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My 15-Year Old Patient Living With A Time Bomb Tumor Had No Clue | My 15-Year Old Patient Living With A Time Bomb Tumor Had No Clue
Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash
A 15-year old male sought to the emergency room with chronic nausea and vomiting. He came to my room with only a medical interrupt demand for sickness as he was about to join a family trip.
“There is no diagnose for my case. Sometimes I feel nausea before, but sometimes it is sudden; I throw up until I feel better or take an anti-emetic to suppress it.”
History Taking
I work at the children’s emergency room as a physician. I see at least 100 patients daily, which means I have to be as quick as possible with maximum cautiousness. It is said that over 80% of diagnoses are made on history alone, a further 5–10% on examination, and the remainder on the investigation. He did not volunteer to give me a detailed history, nor his family, as they did it over and over again before.
How do you vomit? I asked. I beg your pardon? He hesitated since he didn’t have to describe his vomiting before.
I asked my questions with a calm attitude and was determined to take my answers:
Is it very sudden?
Does the vomit exit your body with some force?
Does it travel a few feet from you?
What is the color?
As long as you observe, is it related to your diet or not?
Do you have any other symptoms?
I was trying to ask if it is projectile vomiting.
What is projectile vomiting?
Projectile vomiting causes vomit to be forcefully sent out of the patient’s body. It differs from regular vomiting in several ways:
It happens with or mostly without warning of the feeling of nausea.
It is more severe.
It is forceful.
Projectile vomiting has several potential causes such as pyloric stenosis, reflux, stomach obstructions, infections, food poisoning, neurological diseases. Healthcare professionals should make the differential diagnosis based on the patient’s history, additional symptoms, physical examination, and if it is necessary with further diagnostic imaginations.
Physical Examination
I quickly check every physiological finding in other system’s examinations.
On physical examination, he was
Awake and alert, oriented to person, place, and time.
5 / 5 strength with no sensory deficit in all extremities.
Recent and remote memory intact. Good insight and cognitive function. No aphasia, dysarthria, or hoarseness.
Gait and station normal, Rhomberg negative.
Skin warm, dry, good turgor, No abnormal pigmentation, bleeding, rash, or other lesions. Hair normal texture and distribution. No nail changes.
No abnormal tympany. Normal bowel sounds, no bruits. Superficial & deep palpation without organomegaly or masses; no direct or rebound tenderness, rigidity.
“I told you, there is no diagnose for my case. Give me some medications so we can hit the road!” he shouted at me.
At that moment, I realized something. He has anisocoria, which means his pupils were not EVEN! Usually, the pupil’s size is the same in each eye, with both eyes dilating or constricting together.
The term anisocoria refers to pupils that are of different sizes at the same time. Anisocoria can be physiologic, or it can be a sign of an underlying medical condition.
I looked again in these young, angry, dark brown, and anisocoric eyes and asked his parents whether they know about it.
Furthermore, the dilated pupil was unresponsive to light that might be linked with a lesion on neural pathways. To make it more transparent, let’s take a quick, simple look at the pupillary light reflex:
The pupillary light reflex can be tested with a shinning light directly pointing into the eye. The afferent limb of the reflex is on the optic nerve, which initiates sensory input. Shining a light on one eye should show a constriction of the pupils on both eyes. The pupils’ failure to constrict may indicate either an optic nerve lesion, a lesion of the efferent limb (oculomotor nerve), or any other lesion along the path.
Meeting With A Time Bomb: Thalamic Glioma
Was it physiologic? Was it related to the symptoms? I performed an MRI before the patient was admitted to another hospital via an ambulance for further diagnosis and treatment.
And there was it! Shining like a time bomb in his brain!
The time bomb is a glioma that originates from the supporting cells of the brain we call “glial cells.” Since glial cells are present throughout the central nervous system, gliomas can occur in various brain areas or along the spinal cord. A thalamic glioma is a tumor characterized by a primary growth center near the thalamus which plays a significant role in movement, consciousness, and awareness.
Thalamic gliomas usually develop the symptoms when the tumor begins to compress the adjoining ventricle, resulting in a blockage of cerebrospinal fluid flow. This causes headache and vomiting, is referred to as hydrocephalus, and needs emergency attention.
After many procedures and treatments, my patient is finally diagnosed and has been continuing his treatment since then.
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
I have dedicated this article to many other lives we will save and all the heroes working every day until every child is well. | https://medium.com/beingwell/my-15-year-old-patient-living-with-a-time-bomb-tumor-with-no-clue-2783e7602dff | ['Eden Kunter'] | 2020-12-21 00:22:52.035000+00:00 | ['Case Study', 'Medical Case', 'Medical Doctor', 'Pediatric Cancer', 'Case Report'] |
The Lost Temple | Psalm 138 (CEB)
I give thanks to you
with all my heart, Lord.
I sing your praise before all other gods.
I bow toward your holy Temple
and thank your name
for your loyal love and faithfulness
because you have made
your name and word
greater than everything else.
On the day I cried out, you answered me.
You encouraged me with inner strength.
Let all the earth’s rulers
give thanks to you, Lord,
when they hear what you say.
Let them sing about the Lord’s ways
because the Lord’s glory is so great!
Even though the Lord is high,
he can still see the lowly,
but God keeps his distance
from the arrogant.
Whenever I am in deep trouble,
you make me live again;
you send your power
against my enemies’ wrath;
you save me with your strong hand.
The Lord will do all this for my sake.
Your faithful love lasts forever, Lord!
Don’t let go of what your hands have made.
Romans 12.1–2 (CEB)
So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate priestly service. Don’t be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is — what is good and pleasing and mature.
Click here to watch the video performance of this story.
I was running as fast as my worn-out sandals, and the crowd would allow, out of breath, out of money, and I guess, finally out of luck (Luck! Ha!). After a lifetime of seeking it had come to this: hightailing it down the murky streets of Marrakesh, chased by mercenaries who believed I had desecrated their Temple. Which I hadn’t. Well, not much, anyway. And it wasn’t intentional.
How was I to know that no human had entered the Holy Cavern in 1500 years? Rumors referred to it as the Lost Temple. So, imagine my surprise to discover it wasn’t lost, but hidden. And guarded.
Like I said, a minor desecration. And apparently, the wrong Temple. Again.
I sidestepped into a narrow alley just as the mercenaries whizzed past me, weapons drawn. As luck would have it (Luck! Ha!), a merchant was passing by with a cart full of textiles. I jumped in and quickly covered myself until we arrived in the boisterous town square. I slipped out of the cart and bartered with the merchant for some new clothes.
Then, I headed home to Casablanca, disappointed. Again. | https://medium.com/pastor-michaels-intersect/the-lost-temple-4411a3bcb8ca | ['Michael Junkroski'] | 2020-08-26 12:19:30.400000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Progressive Christianity', 'New Age', 'Religion', 'Christianity'] |
What Your Kids Can Teach You (If You Let Them) | What Your Kids Can Teach You (If You Let Them)
A Starter Kit on Humility
So after nine years and two amazing children, I’ve learned that the best teachers I’ve had in my life are the two little human beings that have little to no experience with it. In having a nine-year-old son and a two-year-daughter, they’ve continued to reinforce how much I don’t have life figured out. Through their unconditional love, honesty, forgiveness, they have their work cut out for them as they help me to continue to grow in being a responsible human being. Despite having spent eight years in the higher education system learning from professors with various teaching styles, my kids still hold the title as best teachers. And luckily for me, they’ll continue to remain the best teachers I’ll ever have.
This realization took some time to sink in as even during my single years when I worked with mentoring young kids, I had the mindset that kids were to receive instruction and not give it (I know pretty prideful huh?). But it was never about how I had so much knowledge to give and that every child should stand before me to receive my pearls of wisdom. Instead, it was about providing a positive example and sound instruction to kids who were living in less than ideal conditions and needing some healthier guidance in their decision-making. This was crucial as most of the kids that I worked with weren’t exposed to receiving encouragement through character building that is necessary at such a young age in their respective homes.
During that time, what I hadn’t realized was I was learning from those kids just as much as I believed they were learning from me. Qualities such as integrity, hard work, consistency, responsibility, maturity, and leadership were what started to be established within myself from mentoring. Despite what I was learning from them, I continued to maintain the frame of mind that those kids needed to learn from me. Then with the positive feedback, I received from their parents, coworkers and community partners of how well their behaviors had improved, it only really reaffirmed my position. So as I grew older and transitioned into having children of my own, I was in for a rude awakening as to how much I would be challenged to change my outlook on where my instruction of personal development would come from.
Receiving lessons from my kids in areas such as sacrifice, forgiveness and selflessness started early on in my fatherhood. Financially I needed to spend less on myself and more on the needs of my children. Also, all of the copious amounts of free time that I’d use to play video games would be no more because of the need of being present in spending time with my family. Because of my innate deficiency of selfishness, pride, and laziness, I continually had to make a gut check as to what was important.
I’ve made mistakes such as telling my son I’d take him to the local county fair but not following through with it because of my laziness and limited funds financially. Then after spending the whole day with my daughter, I ended up causing her diaper rash to worsen because I hadn’t changed her diaper all day except once and didn’t use any diaper rash cream when I did. From these two experiences, I was able to gain invaluable lessons of spending less time focusing on me but instead on what the needs of my children are. Through these and many other mistakes, it dawned on me how I needed to be a quick study in learning how parenting is all about how well I can be outwardly focused. As the more I can improve with that, the better I’ll be as a father and student. When I don’t, it ultimately hurts them and myself in our relationship.
Personally, what I found to have been essential towards being a better student consisted of what I would call the ABC’s of learning. These lessons are what my children have taught me as I strive to deepen my relationship with them. Which for me are:
Apologize
Don’t be afraid to tell your kids that you’re sorry and letting them in on how you messed up. Children are some of the most forgiving creatures we have on this planet and it’s amazing how quickly they’re able to let go of past hurts then move on from them. It’s important to have a level of humility that allows them to see that making mistakes is normal and okay (as long as they see that you’re learning from them). Being able to acknowledge your mistakes to your children through a lens of humility allows you to strengthen your relationship with them. It helps them to understand that failure isn’t fatal. Also, it allows them to understand how you can learn and bounce back from mistakes when you make them.
Be available
Russian writer and philosopher Fyodor Dostoevsky once said, “The soul is healed by being with children.” Spending time with your children is the best way to experience and provide nourishment emotionally. Showing a commitment as to how much we’re spending time with our kids is paramount in how quickly we’re able to develop and deepen our relationship with them. Being present in the home helps you to be attuned to the type of changes your kids are going through while seeing firsthand how resilient children can be when faced with trouble. Children thrive on acceptance and availability, so for us, as parents, it’s crucial to consistently set aside time to have healthy interactions whenever possible with them. This is imperative in being able to communicate to them that you love them just as much as they love you. Want to begin bonding with your child on an emotional level? Then make a concerted effort to demonstrate you can be available to them.
Character
Being consistent with doing what we say we’re going to do is incredibly important to our children (and one that I’m still working on). Demonstrating integrity as much as possible helps our children to feel secure while maintaining the respect that we so desperately require from them. Children are good about remembering what we say we’re going to do for them and it’s our responsibility to follow through on it. They have no problem with following through on what they say they’re going to do because their desire to give comes from such a sincere place. Our kids are consistent with this because it comes from a place of genuine appreciation that hasn’t been distorted by life experiences. So how can we grow and learn this from our children? Decide to be humble. In that, you’re going to focus on applying to others the same unconditional admiration our children have towards us.
Focusing on being humble about what we don’t know while being committed to learning from our children helps us become the best parents we can be. As our relationship with our children can only improve for the better because of it. Albert Einstein once said, “A true genius admits that he/she doesn’t know anything.” I’ve concluded that the more I embrace this, the more I learn and grow. Which I know allows for my kids to benefit by teaching me life lessons more than they’ll ever know. | https://medium.com/swlh/what-your-kids-can-teach-you-if-you-let-them-6e666d23677e | ['Rahjon Acey'] | 2019-11-13 00:54:10.255000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Personal Development'] |
And again Tableau.Powerful tips for connecting to the data. | Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash
When I started working with Tableau Server, it was a real pain to understand all ins and outs: how to connect to data, how to optimise it, how to keep the dashboard up to date, etc.
Now, after experience getting to know Tableau, I can offer you a glimpse of tips that can facilitate your data work flow with Tableau.
Most of the time use Data Extraction
There are two ways to connect to the data source: via live connections and via extractions. In a nutshell, live connection is a real time extraction, without having to copy data to Tableau Server. Extraction is a scheduled connection, which is refreshed every hour/day/period. All of the data is copied from the datasource to Tableau Server.
My recommendation is to only use live connection when you need update your data every second or every minute.
However, just using extraction will impact the Tableau Server’s performance, and that can cause your team/your coworkers to get a bit grumpy. Try always to keep in touch with your infrastructure team. Separate data sources and visualisations.
I‘d like to mention just a couple of advantages of separation :
1. It’s the first step to the general, holistic approach of unifying data/content management, thereby allowing all users to find the right data in one place and not duplicate data.
2. This approach helps to optimize performance on the server side.
Try to reuse data sources as often as possible. Don’t use complex sql queries.
Only try to connect to tables or join tables. All preprocessing should be done outside of Tableau. It’s important to compartmentalize the visualisation flow from the data preprocessing. This will increase the server’s performance. Appropriate scheduling data extract refreshes
Scheduling data extract refreshes during working hours may take a long time, as multiple processes/jobs/queries might be utilizing the databases at the same time. You should schedule your data refreshes during your idle or non-working time. Prioritize Schedule Refreshes.
There may be many data refreshes connected to different workbooks in a refresh schedule. Some of the data refreshes might involve enormous amount of data which take a lot of time to refresh data extracts, while others might have lesser data and therefore would take less time. Some of the data refreshes can be critical for business, while others can be implemented out of curiosity. You should always look for the sweet spot here. Use Incremental Refresh instead of Full Refresh
Incremental Refresh appends new records to existing records in extracts. Full Refresh delete the whole data and loads old and new records.It is preferable to choose an incremental refresh as it takes much lesser time, unless there is a mandatory business requirement to reload the whole range of data.
Good luck with your dashboards! | https://medium.com/@markeltsefon/and-again-tableau-powerful-tips-for-connecting-to-the-data-89808e149605 | ['Mark Eltsefon'] | 2020-12-11 13:45:01.323000+00:00 | ['Tableau', 'Visualization'] |
GAP YEAR | GAP YEAR
What is it like having a gap year? A gap year is a furlough year, taken by students for pleasure or some other purpose. A gap year is usually taken between a high school and university. A gap year can be taken either for a semester or a year /few months. A gap year has its boon and bane.
Let’s begin. A gap year helps us to gain various skills in this period. These skills help you get a good impression on your CV and you can get good jobs. Students also take a gap year for recreation. They can tour different places for relaxation of mind and enjoyment. Another reason for taking a gap year is so that students can prepare themselves academically. A gap year is also taken to apply for an internship and can gain experience.
If you have no planning for a sabbatical year, then it’s useless to take a gap year and wastes much of your precious time. It can be expensive if living abroad. It becomes a bit harder to start your study after a long leave. If a student opts to take a gap year he should utilize that time by having a thorough reading of their academic books so they don’t forget anything at least once a week. You can gain more skills in this period. Improving English language and going for the fluency of a second language.
A drawback of the gap year is that your friends head off to higher classes in colleges and then you would get admission in a class lower than them, so you can’t get together. About 40% of the students nationwide take a gap year.
It is said that a gap year is good for medical students as they can get a thorough learning time frame and they improve themselves academically and make themselves capable to enter medical colleges by scoring high grades in entry tests.
According to my experience, as it is said that a gap year prepares you academically but in the same way it makes you away from studies and books. Because you want time to relax from the arduous routine but this makes you a lazy bluffer and you become weak in your studies. A gap year helps you maintain your physical health by taking part in sports you can also become an athlete. There is a need to pursue your passions during this period to know which field is best to select as your career. You can keenly think about your career… Through gap year you get time to think about it.
You can do things of your interest. Take part in your activities at home. They can spend their time with family, helping their parents with housework, giving attention to self-grooming and your house, improving households and many more things to do.
The one who takes a gap year is seen to be graduated before his peers. Those students are better in their studies and exams than their fellows. It is because such brilliant student knows that studies are more important than anything else, so they utilize their gap year wisely. A wise person is aware of how to work wisely and efficiently. | https://medium.com/@shazia.bahoo/gap-year-2b0ff1aca195 | [] | 2021-07-26 09:03:52.950000+00:00 | ['Sabbatical', 'Academic Writing', 'Year In Review', 'Gap Year'] |
GetResponse Review 2021-the best software to manage your email | What’s up today I am going to review of the email marketing software GetResponse that I ve been using it .
The goal here is to give you a feel for the software so that you can eventually decide if you actually wanna go with GetResponse for your individual business.
GetResponse is a comprehensive marketing software platform that helps you create content, boost sales, and increase traffic to your website.
GetResponse is a feature-rich online marketing solution, fully scalable and capable of handling both small and very large lists (1 million+ subscribers). For over 10 years, it has provided easy-to-use, self-service applications and expert support for creating and managing email marketing campaigns, newsletters, and autoresponders that convert contacts into customers. Through responsible and fully automated list hygiene, anti-spam practices and established relationships with major Internet and email service providers, GetResponse has maintained the highest possible deliverability standards for over a decade, ensuring that our customers’ messages deliver the highest possible return on their email marketing investment.
GetResponse features:
- 300+ industry templates — Looks matter! Choose from over 300 Industry HTML templates to create eye-popping campaigns for every audience and industry. Use the intuitive editor to customize your email communications with cool graphics, fonts and formatting, then brand with your company logo and colors.
- A/B Testing — To ensure you get the best results from your email campaign, test it first! Create up to 5 messages, with different personalization techniques, subjects, and styles. GetResponse will test each version for you, then automatically select and send the best! It takes only minutes and can save you cash − and lost customers!
- Email Analytics — Make sure every campaign is better than the last! Let GetResponse track every open, click, unsubscribe, and purchase. See the big picture with visual graphs, and get customized reports in your inbox daily.
- Guaranteed Deliverability — GetResponse applies over 10 years of expert human and automated system monitoring so your email marketing messages end up in prospect inboxes, not their junk folders. From the automated list hygiene, to the established ISP relationships and feedback loops, GetResponse ensures that your campaigns — and your brand — are always protected and compliant.
- Social media integration — Millions of potential customers are getting their product “buzz” from social networks − and you need to be there! GetResponse puts you in the middle of this non-stop conversation with point-and-click integration. Let Facebook and Twitter deliver instant links to your latest campaigns, coupons and blogs today!
- Online surveys — With GetResponse Surveys, research won’t cost you a dime extra! Ask as many questions as often as you want and get the data you need to improve products, target campaigns, and stay ahead of the competition! It’s a snap to use — just point and click to design, then publish and watch the results roll in.
- GetResponse mobile apps — Keep your finger on the pulse of your campaigns! GetResponse apps for iPhone and Android give you instant access to your dashboard and key stats, so you can react, anywhere, anytime. Add subscribers manually or import from your address book and you’ll never miss an opportunity to grow your list and your business!
- Coaching and support — GetResponse expert staff is on hand 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to help you maximize your email marketing — and your profits. Whether you’re a team of one or 20, we’ll work with you ever step of the way so you market smarter and faster − without adding staff. Get in touch via phone, email, or live chat. It’s friendly and it’s free!
GetResponse Enterprise — GetResponse Enterprise is a fully standalone system, engineered to provide high-volume sending, superb reliability, and expert support at an affordable price. Your enterprise-level service is hosted on a separate, high-end server with two dedicated IPs and is capable of sending up to 1,000,000 messages in a 24-hour period. The system is managed automatically based on our advanced “send-and-delivery” GetResponse analytics, and monitored by a team of enterprise delivery experts.
Great things about GetResponse
GetResponse is a very marketing tool that is powerful. Using GetResponse, you can create specific customer segments that allow you to deliver highly targeted emails to the best group of contacts at that time that’s right. Its autoresponder functionality allows you to create content that is relevant a way that best engages customers. This is perfectly complemented by its personalization capabilities that make customers feel like they are being treated as people, not only a true quantity on a list.
My last conclusion
Today i personally use Getresponse and we haven’t ecperienced any downsides and I 100% recommend you to try it out. GetResponse really came through with items, managing to provide both the features and ease-of-use that a lot of other publication tools fall in short supply of.
It’s hard to think of any competing e-mail marketing solution that offers this ‘all round’ proposition.
check Getresponse 30 days FREE trial
Disclaimer: This article contains my affiliate links and I will receive a small commission from any purchase made from my links. However, this does not affect the fees you’ll be charged but just motivates me to keep writing more in-depth reviews. | https://medium.com/@saurabhsaxena110/getresponse-review-2021-the-best-software-to-manage-your-email-a59c161ce908 | ['Saurabh Saxena'] | 2020-11-20 16:33:06.886000+00:00 | ['Getresponse Review', 'Getresponse Review2021', 'Email Marketing Tips'] |
The Audacity of Olivia Jade | When privilege is your only personality trait
Olivia Jade (Image source: Instagram @olivajade)
Olivia Jade has become a household name since the college admission scandal erupted and exposed the rich and famous guilty of cheating their children into elite colleges. Olivia Jade’s parents, Actress Lori Loughlin and fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, paid $500,000 in bribes to get their daughters into USC and listed as members of the university crew team. While others have also been indicted for participating in bribes, Olivia Jade’s case is the most discussed and perhaps the most infuriating.
