have to know that logo design and branding are very important to amass revenues and profits. Your business success depends on how a logo design is created and how it impacts on the branding aspect.
If the design is not good, the branding will be affected negatively. The branding will get confused because it does not fit in. Again, its marketing efforts will be affected negatively, too. If the logo design is really good, then you will attract more business people. Customers, in general, find the logo attractive. As a result, they will probably find a way to get services from it.
If you are going to start a business, then think carefully. You will need to consider your budget. You also have to consider various aspects of the business. If you do not know how to create a logo, you can ask a skilled person for help. You will also need to find a good designer.
Another thing about logos is that they are small. They are usually small. They are also filled with some colors. These are just some of the elements that you have to consider when making a logo. So, patience is needed if you want to create a logo. You have to know more about these.
The logo design that you have will lead your branding efforts. If you do not create a logo design that is attractive to your target market, your business will not succeed. So, you have to know how to create an attractive logo design. It is a creative process more than a technical one. Just go ahead and use your imagination or consider hiring an expert logo design agency.
In any case, the logo should be the face of the business. It should be out there. So, you have to create a logo that can stand out in the crowd. It can make a statement about the business’s services and its products.
The logo needs to have your personal touch. The business is yours so you want the logo to have your name on it. You also have to know that no matter what the circumstances are, you have to stand out. That is why you have to remember to have the colors you really like.
When you have an attractive logo, you are likely to be successful in amassing revenues and profits. You will also likely have success in increasing your company’s brand awareness by using infographics. A memorable, well-designed infographic is a highly effective marketing technique that easily and powerfully conveys advertising messages and memorability to consumers. Marketing is as simple as creating an attractive infographic which can be used to convey information to a target market about certain products and services with the long-term goal of increasing sales results in the future. This may include a wide range of marketing materials such as infographics, white papers, eBooks, brochures, free reports, and videos. | https://theymakedesign.com/best-branding-and-logo-design-examples-for-inspiration-133-4ce6125ec5c3 | ['They Make Design'] | 2021-05-21 22:38:55.363000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Branding', 'Inspiration', 'Logo Design', 'Visual Design'] |
Sheen | I was here. I mean my body was at least, or whatever remained of this battered extra-terrestrial husk anyways; I mean, mentally I was somewhere else. Greener pastures, rolling hills, and smirking cows; I mean I was back home. I was here, and I was home. Home.
A four-lettered word that now, meant something entirely different. A four by four cell. The magic number four; Abbu’s four ‘o’clock news; Moray’s four gold bangles; the four little whiskers decorating my grandmother’s chin; Gul Bano’s four brocade saris, tucked away in some forgotten part of her dowry suitcase; the four little freckles imprinted on my wrist by the Great Maker himself. Four. My little Zakia turns four tomorrow. Expelled out of my swelling folds four years ago, unwanted and unloved. She latched onto my finger forcefully, as if to tell me that there’s no going back now. No going back at all. Only a bleak, pokey enclosure to look forward to forever; or whatever remained of our cursory existence anyways.
Named after her great grandmother, the Pashtun lady who was rumoured to have once poisoned ten men for plotting to murder her father over some land disputes, as men do; Zakia was every bit as fierce and as independent as her predecessor. I watched her as she slept peacefully, her chest rising and falling like the gentle ebb of the waves in the sea. I’ve only ever been to the sea once; when Abbu was visiting a distant relative in Karachi. The city itself; an odd amalgamation of stink and commotion; friendly wizened rickshaw drivers, women with hair swishing behind their back, low-slung jeans and the complete and utter lack of fabric on their heads. I was both fascinated and horrified at the same time. I still remember the first time I felt the water creep up to my feet; the sea washing out the sand between my toes as it yawned and stretched out to the endless blue horizon. Bluer than my eyes; blue like Zakia’s. Sheen, the Pashto word for blue. ‘Sheen‘ the Arabic letter ‘ش’.
I never had any formal education, since Moray thought I was better off rolling the dough into the shape of a flattened moon. Soft embers would often lick the edges of my creation; I’d often forget about it and the burnt ends would fall off. Moray was disappointed by my failure in this particular department, whereas Abbu couldn’t care less. Abbu would sit me down, his arms overflowing with books; his bespectacled gaze following each letter carefully, tracing out the foreign letters of a language unknown to himself and those before him. But he was intent on learning English. ‘Bachay, there’s just something about those tall white men, the way they carry themselves. Frightening yet impressive at the same time,’ he would say.
My father, Qismat Khan, was no ordinary man himself. Born in the cradle of a deep valley surrounded by jagged peaks, Qismat Khan’s cries pierced the winter skies in the year of 1959. Qismat, an ironic name for a man plagued by bad luck all his life. Labelled as a heretic for his odd, unfamiliar ways such as choosing to home-school Gul Bano and myself, trotting around clean-shaven in a land where manliness was defined by the length of one’s beard and selling feminine products for a living. My Moray rarely stepped out of the house in case she was recognized, and shamed by the neighbourhood ladies for not knocking some sense into her husband. She started to veil her face and only sauntered outside when the sky would darken.
I did miss Abbu. I missed his dear, wrinkled hands, the lines forming at the corner of eyes, crinkling up whenever he smiled. I missed his deep-bellied raucous laughter, his timed burps, and his broken glasses. His pompous mannerisms, his colonial love affair with the ‘tall-white men’, and his constant banter with Moray: to the point that she would get exasperated and not talk to him for days. I yearned to hear his booming laugh echo and bounce off these brick walls so that I could wrap Zakia, and myself, in its warmth.