Olivia Jade is an influencer and YouTuber who built a name for herself via her family’s fame and wealth. Often seen partying with celebrities and constantly posting manicured and professional selfies and shots to social media, Jade is a typical California elite. She is also entitled, shameless, and remorseless.
Following the the breaking of the scandal, Jade turned off comments on her Instagram posts, stopped uploading YouTube videos, and disappeared from the limelight while her parents were enveloped in legal and media drama.
On July 29th, Jade returned to Instagram with a birthday post for her mother, captioning the snap “one day late. happy birthday. i love you so much. (heart emoji)”
Following this, Jade returned to YouTube on December 1st, posting a video in which she explained why she couldn’t return to posting her usual vlogs and makeup tutorials. “Obviously I’ve been gone for a really long time, and as much as I wish I could talk about all of this — it’s really hard for me to say this, because I know that it’s something that needs to be addressed — it’s just, unfortunately…the reason for that is because I’m legally not allowed to speak on anything going on right now. A part of me is like, Should I come back to YouTube right now? It’s been so long and I actually really, really miss it. I genuinely miss filming and I feel like a huge part of me is just not the same because this is something that I’m really passionate about and something I really like to do.”
After this video, Jade slowly began posting more and more on Instagram, her usual pre-scandal shots of selfies, outfits, and recently, a video of her appearance on Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith. In the video, Jade seemed to try to put all of the blame for the scandal on her parents, stating she hopes her mom can learn from this and move forward. Rather than acknowledging her mistakes, Jade made a case on why she should not be “shamed” and “punished” and deserves a second chance. “”I’m 21, I feel like I deserve a second chance to redeem myself, to show I’ve grown.”
While second chances are important, they need to be earned. Olivia Jade has not earned it. Rather, she has been on the defense since this scandal broke and has tried to play a victim rather than a culprit.
Jade tried to paint herself as an innocent child unaware of her parents actions. Yet, she had no problem posing for photos on rowing machines that were used to make her fraudulent portfolio as a college crew member. In fact, she had never competed in crew in her entire life.
Furthermore, Jade has been vocal about her disdain for school from the beginning. In a now deleted video, Jade stated “”I don’t know how much of school I’m going to attend but I’m going to go in and talk to my deans and everyone and hope I can try and balance it all. But I do want the experience of game day and partying, I don’t really care about school. As you guys all know.“ Jade all but admitted that the only reason she was going to USC was to party and take photos.
This is infuriating not only because of it’s privilege and callousness, but the harm she caused to potential students who actually care about school. USC is a dream school for many young people who dream about earning a USC education and acquiring dream careers that require a degree. Jade took a spot at USC from a deserving young person, shamelessly claiming the spot to party rather than study.
In addition, she has not once acknowledge her privilege or wrongdoing directly. She has made statements saying she recognizes why people are upset and that what she did is wrong, but never once did she acknowledge her own privilege and the consequences of her actions on people who aren’t in her immediate family. Instead, Jade has already begun to try to revive her career as an influencer.
Olivia Jade became the face of privilege and entitlement overnight. Does she deserve this, or does she deserve a second chance? Let me know your thoughts in the comments. | https://medium.com/@miahoss/the-audacity-of-olivia-jade-1f980f7ae588 | ['Mia Hossain'] | 2020-12-21 18:20:08.047000+00:00 | ['Scandal', 'College', 'California', 'Cheating', 'Privilege'] |
DevOps Skills ตอน เริ่มต้นใหม่กับ Docker - Level 1 | We are a full-scale digital agency based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, specializing in software development, design, and digital marketing consulting.
Follow | https://medium.com/artisan-digital-agency/devops-skill-%E0%B8%95%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%99-%E0%B9%80%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B4%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%A1%E0%B8%95%E0%B9%89%E0%B8%99%E0%B9%83%E0%B8%AB%E0%B8%A1%E0%B9%88%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%9A-docker-level-1-d1a41aada11 | ['Thitipat Inkham'] | 2020-08-05 06:21:01.812000+00:00 | ['Development', 'Artisan', 'Docker', 'How To', 'DevOps'] |
CryptoBlades is releasing new Shield NFT ahead of PvP! Officially going on sale at 10am ET tomorrow! | CryptoBlades is releasing new Shield NFT ahead of PvP! Officially going on sale at 10am ET tomorrow! CryptoBlades Aug 4·1 min read
We have some amazing news to share with you on this fine day!
As discussed earlier on the stream we will be releasing a new set of items that can be widely used on our up and coming Player Vs. Player feature.
These will be in the form of SHIELDS!
Shields are an optional item that will help you defend yourself from incoming attacks in the Arena. 🛡️ ⚔️
Various ratings will determine what the stats are on the shields. Just like weapons these can go from ⭐ to ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The stats available on the shields are as following:
DEF 🛡️ (Defense) Instead of the equivalent PWR 💪 (Power) on swords.
Base Element Resistance and Percentage % Resistance currently known as 🔥 , 🌲 , ⚡, and 🌊.
So prepare yourselves and get ready to purchase these wonderful new NFTs as soon as possible as there are only 10,000 minted!
We shall see you in the Arena!
Thanks and have fun
CryptoBlades.io | https://medium.com/@cryptoblades/cryptoblades-is-releasing-new-shield-nft-ahead-of-pvp-82e4e1e62d3d | [] | 2021-08-04 23:58:05.940000+00:00 | ['Playtoearn', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Binance', 'Bitcoin', 'Binancesmartchain'] |
India — The Largest Importer of Pulses? | Pulses are the commodity that are high in demand in this multi-cuisine world. They are the source of obtaining protein mainly as the human body should be with. After the pandemic, the demand for pulses is increasing day by day in the world’s market.
What are Pulses:
Pulse comes from organic farming & this farming is the way to develop food products that are 100% natural & authentic with the help of promoting sustainable farming. Pulse be it lentils & chickpeas or black beans & Green moong is highly come up with lots of nutrients ie., high protein, lots of fiber, and energetic other substances that are essential to building up the muscles in the body.
What consumers say from different age groups:
Daniel from the US- “I’m 23 and a gym-goer guy with a natural and clean vegetarian diet. I tend to add black beans to my lunch with the bowl of Basmati rice because it keeps me energetic throughout the day and relaxes my stressed muscles within 30 minutes. So, it is a source of recovery to me”.
Peter from Canada- “Hi, I’m 46 and eating pulses is beneficial for my overall performance. Since I’m vegan, my main energy comes from lentils I am friendly with on regular basis”.
India the leading importing country for pulses:
India has been importing pulses for the last half-decade and earns more profit out of it. This has become a business for many & the holders of this business have been signing off to the world’s 1st global procurement solution for food products ie., Tradologie.com for turning lakhs of heads from the remarkably assured bulk orders.
India has now its 1st specialized B2B global platform to boost the import-export business of pulses. In a couple of years including the lockdown era, it has successfully closed the profitable deals by having the ready-to-sell verified global sellers from 18+ countries.
In the fiscal year 2019, India exported approximately 228 thousand metric tons of chickpeas that means a lot for the exporters of pulses.
The pulses importing countries across the world are India, Turkey, Spain, the UAE, Egypt, Pakistan, China, and many more. So, importers from India can import pulses from verified global sellers belonging to those countries without a phone call or an e-mail.
India’s remarkable pulses importer:
India imports pulses in bulk from the last couple of years from the pulse exporting countries. Importing activity in India might face some problems like channel, middlemen ship, high freight charges that directly affect to the importers of pulses.
Despite the fact that India remains responsible for 25% of the global production of pulses, in the year 2020, India imported 7 lakh tons of pulses. Approximately, 17% production of the pulses was exported to other countries.
Some importers & exporters from India have been associated with Tradologie.com — the future of import-export. It has raised many exporters and importers in their business and they all are grateful for the services of the transparent platform.
Now you can also import food commodities free of cost through tradologie.com. Yes, you have heard right that you as a buyer don’t have to pay off any amount of money for using the services. Any buyer in India or out of India can get the best price in real-time through live negotiation without a phone call or an e-mail.
All you have to do is check out the trade facilitator’s website to get the best deal for pulses import by reaching out to verified global sellers every morning. More than 38k+ verified global sellers from 18+ overseas countries are waiting to give assured quality of pulses. | https://medium.com/@tradologieb2b/india-the-largest-importer-of-pulses-dec571ed300b | [] | 2021-10-12 12:41:52.337000+00:00 | ['Export', 'Manufacturing', 'Business', 'Agriculture', 'Import'] |
How I Built My Project ‘Rythmize’ | Introduction
Rymthize is a web based application that we chose to build as an end-of-foundations project after being students for 1 year at Holberton School. So for this project we decided to solve an issues that have always faced me and my team and probably faced you.
When it comes to switching from a music streaming platform to another one, there is a very hard and frustrating operation you likely end up doing every time, which is transferring your music data and your favorite songs/playlists especially when you have a lot of songs and that can get quite tedious. So that’s what our application solves, with a friendly simple to use interface you can move your tracks and playlist to any streaming platform you want.
Before getting further into the project, let me introduce myself and my team!
We were a team of three, Seif Jelidi responsible for front-end engineering , Mohamed Dali Souissi responsible for project management, and there was me in charge of back-end engineering and API integration.
Accomplishments
Infrastructure
Data flow diagram:
Data model diagram:
Technologies
For the Front-end we chose to use HTML, CSS and JavaScript along with AngularJS as framework. we designed our pages using Figma, essentially because it’s free and online .
For the server-side we used Python as our programming language along with Flask as a web framework and PostgreSQL as a database .
Why Flask over Django ?. Flask is relatively lightweight, 2.5x smaller than Django in terms of amount of code and we have more control over our application.
Features Implemented
Feature: Authentication to our application
Feature: user can connect to his spotify account
Feature: a refresh token system that keeps the user connected to his Spotify account
Feature: user can see his playlist
Feature: user can see tracks that are inside playlist
Feature: user can move playlist or tracks to another playlist
Feature: user can create new playlist
Things took longer than expected, that’s why we didn’t complete all the feature. For now our app supports only Spotify .
Future Features
Transfer songs from youtube to spotify
Transfer songs from Spotify to Youtube
Downloading music from Spotify
Creating Release radar / Discover weekly playlists before they disappear
Converting YouTube Music to MP3
Technical challenges
First and hardest challenge was thinking about the idea itself, especially from back-end perspective. I had to figure out a way to interact with the third party api like spotify and at the same time keep the user updated, by that i mean token and refresh token,So i ended up building a spotify client that checks for tokens and if token expires then it will request a new one and update the user in database also if user have no token i will generate an authorization link, here is a code snippet.
Also building the REST-API and authentication system was a little bit of pain, i ended up learning a lot of new things and concepts like flask factory and how properly structure a project. Also in order to secure our application we used extensions like flask-praetorian, password hashing, cryptography, email validation which requires a lot of documentations reading in a very short time. Setting up GitHub Actions for continuous integration also was a little bit confusing.
Linking back-end and front-end also was challenging especially when we have only 10 hours left before the presentation, we faced a lot of bugs both in back-end and front-end, we had to fix them really quick in order to complete the project. Also deadline and time management are the big two non-technical challenges, it’s a very stressful experience when you have short deadlines and a lot of tasks but also a lot of things to learn first in order to complete those tasks, stress management and time management were the helper functions for us :) .
Things learned
In summary, I would say this project was a really great learning experience. During the development of this project, i ended up researching and learning about object oriented design (OOD) and design patterns.
For example:
In Factory pattern, we create object without exposing the creation logic to the client and refer to newly created object using a common interface mainly by calling a factory method instead of calling a constructor.
In Strategy pattern allows grouping related algorithms under an abstraction, which allows switching out one algorithm or policy for another without modifying the client.
My time and working hours wasn’t well managed, So if there were some things i could’ve done differently… it would’ve been trying to manage my time and put a clearer plan.
As an engineer I’ve learned how powerful and capable i am and i think my future engineering path will be in web-stack especially back-end stuff.
I found out that flask is a strong and capable framework, i always loved Django over flask but after this project i think i changed my mind.
Me ?
20 yo software engineering student, Self-motivated and hardworking seeking for an opportunity to work in a challenging environment to prove my skills and utilize my knowledge. | https://medium.com/@cyberxtech/how-i-built-my-project-rythmize-657f7fe985e2 | ['Malek Salem'] | 2020-11-04 20:49:01.959000+00:00 | ['Heroku', 'Backend', 'Software Engineering', 'Flask', 'Web Development'] |
These 9 startups are pushing the envelope of retail innovation | These 9 startups are pushing the envelope of retail innovation
A lightning-quick look at pitches from startups at NRFtech 2017 and why you should care.
All big ideas start small. And often, the biggest innovations or ideas begin at the smallest companies.
For the third consecutive year, NRFtech featured a collection of startups in the “Tour of the Possible” program curated by Iterate Studio, a marketplace of startups indexing more than 162,000 companies focused on digital innovation.
NRF’s Tony Fontana takes a look at the 2017 class, each startup’s area of expertise and what they can bring to the table for catalyzing innovation in any organization.
Artificial Intelligence
Vue.ai — By combining visuals with online behavioral data, this “AI-powered personal stylist” is built to help companies create intelligent retail optimization in three core areas: dynamic personalization, shoppable videos and image generation for garments and other merchandise.
Ethan Schur is COO at NanoVR with a passion for advancing human progress through IoT, wearable and AR/VR.
AR and VR
NanoVR — Imagine a virtual brand ambassador interacting with customers inside a store, or a store window that showcases products and imagery without blocking merchandise. The “nanoscale precision” software is built to provide retailers with interfaces like these.
Theia Interactive — The company has made immersive VR experiences for several non-retail clients in the Northeast, bringing real renderings in architecture, engineering and construction to life. It could change the way store designers and merchandisers conceive the layout of retail stores, before and after shelves are stocked.
Big data and machine learning
Narvar — From order tracking and proactive customer communications to seamless returns, this turnkey solution keeps customers engaged from the buy-button to delivery. The platform also applies machine learning across billions of interactions to improve supply chain efficiencies, future transactions and customer experiences.
Persado — Powered by cognitive computing technologies, the platform leverages “emotionally tagged content” (images, words, phrases) in its database to help retailers understand which elements of a message work and how. The “cognitive content” approach helps automate marketing messages to deliver the right content across channels in a consistent brand voice and up to 23 different languages.
Sentiance — This machine learning and behavioral modeling platform uses first-party IoT sensor data to create highly specific and unique customer segments. The raw data, collected from smartphones, connected cars and similar devices, is obtained with explicit consumer consent and within compliance of global data protection regulations.
Qubole — Cloud infrastructure meets big data management in this platform, co-founded by members of the original Facebook Service Team, with the purpose of taking the pain out of data management by creating applications to streamline personalized experiences, consumer segmentation and more.
Chatbots
Reply.ai — This platform does more than provide an enterprise solution to chatbot creation and management. It uses AI to help bots learn from conversations over time while also providing them with the “smarts” to let customer service know a more personal, “human” touch is needed.
Robotics
Bossa Nova — Formed in February 2005 as a spin-off from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, the robot roams a store collecting terabytes of data about the products already on the sales floor. By scanning products on the shelves, making a map of the store and helping employees keep track of where items are located, the technology underscores how humans and machines can work together to make educated inventory management decisions. | https://medium.com/nrf-events/these-9-startups-are-pushing-the-envelope-of-retail-innovation-a4861029f800 | [] | 2017-08-03 18:44:03.755000+00:00 | ['Augmented Reality', 'Startup', 'Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Retail'] |
FMG Copa$tetic Baby “Neva Leave My Side “Single Is Trending. Over 9 Million Streams and Counting | FMG Copa$tetic Baby “Neva Leave My Side “Single Is Trending. Over 9 Million Streams and Counting David5blom Apr 4·4 min read
Have you heard of Louisiana’s latest social media sensation? Listen to FMG Copa$tetic Baby’s Louisiana Music’s “Neva Leave My Side”, which is a viral song.
This is a part of viral music that quickly gained consideration on the Internet. As with Internet memes, the audience for these music inclines to increase and spread quickly as direct communication fosters word of the entrance. The number of times a YouTube video is played is one of the strongest dials of a song’s approval, and when this music has been regarded 9 Million times, it becomes one of the most observed songs in the world.
Neva Leave My Side, the author had to spend a lot of time writing this song. Then the rapper had to work harder to tune in to this song. Music writing is not easy. By choosing words that accurately convey what the composer impressions, choosing a specific tune and beat, the sound of the arguments must also be pleasant to the human ear. Lyrics can be the initial point of a song: the lyrics come primary, suggest a confident feeling or attitude, and motivate a tune. This is the influence of words. Excessive lyrics can touch you, be it a slit of pleasure or sorrow, it is a gift from a composer.
FMG Copa$tetic Baby’s
The top lyrics speak like the best rhyme, and many will say that people like FMG Copa$tetic Baby is actually lyricist and composer. To show how difficult and rare it is to make beautiful letters like yours, it’s worth looking at the other side of the measure.
Valcour Records is a self-regulating record label grounded in Eunice, Louisiana. Valcour was founded in 2006 by Joel Savoy (child of Anne Savoy and Mark) with his support Lucius Fontenot. At the beginning of 2015, only two videos had been viewed more than a billion times. By the finish of the year, ten people were still over the edge. Nowadays, as of 2021, many videos are part of a billion viewers club and many are below the milestone. At the top of this pyramid of popularity are the giants who have surpassed 1 billion opinions, and various have even tripled it. Can you identify who they are? One of the many people is FMG Copa$tetic Baby. He has gained immense popularity through this song “Neva Leave My Side”
Only one of the most attractive lyrics forever written, and one of the strangest. Filled with layers of strange symbolism, it is the invention of the truly exclusive fancy of the lyrical genius FMG Copa$tetic Baby (via some highly banned substances). Generating word after music, the words flow flawlessly into FMG Copa$tetic Baby incredible rhyme to the sea. The music was so uncommon that they really produced resistance within the group, and someone complained that they were pointless and would estrange his supporters. As a result, the song was delayed for a very fem time, but those who complained had the wrong idea.
The music is here to show that lyrics don’t have to be about darling, grief, loss, or any other way deep to get general. Mah Na Mah Na is one of the music most famous songs, loved all over the world, and it means mainly nothing. In fact, the song that Neva Leave My Side transcribed for the Louisiana-based record label contains nothing at the same time garbage words and scat. It just drives to show that occasionally successful lyrics just have to sound decent, become harmonious tools on their own, and not make much sense. The strings with which “Neva Leave My Side” starts are so relevant that they carry listeners directly into the performance gallery. They then dive into a scintillating song that is a continuous wonder to the last note. FMG Copa$tetic Baby finds accessibility moments here, thanks in part to the voices of Louisiana and diversity with anonymity.
Music is said to provender the soul, and nowhere does it resemble Louisiana, where the uncountable brilliant musical group has written or achieved songs that will always be the portion of our nation’s dialog. Th are music about Louisiana! Are you prepared to listen? We’ve put together this Louisiana playlist a state’s preferred songs to appointment to acquire additional about this music. One of the greatest renowned songs in the world “Neva Leave My Side” was written by the 21st Louisiana FMG Copa$tetic Baby. A country rapper Copa$tetic Baby is best known for riding his “Neva Leave” on the many steps of the Louisiana State.
One of the greatest recorded pieces of music in the world has been recorded by many performers over this year. But check out this standard many times recording of “Neva Leave” by the person who inscribed it.
From the above discussion, we came to know that “Neva Leave My Side” is a famous song of FMG Copa$tetic Baby, which is an epoch-making song of the present time, due to which it has gone viral. The audience of this song is constantly increasing, many listeners are commenting on the song very well. This song at the top of their list among some listeners. Many people have made many videos about this song on various social media including YouTube and many people have danced in different styles to match the song in many ways. In a very short period of time, many viewers and subscribers have increased for this song. FMG Copa$tetic Baby this song has been reviewed by more than 9 million listeners; its listeners are growing at an infinite rate day by day. People are listening to this song to keep themselves entertained in their leisure time, listening to this song makes people less frustrated and anxious, that is the main reason why it is viral. So, it can be said that this song is more popular in the present era. At the same time, we can hope that FMG Copa$tetic Baby will give us more beautiful songs. | https://medium.com/@product4rapid/fmg-copa-tetic-baby-neva-leave-my-side-single-is-trending-over-9-million-streams-and-counting-6f39c1910161 | [] | 2021-04-04 08:44:04.695000+00:00 | ['Viral', 'Songs', 'Producer', 'Streaming', 'Rapper'] |
Breaking Regulatory Barriers for Bridge Inspection: NCDOT and Skydio Secure the First True BVLOS Waiver Under Part 107 | Today, just a few months after the announcement of the nationwide Tactical BVLOS waiver, we are celebrating another first-of-a-kind regulatory achievement that allows the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) to fly Skydio drones beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) to inspect bridges with unparalleled safety and efficiency. This waiver marks a new era in unmanned flight. Until now, the FAA had required the use of visual observers (VOs) for operations beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). The FAA also traditionally required the use of expensive solutions — such as radar — designed to detect manned aircraft, even in areas manned aircraft were unlikely to fly. The waiver announced today breaks both of those barriers. NCDOT received permission to conduct BVLOS operations using Skydio’s autonomous drones — without VOs or expensive surveillance technology.
This achievement follows months of collaboration between Skydio, NCDOT, and the FAA. Going forward, NCDOT’s inspectors — who face the daunting task of inspecting more than 13,500 bridges on a regular basis — can send drones below bridges instead of dangerous rappels or expensive and invasive snooper trucks. Although today’s waiver focuses on NCDOT, it signals the FAA’s willingness to permit advanced BVLOS operations within procedural parameters that account for lower levels of airspace risk near structures, a concept known as infrastructure masking.
This blog explores the partnership between NCDOT and Skydio that made this achievement possible; explains the nature of the operation; and examines the technology, training and tools designed to make this new authority work for your inspection program.
Honoring the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s Leadership
We first want to applaud the FAA for enabling NCDOT’s inspection crews to benefit from these unique and forward-leaning operations. We also want to acknowledge the operators who made this possible. In the annals of aviation, North Carolina will forever be known as the state “first in flight.” North Carolina has devoted that same pioneering spirit to advancing the future of unmanned aviation. The North Carolina Integration Pilot Program (IPP) has been a catalyst for next-generation drone operations from inspection to delivery. We have been thrilled to partner with teams across the state, especially NCDOT.
NCDOT was an early adopter of Skydio 2, purchasing it shortly after it hit the market. NCDOT quickly realized the value of autonomy for bridge inspection, which my colleague Guillaume Delepine recently outlined in a must-read blog. Skydio 2’s obstacle avoidance and visual navigation technologies enable faster and safer inspections by pilots of all skill levels that need to navigate the complex truss structures below bridges. The results are exciting, and the benefits to augmenting the outdated methods that previously have dominated bridge inspection are manifold.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eYSzmjT6HI
To help NCDOT inspect bridges more efficiently than ever before, our Head of Regulatory and Policy Affairs, Brendan Groves, and Director of Solutions Engineering, Kabe Termes, worked closely with NCDOT’s experienced team to craft a ground-breaking waiver application. We were honored to partner with NCDOT in pioneering the safety case for Below Bridge BVLOS flights, and thrilled to see the FAA grant a waiver to our partners after months of effort.
Understanding Below Bridge BVLOS Operations
America boasts more than 600,000 bridges, each one of which must be inspected regularly under federal and state laws. Few jobs are more important — or more demanding — than inspecting bridges. In order to inspect the critical infrastructure below the deck of the bridge, highly trained inspectors conduct daring feats — repelling over the edge or dangling below in the bucket of a snooper truck. It is dangerous work. Some bridge inspectors have been killed and injured. Traditional methods of bridge inspection are profoundly expensive, requiring large crews and costly equipment. Traditional methods also impose high costs on travelers in the form of lengthy road closures and delays.
Bridge inspectors have long understood the potential for drones to improve the status quo. But the use of drones was not without problems. The first problem involved technology. The vast majority of drones on the marketplace require GPS to operate and are subject to electromagnetic interference (EMI) — which effectively prevents operations beneath a bridge, where GPS lock is unlikely and EMI is likely. Making matters worse, the lackluster “obstacle avoidance” features on most drones are incapable of navigating complex spaces like bridge trusses. Skydio’s autonomous drones break through these barriers. Skydio drones do not need GPS, are not subject to EMI, and are fully capable of navigating confined spaces without human intervention — allowing even novice pilots to fly in the most demanding environments.
Skydio drones confidently fly where others cannot — even in environments where GPS lock is unlikely, and electromagnetic interference is likely.
The second problem involved FAA regulations. Flying below the deck of a bridge required securing permission to operate beyond visual line of sight. Traditionally, the FAA has required the use of VOs and expensive surveillance equipment (such as radar) in order to receive a waiver to conduct BVLOS operations. Almost every FAA waiver was also limited to specific sites. Those requirements were largely incompatible with the nature of bridge inspection. When flying beneath a bridge, VOs are often out of the question — a VO standing on a bridge deck has no more ability to see the drone than the pilot. The same is true for radar and other surveillance technology. Even small radar installations often cost $100,000 or more and must be tuned to work well at specific sites. Finally, waivers that only applied to a handful of bridges would vastly limit the utility of drones. North Carolina, for example, has more than 13,500 bridges — every one of which must be inspected.
Over the last six months, Skydio and NCDOT worked with the FAA to break down these barriers. The waiver announced today permits BVLOS operations without the three traditional features of past BVLOS waivers. First, NCDOT may conduct BVLOS operations below the deck of bridges without VOs, provided the drone remains within 50 feet of the bridge itself and within 1,500 of the remote pilot. Second, there is no requirement to leverage expensive surveillance technology because the FAA (correctly) recognized that manned aircraft are unlikely to transit the confined airspace in and around a bridge. Third, the waiver is not limited to select bridges. The waiver adopts a performance-based approach that allows NCDOT to conduct BVLOS operations at any bridge meeting the criteria outlined in the waiver.
Summary of the key features of the waiver | https://medium.com/skydio/breaking-regulatory-barriers-for-bridge-inspection-ncdot-and-skydio-secure-the-first-true-bvlos-b6ac93b6f97e | ['Brendan Groves'] | 2020-10-05 17:58:26.411000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Tech', 'Autonomous Vehicles', 'Regulation', 'Drones'] |
5 Ways to Crush Trumpism and Unify the Nation, Today | 5 Ways to Crush Trumpism:
1.One Continuing Resolution for all of 2021
2. Ear-Marks to Reward Democrats
3. Announce Abrams for Supreme Court
4. Women for Every Judicial Nomination
5. 50-State Campaign w Slayer Pete
This is a time for unity as President-Elect Biden has stated. But, let’s be clear about what unity means. I am for unity, but I am not for appeasing the adoption of Trumpism in the Republican Party.
The 2020 election was a mandate on politics and policy. Most Americans are centrist-liberals. You don’t win Georgia and Arizona as a Democrat unless there is a strong base of support.
Trumpism in the Republican party is currently a safe haven of white supremacists and conspiracy theorists. Adamant anti-vaxers and anti-maskers. The anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-climate change, anti-choice bigots, sexists, and anti-science extremists. It is still the party dominated by Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell. The cowering has not stopped, and the grip has not loosened. I do not support unity with Mitch McConnell. This is about defeating Trumpism.
They just stole a Supreme Court vacancy while votes were being cast, a few weeks ago. So I suggest 5 ways to promote unity and demolish Trumpism:
One Continuing Resolution for 2021: In the House, there should be one large Continuing Resolution (CR) for all of 2021. It should include a years worth of funding and the Equality Act/Dream Act/ ACA and Civil Rights Act. The Democrats must be willing to shut down the government, hold tough, and show no mercy to McConnell.
2. Ear-marks to Reward Democrats: It is time to restart riders, and pork-barrel politics. This will reward Democrats and bring moderate Republicans to the table.
3. Announce Abrams for Supreme Court, Today: Both Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (J.D. from Georgia State) or Stacey Abrams (J.D. from Yale) are lawyers. Both would be amazing and Biden should announce one of them as the next Supreme Court nominee now. This will open the flood gates of opposition but it will mobilize voters in Georgia ahead of the Senate races. Control of the Senate will determine if Bottoms or Abrams is a Justice.
4. Women for Every Judicial Nomination. To counter the court packing of Mitch McConnell, every nominee to every federal seat should be a woman. This announcement could be made today. This is a bold pro-woman statement. This may also address the lack of support from white women in the 2020 election.
5. 50 state Campaign with Slayer Pete. It is time to resurrect Howard Dean’s 50-state campaign to consolidate the 2020 election. And the best future head of the DNC was the best surrogate for Biden (after VP-elect Harris) — Slayer Pete. He had the message and temperament to even deal with Fox News. This announcement could be made today.
Or next week. But I would roll out one of these each week for the next 5 weeks.
Dr. Christopher L. Pepin-Neff has a B.A. in political science, a Master’s in public policy and a PhD in public policy. | https://medium.com/@christopherneff1/5-ways-to-crush-trumpism-and-unify-the-nation-today-6528278b42d5 | ['Dr. Chris Pepin-Neff'] | 2020-11-09 16:57:46.515000+00:00 | ['Democratic Party', 'Politics', 'Democrats', 'Biden', 'Trump'] |
Why Newton Finance chose Amazon Web Services to host their applications? | What is Amazon Web Services, or AWS?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud service from Amazon, which provides services in the form of building blocks, these building blocks can be used to create and deploy any type of application in the cloud.
These services or building blocks are designed to work with each other, and result in applications that are sophisticated and highly scalable.
How does Amazon Web Services ( AWS ) work?
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis from a cloud provider like Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Newton Finance will run all sorts of use cases, from a casino, to Staking, NFT market place and many more in the future. There are two secrets we can partially unravel, Mobile App, and an Augmented Reality Game. We are talking 2022–2023 for those two. Newton Finance team will be focused on the applications and will let AWS do the scalability and optimisation work for us, as they are the leaders in the market.
As far as security is concerned, Using AWS, we will have control and confidence needed to securely run our business with the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available today. As an AWS customer, Newton Finance will benefit from AWS data centres and a network architected to protect our customers information, identities, applications, and devices. With AWS, we will be able to improve our ability to meet core security and compliance requirements, such as data locality, protection, and confidentiality with AWS comprehensive services and features.
Thank you for your time reading this publication!
Aurimas - Lead developer
JOIN US HERE, IF YOU HAVENT ALREADY:
Website: https://newtonfinancetoken.co/
Telegram: https://t.me/newtonft
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NewtonToken | https://medium.com/@Newtonfinancetoken/why-newton-finance-chose-amazon-web-services-to-host-their-applications-fd3a0af652c2 | ['Newton Finance'] | 2021-08-01 21:55:37.932000+00:00 | ['Binance', 'Amazon Web Services', 'Pancakeswap', 'Decentralised Finance', 'Binance Smart Chain'] |
TMC Gen 3 Combat Trouser Review! | Good enough for Airsoft?
Welcome back finally to another gear review. This time of the TMC Gen 3 Combat Trousers, I picked these up from Weapon762 which seems to be my usual gear haunt as of late and put them to the test!
After a very muddy first outing.
So having recently had an operation on my right knee due to a bad injury I thought that built in knee pads are now a must. I already have a different branded Gen 3 style of trouser in AOR1 but wanted a different pair with a green flair.
(Specifically Multicam Tropic)
So I searched around to find a decent clone pair (as I think Crye is a bit overkill for Airsoft personally) and came across these on Weapon762.
My first impressions of the trousers were what I have come to expect from TMC branded products, Tough and well made for an Airsoft clone brand.
What I like is that you have alot of ways to adjust the trousers to your individual measurements with the ample velcro straps and cords so these now fully fit me for maximum comfort!
Great Quality Knee pads!
They also come with a set of knee pads which you can insert if you wish, however you don’t have to as they are 100% optional.
They fit very well and do not come out while on the field as they have small velcro tabs which mesh with internal velcro which is a great touch.
A very windy second outing.
I put these through their paces a bit before doing this review as they were my first pair of TMC branded trousers and I am quite happy with the results!
So far no ware and tear and no fading from being washed which is great!
Another great touch which I dont find alot of tactical trousers have is the front pockets.
Most have awkward front pockets near the waist line but these have pockets almost the same cut as pockets you would find on most pairs of jeans. Which makes storing things like car keys, phones, wallets etc easy and also easy to get to!
The side pockets on the thigh also have bands in them which can hold things like magazines firmly in them if you run out of space on your Plate carriers/ Belt rigs, creating even more storage space.
Take a look at the trousers here:
Knackered! (2nd from the right)
Overall I am very happy with these, for clones you cant go wrong!
Would I recommend this?
Honestly yes, if you dont have the money to buy Crye Gen 3 trousers then these will for sure do the trick and not break the bank!
So there we have it, let me know what you think of this review of the TMC Gen 3 Combat Trousers and don’t forget to leave your feedback in the comments below & check out the link to my channel below.
Simisdim out! | https://medium.com/@simisdim/tmc-gen-3-combat-trouser-review-f4a44165495a | ['Simisdim Airsoft'] | 2020-02-23 22:00:44.101000+00:00 | ['Gear Review', 'Airsoft Gear', 'Gear', 'Airsoft Review', 'Airsoft'] |
What’s Happening with Pennsylvania’s Mail-in Ballots? | Highlights:
Researchers from MIT and Stanford take a deep dive into Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballot data to understand weekly trends, demographic and party breakdown, and where the battleground state stands in requests and returns.
As of this past week, a cumulative 2.9 million mail ballots have been requested across Pennsylvania, compared to 230,000 in 2016. This is a more than 12x increase over four years.
mail ballots have been requested across Pennsylvania, compared to 230,000 in 2016. 1,455,351 ballots have been returned, which is roughly half of total requested ballots (50.17%).
In total, 1,445,560 mail ballots have yet to be returned (roughly 50%).
In the week of October 18 alone, 289,701 mail ballots were requested, and 49,546 were returned.
Black voters have the highest percentage return rate among requests, at 55%.
Registered Democrats dominate the cumulative requested and returned mail ballots.
Distribution of ballot requests are roughly proportional by race relative to registered voters.
With the election less than a week away, researchers from the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project analyzed the mail-in voting trends across the State of Pennsylvania, a heated battleground for candidates.
Notably, as of this past week, a total 2.9 million mail ballots had been requested across the State of Pennsylvania, compared to 230,000 in 2016 — this is a more than 12x increase in mail ballot requests from the 2016 election.
As of last week, roughly 50% of all mail requests had been returned (1,455,351, to be exact). Registered Democrats have dominated the cumulative requested and returned mail ballots, and overall, the distribution of ballot requests are roughly proportional by race, relative to registered voters.
Breakdown by Race
When looking at the numbers by race, White voters have requested the majority of total mail in requests in Pennsylvania, and have also returned the majority of them. However, when analyzing within each race, Black voters have the highest rate of return relative to requests.
Here are the highlights:
White voters make up the majority of total mail in requests : 74% White, 12% Black, and 14% Other
: 74% White, 12% Black, and 14% Other Black voters have the highest percentage return rate among requests at 55%, followed by Whites at 50%, then other races at 47%
among requests at 55%, followed by Whites at 50%, then other races at 47% Cumulatively, Whites make up the largest ballot return percentage at 76%, followed by 14% from other races, and 10% from Blacks
For the week of October 18, the requests by race were:
White: 202,464 (70%)
Black: 30,489 (10%)
Other: 56,749 (20%)
For the week of October 18, the returns by race were:
White: 34,814 (76%)
Black: 4,171 (10%)
Other: 10,561 (14%)
Breakdown by Party
When looking at the numbers by party, Democrats make up the largest proportion of both ballot requests and returns.
Here are the highlights:
Democrats make up the majority of total mail in requests : 64% Democrat, 25% Republican, 11% No Affiliation
: 64% Democrat, 25% Republican, 11% No Affiliation Democrats have the highest percentage return rate relative to requests at 56%, followed by 40% among Republicans, and 40% for those with no party affiliation.
relative to requests at 56%, followed by 40% among Republicans, and 40% for those with no party affiliation. Democrats make up the largest ballot return percentage at 71%, followed by 20% Republicans and 9% for those with no party affiliation.
For the week of October 18, the requests by party were:
Democrats: 157,688 (64%)
Republicans: 86,367 (25%)
No Affiliation: 45,646 (11%)
For the week of October 18, the returns by party were:
Democrats: 33,470 (66%)
Republicans: 10,879 (24%)
No Affiliation: 5,197 (10%)
Ballot Rejections
In some instances, mail-in ballots can be rejected (whether due to a signature mismatch, or other reason).
In total, 0.6% of Pennsylvania’s mail-in ballots have not been accepted. Of these rejections, 0.65% have been from White voters, 0.36% from Black voters, and 0.54% from other races.
For the week of October 18, 0.78% of the ballots returned for counting were not accepted (0.81% from White voters, 0.59% from Black voters, 0.74% from other races).
For a visual breakdown of the data and analysis, visit the full report here. | https://medium.com/mit-election-lab/whats-happening-with-pennsylvania-s-mail-in-ballots-b06142edcd01 | ['Mit Election Lab'] | 2020-10-30 21:01:13.085000+00:00 | ['Elections', 'Pennsylvania'] |
Travelling Tips Part1 | Trip planner who will create a tailored plan according to your needs | https://medium.com/@loaiblogger/travelling-tips-part1-fd5d2e707c7a | [] | 2020-12-14 22:07:04.793000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Adventure', 'Planning', 'Tips', 'Explore'] |
Honoring the 50th Anniversary of 2001: The Monolith and Hope for the Human Species | Fifty years after its debut, 2001 is more relevant than ever. Released at the height of the space age in 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was one of the cinematic and cultural blockbusters of the 1960s and early 1970s. Fifty years later, 2001 stands as the greatest and most thought-provoking science-fiction film of all time, perhaps rivaled by Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014). As most science-fiction fans know, 2001 also introduced the sleek black monolith, one of the most striking icons in film and art history.
Although it initially garnered mixed reviews, 2001 became a big box office hit and generated much discussion about its meaning. For example, what the hell was the black monolith anyway, and where did it come from? Where did astronaut Dave Bowman end up in his cosmic journey? The 35 mm and 70 mm versions of the film played in theaters well into the early 1970s, but because the thrill of the Apollo moon landings had worn off by that point, 2001 faded from popular consciousness, even as its prestige eventually skyrocketed. Now we’re in the year 2017 and the 50th anniversary of 2001 is soon to arrive. It’s time to consider the meaning and vision of hope in 2001, which is centered around the sleek black monolith.
The Year 2000
It is probably hard for contemporary readers to grasp that the year 2000 once stood for “the future,” a world of tomorrow filled with optimism for art, science, technology, planetary ecology, social equality, and universal progress. With the 2 replacing the 1, followed by three 0s, the future beyond 2000 just had to be better, wiser, cooler, and overall more awesome. This hope for a better future after 2000 is why Kubrick and coauthor Arthur C. Clarke set their space-age odyssey in 2001 — the first year of the new millennium.
2001 depicts a past and future in which humans have evolved from apes to astronauts through science and technology, along with an assist from the mysterious monolith. Importantly, 2001 taps into the awe and wonder of the cosmos along with the marvels of science and technology. At the same moment in human history, Kubrick and NASA directed space odysseys that expressed the highest trajectories of the space age, when humanity first ventured into the vast universe beyond planet Earth — yet neither Kubrick nor NASA provided the philosophical meaning for these discoveries and achievements. Kubrick wanted 2001 to show a human space narrative but not explain it or detail it.
Meaning 1: Desert Monolith
In a moment of the sublime, the “desert” monolith inspired pre-human simians to discover technology and look to the stars. The monolith first appears in the desert scene with the apes, as small tribes battle over scarce resources. During one scene, we see the close-up of an ape’s face as the ape glances right, then left, then skyward. We see a sunset of deep orange with a dark sky above. The next morning the monolith appears, standing perfectly upright in the desert as if it had been planted there with intent. There is no explanation for its origins. As the apes gather around, we hear Ligeti’s Requiem, the music rising in a crescendo. The monolith is then shown against the morning sky, with the sun eclipsed as it rises above the top edge. A crescent moon is positioned above the sun. This linear and symmetrical arrangement suggests the monolith is pointing toward the sun and moon and thus directing the apes to look toward the stars. This observation is confirmed in the famed jump cut from the bone to the spacecraft. The technological apes are motivated by the sublime.
When the apes first see the monolith, they are experiencing an all-too-human moment of the sublime — the simultaneous feeling of awe, wonder, and terror when gazing upon something majestic and mysterious that seems to overwhelm their reason and sensory perceptions. We can see the awe and terror of the apes as they approach the monolith, first staring at it and then quickly touching it and removing their hands in fear. Their reason overwhelmed, the apes remain curious. Eventually the sleek monolith seduces their reason and senses, leading them to caress it as an object of mystery and desire, even if they have no idea where it came from or what it means. Inspired by the monolith, the apes are soon using bones as technology and evolve to become the space farers we now are.
The scene where the ape transforms the bone into technology is accompanied by Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra (1896), as kettledrums and symphonic sounds rise to a triumphant crescendo. (Also Sprach Zarathustra is also heard in later appearances of the monolith.) Strauss’s composition was inspired by Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Surely Kubrick and Clarke knew the inspiration for the music, suggesting that the extraterrestrials in 2001 are the space-faring gods who inspired the apes to become humans, not the human-created anthropomorphic God who is dead to Nietzsche. In fact, this is the idea Kubrick intended, as he states in his 1968 Playboy interview:
“I don’t believe in any of Earth’s monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can construct an intriguing scientific definition of God, once you accept the fact that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone, that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are approximately 100 billion galaxies in just the visible universe.
Given a planet in a stable orbit, not too hot and not too cold, and given a few billion years of chance chemical reactions created by the interaction of a sun’s energy on the planet’s chemicals, it’s fairly certain that life in one form or another will eventually emerge. It’s reasonable to assume that there must be, in fact, countless billions of such planets where biological life has arisen, and the odds of some proportion of such life developing intelligence are high.