Zakia will never know her grandfather. She will never know Moray or her Tror Gul Bano. Gul Bano, the apple of my parents’ eye, the sweetest little darling with curling hair and a dimpled smile; was married off to a local landlord whose only two passions in life were women and whiskey. Sadly, she bore the brunt of it, when he’d come home drunk, swaying side to side and smelling of sweat and musk. The night would often end in a verbal spat and Gul Bano’s body being subjected to almost any weapon within his reach (on good days it was his chappal and on bad days it was the hot iron rod). Gul Bano’s back started to resemble the map of our village, deep ridges etched into her back — a reminder of the price she pays to exist. The last time I saw Gul Bano, she was with a child. Her belly bursting like a ripened apricot, ruddy cheeks, and glistening skin. Her eyes, however, told a different story.
I shook myself free from the memories — as it does not do to dwell on the bygones — and got up to perform the ablution. The word of God was thankfully still fresh on my tongue. I let the dirty water trickle down my arms and legs, three times for each limb as God had desired it. That was the other magic number — Three. It had been three days since we ate any proper food. Our captors were generous enough to slip some bread under the little gap between the filthy floor and the steel railings. But their generosity only extended so far to keep us alive. My little bundle of joy and I, befriending ghosts and mice behind these impenetrable walls. I gave up on the idea of freedom long ago. Death was my freedom. Death was Zakia’s freedom too. Zakia was unperturbed about her surroundings, as this was the only life she had ever known and will know. I sneak a glance at her dear little body, so young and yet so frail as if a whisper itself would topple her over. Her drooping lashes and her heart-shaped face was all hers and hers only. The only thing that set us both apart was that she was many shades darker than I was. No one in my family or extended relatives possessed such golden brilliance, but I knew it was reminiscent of the man who had fathered her.
The thing is when you are shut out from the outside world; when you are stripped of your dignity, your self-respect, and every material shred clinging to your body — all you are left with are memories. Memories that you desperately try to swallow down, but they keep rising at the back of your throat like bile until you are forced to spit it out. The after-taste is always bad, always lingering until the next day. The process is exhaustive but it continues. Whatever it is, the memory of that night continually haunts me. The peals of laughter. The smell of mehndi on my feet. The soft beating of the drum; my mother glassy-eyed and sniffing; my father looking self-important and — Him. Everything blurred and faded into the background when he walked in. Not at all young and gangly, this was a shrivelled face with a permanent scowl etched onto it. A towering conifer among a sea of neem trees. I looked towards Abbu with some confusion and all I got was a pained expression. Gul Bano was weeping and painting my lips with her pinkie. I realized at once that I had been sold. They called it a ‘business transaction’ in English, I remembered from one of the many lectures with Abbu.
My prince charming was a balding man of seventy. He was not seventeen, as the tales Moray had regaled me with. He was not handsome, and most of all, he did not look happy. ‘Keep your eyes lowered, you common whore’ were the first words he blessed our union with. After that, all I remember was seeing red. I remember thinking shamefully, that The Great Maker had probably seen it all and Moray’s word echoed into my ears, ‘A dutiful wife is always yielding, always agreeable no matter what. That was the way of your grandmother and her grandmother, and that will be your way too.’ I never understood why Abbu sold me. Was it pressure from the village elders or was his business in trouble? How much was I promised for? How much was I worth? A few hundred rupees? Maybe a thousand? I will never know. Our staunch traditional laws prevent us from questioning. No matter how dear Gul Bano and I were to Abbu and Moray; no matter how dear any daughter of this stern valley is to her family, the day of her betrothal is the day when she dies. My marriage to Shahbaz Khan was the day I died.
I hear a groaning sound and turn immediately to my right, to see Zakia waking. “Moray? Moray are you there?”
“Yes, my dear, I am here.” I wipe the tears from the corners of her eyes, which are threatening to spill. I wash her face and wet her hair with the pail of water left here by Shahbaz Khan’s men while reciting incantations that I remember from Moray’s dusty old copy of Quran. Gul Bano and I used to giggle while rolling the unfamiliar Arabic words in our mouths; Abbu’s perplexity at the barrage of questioning which ensued after reading, and Moray’s disapproving looks. God, according to her, was a malevolent being that was to be respected out of fear, at all times. We were not allowed to go and play with our friends outside until each of us recited the entirety of the Ayat-ul-Kursi (The Throne Verse) and the four ‘Quls’ to her. Moray was all about tough love; girls should cover their bodies with a chador, girls shouldn’t be too loud, girls should be homely and feminine, etc. But we never held it against her. Underneath that rock-solid exterior was someone who only feared for her daughters’ futures amidst these harsh landscapes. Too bad, since one turned out to become a punching bag for her husband, and the other ended up behind bars — for birthing a daughter.
He made it clear since day one, that he wanted a boy. I was four months pregnant then, but it didn’t show. What did show, however, were the reddened wrists and the purple bruise forming near one of my eyelids. “My Lord,” this is how he liked me to address him, “This is not in my hands, only the Almighty can choose to bless my belly with whatever he likes — male or female.” It was one of those rare instances where I spoke up and ended up regretting it severely. I still remember his hands encircled around my neck, his breath heavy upon my face; “Know this and know now slut,” this was how he liked to address me. “If you bring me anything less than a boy, I will skin you alive and throw you to the dogs!” He flung me towards the wall and stomped out of the room. I remember silently weeping and falling into prayer, begging to The Great-Maker to grant me a son. The day I went into labour, felt like the day of Reckoning itself. Female anatomy was beyond me, and all I knew was that some village doctor was yanking a child out of my body. It felt sort of like the exorcisms you’d hear about. Removing the jinni from someone’s body. Zakia’s birth felt exactly like that. An exorcism.