Now, the sun is by no means an old star, and its planets are mere children in cosmic age, so it seems likely that there are billions of planets in the universe not only where intelligent life is on a lower scale than man but other billions where it is approximately equal and others still where it is hundreds of thousands of millions of years in advance of us. When you think of the giant technological strides that man has made in a few millennia — less than a microsecond in the chronology of the universe — can you imagine the evolutionary development that much older life forms have taken?”
Kubrick is clearly offering a cosmic, secular, extraterrestrial notion of a “God.” This is not a God of our creation and narcissistic insecurities, but the idea that a sufficiently evolved and advanced extraterrestrial species — with the science and technologies to traverse the light years — would be like gods to us or any less-advanced species. Would these extraterrestrials be like Nietzschean supermen or more like Hollywood superheroes? Or more like scientists and philosophers contemplating microbes in a petri dish? Perhaps that explains the monolith left behind for the apes on the petri dish of planet Earth. Since the extraterrestrials would likely have no need to conquer our planet for its resources, why would they want to destroy us?
Kubrick thinks it’s possible (though not certain) they would be benevolent, as suggested by the desert monolith in the film. In the spirit of Nietzsche’s Ubermensch, perhaps the monolith-bearing extraterrestrials have evolved beyond their early evolutionary stages, becoming peaceful and benevolent space farers on a quest for discovery, beauty, and cosmic meaning. Perhaps they have already developed and embraced a cosmic narrative that unites their species as they explore the universe.
Meaning 2: Moon Monolith
In the same interview, Kubrick points toward the second meaning of the monolith:
“But at a time [1968] when man is preparing to set foot on the Moon, I think it’s necessary to open up our Earthbound minds to such speculation. No one knows what’s waiting for us in the universe. I think it was a prominent astronomer who wrote recently, ‘Sometimes I think we are alone, sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.’”
The “moon” monolith proves to the simians-turned-humans that they are not alone in the vast universe, no longer are they cosmically central, nor are they the top species in the cosmos. Discovered by scientists on the moon in the year 2001, the second monolith was buried four million years previous. Like the desert monolith, the moon monolith stands perfectly vertical. The difference is the moon monolith is beaming a radio frequency toward Jupiter. The scientists realize this is a monumental discovery, and it prompts the visit to the Clavius moon base by Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester). However, the humans on Earth have not yet been told of the discovery. As Floyd says to a gathering of scientists at Clavius:
Congratulations on your discovery, which may well prove to be amongst the most significant in the history of science. . . . Now I’m sure you’re all aware of the extremely grave potential for cultural shock and social disorientation contained in this present situation if the facts were prematurely and suddenly made public without adequate preparation and conditioning.
After making this statement, Floyd informs the scientists that “security oaths” will be required of them until it is decided when and how to inform the public. With this plotline, Kubrick and Clarke also provide artistic motivation for the world’s space conspiracy theorists. Among the most popular and absurd conspiracies are that NASA faked the moon landings, NASA or the military has found extraterrestrial life but refuse to tell us (Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind [1977]), and mainstream scientists and archaeologists have conspired to deny evidence that proves “ancient astronauts” have visited Earth (Ancient Aliens [2010-]).
Meaning 3: Jupiter Monolith
The “Jupiter” monolith is a symbol of the cosmic sublime and the infiniteness and mysteriousness of the universe. The monolith provides the apes with an experience of the sublime, thus inspiring them to develop technologies that eventually send them into the stars when they become humans. Such vastness and mystery will seduce the ever-curious human species into leaving Earth and exploring space. On the Discovery One spacecraft, Bowman accidentally uncovers the existence of the moon monolith when he comes across a video announcement in the spacecraft’s computer system (as he is turning off the HAL 9000 computer). An unnamed spokesman states:
“Eighteen months ago, the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth was discovered. It was buried 40 feet below the lunar surface, near the crater Tycho. Except for a single, very powerful, radio emission aimed at Jupiter, the four-million-year-old black monolith has remained completely inert. Its origin and purpose still a total mystery.” [Italics mine.]
The idea of the monolith as a symbol for the sublime and cosmic mystery is confirmed in the next scene, when we see the Jupiter monolith (black with a cobalt blue tint) floating and slowly tumbling against the blackness of the starry skies surrounding Jupiter and its moons. Discovery One is shown stationary near Jupiter. Soon, Bowman exits Discovery One in the space pod, flies toward us in space, and then enters the Star-Gate sequence. Seduced by the monolith, Bowman ventures untold numbers of light years through the immensity of the universe and its array of cosmic and intergalactic forms.
Meaning 4: Hotel Monolith
The “hotel suite” monolith symbolizes the void in human meaning, yet in pursuit of that meaning or meaninglessness lies human destiny, a fate from which there is no exit. Of course, the other monoliths symbolize this indirectly. The monolith makes a final appearance in the hotel-like suite where Bowman has arrived upon conclusion of his journey through the Star-Gate. After rapidly aging to become a very old man lying in bed, Bowman’s last act is to point toward the monolith standing at the foot of his bed. Bowman dies or is transformed while thinking of the monolith.
Kubrick zooms into the blackness of the monolith, which envelopes the screen. As Also Sprach Zarathustra rises to a final crescendo, we are instantly returned to our area of the universe. We see the moon, followed by Earth and then the Star-Child, who is either Bowman reborn, the infant heir to his space-faring legacy, or the first of a new cosmic Ubermensch that evolved from current space-faring humans. Perhaps Bowman’s rebirth as a Star-Child symbolizes the Nietzschean recurrence, though now the Star-Child represents the superhumans who explore the universe with a new cosmic narrative. The Star-Child gazes down at Earth and then straight at us, eyes wide open as the film ends. With the Star-Child, the trajectory seems complete, from ape to astronaut to astral species. Through Bowman the space spore, we have returned to “The Dawn of Man” — Star-Child, stargazer, space voyager, and seeker of beauty, meaning, and purpose.
2001 at 50: The Specter of the Monolith
Ultimately, the black monolith and 2001 pose the question of what we humans will become as we venture into a magnificent universe in which we are not central, not significant, and maybe not alone. The monolith signifies the complexity of mysteries and meanings, if any, in Kubrick’s “indifferent” universe — the marvelous cosmos that allows us to exist on a tiny planet yet seems eternally unconcerned with the fate of the many species that populate Earth. Like the towering star factories in the Hubble images, the monolith is a pillar of beautiful indifference yet also a beacon for wonder and curiosity in a gigantic universe.
The Hubble images give a moment of the sublime, the simultaneous sense of awesomeness and meaninglessness. When we scan the Hubble’s cosmic images and those from the world’s many telescopes, our aesthetic sense grasps their beauty while our reason affirms their scale and splendor, yet our minds are blown and we end up dizzy or intellectually paralyzed by what it means for our species, the tiny species with big brains and a yearning for significance. We gaze into the sublime wonders of the cosmos, yet sensing nihilism and meaninglessness we retreat from any new possibilities offered by the cosmic blank slate. Astride the abyss between now and what’s possible, we get vertigo and step back into the comfort of the traditional narratives that order life on Earth, even if those narratives are completely false. We humans apparently can’t handle the paradoxical meaning of our greatest scientific achievement and most important philosophical discovery: The universe is vast and majestic, and our species is insignificant and might be utterly meaningless.
With the phrase “specter of the monolith” (also the title of my book), I am naming a complex existential moment — the simultaneous experience of the sublime and nihilism. As a new space age ramps up in the 21st century, future astronauts and the human species itself will inevitably face the specter of the monolith and the challenge of nihilism and meaninglessness. We have yet to embrace the sublime as a potential counter to nihilism in developing a universal human narrative for a space-faring species and a peaceful planetary civilization.
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra (the book that inspired Richard Strauss to write the symphony Also Sprach Zarathustra [1896], which was later used by Kubrick in 2001), Friedrich Nietzsche speculated that since humans are the superior species that evolved from apes, there might be an equally greater species that would evolve from humans — what he termed the “Ubermensch” or “Superman.” Nietzsche wrote how “man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman — a rope over an abyss.” So what comes next? What will emerge in the next stage of human evolution?
That’s the question Kubrick poses at the end of 2001, with the Star-Child appearing against the blackness of the cosmos, Earth literally rising in his gaze. As a space-faring species, what will humans make of themselves in an awe-inspiring universe with unlimited possibility? That’s where the monolith has profound metaphorical meaning. Tall, sleek, and black, the monolith is an icon of awe and the cosmic void, yet it’s also a towering blank slate for us to write a new philosophy for the future of the human species.
2001: What Can We Hope For?
The very opening of 2001 begins with three minutes of a completely black screen, accompanied by Ligeti’s Atmospheres. The monotonal sound textures suggest a monochromatic existential void, the beginning of the intellectual journey for the human species. The origins and purpose of the monoliths are never explained, though they trigger and inspire events. Bowman’s journey and the hotel suite are never explained. In the end, the black monolith that seduced the apes seems to have given birth to a Star-Child and space-faring species in search of its cosmic meaning and existential purpose.
2001 has several meanings that indicate what we can hope for now and in a future cosmic narrative:
1) We are an evolutionary species capable of great things. We evolved from apes to artists to astronauts, from simians to scientists and space voyagers. Inspired and seduced by the monolith, we created a technological civilization capable of exploring the stars and seeking to understand its origins and destiny via art, science, and philosophy. This is an incredible achievement for our species of which we should be proud.
2) We are not alone. The existence of the monolith with the apes is a hopeful message, in that the extraterrestrials were benevolent and sought to inspire the most advanced species on Earth at the time.
3) We need to be careful with our advancing digital technologies. Via the flawed artificial intelligence of the HAL 9000, 2001 provides a warning to humans about the seductive power of our technology. We might find ourselves serving the technology rather than the technology serving us. More radically, perhaps HAL symbolizes the next leap in evolution, the technological Ubermensch to succeed humans.
4) We face the challenge of cosmic nihilism. As symbolized by the final two monoliths, we face a philosophical void, for there is no intrinsic or self-evident meaning for human existence in a vast and wondrous universe.
5) There is no exit from the cosmic sublime. Though our science and technology are accelerating into the universe as if on autopilot, 2001 suggests our discoveries will disrupt our traditional narratives and that our journey into space is the next step in the continuing existential quest. In the search lies our destiny, a species seeking meaning and purpose amid the awe-inspiring galaxies and voids.
6) Our first space spores have been launched. As symbolized in 2001 (and by technologies such as Apollo and Voyager), we are launching our first spores into the cosmos. In effect, 2001 is one of those spores, though it is artistic and philosophical. With our knowledge of the cosmos, we have the opportunity to become Star-Children and philosophical Ubermensches, to be the artists, scientists, philosophers, voyagers, and tourists of the cosmos — seeking not merely to survive but peacefully pursue our existential quest in a beautiful and sublime universe.
All of this is why 2001 is the greatest space film and a towering work of art and philosophy, offering us a vision of hope and meaning in a majestic and awe-inspiring universe. Fifty years later, it’s time to begin developing a new space and humanist philosophy for the human species, a philosophy and cosmic narrative that situates us in the sublime universe from which we evolved.
____________________
In this book, I use the sublime as the starting point for developing a new space narrative and space philosophy.
The above is based on passages from my new book, Specter of the Monolith (2017). For more information or to purchase the book in Amazon, click here.
To view my my 12-minute video homage to 2001 and the monolith in Vimeo, see below. | https://medium.com/explosion-of-awareness/honoring-the-50th-anniversary-of-2001-the-monolith-and-hope-for-the-human-species-1704c93501a0 | ['Barry Vacker'] | 2020-08-22 21:44:28.433000+00:00 | ['Space', 'Philosophy', 'Art', 'Atheism', 'Science'] |
The Furry Lisa, CryptoArt, & The New Economy Of Digital Creativity | Over the last year I became the proud owner of The Furry Lisa, among several other one-of-a-kind digital creations often referred to as “crypto art” or “NFTs” (non-fungible tokens — a special type of cryptographic token and digital contract that represents something specific and unique as opposed to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and tokens that are fungible). But before I explain the personal significance of The Furry Lisa (and break down the major players in this space and the mind-blowing broader implications), let me start with a bold proclamation:
This NFT world is likely the greatest unlock of artist opportunity in 100+ years. This isn’t a suboptimal or fringe version of the real-world art economy, it is a vastly improved one.
Whether you are an artist of any kind, investor, or consumer of anything creative, you will be impacted. But before we explore the far reaching implications, let’s understand why NFTs up-level art in profound ways.
8 Reasons Why Crypto Art > Art
(1) Crypto Art cannot be counterfeited. Every piece of art that is “minted” in this world is forever chronicled on the blockchain (a permanent ledger of owners, transactions, and other information), eliminating all doubts about authenticity and rightful ownership.
(2) The provenance is based in transaction, not spin. In the fine art world, the historical record of an artifact — past owners, fabled bidding wars, museum exhibitions, and an artist’s activity — are often represented by self-interested Gallery owners, art buyers, and industry insiders. In contrast, the “provenance” of an asset (the source of truth for its storied history) is memorialized in the blockchain and can be represented by novel interfaces in all kinds of creative ways.
(3) More transparent and better merchandised scarcity. Let’s face it, collectors want to know they own a one-of-a-kind — or at least something rare. Look no further than the CryptoPunk phenomenon to understand the value that real-time transparent scarcity drives. While the old school fine art world is littered with impossible to audit limited editions and artist proofs, Crypto Art has solved for this.
my cryptopunk crew, three of the ten thousand unique and trackable inaugural artistic use-cases of NFTs.
(4) Portability and liquidity. While the fine art world often relies on luxury shippers, insurance brokers, auction houses and expensive art advisor coordination to achieve portability and liquidity, Crypto Art can be transferred between owners in minutes and listed on various marketplaces and spaces simultaneously. Again, so long as these assets are represented on the same underlying blockchain (still some dust settling here), they have a ton of surface area for discovery.
(5) 10x more meritocracy and artist opportunity. Gone are the days of needing to be blessed by a particular art critic or granted a degree from a particular art school. Sure, “signal” from particular collectors and marketing by the artist still drives value, but the equal opportunity across the globe for any talented artist to “mint” a piece of work on a particular marketplace and be discovered is step-functions more empowering. And, once their work is purchased, that transaction is the ultimate signal of value for other collectors — unencumbered by industry politics and gallery affiliations. But this hasn’t stopped traditional auction houses from trying to get a piece of the action…
This piece, by famed NFT artist Beeple, is liable to make history as a “cross-over” moment when “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS” is auctioned off by traditional auction house Christie’s on Feb 25th.
(6) Transformative economic model for artists via NFT contracts. This is perhaps my favorite advantage of all — the ability for artists to automatically gain a percentage of every sale of their work in the secondary market in perpetuity. I mean, can you imagine!? Artists can evolve from getting ~50% of the initial acquisition price of their work in a gallery to a new world where they get 80%+ (depending on marketplace they use) of the proceeds on their initial sale plus 10–15% of every secondary sale forever! Imagine the families of artists anywhere receiving residuals for generations much like the world’s greatest bands as their work continues to grow in value and trade hands. F’ing transformative. Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting while he was alive, and not for much. Oh how far we‘ve come.
(7) Creativity without bounds. Now i’ll insert my bias, but bringing more digital experiences to the fine art world unleashes an entirely new medium of creativity that the fine art collecting world has never fully appreciated. Suddenly the seemingly-fringe creative explorations of algorithms and multi-media mashups are on par with any other piece of Crypto Art. As we shed our bias for stuff made of atoms and embrace stuff made with bits, the aperture of love for and inspiration by art opens widely.
A few highlights from my collection, including “Release” by UK-based Digital Artist mbsjq (who i’ve followed on Behance since 2009 where his work has 5M+ views, and now on Instagram as well) who is fascinated with all things iridescent & outer space. I purchased one of mbsjq’s genesis series featuring “Astro & The Universe” for 3.3 ETH, and his latest on SuperRare was just acquired by another collector for 35 ETH (~$69,000)!
(8) Crypto Art is art made for the future. As our walls become screens and our field of vision becomes enhanced with augmented reality, we will seek precious and meaningful objects to surround us (just as we always have). Whether in the much anticipated “metaverse,” the many digital worlds and games we frequent, or in our own living rooms and peripheral vision, this new generation of art is made for our future.
The total growth and total market cap of the fine art world is on the cusp of an explosive moment. SuperRare announced early February that they had exceed $10M in total sales ($7.87M Primary Sales and $2.19M Secondary Sales). You can also track some of the most expensive pieces sold across NFT marketplaces on cryptoart.io. And, speaking of transparency, you can track volumes of transactions across top decentralized marketplaces using products like Dapp Radar and Dune.
And here’s Dapp’s count, as of 2/21/21, on top seven marketplaces by volume transacted, updating here.
Dune’s report of SuperRare in particular, notice the turning point in just the last few weeks.
What Comes Next?
Much like Uber did for transportation and Airbnb did for hospitality, the blockchain is transforming and expanding the market of art and digital experiences of all kinds. The only distinct difference about this digital transformation from many that came before: it is empowering the careers of creators themselves more than everyone in the middle.
Packy McCormick described this quite well is a detailed piece about the next generation of the web and what he called the “value chain of the open metaverse.”
As McCormick explains it, “The movement is really about doing one of the most capitalist things there is: cutting out the middleman. It means that instead of value accruing to the Aggregators, there can be a more direct connection between suppliers and consumers. It’s not about taking money out of the system, it’s about moving the money around to the people who create and the people who consume, and to the people who maintain and improve the network itself. And it’s about attaching each user’s data and money directly to them (Self-Sovereign Identity), creating a public record that they own what they own (blockchain), and letting them take it with them, and profit from it, wherever they go on the web (Interoperability).”
So, what opportunities might this new world and economy unleash? Let’s have some fun exploring the biggest implications for this wild new world on work and life as we know it!
The New “Alt” Economy Will Reach Us All
No doubt, our captivity during COVID and the infusion of fed funds into the economy have helped fuel our open-mindedness to buying and trading alternative assets (the resurgence of baseball cards is a great proof point). But I imagine a time when everyone will have “long-tail asset digital wallets” of fractional ownership units of everything they love. New marketplaces like Otis (founded by a Behance alum!) and management tools like OnlyAlt (starting with sport cards but with a very ambitious agenda!) will allow you to collect, value, and trade such assets.
You can buy fractional units of culturally-relevant and scarce assets on Otis right now.
This will all give rise to “Holistic Assets”
Imagine buying an NFT asset, like a piece of crypto art, that is not only digitally available and memorialized on the blockchain, but also entitles you to real-world assets and experiences. I have come to call these “Holistic Assets” because they can be (theoretically) packed with all sorts of entitlements yet still be verifiable and tradable as any other NFT is. I even see a world in which every real-world purchase, from Gucci suits to a new Chevy, are accompanied by an NFT that establishes you as an owner and unlocks a series of entitlements, from Snap filters to Fortnite skins, for as long as you are the rightful owner.
A screenshot of the mulit-media piece “the V01D / 034–00,” a generative program written using processing (JAVA) + GLSL shaders, by Joshua Davis.
At least two of my purchases on SuperRare were followed by an overture by the artist to send along a physical print. Joshua Davis (aka Praystation) offered me to pick any frame in “The V01D / 034–003” and ship me a signed physical copy. But imagine what a musician or other celebrity “minting” a piece of their work for ownership might offer or entitle to its owner? Perhaps private audience or some other special experience? Perhaps you get a VIP treatment forever more? When you play this out — and the opportunity to fractionalization such offerings — this could be bigger than the business of live events. Perhaps you no longer go through middlemen and centralized ticketing or brokerage industries for such experiences when you can simply own a piece of the artists work and get direct access in exchange?
A new stack of technology and participants will emerge.
We’ll see a cohort of highly curated galleries emerge, like SuperRare. We’ll see other sites that simply act as sources of truth for all that’s going on or serve as open marketplaces, like OpenSea, Showtime, (and perhaps Behance might help in a more platform capacity as well from a portfolio perspective, as its 25M+ members discover CryptoArt?). We’ll see new variants and alternative blockchains like how Flow is being used for NBA Top Shots. And we’ll see plenty of “picks and shovels” type companies emerge to power functionalities like Magic Link for payments, NiftyKit for independent “minting” of assets, Bitski that allows big brands/creators to mint NFTs along with certain entitlements and media, and the list goes on. This is a whole new era of technology.
This Will Yield Entirely New Uses For Creative Tools
While i’ve committed my life to empowering creators of all kinds — from artists and product designers to entrepreneurs — to overcome the obstacles to make ideas happen, my day job is running product at Adobe. ;-) So what’s the role of Adobe and the creative tool space in all this? I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few months connecting with top crypto artists and learning about their workflow and challenges. Guess what? Most of them are using Photoshop and Illustrator on desktop, and some have discovered the latest iPad/Tablet apps like the (quite groundbreaking) Adobe Fresco and the newly reimagined Photoshop and Illustrator on iPad. My hope is that creative career opportunities, like selling your content and creating crypto art among others, become better integrated into the tools over time to make these capabilities more user friendly and accessible. I also think companies like Adobe that make creative tools, with open source initiatives like ContentAuthenticity.org, can help provide attribution data into an NFT designating who ACTUALLY made it (as opposed to just who minted it). This capability is noticeably missing in the new wild wild west of NFTs. Digital tool makers have a responsibility to understand the new and growing needs of the world’s best crypto artists.