I hated her at first sight. I felt like The Great-Maker was playing a practical joke on me. Maybe the angels in heaven were laughing too. I wanted to throw her into the flowing streams nearby and forget that she ever existed. I could tell Shahbaz Khan that the baby was stillborn. Yes, I could do that. No one would know except the maids who I’d pay in my wedding gold to keep mum about it, and the doctor herself. No one. Except that, when the baby opened her eyes and cooed at me, all my defences, all my fears melted away. Here was a being that I created. Her incompetent father was only a donor, but I housed her for nine-months in my belly. I felt her kicking in my stomach at the odd hours of the night. I was immensely proud of myself for doing such a good job, but I worried about her too. Zakia’s nose was exactly like mine, it would grow into a pointed hooked nose much like the maternal side of her family. Her hair was a mousey shade of brown, wispy curls springing from her small head. Her skin was like Shahbaz Khan’s — deep tan. The only thing that would ever distinguish her from me.
“Moray, I am hungry. Can’t we eat something besides stale bread and water today? I want daal!”
Interrupted from my reverie, I broke off a piece of old bread and handed it to her. “Eat up child, daal is only on Sundays, remember?” I was lying. I didn’t know if it was on Sundays, Wednesdays, or any days at all. The last time Shahbaz Khan felt nice enough to slip some leftovers was probably a month ago. Time is a luxury which those behind bars do not possess. Time is defined by hours here, in solitary confinement. How many hours had it been since we had been thrown into this dark room? Since Zakia was four months old. I tried counting on my fingers but failed. Abbu’s educational methods never extended all the way to mathematics, so I could only count the rupee notes. That too, only came in handy when buying sweets for Eid from the local grocery shop. In Zakia’s world, grocery shops are a thing of fables. I allowed myself some wishful thinking and wondered if we were to ever escape this hell-hole, how I would introduce Zakia to things she had never experienced or seen. First up, the gushing streams. The icy-cold glacial remains, flowing down from the highest peaks, snaking their way into the ditches and wells near the village. I would make her drink Coca-Cola, the nectar of the capitalist gods residing in the big city. I would show her chukars that frequent Zuleika’s courtyard; the smell of the damp earth after a heavy shower; the rose orchid after the spring equinox, and most of all — I would take her home and introduce her to Abbu and Moray.
But would they want me back at all? After I had brought shame to the family honour by falling in love, while on the run? Yes, love. The very emotion that sweeps us off our feet, lifts us into the clouds and leaves us suspended there. Coming down is the hardest part. Escaping with Zakia in tow was easy. Getting mauled by a village dog (probably one of Shahbaz Khan’s) was easy. Surviving by eating leaves and sipping water for nourishment, was easy. Sleeping in deep trenches and staying out of danger’s way was easy. Throwing Shahbaz Khan’s men off the scent was easy. Falling in love was not.
I never saw it coming. It was a short, but sweet affair. Love was unheard of in our village; the concept of love-based marriages was alien, deplorable. Moray was too shy to explain the idea of love to us, Abbu too distant. Zuleika was our only source of information on this taboo subject, because of all the dramas and Bollywood movies she watched on TV. Heroines fainting into the arms of their lovers, damsels in distress being rescued by handsome, chivalrous men, and the occasional, sinful peck on the lips. She explained all of this to Gul Bano, who in turn explained it to me. I was shocked at first, horrified at my tender age of twelve that such a thing could exist. “Moray, are you and Abbu lovers?” Moray looked at me with reddening cheeks and an angry gaze, “Who is filling your mind with such evil, unislamic ideas?” She twisted my arm until I was forced to blurt out the truth. “It was Zuleika! Zuleika told Gul Bano and she told me! She says she saw it on the TV.” Moray let go of my arm, “Don’t you dare ask me such despicable questions ever! Love!” she scoffed. “You are too young and too innocent to know such things, I will give Gul Sanga a good talking to and tell her to go and take care of her corrupted daughter. Love indeed! Huh!”
I heeded Moray’s advice all my life. I steered clear of it, married a seventy-year-old tyrant, got pregnant, gave birth, and ran away from home. Going by this logic, nothing should come hurtling my way then, right? Wrong. I had been wrong for most of my life, and I was wrong once again. He saw me by the stream, cupping my hands and quenching my thirst. At first, he made a sound as if to clear his throat. Quickly remembering my Moray, I jumped to drape my chador around my head and cover my face. I grabbed Zakia and stood at a great distance from him. “If you touch me or my child, I swear by Allah, I will scream.” Using Allah’s name as a defensive stance worked quite well most of the times — people would often be reminded of their sins at the very moment, and stop what they were/would be doing in order to avoid pissing off the Lord of the Worlds. Instead, this man just smiled at me. It was a nice smile, but I wasn’t used to nice things so I viewed him with suspicion. “Relax, lady, I am not going to harm you. I am just passing by your village to visit my folks. What are you doing here out in the open field, with no man by your side? Where is your husband?” I told him that for someone who is “just passing by” he asked a lot of questions. He laughed and I couldn’t help but notice that it was just like Abbu’s laugh — deep guffaws brimming with warmth. He looked no more than in his mid-twenties, dark brown hair, and grey eyes. He had this kindness about him that I had never witnessed while living with Shahbaz Khan. To think that there were other men besides my Abbu who were capable of being nice was disconcerting to me.