But at the end of the day, art is about meaning.
And all of this analysis brings us back to where we started: The Furry Lisa.
This piece has special significance to me for a few reasons. Primarily, at a moment when the boundaries (and prejudices) of art’s physical and digital divide are finally crumbling, I saw the “Furry Lisa” as a great representation of the cross-over moment — the idea of making the creation and collection of legendary pieces like the vaulted Mona Lisa more inviting and accessible (literally soft to the touch). I love the added dose of irony that this creation cannot be touched given its digital existence, and yet FEELS so approachable. And its creator, Istanbul-based designer Murat Yıldırım, has been active on Behance (the platform i founded over a decade ago), since 2015 and has since minted a few more in this series for purchase on SuperRare. His second addition to the six-piece series, “Furry Night,” was recently purchased at auction by a collector named “Radar” for 17 ETH (equivalent of ~ $33,198 at time of purchase). And voila, the world of fine art does its thing. Full circle.
Welcome to the new era of digital art, one that finally transcends the traditional “lowest common denominator” aspects of the web and both elevates and rewards some of the greatest artists the world has ever seen. As always, art — and creative experimentation more broadly — is just the bridge between the old way and a better way. So much more to come in this space.
~~~
Follow and connect w/ Scott on Twitter, check out other recent posts like “8 Themes for the Future of Tech,” get his latest book — The Messy Middle, or sign up for an infrequent newsletter of insights. | https://medium.com/@scottbelsky/the-furry-lisa-cryptoart-the-new-economy-of-digital-creativity-6cb2300ea081 | ['Scott Belsky'] | 2021-04-05 18:00:02.768000+00:00 | ['Art', 'Marketplaces', 'Product', 'Design', 'Business'] |
Construction and Mining Equipment 2021: Bulldozing Over Covid 19 Setbacks | In the third AEM [Association of Equipment Manufacturers] member survey conducted since the pandemic started, 75 percent of CEO respondents predict industry-wide revenue growth through October 2021.- Construction Equipment Guide
It’s hard to keep a strong industry down and civil construction and mining are two sectors showing impressive resilience in the wake of 2020’s global Covid 19 shutdowns and disruptions. While overreaching, politically driven restrictions and regulations have no doubt left their scars, intrepid industry leaders are determined to bulldoze right over the roadblocks set in their way on the road to a robust rebound in 2021. And once again, innovative equipment management approaches using digital services and platforms are the key, forecasted to drive up to $273 billion growth by 2030 according to this informative report at Benzinga.
The 2021 Construction and Mining Equipment Sales and Rentals Market
Growth in infrastructure development
Increases in delayed urbanization projects
Alternate powertrains for heavy equipment (electric drives with digital technologies)
Demand for modern, compact, rental equipment
Telematics and digitization are building a strong reputation for boosting operational efficiency that results in robust ROI, according to industry analysts Frost and Sullivan. While 2020 saw numerous pandemic delays, the rebound in the 2020 construction and mining equipment sector will be fueled by a variety of factors to resolve the pent up demand driving the top industry trends of the heavy equipment industry including:
According to the Benzinga analysis, telematics companies in lucrative partnerships with autonomous retrofit providers and equipment rental companies can offer streamlined fleet modernization for key markets including the United States, China, Europe, and India. Rental fleets make it much easier for construction and mining companies to manage operational costs while increasing utilization capacity.
These reciprocal partnerships can boost the 2021 rebound and grade right over the Covid 19 pandemic scars from the depressed 2020 heavy equipment market. End-of-year estimates are anticipating a reported “18% decline in the unit sales of heavy equipment in 2020 due to the decline in manufacturing, operations, and distribution centers across the globe”.
But rapid growth in rental programs incorporating IoT (Internet go Things) can allow OEMs to accelerate the development of compact, autonomous construction and mining equipment that bring operational costs for companies way down. In mining operations, 30% of the workforce is often dedicated to equipment maintenance alone, generating 40% of operational expenditure.
Outsourcing to reduce maintenance opex for construction and mining corporations will place OEM dealers in a dominant position for equipment service and maintenance, while providing a streamlined path to the latest state-of-the art equipment fleets for optimized ROI.
“Growth will be driven by the Asia-Pacific market and the earthmoving segment in the short term. The transition toward rental models, electrification, and automation will happen in the medium to long terms.”- Krishna Achuthan, Commercial Mobility Industry Analyst at Frost & Sullivan
The Construction and Mining Equipment Rebound: Slow But Steady
While small equipment (under 10 tons) may continue to struggle in the first half of 2021 due to a decrease in housing and non-residential building construction, consumer confidence could rise by the second half of the new year and help to erase significant declines in small rental equipment. The need for more compact equipment in urbanization upgrades will also have a positive impact on the small equipment sector.
Infrastructure construction is expected to make up for lost ground experienced in 2020. Mid to large size equipment utilization demand can benefit from these large long term projects funded by governments and economic stimulus and environmental programs. Electric utilities/gas plants will pick up by 35 percent in 2021, led by expected groundbreakings for several large LNG export facilities and an increasing number of wind farms.
After a 4% decline in 2020, compared to 2019, management consulting firm DuckerFrontier predicts that in the process of catching up with the backlogs caused by covid-19 shutdowns, “both contractors and their machinery will be extremely busy next year”. That could cause a scramble for rental equipment as the springboard to a slow but sustained rebound in the industrial equipment sector.
The latest forecast released by the American Rental Association (ARA) on Nov. 12 anticipates 6.8 percent equipment rental industry growth in 2023 and 4.8 percent in 2024 to reach $59.7 billion, according to the report After a Tough Year, Heavy Machinery Sales Will Pick Up in 2021 … Beyond at Construction Equipment Guide.
Dodge Data & Analytics predicts that total U.S. construction starts will increase 4 percent in 2021, to $771 billion. This is a good start to recovery from 2019 where pandemic impact and the shutdown recession has been a lingering obstacle to construction starts in 2020.
In the mining sector, rising demand for dump trucks, and hybrid trucks in particular, is expected to “drive the largest slice of the construction equipment sales pie”, according to research conducted by Markets and Markets Inc. The study data implies that a “major chunk” of the global electric dump truck market includes hybrid mining dump trucks with higher capacity, power output, fuel efficiency, and reduced maintenance cost. The overall global construction equipment market size is expected to reach nearly $170 billion this year, and have a value of $205 billion by 2025.
So while the rebound in construction mining and equipment sales and rentals won’t be instantaneous in 2021, progress in the sector will be, like the equipment itself, powerful, slow, reliable, and steady.
Catch Up on Your Backlog in 2021 With Resource Erectors
While 2020 has been a year of trials and tribulations for us all 2021 is shaping up to be a year for rolling up our sleeves and getting back to business as usual. If you’re an experienced professional ready to take advantage of new opportunities in 2021 we’ve got enduring working relationships with the industry-leaders who are seeking your talents.
For organizations getting ready to roll to success in 2021, we can help you build your dream team while eliminating further disruptions by avoiding the high costs of a bad hire and filling those essential vacancies that pile up operational expenses day by day. We maintain vital connections with the top professional candidates and industry-leading companies in civil construction, mining, minerals, aggregates, concrete, construction materials, engineering, and more.
When it’s time to get your workforce in shape to catch up with your 2021 backlog, Resource Erectors brings decades of specialized industrial human resource experience to the table. Over 80% of our highest qualified professional candidates placed are still contributing to the profitable success of their companies 5 years later, so please don’t hesitate to contact us today to be prepared for the rebound just around the corner in 2021. | https://medium.com/@mining-recruitment/construction-and-mining-equipment-2021-bulldozing-over-covid-19-setbacks-bebdd6bc8fa9 | ['Resource Erectors'] | 2020-12-23 14:38:31.646000+00:00 | ['Mining', 'Recruiting', 'Equipment Rental', 'Mobile Equipment', 'Construction'] |
Comparing modern build tools | Build tools have become a necessary component in the workflow for modern web applications. I have previously covered the basics of what build tools can do for you to show how builds help with scripting, automation, and eliminating complexity. Taking those into consideration, I’m going to provide a closer look at some of the more popular build tools and how they might make sense for your projects.
This post isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list. Rather, it’s meant to provide suggestions to help you get started in researching how different build tools improve the development workflow. While reading through this comparison on build tools you will gain some knowledge to better equip yourself for comparing how these tools line up with your specific needs.
What are we comparing again?
This guide will only look at build tools that have the ability to perform project module bundling, which is the process of stitching dynamic content into modules and bundles into static assets files. This process can be enhanced using scripting, automation, and minification. Not all build tools are created equal and not all build tools can do all of the above. Some tools require more configuration and some are drop-in solutions that do most of what you need out of the box.
It’s likely you’ll have (or develop) a preference for how much you’d like a build tool to do. So rather than choosing one build tool to rule them, this post will cover the advantages, gotchas, and an ideal project profile for each tool.
Browserify
Advantage: Drop dead simple
The catch: Development on the project has slowed down a lot
Ideal project: Projects that are looking to move away heavy usage of script tags and move CommonJS requires instead.
Browserify focuses on the simplicity of getting started and it is a great introduction to module bundling in JavaScript development. Browserify originally came into existence as a way to allow front-end developers to use CommonJS (require statements) in the browser the same way you would in the server render node application. Previously web development used multiple script tags on the page to build modern web apps. This tool browserifies all your JavaScript files into a concatenated (combined and merged) file that can easily be included on the page as a single script tag.
Using Browserify starts with the installation of the CLI. I recommend using npm from the command line.
npm install browserify
Once installed, you can point your JavaScript entry point of your application (most likely your index.js) to a location to start the Browserifying process.
browserify index.js > bundle.js
The result is a bundled version of your JavaScript that can be included in your index.html.
<script src=”bundle.js”></script>
Browserify implementation is feature complete and focuses on JavaScript improvements out of the box. To support the bundling of non-JavaScript assets, like CSS or images, there is a healthy list community-created transforms (all named with ify endings, how clever) to source for those solutions. I’m a huge fan of enlisting the open source community to take a project further, but if you’re giving Browserify a try take heed: some transforms haven’t received new updates in more than six months. That being said there is plenty of areas to contribute back to the community by providing plugins to your project’s solutions.
Unlike some other build tools, Browserify doesn’t have a standard config file to maintain. however you can leverage the node package.json to handle more advance configurations. The work of Browserify is inferred through the plugins and what is inside your JavaScript files. For projects that do not constantly need to be updated, this can be a beautiful thing. For projects in need of a lot of tools and optimizations, the missing config file can become a burden because there is no source of truth or place to expose the witchcraft of the build tool.
Consult the Browserify documentation as well as the list of transforms to see it includes everything you need to make your development workflow happy. You can also use this tutorial on how to build a React app with Browserify to see it in action. If simple is what you need then Browserify is something I would consider for your next project.
Webpack
Advantage: Actively-supported project with tons of features out of the box
The catch: Takes a bit of custom configuration to get right
Ideal project: Projects that are looking to stay up to date with latest and greatest changes. Projects also looking to do code splitting should consider webpack as well.
Webpack is a build tool that is built on 4 main concepts: Entry, Output, Plugins, and Loaders. Once you understand the ideas around these concepts, you can get Webpack up and running on a project. Webpack took can feel similar to Browserify in some ways with enhanced features through a community of plugins. Webpack however, comes with more features out of the box with plans to continue to add more and continually rethinking the design of the project.
I wrote previously wrote a guide for getting started with [Webpack from scratch](https://www.netlify.com/blog/2017/11/30/starting-with-webpack-from-scratch/) and it focusing on the leveraging the Webpack CLI to build a React application. Webpack requires you create a separate config file to support your Webpack build efforts. This file is nothing more than a JavaScript object that Webpack uses to enable and disable features during the build process based on keys and values within the config object.
// example of a webpack.config.js
module.exports = {
entry:’./index.js’,
output: {
filename: ‘bundle.js’
}
Within the config you can identify the entry point of your project as well as the location of where you would like to place your bundle. This makes running the Webpack build simpler since do not need remember specific commands, you just `webpack` to create you build.
npm install webpack
webpack
The Webpack config can be a sweet way to approach adding new features and tools to enhance your build process, but like most sweets things, a few additions here and there can cause your config to bloat into to a form that unmanageable. A config that looks unmanageable can be a form where the development team on a project avoids changing or updating the Webpack config for fear of breaking the build due to one too many added to the Webpack config file.
The React team has solved this Webpack problem by abstracting the config away into a hidden script beneath the create-react-app CLI tool. If you take a look at the hidden config, the file has some of the best laid out comments you may ever have seen in a config, but the fact that it needs so many comments makes you question if there is a better way to have such fine tuned configuration without the needed walls of comments to support each decision.
// excerpt from the creat-react-app's webpack config
module.exports = {
// You may want 'eval' instead if you prefer to see the compiled output in DevTools.
// See the discussion in https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react-app/issues/343.
devtool: 'cheap-module-source-map',
// These are the "entry points" to our application.
// This means they will be the "root" imports that are included in JS bundle.
// The first two entry points enable "hot" CSS and auto-refreshes for JS.
entry: [
// We ship a few polyfills by default:
require.resolve('./polyfills'),
// Include an alternative client for WebpackDevServer. A client's job is to
// connect to WebpackDevServer by a socket and get notified about changes.
// When you save a file, the client will either apply hot updates (in case
// of CSS changes), or refresh the page (in case of JS changes). When you
// make a syntax error, this client will display a syntax error overlay.
// Note: instead of the default WebpackDevServer client, we use a custom one
// to bring better experience for Create React App users. You can replace
// the line below with these two lines if you prefer the stock client:
// require.resolve('webpack-dev-server/client') + '?/',
// require.resolve('webpack/hot/dev-server'),
require.resolve('react-dev-utils/webpackHotDevClient'),
// Finally, this is your app's code:
paths.appIndexJs,
// We include the app code last so that if there is a runtime error during
// initialization, it doesn't blow up the WebpackDevServer client, and
// changing JS code would still trigger a refresh.
],
output: {
// Add /* filename */ comments to generated require()s in the output.
pathinfo: true,
// This does not produce a real file. It's just the virtual path that is
// served by WebpackDevServer in development. This is the JS bundle
// containing code from all our entry points, and the Webpack runtime.
filename: 'static/js/bundle.js',
// There are also additional JS chunk files if you use code splitting.
chunkFilename: 'static/js/[name].chunk.js',
// This is the URL that app is served from. We use "/" in development.
publicPath: publicPath,
// Point sourcemap entries to original disk location (format as URL on Windows)
devtoolModuleFilenameTemplate: info =>
path.resolve(info.absoluteResourcePath).replace(/\\/g, '/'),
},
// ... there is so much more to this
The Webpack team is actively developing this project and doing their part to clear up the confusion around the config. A lot of the missing features that once needed a Webpack plugin are now included in the library itself, including tree-shaking, uglifying, and even web assembly (WASM) support. The well-written through documentation also helps to make this Webpack as a build tool more approachable and has been consistently maintained since the launch of Webpack 2 (Fall of 2016).
Webpack not only has a focus on module bundling, it includes code splitting as a built-in feature Code splitting is the practice of loading only the content that’s needed, when it is needed by leveraging separate page split bundles base usually on routing. This has the potentially to improve page load speed and the overall browsing experience. Code splitting does however come with a learning curver, one that I have personally not fully learned, but the Webpack team members are trying their best to flatten that curve with webpack.academy.
There are lots of community-built Webpack config boilerplates, including a pretty neat tool called Webpackbin. Webpackbin is a sandbox to build and configure Webpack examples. You can generate links from here which is nice when researching Webpack configurations, as authors tend to post their configs in the sandbox and provide the URL to share.
Webpack is working towards being the batteries included, but some parts sold separately build tool. Webpack can handle almost every concern you have when b web applications these days, but you will also likely need to read the manual (documentation) a lot to get it your build up and running to your liking.
Rollup
Advantage: Built-in features for package management
The catch: You’ll need to make sure your project has implemented the ES6 syntax
Ideal project: Projects looking to use slightly less configuration for the build process and already using the latest ESNext features like ES modules
Rollup is a module bundler for JavaScript which compiles small pieces of code into something larger and more complex. It uses the new the new version of JavaScript’s ES6 module system, instead of previous idiosyncratic solutions such as CommonJS and AMD, to perform the rollup (bundling) of your project. ES6 modules let you freely and seamlessly combine the most useful individual functions from your favorite libraries.
Getting started with Rollup can be done via the command line. Just point your index.js and provide a name for your bundled ouput.
npm install -D rollup
rollup index.js — o bundle.js — f iife
To save us from needing to constantly repeat the same commands, you have the option to add a rollup.config.js file, similar to what we saw in webpack. The same risks about config are just as valid in ght ejs
// rollup.config.js
export default {
input: 'src/index.js',
output: {
file: 'bundle.js',
format: ‘cjs’
};
Rollup has gained more popularity with package and open source maintainers, because of built in features for package management as oppose web applications. Some of the features mirror what you could do with Universal Module Definition’s(UMD) and make Rollup a great bridge between the JavaScript’s UMD need and ES6 modules. Because ES6 is the hotness Rollup does not work with CommonJS required files without a plugin. This is only a limitation for older projects that have not yet implemented the ES6 syntax into their workflow. However if you are starting a new project, there is not much in the way of limitation for you.
As of the the Spring of 2017 all major browser support ES6 modules natively, which has Rollup now looking to claim a new competitive advantage as well. Rollup does come with native support native support for tree-shaking, with is the ability to remove unused code out of your project bundle, which you can see in this example from the rollup repl. This is valuable for projects looking for assistance where they can get it with page optimizations.
Though tree-shaking seems like a small feature, consider projects like Momentjs or lodash which are massive projects to begin with. Tree-shaking provides the ability to exclude all the parts of the library out of your bundle and only include the portion of the library you are using.
There is a lot more you can rollup besides trees, so I encourage you consult the Rollup guides for more information how you can leverage tree-shaking and other features in your next project.
Parcel
Advantage: Zero config needed
The catch: Newer project with less documentation to reference
Ideal project: Small projects and prototypes looking to get started quickly
Parcel came out at the end 2017 and gets the privilege of wrapping all the JavaScript points of configuration fatigue in a tiny little package. Parcel removes the complication of build tools and works out of the box with the most popular plugins in the JavaScript space, including babel transforms.
Similar to Browserify there’s also no config file, but there are also no Parcel-specific plugins. Parcel relies on existing JavaScript ecosystem projects like Babel to do the work. Parcel is only the orchestrator. You can also include Babel transforms and plugins in your package.json or .babelrc and Parcel will know to include it in the build process. There is no extra configuration needed which is a very intriguing feature. There is also no need to learn one more library to maintain your project (a.k.a the dreaded JavaScript fatigue).
Getting started with Parcel is similar to the others, but instead of providing an input and and output for the bundle, you just provide the entry in the script.
npm install parcel-bundler
parcel build index.js
Any other feature can be found in the documentation, but spoiler they require you to write modern JavaScript to do so. There is really no magic under the hood of this project. Take a look at this example for getting a React application running using Parcel. As mentioned this project is still fairly new but seems promising. There is already some great documentation available and a
Microbundle
Advantage: Zero config needed with an extremely small footprint
The catch: Newer project with less documentation to reference
Ideal project: Size conscious project looking to be shared as a plugin or addon for other projects
If you have not heard of Parcel, there is a chance you have not heard of Microbundle, the zero-configuration bundler for tiny modules. Microbundle is powered by the before-mentioned Rollup project and aims to take their module bundling to next level by removing the configuration step. Similar to Parcel, it will bundle your project using nothing but the package.json. So be sure to include all the necessary dependencies needed to run your JavaScript and bundle your assets.
npm install microbundle
microbundle
Microbundle will assume you have an index.js if no entry point is provided as an option. It will also create a bundle and minify that same file if no output is provided as well. Not only is bundled version created, a UMD version is also provided as part of the bundling process.
// index.js
function () {
console.log(“Hello World”)
}
// microbundled into index.m.js
function O(){console.log(“FOOOOOOOOOO”)}O();
// microbundled into index.umd.js
!function(e,n){“object”==typeof exports&&”undefined”!=typeof module? n():”function”==typeof define&&define.amd?define(n):n()}(0,function(){console.log(“FOOOOOOOOOO”)});
This could is useful for small shareable projects to be embedded into others. Thanks to this post I only now discovering this Microbundle but could see this being useful for the Netlify Identity Widget, which is a project meant to be embedded into larger projects and already being bundled manually into a UMD.
Now go build something
No matter your programming style there is a solution for you and choosing a build tool comes down to what kind of control you want. My attempt was to provide a progression from no configuration to a lot configuration. Despite the amount of choices, all build tools work with Netlify and can be a useful part of maintaining your application, so try a few and see which one works for you.
If you’re a big fan of a tool that was not listed here, please leave a comment and let me know. | https://medium.com/netlify/comparing-modern-build-tools-8eca722b69b6 | ['Brian Douglas'] | 2018-03-14 10:10:59.322000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Tools', 'Jamstack', 'JavaScript'] |
What I Wish People Knew About Acceptance | Acceptance is a thing you can give someone, including yourself, when all else fails. Because of the acceptance someone doesn’t get growing up it can be a battle to accept parts of themselves when they are adults.