His name was Rasul Shah. He was the grocer’s nephew, the one we used to go to collect our Eid candy from. He took us under his wing and helped us flee the village. We escaped to his town, where we stayed with his sister and grandmother ‘Nazo’. He was a proper gentleman: always keeping us at an arm’s length out of respect for his chastity, and mine. Chastity was an ephemeral concept in my case. Here I was; a victim of marital rape, pregnant with my husband’s child, yet living with strange women related to a strange man I met off the road. I was too trusting, but this time for all the right reasons. I remembered those four months as the happiest ones of my life. I watched Zakia’s cheeks grow ruddy and her body become stronger on a fresh diet of milk and mushy fruits. My own skin took up on a surreal glow and my eyes started to twinkle again. His grandmother and sister became the family I never had — feeding me and telling me stories of their past. It was around that time that Rasul started making good money out of his trade and asked me to marry him once I got a Khula from Shahbaz Khan.
Khula. Divorce. Once again, a subject that was never spoken of within my own community, yet here Rasul Shah was asking me to proceed with one. It was like cutting off my own head and presenting it to Shahbaz Khan on a silver tray. “You will make a beautiful bride to my handsome grandson,” Nazo would often say. She adored Zakia to no end and I knew, that if I were to start my life all over again, it would be here under Rasul Shah’s care, with him by my side. Khula. The word kept ringing in my head, until one night, I decided to get it done with the help of a Qazi that Rasul Shah knew from the city. The Qazi verbally interviewed me from behind the curtain and wrote it all down on an official piece of paper. It looked so much like the nikkah nama I was forced to sign. Rasul Khan was to deliver the document to Shahbaz Khan’s men. I signed it and sent off my soon-to-be lawfully wedded husband with a smile, on a death march.
Nazo was the first one to wake me up screaming. Rasul’s sister came hurtling downstairs banging on my door. Fear crept into my heart as I opened the door with Zakia straddled on my lap. “He left us, my Rasul left us!” Nazo grabbed my face and yelled at me. “They killed him those dogs! They shot him! They shot my Rasul Shah, my beautiful boy!” Huge wracking sobs overtook my body and I felt my soul splitting into two. Zakia looked up at me with confusion etched on her little face. I wailed along with the other two women the entire night. And after the streaks of tears on my cheeks dried up, I made a decision. This was entirely my fault, I put my beloved into harm’s way, and therefore I would have to pay for it. I packed my bags in the dead of the night, and, before leaving, managed to get a glimpse of the faces I had come to love so much in all these months, and then set off. Zakia wrapped around my back, we ventured into the wolf’s den once again.
I don’t know what I expected. Definitely not for Shahabaz Khan to forgive me and take me into his loving arms once again. He would never accept Zakia either. I don’t remember much of the argument except that, it involved him kicking dust into my face and slapping Zakia hard. All I remember after that was this cold darkness. This abyss that I grew accustomed to, that Zakia grew up with. “You and your bastard child will spend the eternity in this room. That will teach you what happens to those who try to betray Shahbaz Khan!” His voice kept echoing long after he left, I heard it too often in my sleep.
I lay my head on the cold, stone floor and brought Zakia closed to me. The Almighty, The Lord of Worlds, The Great-Maker, or whatever names you called him by, was such an enigma. He gave me pain; he gave me hurt; he took my only comfort away. Yet in my arms, was breathing body that resembled me, spoke like me, laughed like me, and was mine in every manner. If death was next in our long list of adventures, I was prepared to accept it. Zakia’s concept of death was non-existent, it made the whole thing easier for us. If dying meant I could meet Rasul once again in the heavens above, Moray and Abbu soon to follow, and even make space for Gul Bano; then death was a family reunion that I could not wait for. | https://hiba-memon.medium.com/sheen-30811d7655bf | ['Hiba Memon'] | 2020-04-11 13:09:44.557000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Fiction', 'Prison', 'Story', 'Life'] |
Full disclosure, always: Peer Mountain listed on Project Transparency | We are proud to announce that Project Transparency has listed Peer Mountain as a responsible and trusted member of the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. As supporters of this voluntary disclosure standard, we will provide full disclosure of the wallets Peer Mountain controls, and provide a voluntary explanation of any expenditure greater than 0.5% of the funds collected.
Project Transparency is a self-regulated venture that aims to improve regulatory procedures and disclosure in the cryptocurrency sector. Launched in 2017 by sixteen industry leaders, including Maecenas, Santiment, and Cofound.it, the initiative currently represents over $650M in market capitalisation.
“With the rapid rise of digital currencies and proliferation of ICOs, investors increasingly want security regarding their funds and transparency on how they are administered.” Project Transparency website
Self-governance and transparency are among Peer Mountain’s core values. In the face of stricter regulation of crypto markets around the world, we’re committed to developing and maintaining honest and open relationships with our investors, the crypto community, and lawmakers.
As early supporters of ICOCharter.eu, a self-regulation charter for European ICOs, we’ve also established a fair and transparent ICO. Our CEO, Jed Grant, developed a comprehensive guide to ICO due diligence to help investors better evaluate not only Peer Mountain, but all crypto projects. This three-part series features a framework for ICO due diligence, advice on crypto valuation, and running a fair ICO.