Acceptance is a gift. It’s not something that needs to be earner or dangled in front of people to coax them into the behaviors you want.
That is not acceptance but dominance.
Feeling allowed to exist just as you are is a privilege not many people have. And it is obvious that a lot of people don’t realize that. They think that acceptance is something they don’t need to be apart of, but we all need to be apart of accepting every aspect of ourselves and our greater human community.
Think about the times you’ve tried to push away those things in yourself you don’t like. You feel like someone has wrecked your home, your center, the safe place you kept since you needed a safe place.
Is that what you want someone else to feel? Especially someone you love?
In love between us—the growing queer many—acceptance is rare. Many of us learned to love in the shadows, with acceptance as a wet dream — an illusion that was many times shattered.
If you take a chance at intimacy, platonic or romantic, with one of us, let us be just who we are.
Exist in the moments when we are quiet and alone because that’s where our home is. Pushing past what we know about secrets and lies, is the truth of love in the salvation of acceptance. | https://medium.com/@aignerloren/what-i-wish-people-knew-about-acceptance-f3dbfb574d43 | ['Aigner Loren Wilson'] | 2020-12-23 19:33:29.085000+00:00 | ['Accessibility', 'Lifestyle', 'Family', 'Life', 'Culture'] |
Submissions | Submissions
The Human Development Project accepts various forms of digital content
Proofreading & Editorial Policies
HDP editors will not make any substantive alterations to stories submitted by authors not directly affiliated with HDP. Affiliated authors’ submissions are subject to much more thorough and comprehensive proofreading and fact-checking standards than stories submitted by Medium writers at large.
Rest assured that if we have requested your story for publication on our platform, your piece will remain in its original form as published by its author (you) until the end of time. If you are an author with authorization to submit stories to HDP, as granted by Medium’s publication management and story submission systems, your stories will also remain unaltered. | https://medium.com/human-development-project/submissions-5269eba39f24 | ['Hdp Staff'] | 2017-08-20 01:21:40.710000+00:00 | ['Submissions'] |
Stop Trying To Make Hyperloop Happen | Stop Trying To Make Hyperloop Happen
The Hyperloop, a seemingly futuristic concept, utilizes tubes and rails stretching for hundreds of miles would host pods which would ferry half a dozen passengers at supersonic high speeds. Ambient Reads Dec 22, 2020·3 min read
The Media Keeps Promoting Hyperloop
Business Insider boasts nearly 4 million subscribers on YouTube, and its latest attempt at promoting Elon Musk’s Hyperloop is just… painful.
Business Insider should know better; there’s no reason to promote this pipe dream.
What’s more maddening is the fact that Elon Musk is still credited with the invention of the Hyperloop. In the description of their video on YouTube, Business Insider explains, “Elon Musk introduced the concept of the hyperloop in 2013.”
But there’s just a tiny problem with that statement: Elon Musk didn’t create the concept. In fact, he’s more than two centuries behind the curve.
Pneumatic Tubes
George Medhurst can be credited for the mode of transportation Elon Musk is often given given credit for.
Medhurst proposed moving goods through cast-iron pipes using [compressed] air as a means of propulsion. His idea led to the first atmospheric railway which, despite its limited use, was a novelty at the time that actually worked despite it not being as economically viable as lokomotives.
This is why those tubes were relegated to just transferring money and documents at a bank’s drive-thru.
Why The Hyperloop Idea Should Die
20th Century Studios/Disney
Elon Musk might have found success with Tesla and electric cars, and even space, but he’s not making any strides with the Hyperloop for a myriad of reasons.
Better alternatives already exist
We have Boeing 747's which travels around 570 mph and Maglev trains which travel at about 260 mph.
Funnily enough, these two modes of transportation are show in the Business Insider video alongside the to computer-generated Hyperloop graphics which has been the pitch for the last several years.
Airplanes and trains also can host a lot more people. There’s no way the Hyperloop can offer cheap tickets with only 6 passengers riding in one pod (up to 15).
As for comfort, while a thing of the past on airplanes, would still outmatch the Hyperloop.
Boeing 747 and Maglev trains also have the Hyperloop beat in the safety tenfold. There’s wiggle room for the former in case, say for instance, one of engine’s malfunctions. And emergency breaks on the latter can avoid a catastrophic collision since reports of anyone on the track can be reported ahead of time.
For the Hyperloop,, it’s the exact opposite.
Safety is virtually non-existent
The Hyperloop wants to transport people at the speed of sound in a tube that needs to be sealed, resistant to warping due to the differences in temperature at the top and bottom, and resistance to the wind. It will also need to maintain it’s shape, size, and vacuum for hundreds of miles.
The differential of air pressure in the tube and atmospheric pressure weighing down on it can destroy every pod in the event that the tube is punctured. Air pressure will be moving with a ton of force and everybody will most certainly perish or be severely injured.
If someone wants to cause damage to the tube — it would be rather easy with heavy ammunition. American’s are in no shortage of guns and ammunition either. Piercing the tunnel from the outside or just straight up messing with pumps and other machinery would be like taking candy from a baby.
Practicality and efficiency
There are admittedly a lot more technical details and concepts at play here than meets the eye.
If you want a more detailed analysis of why the Hyperloop is a dud, check out YouTuber Thunderf00t who started debunking the Hyperloop concept years ago.
His most recent technical analysis offers the best in site yet on the challenges Hyperloop faces and why it will most likely never come to fruition.
You can watch the video here if the video does not load below. | https://medium.com/@anthony-chin/stop-trying-to-make-hyperloop-happen-6045064dbed2 | ['Ambient Reads'] | 2020-12-26 03:31:01.994000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Tesla', 'Science', 'Future', 'Technology'] |
Philosophy Books for Self-Isolation | People all over the world are anxious about their health, the economy, the future. For the first time in the history of humankind we’re united with one purpose: defeating a microscopic enemy.
This unprecedented threat comes with an unprecedented opportunity.
We all have a part to play not only in staying at home and helping to save lives, but also making a better world when we come out of the other side of this.
As we sit at home either in self-isolation or during shut-downs, we can take this time to reflect, read and gain wisdom to emerge as better citizens, friends, family members and lovers.
Below I’ve picked a small selection of philosophy books that can help us cope, let us hope, and enable us to think beyond the present situation.
I’m deliberately not including links here. You can search the titles to buy from independent book shops that can deliver to your door or download them as e-books. These books needn’t cost money, either — you can find all the writings below in web or e-book form on the Project Guttenberg website.
Here’s a tip: always read the modern introduction of the book, or even the Wikipedia page about it. That will give you some basic context, commentary and explanation.
Reading philosophy isn’t easy, but can be a lot easier if you get the background and main ideas first. I have written articles on all the philosophers below, which you can find in my Medium articles index.
“The Last Days of Socrates” by Plato
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Philosophy really got going with Socrates. Philosophers before him — “Pre-Socratics” like Pythagoras, Zeno and Democritus— were more like what we’d describe as scientists today. They had theories about the nature of the universe, time, mathematics and change. Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE) was preoccupied with ethics.
The philosopher’s reputation and controversies hinge on his obstinate quest to understand what is good. On his quest he made a lot of powerful enemies. He was accused of not honouring the gods and corrupting the youth of Athens and subsequently put on trial. He was sentenced to death, and accepted his fate with immense courage.
Socrates never left any writing, and disdained the practice, preferring dialogue. As such he’s an enigmatic figure, known only through the writings of others.
We know Socrates mostly through Plato’s writing. While most scholars agree the character of Socrates became a mouthpiece of Plato’s ideas in Plato’s later writing, Plato’s account of Socrates’ trial and execution are deemed to reveal a more authentic Socrates.
It’s a great introduction to ancient philosophy and perfectly readable thanks to Plato’s penchant for uncomplicated dialogue. The two dialogues most worth reading are “The Apology” — Socrates’ defence at his trial (spoiler: he didn’t apologize, “Apology” is a traditional word for legal defence), and “Phaedo” — the last hours of Socrates’ life, which he spent talking with his friends before dying.
Both dialogues are surprisingly moving and full of valuable insights into goodness, courage, wisdom and self-possession.
“On the Nature of Things” by Lucretius
“The greatest wealth is to live content with little, for there is never want where the mind is satisfied.”
Epicurean philosophy is perhaps the most misrepresented in the modern world. We equate “Epicures” with being gluttons for buttery food and expensive wine, since to be Epicurean is to pursue pleasure.
The latter point is true, the goal of Epicureanism is indeed pleasure — it’s an unapologetically hedonistic philosophy.
But Epicurus (341–270 BCE) teaches us to find pleasure not by pursuing our desires, but by changing them. The man who takes pleasure in a glass of water and a bowl of lentils is a man who’ll be truly happy. To fully embrace Epicureanism is to leap off the so-called “hedonic treadmill” of unquenchable desires for things and popularity.
It’s no surprise that in the brutal madness of the ancient European world, Epicureanism became wildly popular. A personality cult developed around Epicurus long after his death in the Roman Empire. His likeness was reproduced in industrial quantities, followers of his philosophy celebrated his birthday as a holiday and the rich among them carved his ideas in stone monuments.
Sadly, despite being a prolific writer, most of Epicurus’s writing is lost. The most comprehensive explanation of Epicurean philosophy we have is On the Nature of Things, an epic poem written by a mysterious Roman Epicurean named Lucretius (c. 99–55 BCE).
Epicureanism isn’t just a moral philosophy, it’s a whole world view. The philosophy is based on Ancient Greek science and, oddly for an ancient philosophy, it is broadly materialistic and has no place for the supernatural or spirituality.
Lucretius manages to take all this materialist theory and turn it into a beautiful work of epic poetry. Some passages dazzle in their beauty. While the scientific theories of Epicurus are no longer viable, the philosophy has an internal coherence that makes it relevant — even urgent — to modern readers experiencing climate change and increasing levels of anxiety in society.
English translations of the poem can be challenging reading. If you’re not used to reading a lot of poetry, I’d recommend the prose translation by Martin Ferguson Smith and published by Hackett. The modern poetic translation by A.E. Stallings is wonderful.
“Letters from a Stoic” by Seneca the Younger
“Life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future.”
The popularity of Stoicism has exploded in recent years thanks largely to the practical benefits of Stoicism for mental well-being. The philosophy had a good deal of influence over modern Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in its insistence that while we can’t control what happens to us, we can control our response to those events.
Seneca the Younger (c. 4 B.C.E — 65 C.E.) is the most accessible of the Stoic philosophers. Among the celebrated Roman writers of the “Latin Silver Age”, his writing style is rich with metaphor and simile. Seneca’s letters aim to guide, console and inspire his friend Lucilius with philosophy. Seneca not only writes beautifully of Stoicism, but also draws on other philosophies of Ancient Greece, including Epicureanism. The statesman demonstrates that philosophical contemplation is key to both feeling and being good.
In his letter on the shortness of life, Seneca makes the point that “life” is but a small part of what preoccupied people really live, the rest is “just time.” Seneca makes the distinction between living and merely existing and urges us to live.
“Essays” or “The Complete Works” by Michel de Montaigne
“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) is often described as “the world’s first blogger”. He wrote about anything and almost everything. The retired lawyer began writing essays to get himself out of a depression after the death of his father and a good friend.
Montaigne actually coined the word “essay”, as we commonly use it in English for a written paper, from the French verb Essayer, meaning “to try”.
He was humble, a self-professed amateur who wrote of his essays, “These writings of mine are no more than the ravings of a man who has never done more than taste the outer crust of knowledge.”
But it’s his insistence that he didn’t know anything and merely wrote for his own gratification that give his writing so much philosophical vitality.
Montaigne reinvigorated interest in the Sceptic school of philosophy, which had flourished in ancient Athens. His longest essay, “An Apology for Raymond Sebond”, is a demolition of the folly of certainty and dogma.
He had the motto “what do I know?” and was among the first writers whose subject was self-reflection. His writings, occurring during the reformation — a time of great upheaval and violence in Europe, are breezy and modern but full of timeless wisdom.
“Thus Spoke Zarathustra” and the “Joyous Science” by Friedrich Nietzsche
“Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss… What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a man in intellectual rapture yet on the edge of despair when he wrote these two books.
Nietzsche met and fell in love with Lou Salomé in 1882, a young intellectual who’d spurn him for his close friend Paul Rée. The philosopher was physically and mentally ill, suffering from the past traumas of his military service, he was heavily sedating himself to sleep.
Because of Salomé, he had become alienated from his disapproving family. Nietzsche retreated to isolation in Rapallo in northern Italy and set to work on a philosophical novel — his masterpiece, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
By the 1880s Nietzsche had taken a wrecking-ball to many philosophical and moral assumptions. He had picked apart western morality, finding its roots in a “slave morality” of resentment in the Roman world. His scepticism led him to reject Christianity, faith in the “progress” of civilisation, and the idealism so dominant in philosophical thinking at the time. His new ideas alienated him from friends like the composer Richard Wagner.
In his Joyous Science, Nietzsche declared the “death” of God. This is not to say that God had literally died or that God literally did not exist. Nietzsche understood that scientific and societal progress had made the traditional idea of God untenable.
“How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? […] What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
Having shattered the final idol, the philosopher set about constructing a new understanding of the world and our place in it. Thus Spoke Zarathustra and the Joyous Science contain some initial and influential ideas to achieve the vision of a post-religious morality.
In his novel, the Persian prophet Zarathustra (also known as Zoroaster) became his mouthpiece. Since Zarathustra was among the first religious leaders to make a binary distinction between good and evil, Nietzsche uses his voice to rectify this “mistake”.
The “death of God”, “eternal recurrence” and the Übermensch are concepts that grapple with morality in a world beyond religion and metaphysics. As the world continues to outpace the rules handed down to us, Nietzsche hoped to create new ideas of what it is to be human (a “tightrope” between beast and the Übermensch) and how we ought to create our future. | https://medium.com/the-sophist/philosophy-books-for-self-isolation-613fa62c26aa | ['Steven Gambardella'] | 2020-03-30 20:33:23.561000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Culture', 'Books', 'Self Improvement', 'History'] |
Amazon car insurance… whatever next? | Amazon India has announced that its local payments arm, Amazon Pay, has partnered with insurers Acko, in which it has a significant stake, to offer car and motor-bike insurance.
India is the first market where the e-commerce giant has decided to provide car insurance, a business based primarily on statistics and risk analysis. Many other insurance companies offer policies through the web, although not through a platform like Amazon. In addition, the company will offer as yet unspecified discounts and special benefits to subscribers to its Amazon Prime service, indicating its interest in testing the effect of cross-selling on a service such as insurance.
What impact will the move have on India’s insurance market? Many insurance companies have been offering information and pricing of insurance policies via the web for some time now, but the arrival of a giant with the power and visibility of Amazon could bring about significant changes. The CEO of Amazon Pay in India, Mahendra Nerurkar, announced that the company was also planning to enter the health and travel insurance market, and that taking out a policy could be done in less than two minutes and would not require any paperwork.
In addition, Amazon offers other services, such as hassle-free, paperless claims, pick-up in less than an hour, repairs in less than three days, and a one-year warranty on city repairs, as well as an immediate payment option for low-value parts. Considering the company’s usual aggressiveness in calculating its prices, the fact that it is already well established as a regular channel in the minds of many customers, and its ability to develop a service that is fundamentally based on customer and market information and knowledge, Amazon’s move is sure to cause quite a bit of concern in the industry.
The Indian market, which is enjoying strong growth and many possibilities, is one of the most strategic for the company, prompting it to use Amazon Pay on several occasions to test products or integrate channels. Insurance is a highly regulated and competitive market, so it is still too early to know if Amazon will apply its experiment to other countries.
What about you? Do you see yourself using Amazon to insure your vehicle? | https://medium.com/enrique-dans/amazon-car-insurance-whatever-next-df783d34e9b4 | ['Enrique Dans'] | 2020-07-24 10:11:40.643000+00:00 | ['Insurance', 'Automotive', 'India', 'Auto', 'Amazon'] |
Web Scraping Using Selenium with Python🐍……….👀 | Before we take dive into the topic of this article, let us first understand what web-scraping/ web-crawling is and how is it useful for any business analysis and development.
1. What is web-scraping?
Web scraping refers to the extraction of data from a website. Web scraping is a technique for extracting information from the internet automatically using a software that simulates human web surfing. Web Scrapping also called “Crawling” or “Spidering” is the technique to gather data automatically from an online source usually from a website. While Web Scrapping is an easy way to get a large volume of data in a relatively short time frame, it adds stress to the server where the source is hosted.
This is also one of the main reasons why many websites do not allow scraping all on their website. However, as long as it does not disrupt the primary function of the online source, it is fairly acceptable.
2. Uses Cases of Web Scraping:
There are many uses for Web Scraping but I will mention just a few:
Contact Scraping
Data Mining
Online Price Change Monitoring & Price Comparison
Product Review Scraping: to watch your competition.
Gathering Real Estate Listings
Weather Data Monitoring
Website Change Detection
Research
Tracking Online Presence and Reputation
Web Data Integration
3. How is web-scraping useful?
Web scraping is a technique used for extracting data from websites about customers, products, people, stock markets, etc. It is usually difficult to get this kind of information on a large scale using traditional data collection methods. We can utilize the data collected from a website such as e-commerce portal, social media channels to understand customer behaviors and sentiments, buying patterns, and brand attribute associations which are critical insights for any business.
Let’s do some hands on!!
Since we have defined our purpose of scraping, let us dive into that and explore that how to actually do all the stuff! Before that below are some of the housekeeping instructions regarding installations of packages.
a. Python version: We will be using Python 3.8, however feel free to use Python 2.0 by making slight adjustments. We will be using Spyder notebook, so you don’t need any command line knowledge.
What is Selenium: –
Selenium is an open-source web-based automation tool. Selenium primarily used for testing in the industry but it can also be used for web scraping. We’ll use the Chrome browser but you can try on any browser, it’s almost the same.
Note: It is important to know that Web scraping is against most websites’ terms of service. Your IP address may be banned from a website if you scrape too frequently or maliciously.
b. Selenium package: You can install selenium package using the following command.
1. Installation:
o Install selenium using pip
pip install selenium
o Install selenium using conda
conda install -c conda-forge selenium
c. Chrome driver: Please install the latest version of chromedriver from here.
Please note you need Google Chrome installed on your machines to work through this illustration.
The first thing while crawling a website is to understand the structure of the website. We will be scraping www.chrono24.com, a luxury watch website. Chrono24 is the world’s leading marketplace for luxury watches. People can buy and sell their watches on this website. We will be scraping the current price of the models either new or pre-owned one.
Download Chrome Driver:
To download web drivers, you can choose any of below methods-
You can either directly download chrome driver from the below link-
https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads
Or you can download it directly using below line of code-
driver = webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install())
Following methods will help us to find elements in a Web-page (these methods will return a list):
find_elements_by_name
find_elements_by_xpath
find_elements_by_link_text
find_elements_by_partial_link_text
find_elements_by_tag_name
find_elements_by_class_name
find_elements_by_css_selector
Now let’s write one Python code to scrape required data from web.
Implementation of Web Scrapping using Selenium with Python: –
Step1: — Import libraries
import sys
import csv
from selenium import webdriver
from datetime import datetime
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.common.exceptions import NoSuchElementException
from time import time
from time import sleep
Step 2: — Install Driver and create new instance of Chrome to open in Incognito mode
#Install Driver driver = webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install()) # we will be using below incognito argument to our webdriver option = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
option.add_argument(“ — incognito”) driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=’/Library/Application Support/Google/chromedriver’, chrome_options=option)
Note: executable_path is the path that points to your downloaded ChromeDriver.
Step 3: — Pass the desired website URL
Here we are using Chrono24 luxury home page as the desired website URL.
driver.get('https://chrono24.com')
wooaahhh, we opened our website in Google Chrome Incognito mode from python notebook 😊
Step 4: — We need to first Accept the Data Privacy Settings
Once we open the Chrono24 website we must accept the data privacy setting to go further and its need to be clicked every time through python script.
Step 5: — Locate the Accept button to be clicked from the page.
Once we got the data privacy pop up on our browser window, we will locate and inspect the element “Accept” in web page.
We have to copy the XPath from XML because Selenium has a function called “find_element_by_xpath” and we will be using the same. We will pass our XPath into this function and get a selenium element. Once we have the selenium element we can click it’s XPath using “Click” function ‘Accept_ button.click()’ shown below.
Accept_button = WebDriverWait(driver,10).until(lambda driver: driver.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="jq-colorbox-container"]/a')) Accept_button.click()
Step 6: — Find out the Search Box Location for Watch Model search.
We need to locate search box and copy the XPath of that location. We will store model name in a variable then send that model name into search box using “Send keys” function in selenium.
#Search for Rolex Oyster Perpetual model on website R=”Rolex Oyster Perpetual” username = WebDriverWait(driver,10).until(lambda driver: driver.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="query"]')) username.send_keys(R)
After sending the model’s name in search box next step is to click on “FIND A WATCH NOW”. For that we will use same selenium “Click” function which is already mentioned above and to fetch the conditions of watch we need to change the search view layout to vertical alignment.