Transparency is vital to Peer Mountain’s economy of trust, and to strengthening investor confidence in the cryptocurrency market. We’re looking forward to helping Project Transparency reach its ambitious goals. | https://medium.com/peermountain/full-disclosure-always-peer-mountain-listed-on-project-transparency-9f8bfc25a9e6 | ['Peer Mountain'] | 2018-06-26 07:53:39.792000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Blockchain', 'Technology', 'Ethereum'] |
欸！我該買還是要賣了？ - 狂人 5 日線戰法 | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/cryptochat/%E6%AC%B8-%E6%88%91%E8%A9%B2%E8%B2%B7%E9%82%84%E6%98%AF%E8%A6%81%E8%B3%A3%E4%BA%86-%E7%8B%82%E4%BA%BA-5-%E6%97%A5%E7%B7%9A%E6%88%B0%E6%B3%95-2e8618f2a11c | ['Dave Yeh'] | 2018-05-26 10:04:28.943000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin'] |
Kreatives & soziales “Hotelprojekt” ausgezeichnet | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/workersonthefield/kreatives-soziales-hotelprojekt-ausgezeichnet-dd85cbf1bdd5 | ['Reinhard Lanner'] | 2016-06-26 08:32:00.122000+00:00 | ['Architektur', 'Hotel', 'Design'] |
What is the Perfect Christian? | What is your idea of the Perfect Christian?
Who do you think of when you think of the perfect Christian? What attributes and/or characteristics does that person have? Is it a person that is highly sociable with a big smile? Does this person exude passion and eagerly participate in any and all church activities? Is he or she comfortable with the spotlight and attract crowds of people? Does this person often have people over to their house for small groups or maybe just to have fun?
I am willing to bet most of you saw these traits in that person you saw as the “perfect Christian”. And if you didn’t, I am willing to bet this was your description as the perfect Christian before you learned about introversion. I’m not going to lie. I did. I always saw those that were more outgoing and sociable in the church as the more spiritual ones. The ones closer to God. Why else would they be that excited?
Lets look at the Stats
One of my favorite books on the topic of Christian introversion is “Introverts in the Church” by Adam McHugh. Chapter one of that book is actually what inspired the writing of this article. Adam tells us about a study that was done with students of Harvard University. The students were asked to rate Jesus according to the Myers Briggs personality traits. Interestingly enough, most of the students rated Jesus to be almost identical to themselves on almost all the personality traits. For instance, when it came to being a thinker or a feeler, students portrayed Jesus as more of a feeler if the student was also a feeler.
The more interesting part is when they came to the part of the study that asked students to rate Jesus as an introvert or an extrovert. Overwhelmingly, 97% of students said Jesus was an extrovert. This was bewildering given the fact that over half of the students surveyed were introverts themselves. So, despite the fact students saw Jesus as sharing their same personality, for the most part, even introverts overwhelmingly put him in the extroverted category. This means that there is a skewed perception of the “Perfect Christian”. This study shows us that an ideal Christian is a person with an extroverted personality. Why is this?
Well, I don’t think it is out of line to believe that our western culture has a lot to do with this skewed perception. Here in the U.S., we tend to put those with an extroverted personality to a higher esteem, as opposed to the eastern culture that prefers introspective thinkers. We envy those that can wow a crowd and speak to people they just met as if they have been friends for years.
Our great leaders are outspoken and can thrive in the spotlight. They don’t take “no” for an answer and they don’t let feelings get in the way of there failures. That’s who we look up too. When we think of perfection, we think of a better version of ourselves. And here in America, our better selves are more sociable and outspoken. So it is no wonder we see the perfect Christian as that sociable, outspoken person. So where did this idea come from?
The Paradigm Shift
Susan Cane, author of the book “Quiet: The Power of Introversion in a World that Can’t Stop Talking“, calls this the “extrovert ideal”. Which means, our ideal selves are extroverts. We no longer look up to the man that uses his thoughts but rather his words. Susan covers a paradigm shift that happened at the turn of the 20th century that might explain how this came about. As we began to live in big cities and surround ourselves with more strangers, we relied more on a persons personality or first impression to get a sense of who they are.
This was the opposite of how we judged a persons character in the 19th century. In the 19th century, we lived in mostly small towns, where everyone knew you and you knew all of them. With a lifetime of knowing certain people, we were able to judge on true character rather than first impression or charisma.
We now look up to the man that uses his words. Especially if he says it with such confidence. Modern evangelicalism is a good example of this. It is noted in the book, “Introverts in the Church“, that when Adam McHugh goes in for an assistant pastor interview, the preacher directly tells him there is no room for a person that is not extroverted and lively. That is a pretty straightforward pastor and one that believes introversion is a sign of spiritual immaturity. When I read that statement, it made me wonder how many other people believe that. My guess is a whole lot! As you may guess, I don’t believe that one bit. And I hope you don’t.
Was Jesus an Introvert?
As I study the life of Christ, I don’t see him as an extrovert. I don’t even see him as an introvert. I see him as the perfect Christian. Now he obviously wasn’t a Christian (because that term came about after his death), but you get my point. Jesus was the perfect example of what God wanted from man. When man was created, Jesus is what God intended. Adam was that man until he sinned. Which in turn no longer made him the example we should live by.
Jesus was not an introvert or an extrovert. He was all the personality types in one, embodying the perfect balance. This balance is what we all should strive for. He was able to go along the introvert-extrovert continuum (mentioned here) depending on the situation he was in. Jesus showed extroverted qualities while at the synagogue preaching or when was able to speak to crowds of people without feeling anxiety. He showed introverted tendencies while seeking solitude and cherishing small groups, such as the time he and the disciples went to see Mary and Martha.
A ministry student, Gary Baldwin, wrote a doctoral paper that covers this very topic. It is called “A Personality Theory of Christian Personality“. In his paper, he mentions a man by the name of John Sanford and his book, “The Kingdom Within“. Johns take on Jesus’ personality hits the nail on the head in my opinion.
He [John A. Sanford] clarifies that maturity, specifically spiritual
maturity, comes in consciously developing and balancing all facets of the human
personality. Through a careful study of the Gospels he reveals in Jesus a personality that
is perfectly developed and balanced.
This means that we have to constantly work on our spiritual and physical maturity by putting a conscious effort into developing our personality. Gary also points out in his paper that throughout different stages of our life, we are working on developing different functions which make up our ultimate personality in the end. Each function is a part of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Read more about that here.
Attitude: E . . . . . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . . . . . . I
Perceiving Function: S . . . . . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . . . . . . N
Judging Function: T . . . . . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . . . . . . F
Generic Functions: J . . . . . . . . . . . | . . . . . . . . . . . . P
It is believed that we don’t reach a more balanced personality until after the age of 50. In Gary’s paper, the balance is described as “greater psychological dexterity”. Which I think is a pretty fantastic term. It just paints a better picture of what you are trying to achieve. Being able to balance between personalities as effortlessly as possible.
Conclusion
As Christians, our goal is to be “like Christ”. Christ was perfect in all of his ways and was sent here to be the example to mankind. Because of his perfection, he was perfectly balanced in his personality. Which is what we should be striving for. If you are an introvert, don’t settle in your introversion. Work to strengthen your extroverted side. Engage with others and put yourself out there sometimes. The world will benefit and be a much better place because of it. If you are an extrovert, find the time to practice introspection and reflection. You will gain a much greater understanding of who you are and what you really want out of life. It also gives you that quiet time to actually listen for God.
Yes, God made you a certain way and there is a reason he made you that way. Each person, or type of person, has their strengths and weaknesses. It is okay to have a preferred personality. But it is not okay to let that personality define who you are as a person. Only you can define you. Tim Challies, of Challies.com says, “Introversion is a useful description, but a poor definition” and I couldn’t agree more.
The answer you have been waiting for…
I want to wrap up by saying, the perfect Christian is not an Introvert or an Extrovert. It is not the person who enjoys being on stage or working a crowd. It is not even the person that in alone all day in his den studying the word of God and reading book about theology. The perfect christian is a perfect mix of all of those aspects, and more. That mix might look a little different for everyone. You will obviously play more to your strengths and talents. That is why God gave them to you. Rest assured, the more you work to find that balance as Christ had, the more you will be fulfilled in your faith.
This article and more like it are also at ChristianIntrovert.com | https://medium.com/christian-introvert/what-is-the-perfect-christian-aaaaf3336638 | ['Travis Haines'] | 2019-03-03 18:12:20.666000+00:00 | ['Extrovert', 'Introvert', 'Perfectionism', 'Christianity', 'Christian Living'] |
Hungarian startup makes its COVID-19 drive-thru testing software available free of charge and open source | Hungarian startup makes its COVID-19 drive-thru testing software available free of charge and open source Rollet Follow Jun 25 · 3 min read
The first official case of coronavirus in Hungary was reported in early March. A few weeks later, due to the rapid increase in the number of epidemic cases, the Hungarian government decided to partially lock down the country. The restriction halted the country’s normal operation for a month, several small businesses closed, and tens of thousands of people became unemployed. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rollet, a Hungarian startup, has embarked on the development of their software for administering in-car coronavirus testing, which is now available and free to use for any government or organization to help speed up response on a possible next wave.
The drive-thru coronavirus testing station fitted with Rollet’s technology was first launched in Budapest in April where hundreds of visitors were tested over the course of a few days. The drive-through COVID-19 testing method is not a novel concept, it was widely used in several Asian countries before the Hungarian solution, but previous approaches stuck to paper-based implementation which was slow and put people at a relatively high risk when contact is made between staff and patients in the process. The essence of the contactless solution developed by the startup is that patients arrive at the test station after online pre-registration. Data recording is also paperless and contactless, as the test station workers can identify the arriving motorists based on QR codes, and authorize visitors through the mobile application, which is now open sourced. As well as the entry check, sampling administration takes place in the app too, pairing the given patient’s QR code with the samples. This contactless method eliminates the chance of wrong inputs and human errors under stress.
“We agreed with the Rollet team at the very beginning of the project to make the end product widely available so that governments worldwide can respond immediately and appropriately to the crisis when needed. Being a Hungarian company, the size and population of our cities needed a highly efficient solution for mass testing, which forced us to create a technology solution that was simply not available before. There is still no consensus on whether the coronavirus will cause another wave of pandemics in the fall, but in any case, our system offers a very fast and effective solution for identifying COVID-19 patients. ” — said Andy Zhang, Founder and CEO of Rollet
The project, codenamed “NOÉ”, is free to use and thanks to the MIT license, It can be freely adapted by both private companies and government organizations, released under the MIT licence. Rollet NOÉ is available at Github.com/rollethu/noe. According to the startup, the code can be used to help start a drive-thru test station within a few days, as the program is suitable for receiving and sampling thousands of guests without additional development. The software can not only be used for coronavirus testing, but also for the rapid sampling of all viruses where a vehicle provides a suitable containment environment for sampling and screening.
Rollet launched its contactless drive-through payment service in Hungary in 2017, and since then, cashless, in-car payment methods have been made available to motorists in dozens of locations, including parking lots, office buildings, industrial areas, and business parks. In 2020, The Next Web chose Rollet as one of the best Hungarian startup innovations in Europe, and last year the audience of the Vienna Property Forum chose Rollet as “CEE’s Best Emerging Startup”. | https://medium.com/rollet-pay/hungarian-startup-makes-its-covid-19-drive-thru-testing-software-available-free-of-charge-and-open-c82d254df2ef | [] | 2020-06-26 08:19:15.385000+00:00 | ['Open Source', 'Software Development', 'Github', 'Covid 19', 'Coronavirus'] |
The Importance of Studying a Recognised Qualification | When embarking on a career as a Legal Secretary or advancing your expertise within your role as a Legal Secretary, it will be necessary for you to study a course which provides you with the knowledge and skills needed for the job.