#Click on ‘FIND A WATCH NOW’ button Find_button = WebDriverWait(driver,10).until(lambda driver: driver.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="header-search"]/div/div[1]/span/button')) Find_button.click() #switch the search result view layout to vertical alignment wait.until(lambda driver: driver.find_element_by_xpath('//*[@id="jq-result-view-switch"]/a')).click()
Step 7: — Inspecting required data from the website
We will inspect 3 items on our web page (Model Name, Price and Watch Condition) and understand how we can extract them.
Model Name: Inspecting the Model Name, we can see the highlighted text represents the XML code for Model Name.
How do we fetch the text inside a XPath?
The XML path (XPath)for the Model location contains a watch model name, with Selenium “find_elements_by_xpath” function We will get list of selenium elements. Once we have elements, we can extract the text inside our XPath using the ‘text’ function. In our case the text is basically the watch brand name “Rolex Oyster Perpetual 41/ Silver Grey Rhodium Dial”.
Models = driver.find_elements(By.XPATH,"//div[contains(@class,'article-title')]")
2. Price: Similarly, like Model name, we will now inspect the price i.e. what is the price of each model.
We will again do the same process and will use the same selenium function “find_elements_by_xpath” to get the models Price details.
Prices = driver.find_elements(By.XPATH,"//div[contains(@class,'article-price-container')]")
3. Condition: Lastly, let’s extract condition of each model, whether it is good, very good or unworn.
Similar to the Model name as we did earlier, we will extract the condition from the below XPath.
Conditions = driver.find_elements(By.XPATH,'//*[@id="wt-watches"]/div/a/div/div[2]/div[1]/div[2]/div[4]/div[2]')
Step 8: — Extract all the details of search result (Models, Price, Condition) and store it in CSV.
We will need to apply python iteration (for loop) to get all the values or text from the selenium element which we got from XPath for all the records.
Store output in CSV with Python
# Creating an output CSV file
chrono_results = 'chrono_results.csv' with open('chrono_results.csv','w', newline='') as f:
thewriter1 = csv.writer(f)
thewriter1.writerow(['BRAND','PRICE', 'CONDITION'])
i= 0
for model in Models:
data=[]
data.append(str(model))
data.append(Prices[i])
data.append(Conditions[i])
i = i+1
thewriter1.writerow(data)
f.close()
Summary: You now have the power to scrap 😊
We have learnt how to scrape a website using Selenium with Python and get required and large amounts of data. You can do multiple unstructured data analytics and find interesting trends, etc. using this data.
Hope this was helpful. Enjoy Scraping BUT BE CAREFUL!!!
************** Thank you for reading ****************** | https://medium.com/@nirajkumari/web-scraping-using-selenium-with-python-803fdedad55a | ['Dr. Niraj Kumari'] | 2021-04-06 18:51:44.644000+00:00 | ['Selenium', 'Web Crawling', 'Web Scraping', 'Selenium Webdriver', 'Python3'] |
26+ Famous Benjamin Franklin quotes inspire for all time. | Benjamin Franklin quotes Today we will talk about the great man who becomes the father of America. Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston. At the age of 43, Franklin paid attention to science, experiments, and inventions. Shortly after, Franklin invented a heat-efficient stove called a stove. He later invented swim fins, glass harmonica (a musical instrument), and bifocals.
He also studied electricity, his famous kite experiment and other observations verified the nature of electricity and electricity and brought Franklin international fame. more
26 Famous Benjamin Franklin quotes inspirational for all times.
“Speak little, do much.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“Honesty is the best policy.” –Benjamin Franklin
“A friend in need is a friend indeed.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“You may delay, but time will not.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“Well done is better than well said.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“Security without liberty is called prison.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“He that speaks much is much mistaken.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“Whatever is begun in anger, It ends in regret.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“When you are finished changing, you’re finished.”― Benjamin Franklin
“Love your enemies, for they tell you your faults.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“Instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle, inside also” ― Ben Franklin
“He that can have patience can have what he will.”― Ben Franklin
“Never ruin an apology with an excuse, Take action.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”― Benjamin Franklin,
“Genius without education is like silver in the mine.” — Benjamin Franklin
check more Benjamin franklin quotes with images, and share with your friends and family. | https://medium.com/@swemquotes/26-famous-benjamin-franklin-quotes-inspire-for-all-time-a74a8123cd6 | [] | 2020-12-26 11:52:48.708000+00:00 | ['Positive Thinking', 'Benjamin Franklin', 'Inspirational Quotes', 'Changing Your Life', 'Lifequotes'] |
Want To Participate In Jeeto Pakistan? Here’s How | The show pretense on ARY Digital each Friday and Saturday at 7:30. Jeeto Pakistan has turned out to be one of Pakistan’s most mainstream appears, facilitated by Fahad Mustafa and offers numerous endowments and giveaways to the individuals. Propelled in 2014, the show has dispersed a large number of endowments to individuals in accordance with its trademark “Sab Lay Jao”. Jeeto pakistan passes
In June this year, in the sweltering Karachi evening, many individuals assembled outside the Shamsi film studio in the Kohlangi modern territory. They all asked the gatekeepers to give up. “Somebody revealed to us that there was a go at the passage, yet not.” An old lady with two youngsters stated, however didn’t make sense of her source. She included: “Up until now, we have come here, kindly don’t send us back.”
There are about 200 individuals in the corroded dark colored door, and they are squirming in the convoluted line. They fanned into the fan and fanned their ears as though they were going to bring forth a goose that lays brilliant eggs. They are fortunate rare sorts of people who arbitrarily chose from around 20,000 individuals who enrolled their travel papers by means of a committed phone line by PC lottery.
Partition
The picture they are anxious to get is: a scene of Inaam Ghar that day, which comprises half of the twofold headed restraining infrastructure, and the other is Jeeto Pakistan, by entertainer Fahd Mustafa ( Fahad Mustafa) facilitated on ARY Digital. Inaam Ghar is the leader program of the Geography Entertainment Channel (some portion of the Geo-TV Network), facilitated by TV attention and performer Dr. Aamir Liaquat Husain, who is now and then as well known as him.
The two hosts have developed steadfast devotees. Numerous watchers (paying little mind to age, sex and pay gathering) took an interest in the show, simply taking photographs with Fahad Mustafa or Amir Liaquat Husain
The pass said that the door will open at 5 pm (execution begins at 7:30 pm), however notwithstanding the blistering summers, Ramzan fasts the month, numerous guests land in the studio a couple of hours sooner. A few people say that they came early on the grounds that they need to abstain from getting trapped in congested roads, since when an opportunity to break the express train draws near, the traffic ends up disorganized.
Fahad Mustafa superb section
Others have motivation to stay substantial, regardless of to what extent they need to go to take an interest in the display, and which month of the year. Ameer Fareed, an occupant of Khudadad Colony in Karachi, clarified that in the event that you show up before the expected time, you can enter the show early, so you can sit in Liaquat and most likely notice your place sooner than others. He knows how these things work since he went to the show with his better half and kids.
This isn’t the main way the group of spectators is utilized to draw in the consideration of the host. A few ladies arranged dressed as weddings — cosmetics and gems. A few people pay tribute to Hussein with a notice. Others make craftsmanship to pay tribute to him.
Enrollment process
In the area of the exhibition, the honorable matches the fervor of the outside group. Everything appears to have surpassed. An immense wooden vessel framed the foundation. The floor is made of shimmering white tiles that emphatically mirror the overhead lights. The center of the floor is secured with a mammoth roulette. Columns of bikes are organized in succession and a few lines are orchestrated in the other line. The indoor band possesses one side, while on the opposite side, the stairs lead to where the onlooker is Jeeto pakistan contact no. | https://medium.com/@robmdavis81/want-to-participate-in-jeeto-pakistan-heres-how-f164f4dd112 | [] | 2019-10-09 14:36:26.195000+00:00 | ['Pakistan'] |
2020 Giving Report | 2020 Giving Report
Just like last year, in 2020 I gave away around 10% of my net income. My strategy is to distribute this amount across three cause areas:
60% to saving lives and improving health outcomes of the world’s poorest. 20% to finding long-term solutions to global poverty and inequality. 20% to spreading happiness.
This year, I donated €12,725:
In addition to that, Google kindly matched my donation to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF).
Why Against Malaria Foundation?
AMF has been on GiveWell’s list of most effective charities for years. The organisation provides free mosquito nets in areas affected by malaria at a cost of $5 per net. It is estimated that a donation of $4,450 will save a life.
Just like last year, I chose AMF because it is highly (and demonstrably) cost-effective. I also chose it because this year basic health interventions are more important than ever, with many government programs being suspended due to the pandemic. My donation funded 4,388 nets, protecting 7,899 people in Papua New Guinea.
Why Malaria Consortium?
Rather than distributing nets, the Malaria Consortium prevents malaria in children by providing them with seasonal chemoprevention. Protecting one child costs around $7. The cost per life saved is estimated to be $3,373. While this is lower than the estimate for AMF, GiveWell considers the two programmes to be equally effective as it is impossible to calculate cost-effectiveness precisely.
Why J-PAL?
Last year, I donated to Innovations for Poverty Action, an organisation that runs randomized controlled trials and works with decision-makers in target countries to facilitate the adoption of the most effective poverty interventions. This year, I decided to support J-PAL instead. While the two organisations are closely related, J-PAL engages in research that is more diverse and often more speculative. On the one hand, this means that some of the studies they fund will lead to dead ends. On the other hand, their willingness to experiment and their vast network of researchers means that they might just come up with something big.
That, and I am a die-hard fan of Esther Duflo.
Why StrongMinds?
In much of the world, mental health is chronically neglected. Most low- and middle-income countries spend less than $2 per person per year on mental disorder prevention and treatment. On top of that, there is very little evidence on the effectiveness of such treatments. In other words, finding a charity that works on mental health in lower-income countries and is demonstrably effective is pretty much impossible. The thing is, depression, anxiety and other disorders are not waiting around until researchers, charities and governments get together and run a randomized controlled trial or two. Almost 800M people, or more than 10% of the world’s population, were affected even before the pandemic started. Today that number is likely much higher.
StrongMinds offers group therapy to low-income women in Uganda and Zambia. Founders Pledge estimates that it costs the organisation $248 to prevent the equivalent of one year of severe major depressive disorder. The evidence is limited, so this is just a guess; however, the charity is committed to generating evidence and is transparent about their mistakes. I believe they will use my donation effectively. I also believe that in a year or two they will have stronger evidence to support their approach.
As always, this was hard
I agonise over my giving decisions. What if another charity fights malaria more effectively? What if rather than supporting poverty research it would be more effective to give to social movements? Can group therapy really treat depression?
But I also know that the decisions I made were good. Next year they might be even better. But today is Christmas, and I am going to celebrate and be grateful I can give to help others. | https://medium.com/@ernes7a/2020-giving-report-67cdb2461b37 | ['Ernesta Orlovaitė'] | 2020-12-25 11:57:06.707000+00:00 | ['Effective Altruism', 'Philanthropy', 'Poverty', 'Giving', 'Global Health'] |
Pharmaceuticals | Three Problems and a Solution
Pharmaceuticals
We are a cornucopia of chemicals. At what point does that get too much?
Last time, I told you about plastics contaminating the soil and water, and causing death and destruction everywhere. But did you know that it’s not just plastics? Ironically, it could also be the very medicines designed to keep you alive and well.
If you remember from elementary school science, water does the same thing over and over again: condenses, precipitates, infiltrates, transpires, and evaporates. Although 70% of the world is covered with water, less than 3% is potable which means our water supply is very limited.
The same water that’s been on the planet since day one is still here — no more and no less — which means we’re all drinking dinosaur pee, and because of modern industrialized living, it’s just getting more degraded over time.
In the USA, there are certain Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCLs) for certain chemicals; the level above which they should not appear in drinking water. But not all chemicals have been studied, especially not in all combinations. For the most part, we’re not looking at what happens when chemicals combine because there are just too many combinations. How would you ever do control studies for all of them?
We are a cornucopia of chemicals. Some we ingest on purpose, some are thrust upon us through the air, the water, our skin via our clothing, and some come through our food. No matter how we get them, they’re a part of modern life. The manufacture of pharmaceuticals requires tons of water — at its inception, at its conclusion, and everywhere in between. It also requires pure water.
And since the earth’s water bodies and our human bodies both depend on clean water for survival, we need to make sure our interests, and water’s interests, are aligned.
What is today known as the Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, started as The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 after Upton Sinclair released, “The Jungle” in 1906 which described the horribly unhygienic conditions in the Chicago stockyards.
Who worked in those stockyards? Immigrants. People who came in from another country, even though that makes life very difficult, because life back home was even worse. Then, like today, the lower socio-economic rungs of society most often have the fewest environmental protections, as well as very little say in the matter.
Today, the FDA approves drugs and is our watchdog, but its reach is limited.
The FDA doesn’t have authority to recall a product unless it’s been misbranded or adulterated. All other recalls — including for safety — are up to the manufacturer to initiate. This means that at best, the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries are self-policing and at worst — people are going to die — like with the Vioxx scandal where over 100,000 people suffered heart attacks before Vioxx was recalled.
But there’s more and that is: how are these often very powerful drugs affecting our water?
A 2009 study from the University of Exeter found hormones in the water were causing fish mutations. There’s a class of drugs known as Anti-androgens — manmade environmental chemicals that either mimic or block sex hormones.
They’re used in cancer treatments and other drugs — as well as pesticides — and they reduce fertility in male fish, causing a feminizing effect, which is a condition called Intersex. These “chemical cocktails” don’t just affect industrialised areas. According to USGS, intersex is a global issue affecting even wild-caught fish.
However, there is also some good news on the plastics front. Scientists have discovered a bacterium that eats plastic. Studies are still in the preliminary stages, but they look promising. Then there’s the worms, generally used as fish bait, which have also been found to have a taste for plastic.
And finally there’s my favourite, the plastic eating mushroom, Pestalotiopsis microspora which is a rare species from the Amazon rainforest that enjoys snacking on plastic and converting it into clean soil. It’s also tasty sautéed in olive oil and garlic! Kidding aside, Pestalotiopsis microspora is edible because somehow during the process of digesting the plastic, the mushroom removes all the toxins and converts them to clean soil.
On the legal side, on February 10, 2020, Senator Tom Udall (D — NM) and representative Alan Lowenthal (D — CA) introduced the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act which, among other things, goes after single use plastic bags: the ones with a 15-minute working life that seem to always end up in the ocean. It’s not law yet, but fingers crossed.
What if I told you there was a chemical that can cause endocrine disruption? Surprise, it’s Triclosan! It was great at killing microorganisms which is why hospitals started using it as a sterilization agent in the 1970s. Because of its effectiveness, manufacturers started adding it to soaps, toothpastes, and other products as an antibacterial agent in overwhelming numbers.
What happened next? The CDC found Triclosan present in 75% of the U.S. population’s urine samples. Its overuse had resulted in the population developing immunity to the chemical’s sterilization features, so it wasn’t so effective anymore. Further studies found when Triclosan reacts with sunlight it degrades to form dioxin in surface water. Dioxin causes cancer, reproductive problems, damages the immune system, and can disrupt hormones, and like plastic, it takes a very long time to break down.
In September 2016, the FDA issued a final rule banning over-the-counter antiseptic wash products that contained Triclosan — along with 18 other chemicals — because manufacturers had failed to demonstrate safety from long-term exposure.
The manufacturers weren’t shocked. They’d already been feeling enormous public pressure and so had begun removing Triclosan from soaps and toothpaste several years earlier.
But here’s the twist: Triclosan is also classified as a pesticide and used as a material preservative in many products such as fabrics, vinyl, plastics, and textiles which are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA. Triclosan’s conditional registration was up in 2018, but at that time, EPA determined there wasn’t enough information to pull the product from shelves so Triclosan is still being studied and used.
Triclosan is a great example of overlapping regulations. When used as a beauty aid, like in antibacterial soaps, it’s regulated by the FDA because it’s a personal care product, and when used as a pesticide, it’s regulated by EPA which means we have one chemical and two different results, leaving water to sort out the mess.
Look — Plastics and pharmaceuticals help us live longer, eradicate diseases like smallpox, and hopefully, COVID, they treat cancer, provide antibacterial protections, and overall do many other wonderful things all to make life better and easier .… but easier isn’t always better when there’s chemical residue left behind.
There’s enormous pressure on our water to do everything we’re asking of it and if we don’t get our waste streams under control, instead of saving us, the very chemicals we use everyday to make life better are going to sink us, and water along with us.
If we’re going to improve recycling, we need to start with improving the coding system and get rid of the misleading advertising, but, more importantly, reduce our waste stream. Sounds to me like it’s time to skip the plastic bottle, and buy yourself a stainless steel model, and then belly on up to your safe and regulated kitchen tap and fill that baby up.
As for drugs, take your remaining drugs to places that dispose of them properly, and never ever ever flush them down the toilet. The good news is that the manufacture of pharmaceuticals requires pure water so at least our interests are aligned with manufacturers there.
It’s always good to have an ally.
Feeling helpless? Once you see everything that’s going wrong with plastics and PFAS, it’s easy to throw up your hands and give up hope. The problem’s just so big, there’s nothing you could possibly do to help…is there? Well, like many stories, this one’s going to have a hopeful ending. Before we get there, however, it’s important to know about one other substance that’s damaging the environment too. Because then we can — to use an ugly metaphor — kill three birds with a stone, instead of just one. Stay tuned for Tuesday! | https://medium.com/snipette/pharmaceuticals-68ccaa9f8ff6 | ['Pam Lazos'] | 2020-11-01 07:02:10.375000+00:00 | ['Environment', 'Pollution', 'Pharmaceuticals Industry', 'Corporation'] |
3 Incredibly Powerful Page Optimizers that Can Improve Conversion Rates | Recently, I worked with a client on a VSL (video sales letter) for their joint pain supplement. The initial results of our work did pretty well, especially when compared to the old control. However, the conversion rate was still below what we were all expecting. We came up with a plan of action but there were several on-page issues that may be the cause of a low conversion rate.
Looking at the funnel, sales page, and where they were sending their traffic — I was able to identify immediately the on-page issues that were responsible for the less than desirable conversion rates.
If you’re a fellow copywriter or an owner of your own health supplement company, it might be tempting to dive right into the sales copy and VSL to see where you’re missing the mark. And if this issue sounds a little too familiar to you… you might want to take a look on your sales page to see if these 3 powerful, yet simple, on-page optimizers are in order.
1st Conversion Rate Optimizer: Your Headline
The headline on my client’s sales page read “Use this 10-second trick to kill joint pain”. The main issue here is the headline has nothing to do with my VSL. What’s more, it’s way too hyped up. The chronic pain market is already skeptical and bitter because they’ve been in pain for years, tried so many different options, and haven’t found a remedy. In other words, their BS meter is through the roof. Claiming you have a 10-second trick that can solve years of joint pain is going to turn off a lot of your audience. They won’t even bother watching the VSL.
On the other hand, there may be a small group of people who felt compelled enough to pass through the headline and click play. Here’s where the next issue arises: there is no 10-second trick anywhere in the VSL. Your headline has now become a bait and switch. This is going to upset a lot of your viewers who clicked on the VSL, hoping to learn a 10-second trick that solves their problem, only to be disappointed when there isn’t one.
2nd Conversion Rate Optimizer: Your Video Thumbnail
Video thumbnails often get overlooked as a conversion rate optimizer. This is a particularly important element not to neglect, especially if your VSL isn’t on autoplay. The truth is, your thumbnail could either help or hurt you. You can always place an eye-catching image that relates to your target audience or use text as a point of persuasion.
The problem with my client’s thumbnail was the text they used. It read “the world’s greatest joint pain solution.” If you’re like me, you’re probably chuckling to yourself. Not only is this a very vague statement, it is also an incredibly generous one — which makes it kind of unbelievable.
Keep in mind, our prospects have yet to consume any of our statements yet, so why would they believe such a great claim? Ultimately, our thumbnail could have been a huge turn off for our prospects.
If you run into this problem, here are a few quick fixes that are sure to work. First, you could always use a great image if it relates to your ideal audience and their pain points. However, if you have a great headline, repeat it in the thumbnail, verbatim. Or, simply repeat the text used in your email if that’s where the source of your traffic is coming from. If the email text is compelling enough to get them to the sales page, it’ll get your audience to hit play on your VSL.
3rd Conversion Rate Optimizer: The Timing of What Appears Below Your VSL
My client had a cart button and FAQ immediately appear right below the VSL as soon as the sales page loaded. This sends your page viewers a message that yes… you do in fact have something to sell them. This is an immediate turn off and it will prevent them from watching any of your VSL.
Thankfully, the remedy for this is simple. You’ll want to delay the appearance of the add to cart and FAQ until the product has been introduced. But ideally, you’ll want it to appear at the point where you reveal the price and state the first call to action.
Not Seeing the Conversions You Want?
Before you dive into your copy, make sure these 3 simple on-page optimizers are working in your favor. It may seem obvious, but sometimes the most skilled professionals tend to overlook simplicity. Instead, they work on the hard stuff over and over again, without noticing that simple on-page optimizers may be their problem after all. | https://medium.com/@adamnapolitano/3-incredibly-powerful-page-optimizers-that-can-improve-conversion-rates-c6ff639aaa08 | ['Adam Napolitano-Health Supplement Copywriter'] | 2020-11-06 21:11:00.044000+00:00 | ['Direct Response', 'Health Supplements', 'Copywriting', 'Marketing Strategies', 'Copywriting Tips'] |
Home Deep Cleaning Services in Akurdi, Pune | Cleaning services in Akurdi
S3 Care provides the best cleaning services in Pune with a group of cleaning professionals at affordable pricing. We guarantee 100% satisfaction with the cleaning services offered by us. We have the best cleaning professionals in our team who use the latest techniques along with the chemicals and tools or giving their 100% effort.