With a wide variety of training organisations providing Legal Secretary courses, it can be confusing to know which is the best one to choose. A good way to come to a decision is to see how recognised the training provider and its courses are. You can take a look on careers websites such as the government’s National Careers Service and UCAS, or browse legal websites such as the Law Society and All About Law. This will give you a really good idea as to how recognised certain qualifications are.
Another good way to find out which qualifications are recognised in the legal industry is by talking to recruitment agencies and law firms directly. They will be able to advise you which courses they value the most.
Not only is it important to study a recognised qualification so that recruiters and employers know the value of what you have studied, but also so that you will be acquiring the knowledge and skills you need from the best source. ILSPA’s courses are highly regarded in the legal industry by law firms and legal recruiters. Many law firms throughout the UK and overseas enrol their Secretaries on our courses, or state that these are essential for entry-level positions.
Being the professional body for Legal Secretaries and PAs, ILSPA provides recognised courses which enable people to advance their careers. We focus on teaching Students about law and legal procedures so that they not only know how to perform certain tasks, but also understand the principles of law behind them. This leads to a holistic way of working, provides greater job satisfaction and leads the way to better prospects.
As well as providing qualifications, ILSPA is recognised for helping our Students and Members throughout their working lives. Our team of experts are passionate about their roles and love helping people with their Legal Secretary careers. We receive regular feedback from Students about how much they have enjoyed our courses and have secured employment in the legal field as a result of qualifying.
If you would like to speak to a member of our team about our qualifications, please feel free to contact us. Whether you are currently studying one of our courses or you are thinking about enrolling, we are happy to provide you with any advice you need. | https://medium.com/@ILSPA/the-importance-of-studying-a-recognised-qualification-2d9c139b6bdd | ['The Institute Of Legal Secretaries'] | 2019-04-12 13:36:17.838000+00:00 | ['Law', 'Education', 'Legal', 'Training', 'Qualifications'] |
Why You Should Stop Working on Smart Homes and Focus on What Matters | “McFly!!”, Mr. Fujitsu yells on the screen.
Old Marty, with a submissive posture, responds: “Mr. Fujitsu, sir! Good evening, sir!”
“McFly, I was monitoring that scan you just interfaced. You are terminated.”
“Terminated? But sir! It wasn’t my idea! Needles was behind it!”
“And you cooperated. It was illegal and you knew it. You’re fired, McFly. Goodbye.”
“But sir — ”
“McFly, read my fax!”
Simultaneously, copies come out of the fax units in each and every room of the house, including the bathroom; which says in big block letters, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Scene from Back to the Future II: A projection from 1988’s on smart-homes in 2015
Just a second… Fax machines in 2015? Who would need them in every room of the house, even in 1988?
That’s the question I ask every time I watch the movie “Back to the Future II”. Video calls prediction is on target, robo-drones that walk the dogs are likely to happen, hover-boards are awesome, self-drying coat with a ventilation system is funny. However, fax-machines look so odd. So useless.
Then why couldn’t scenarists Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale see this coming?
Actually, Robert and Bob made the same mistake with today’s smart-home solution providers. They couldn’t free themselves from product-oriented thinking. They made a non-relevant modification on some gadget that already existed back then, without looking at the customer need. They kept themselves in the boundaries of a product available in 1988 and found it enough to make an incremental change on it.
Therefore, apart from their visionary predictions, their smart-home design hosted a non-relevant and useless gadget in it.
What about actual smart-homes of today?
Nevertheless Robert Zemeckis and Bob Galewere were scenarists and they were paid to come up with a good story, which they did, not with product ideas that would sell millions. But what excuse do these guys (4:14) have while they are proudly saying, “In a world full of technology, have you ever wondered why are we still opening and closing our blinds by hand?”?
Smart-homes: Are you still washing your hands by hand?
These solutions are designed by the people whose job are to design successful solutions that actually solve problems. Yet they still fall into the trap of product-orientation.
Here is another example: the iron with bluetooth and an app:
Laurastar Smart: Can a product be smarter than its creators?
As the manufacturer puts it; this is not an iron. This is an ironing system and a connected solution for smart ironing. They say, “It uses Bluetooth technology to connect to the mobile application and acts as your coach to beautify your clothes”. Yes, you heard it right. It doesn’t iron your clothes. It beautifies them. In marketing terms, its value proposition is “beautifying the clothes”. After almost 150 years of its invention, they used all their creativity to come up with a value proposition statement, which drained their brains just before they actually decided to make the product.
It somehow reminds me of AT&T putting a fake 5GE logo on a 4G communication.
AT&T’s response to Huawei’s 5G technology: “5G logo with an E”
OK. Let me leave sarcasm aside and get to the point.
Stop torturing the irons already! Who told you that we like ironing? We don’t. We hate it. We hang our t-shirts decently, desperately hoping that they won’t require ironing. Why are you so obsessed with the iron, instead of coming up with a revolutionary solution that makes it obsolete? Our need is shirts without wrinkles, not smarter irons with sensors that adjusts the steam or can be switched on/off via our mobile phones.
Never-ending story of product-orientation and why it still exists
You can easily imagine other commercials where smart-home manufacturers try to convince you that it is very critical that you turn off/on your lights / TV / music without using your hands or remotely turn on/off your oven and hope for the best. Product-orientation is everywhere.
The ironic part is that there is an extensive literature on how awesome customer-orientation and how boring product-orientation is. It is a very old story. People still write books and articles about them, saying almost the same things over and over again.
Then why do these articles cling to emphasizing customer orientation for all these years? The answer is simple: We forget. We get distracted every time there is a technology shift; we turn our backs to customers and start playing with the technology. We can’t do both because we can focus on one thing at a time. It is our survival strength inherited from our early ancestors. And with great strength comes a great weakness.
Representative sample: Dog playing with the technology and ignoring the customer
The technological toys we’re playing with now has come with the digitalization appeared behind the clouds of the perfect storm created by the simultaneous emergence of a number of technologies such as cloud, IoT, mobile, powerful processors, machine learning (ML), etc. We’ve got hypnotized with sensors, apps, ML algorithms, and neglected our customers. But now we’ve played enough. It’s time to use our learnings to address the needs of our customers.
Focusing on what matters: Connected Living
Firstly, I’d like to hand the microphone to Yuval Noah Harari; the author of the book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”:
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, …most people worked in the family business — the family farm or the family workshop, …or they worked in their neighbors’ family businesses. The family was also the welfare system, the health system, the education system, the construction industry, the trade union, the pension fund, the insurance company, the radio, the television, the newspapers, the bank and even the police.
Briefly, the family in one physical house was the welfare system of an individual in the good old days. Harari also reveals that most of this welfare system is currently delegated to public & private sectors, which fostered individualism:
The state and the market approached people with an offer, …‘Become individuals,’ ...‘Marry whomever you desire, …take up whatever job suits you, …live wherever you wish… You are no longer dependent on your family or your community. We, the state and the market, will take care of you instead. We will provide food, shelter, education, health, welfare and employment. We will provide pensions, insurance and protection.
Despite the individualism wave that weakened family bonds, humans still need the proximity maintenance to avoid distress, or simply, “be happy”.
Please check Jonathan Haidt explaining Bowlby’s four defining features of attachment relationships in his book “The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”: 1. proximity maintenance 2. separation distress 3. safe haven 4. secure base. He briefly emphasizes that we all need proximity to people we are close with and a safe place, in degrees that change with our age.
“Friends” also need proximity
That is to say; people don’t care about smart homes (the product), they care about being close to their family & community and get rid of modern life complexities (customer need), which brings us back to the concept we tend to forget too often to focus on: “the customer (the individual) experience”. Focusing on the “individual’s experience”; the markets and the state can strengthen the traditional bonds back again, helping each individual live in the same virtual house / community with their families and friends.
By doing so, it is possible to get back to the old days of participatory living, reducing the excessive load of services such as healthcare, justice, safety, insurance, pension, education, sheltering, etc. on governments’ shoulders and distribute it back to citizens and the markets.
Long story short: If we help individuals connect digitally with their friends / family in meaningful ways, we will come up with relevant products.
Some tangible use-case examples
Best way to understand what people need is to actually observe them and identify their jobs to be done and corresponding pains and gains, incorporating design thinking. But even an empathy session will give you great insights. For example; as a representative of 40+ single professionals, here is a bunch of pains I assume my live-alikes would like to resolve:
I need to know when my one of my parents fall or have an heart-attack, and help them instantly. I can’t / don’t want to be with them all the time, but I want to know the critical incidents and help them instantly.
I am tired of managing the apartment & utilities. Lots of different bills, taxes, maintenance, it’s like running a company!
I take care of myself and barely get sick, but I pay the same insurance with other people. And when I get sick, I need instant help. It’s not always easy to spot an available close friend.
My cat is alone when I go on a vacation and I get worried about how he is.
Actually, people have already created their Minimum Viable Products (MVP) to address similar needs, using Whatsapp. I assume most of you are added to family Whatsapp groups where you share your good moments or “we have arrived, mom” information.
These texting groups show us that families are already digitally connecting themselves using Whatsapp groups. It is an MVP that proved successful as a connected living solution, indicating that people are very likely to embrace the real product once it is out.
What are your family whats-app group use-cases? Take your time to make a list. Next big thing can be in it.
Whatsapp family groups: A connected-living MVP that customers created and is far from being perfect
So what now?
Just like Steve Jobs got “insanely simple” using his “simple stick”, get yourself a “customer-orientation” stick and get insanely customer-oriented. Whenever you get off the wagon, that stick will get you right on.
Be brutally honest with yourself. Otherwise the seduction and the comfort zone of the product-orientation will take over soon.
Get customers’ approval instead of the management board or the investors. An investor can bet a million dollar on your product, or the CEO can give you a go; but they are far from being indicators of success. There are tons of stories out there where start-ups get the investment, feel like rock stars, and go bankrupt.
Don’t fall in love with your product. Or be prepared to share the same finale with Kodak, which at least had a very good run. Did you?
source: blogs.ubc.ca
Don’t start with the ideas, start with the needs. Ideas are like rainbows. They are visible but they move away as you try to approach them. They have no ground. But needs are solid like a rock. They provide the ground for your products. They are real.
Lastly: Have confidence in yourself. Be authentic. Be bold. Don’t imitate or make incremental changes on an existing product. Create a brand-new product that meets a need 10 times better than the current paradigm. | https://medium.com/@anilsavaskilic/why-you-should-stop-working-on-smart-homes-and-focus-on-what-matters-3cce087dd7a0 | ['Anil Savas Kilic'] | 2019-07-02 18:52:07.831000+00:00 | ['Connected Home', 'Smart Cities', 'Customer Experience', 'Smart Home', 'Digital'] |
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