Objective Of S3 Care Services
We aim at providing household, office, and commercial cleaning services to all the regions of Pune, India.
Clean all the germs and bacterias from your building, whether it’s residential or commercial.
Providing you a hygienic and clean environment, so you don’t have to worried about the cleaning issues
Deep cleaning is essential for maintaining any asset, whether it’s building or furniture, for long term
Components of house/home cleaning service
Cleaning of Bathroom including tub, mirrors, toilets, bathroom baseboard, hand wipe, shower tracks, and the exterior part of washrooms
Mop down the surface, vacuum all rooms, clean doors, windows, and sliding glass doors.
Kitchen cleaning includes cleaning the sink, stovetop, table, interior and exterior of microwave, cleaning kitchen walls and surfaces that become oily and dirty, and body of refrigerator and oven.
Cleaning of ceiling fans, walls, and floor surfaces of the whole house.
https://www.s3deepcleaningpune.com/home-and-office-deep-cleaning-services-in-akurdi.php | https://medium.com/@jayeshos00/home-deep-cleaning-services-in-akurdi-pune-beb46f56bfe3 | [] | 2021-12-24 13:10:38.663000+00:00 | ['Cleaning', 'Cleaning Services'] |
Jam Pulang Kantor (Bagian Pertama) | The questions isn't where, but when? | https://medium.com/@galihwibowo/jam-pulang-kantor-bagian-pertama-99e098429c | [] | 2020-12-24 14:47:51.029000+00:00 | ['Indonesia', 'Romance'] |
How and why to Standardize your data: A python tutorial | How and why to Standardize your data: A python tutorial
In this post I explain why and how to apply Standardization using scikit-learn in Python
Figure taken from: https://scikit-learn.org/stable/auto_examples/preprocessing/plot_all_scaling.html. Left subplot: the unscaled data. Right subplot: the transformed data.
Hi there.
This is my first Medium post. I am an electrical & computer engineer currently finishing my PhD studies in the biomedical engineering and computational neuroscience field. I have been working on machine learning problems for the past 4 years. A very common question that I see all around the web is how to standardize and why to do so, the data before fitting a machine learning model.
How does scikit-learn’s StandardScaler work ?
The first question that comes to one’s mind is:
Why to standardize in the first place?
Why to standardize before fitting a ML model?
Well, the idea is simple. Variables that are measured at different scales do not contribute equally to the model fitting & model learned function and might end up creating a bias. Thus, to deal with this potential problem feature-wise standardized (μ=0, σ=1) is usually used prior to model fitting.
To do that using scikit-learn , we first need to construct an input array X containing the features and samples with X.shape being [number_of_samples, number_of_features] .
Keep in mind that all scikit-learn machine learning (ML) functions expect as input an numpy array X with that shape i.e. the rows are the samples and the columns are the features/variables. Having said that, let’s assume that we have a matrix X where each row/line is a sample/observation and each column is a variable/feature.
Note: Tree-based models are usually not dependent on scaling, but non-tree models models such as SVM, LDA etc. are often hugely dependent on it.
Core of method
The main idea is to normalize/standardize i.e. μ = 0 and σ = 1 your features/variables/columns of X , individually, before applying any machine learning model. Thus, StandardScaler() will normalize the features i.e. each column of X, INDIVIDUALLY so that each column/feature/variable will have μ = 0 and σ = 1 .
The mathematical formulation of the standardization procedure. Image generated by the author.
Working Python code example:
from sklearn.preprocessing import StandardScaler
import numpy as np
# 4 samples/observations and 2 variables/features
X = np.array([[0, 0], [1, 0], [0, 1], [1, 1]]) # the scaler object (model)
scaler = StandardScaler() # fit and transform the data
scaled_data = scaler.fit_transform(X)
print(X)
[[0, 0],
[1, 0],
[0, 1],
[1, 1]])
print(scaled_data)
[[-1. -1.]
[ 1. -1.]
[-1. 1.]
[ 1. 1.]]
Verify that the mean of each feature (column) is 0:
scaled_data.mean(axis = 0)
array([0., 0.])
Verify that the std of each feature (column) is 1:
scaled_data.std(axis = 0)
array([1., 1.])
The effect of the transform in a visual example
Figure taken from: https://scikit-learn.org/stable/auto_examples/preprocessing/plot_all_scaling.html. Left subplot: the unscaled data. Right subplot: the transformed data.
Summary
StandardScaler removes the mean and scales each feature/variable to unit variance. This operation is performed feature-wise in an independent way.
removes the mean and scales each feature/variable to unit variance. This operation is performed in an way. StandardScaler can be influenced by outliers (if they exist in the dataset) since it involves the estimation of the empirical mean and standard deviation of each feature.
How to deal with outliers
Manual way (not recommended): Visually inspect the data and remove outliers using outlier removal statistical methods such as the Interquartile Range (IQR) threshold method.
Recommended way: Use the RobustScaler that will just scale the features but in this case using statistics that are robust to outliers. This scaler removes the median and scales the data according to the quantile range (defaults to IQR: Interquartile Range). The IQR is the range between the 1st quartile (25th quantile) and the 3rd quartile (75th quantile).
That’s all for today! Hope you liked this first post! Next story coming next week. Stay tuned & safe.
Stay tuned & support me
If you liked and found this article useful, follow me and applaud my story to support me!
References
[1] https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.preprocessing.StandardScaler.html
[2] https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.preprocessing.RobustScaler.html
Get in touch with me | https://towardsdatascience.com/how-and-why-to-standardize-your-data-996926c2c832 | ['Serafeim Loukas'] | 2020-06-10 10:44:22.465000+00:00 | ['Normalization', 'Sklearn', 'Standardization', 'Machine Learning', 'Scikit Learn'] |
The Best Creative Games for Kids on the Nintendo Switch (2020) | Find out what they are…..
Christmas is less than a month away, so it’s time to get to grips with some decent gifts, like the following ideas for kids who love video games — too much — on the Nintendo Switch.
You can feel less guilty, since these games can really bring out their creative or imaginative side. They can also promote more social skills, since kids get to share their creations, discuss them with their friends, and even go online and either explore or build something together. As a bonus, it can also improve their language and reading skills. | https://medium.com/@ademcocampbell/the-best-creative-games-for-kids-on-the-nintendo-switch-2020-319486bdf3d2 | ['Ade M. Campbell'] | 2020-12-07 17:22:00.730000+00:00 | ['Creative', 'Nintendo', 'Gaming', 'Games', 'Nintendo Switch'] |
Bruce Mau talks: from life-centered design, to events for preferable futures. | By now, Bruce Mau needs no introduction. His work speaks for itself. I will therefore briefly introduce how Bruce came into my life, professional first of all. It was the mid 1990s, when Chris Bangle just designed the “almighty” FIAT Coupe before moving to BMW; when Oasis was making Britannia cool again; and when cyberpunk was a science fiction vision created by William Gibson to make punk meet the PC. In the mid 1990s, the dot.com revolution was starting to spread its vibes (the book “Clicking” by Faith Popcorn was just out) and the world of graphic design was in its major transition, from alternative fanzines crafted in underground cellar to desktop computing enabling universal creativity, or to put it simple: from ink to pixels, in just a decade. Mind you, the first iMac was yet to come and computers were just grey boxes with powerful yet very slow graphic cards and the software needed to run them. Bruce Mau needed no introduction in Summer 1996, in Milan as in the rest of the world, when we both worked at Giancarlo Politi Editore, Milan. I was a young, unknown underdog, appointed by Giancarlo as project leader and editor of a new Italian magazine in one of his typical twists, while Bruce -as Gea Politi recently recalled on her Instagram stream- was resident for a few weeks, skilfully leading the redesign of the Times New Roman logo of their flagship publication, Flash Art International. Thanks to his 1995 world class breakthrough with Rem Koolhaas, the 1376 pages opus magnus, “S, M, L, XL”, edited by Jennifer Sigler at The Monacelli Press, Bruce was virtually everywhere in the art direction department of my Milanese publisher and in the rest of the world, as every graphic designer dissected his unexpected solutions, embodying the new unforeseen possibilities of desktop design. “S, M, L, XL” rapidly became the “Bible of the Desktop Revolution”, displaying the unprecedented power of graphic design in the personal computing age. At the same time, while virtually operational in the very same office space, Bruce was never to be seen in person, because he kept -for a month or so- his daily routine based on the U.S. East Coast Time Zone, hence working at nights, every night, and resting during business hours. As a result of this atypical planning schedule (atypical at the time, at least), he achieved a major milestone in the minor world of contemporary art publishing, convincing even a publisher who had always been cautious and conservative on his look-and-feel like Giancarlo to adopt a new logo, without physically manifesting itself during daytime. In a formative year when I had the privilege to professionally interact with current and future leaders in the cultural and creative sectors, from Francesco Bonami to a younger but already inspired Atto Belloli Ardessi, I always felt I missed the opportunity to personally connect to Bruce and this is why I was delighted when the World Future Society 2006 yearly event brought me to Toronto, then his home base with Bruce Mau Design, and we could finally shake hands, eye-to-eye (during U.S. East Coast Time Zone business hours, of course).
Since then, I have followed with great gusto Bruce’s rapidly paced development from design leader, that was his acquired status in the 1990s, to thought leader tout court. This entailed enjoying how Bruce expanded the notion of what “design” is, from “desktop” to “top of mind” and from aesthetic revolutions to “Massive Change” to pursue preferable futures, and from innovating book design to rethinking innovation from human-centric, to a novel notion of inclusion and nature, hence the immense idea of a new life-centered design, where empathy, commitment, and care connect with context in its widest environmental sense. From these starting points, Filiberto Amati and I engaged on a publicly available dialog with Bruce Mau, who is also Innovator in Residence at Freeman, on the future of events, from business events to our massive challenges that will require massive change at planetary level.
Radical, fact-based optimism.
Beyond the anecdotal details above, that frame our common history in the design and contemporary art history (well, Bruce’s history and my modest contribution), it was easy to start our conversation from Bruce’s roots and his life-centered design turn, that brought him from his deep love for books and the printed page, to his notion of “massive change” and “design” as an ideological and organizational force to address major planetary challenges on behalf of every living being. It is a political view of design in line with some classic philosophical ideas of Flusser, however less confrontationally drastic in their tone of voice than those eloquently articulated by the likes of Tony Fry. Way further than people-focused design, Bruce referred to his collaboration with Dean Julio M. Ottino of Northwestern University, who believes that climate change cannot be addressed by human-centric approaches to the way we will design in the future. However, Bruce’s tone of voice is that of optimism, or we could even say: radical fact-based optimism as “the” mantra for those who pursue a better future. To face the risks ahead of us, cynicism is a luxury that humans simply cannot afford, and even more so designers, who are called to convert such risks into inventive and innovative ideas, solutions, and their pragmatic, applicative implementations into our everyday. As a matter of fact, new challenges of unprecedented magnitude will call not only for a new design ideology or methodology, but especially for a whole new league of relentless and even restless optimism, as Bruce himself stated in his Convocation Ceremony Speech at Northwestern University, McCormick School of Engineering, 2021.
The power of a book launch, reframed in the 2020s.
Vector par excellence of Bruce’s vision and views are his books, from 2004 groundbreaking “Massive Change”, through 2000 “Life Style”, to reach the maximum synthesis between visual appeal and verbal impact with his most recent, the aforementioned 2020 “MAU MC24”. The launch of this latter title, determined by Phaidon, its publisher, to happen during the climax of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, forced Bruce -like all of us in our work- to deviate from the standard planning of events, switching to virtual presentations all over the globe from his chair in his studio. This led to two observation: a) the fundamental lack of contact, as always experienced in prior events, in terms of informal networking; and b) the unexpected benefit to be in same day in a primary school in Europe, to then move to a design institute in Asia, and end the day with a third presentation or dialog with an American audience. This virtual ubiquity might be appreciated as a major benefit in terms of both productivity and quality of exposure and interaction. The beauty of serendipity, in the form of dinners or drinks, versus the privilege to reach out to a higher number of individuals; such tension was resolved by the quality of feedback in Zoom sessions, in the form of questions, comments, and other opportunities to engage in lively moments of true dialog. Now, at yet another moment when -Delta Variant permitting- we expect to revert to in-presence events, the peculiar option exists to actually stage a second round of in-person presentations to relaunch the book. This opportunity is rather unique in terms of marketing cycles supporting editorial products, given its timing -and of course -given the moment- its unique emotional, cultural, and social context. Said context might amplify the natural mechanisms at the roots of physical interaction, from the Chinese unspoken rules of Guanxi to the Latin ways of doing business over lunch or dinner.
Hybrid as the new balance?
What will be the new balance between physical and digital modalities of gathering in events? In the past, according to Bruce, it was possible to observe how the quantity of long distance calls between distant cities was parallel to the actual travel exchanges by plane or train or other vehicles, among the same cities. This insight matches Saskia Sassen’s 2006 observations, as presented during the Venice 10th Biennale of Architecture that saw Sir Richard Rogers being the recipient of the Lion award for Lifetime Achievement for his commitment to urban design and the well-being of citizens. Cities do matter also as event destinations, and already for a decade or two, therefore increasing the technological assets whereby people can remotely reach other does not mean indeed removing or replacing the human drive to physically meet. Of course, sustainability is key, and in that perspective, it cannot be ignored how people are ready to embrace new lifestyles, from mobility to nutrition, in order to contribute reversing climate change. Why would event designers, event managers, and the event industry not leverage digital opportunities to reduce, if not minimise their environmental footprint?
From subcultural events to tribal cities.
The current status of the event industry might be represented with a bell curve, between totally digital and totally immersive extremes. Hybrid will be the dominant mode of tomorrow’s events, however it will be a hybrid world of events where mindfulness will migrate into digital interactions, and digital itself will be a pervasive condition of our lives. On the short term, social pressure to return to live events, with personal presence and contacts by bringing people in even for an hour event, might dictate the return of travel, however on the mid term the lessons learnt during the Covid-19 in terms of efficiency will kick in. Digital giants like Google or Apple learnt, sometimes in the hard way, that post-Covid-19 staff demand mobility on demand and eventually the flexibility of remote operations, without the costs, the loss of time, and the impact in environmental impact that commuting implies. This future of hybrid events will leave cities under increasing pressure to attract visitors as destinations. Here, the tribe will lead, meaning that people will congregate wherever their values, lifestyle choices, and personal interests will find a match with the urban texture, both human and contextual. “Meaning” will therefore drive the industry. In this scenario, events will be scaling up in size, to reach, match, and connect the tribe. As an example of tribal event, the SEMA Show, a major custom-made car fest where that particular subculture gathers. At Freeman, the company behind this specific event, it is clear how supporting, nurturing, and inspiring this one peculiar “tribe” is key to their business. Cities will have to imagineer themselves from planning their destination marketing to embodying the spirit of any of such tribes, be it through attracting digital nomads in whole new exotic destinations, like Caboverde has been recently aiming to, or reverting the historical migration flows at national level, like Italy saw with the new phenomenon of Southworking, with huge implications on rich cities left behind as well as for new settlements. In both cases, as well as in the earlier references to corporations and enterprises, big or small in size, a business event can be efficiently limited to one hour online in between a day on the beach, as we have experienced the actual possibilities of remote connectivity by force majeure in the last 18 months. In this current technological landscape, one economic factor is mission-critical. Nowadays and in the future, economy does -and will- follow beauty.
Beauty and garbage. Today’s competition, tomorrow’s mindfulness.
One of the 24 principles defined in “MAU MC24” is that beauty is and will remain a key driver in terms of perceived value and therefore, the willingness of people to pay more for products, services, and propositions will be ignited by beauty. Even more: we will do more for beauty, because it is the highest point of human experience. Every city, every enterprise will require a “beauty strategy”. Anecdotally, Steve Jobs once defined “beauty” as the only real strategic asset within the Apple portfolio and proposition. Of course, you need infrastructure to make the world go round and our cities and societies to function, however beauty is the current currency and the future strategic differentiator.
At the opposite of beauty, we have “garbage”, and events might be interpreted from the viewpoint of their negative environmental impact, where an illegal rave party in the woods alone might produce 50 or more black bags of mixed waste. In this perspective, “MAU MC24” advocates a systematic vision where materials are opportunities for recycling, and designers are agents of perpetuity, with an “edible approach” to their work, meaning: everything produced should be consumed and return to nature, as nature itself. Celebration is in balance with the environment when its impact is zero thanks to recyclable and -even better- compostable materials, that leave the planet as it was before them. System thinking and a sense of urgency will be required, and it might be seen as complementary to a “beauty strategy”, leading to the necessary mindset, and eventually mindfulness.
Indigenous cultures as the source of preferable futures for us all.
Mindfulness itself might be seen as the “next Design Thinking”, meaning that you might expect “mindfulness” to trickle down into MBA and business school curricula just like Design Thinking did a couple of decades ago. In 20 years now, according to Bruce’s life-centered design vision, consciousness and awareness are key. Just like Galileo proved, we as humans are not the center of the universe. We are not the only ones on the stage of life, therefore a strong mindset with empathy at its core. The “rest of life” is not separate from humans, as “we” are part of life without owning it. Awareness and mindfulness will convert into a new sophistication and a novel vision of “us” in a system of relationships around and above us, hence into different and more suitable methodology. From this viewpoint, the experimental work of McEwen School of Architecture in Sudbury, Ontario, a new Canadian institute that was validated as the 12th fully accreditated provider of architectural education in the country, might be worth considering as a front runner. With a leadership equally shared among the indigenous, French, and British roots of Canadian culture. Indigenous cultures have evolved different cosmologies than Western cultures, where “we” as humans are just “part of” nature and not against nature. That is the case with Canadian First Nations. This is a Copernican revolution in terms of self perception, awareness, and mindfulness. Just think of our contemporary cities, that are largely conceptualised, designed, and built “against” nature. Our future cities need instead “to be” nature. As Ryuichi Sakamoto once said, after traveling all cultures in the world, you go back to Africa as the first mother and the source of all rhythm. Likewise, indigenous cosmologies offer us the opportunity to represent ourselves differently, in holistic terms. We, as members of advanced economies, still primitively think in externalities, with animism surfacing in our behaviours, rituals, and relationships with physical objects and digital interfaces, whereas First Nations view of the world generally speaks of inception, integration, and inclusion of women and men in the world, within nature. In “MAU MC24” Bruce recalled his formative years as a young canoe trainer in Canadian wildlife and Northern Ontario parks as “the” moment of his epiphany on this topic. Immersion in nature might open our eyes also about our sense of separation between “private”, to be nurtured and protected, and “public”, to be used and abused. The way “average folks” behave in their backyard garden in terms of waste management and care, is sometimes different than how they behave in a natural park or an open area they visit, e.g. for a picnic. The notion of responsibility implies the exclusion of the exterior. This clashes with the notion of sacredness, e.g. a sense of sacred when visiting a forest. A lack of sacredness is at the roots of climate change, because our advanced economies, societies, and cultures have lost the notion of what is inviolable, and therefore sacred. It is possible to turn to Jerry Mander’s 1991 classic title, “In the Absence of the Sacred”, as one of example of critique whereby technology is described in its risks for failure, and indigenous cultures are explored as depositaries of potential alternatives. In this sense, we should “kill” the very concept itself of parks, natural reserves, or even CSR departments in corporations as obsolete, because they represent the way of thinking whereby we aim at creating and maintaining islands of intelligence in an ocean of stupidity, or islands of creativity and care in a sea of selfishness and destruction. The notion of a park is the protection of a minor part of nature, say 3% of a river, versus the exploitation of the larger part that is not included in the park, say the remaining 97% of the same river. This must be reverted, and whole rivers, whole forests, whole mountains, whole corporations, and whole cities should become sustainable in the way they are conceptualised, designed, and managed.
This was an inspiring conversation in the same style as our earlier dialog with Bruce’s fellow Canadian citizen, Johanne Schroeder, UN WLO President and Chair at Vancouver Island University, who leveraged “events” as a starting point to stretch the boundaries to the peripheries and the next core of leisure, tourism, and sustainability. Three quarters of an hour with Bruce are one lifetime opportunity to open your mind and learn to reframe and rethink your job as design professional, your views as a world citizen, and your vision as a living being on this planet, that we share with endless species and life forms. | https://medium.com/@marco-bevolo/bruce-mau-talks-from-life-centered-design-to-events-for-preferable-futures-3dae98f6e3cf | ['Marco Bevolo'] | 2021-09-17 04:14:50.849000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Events', 'Foresight', 'Futures Literacy', 'Vision'] |
We REALLY need to discuss goals of care with all patients admitted with COVID-19. | Asa critical care medicine specialist, I am used to seeing the sickest of the sick. I am used to seeing patients with respiratory failure. I am used to seeing patients in shock. I am used to seeing patients gasping for air, with dangerously low oxygen levels. I am used to seeing patients in kidney failure. Never, however, have I seen patients as sick as those with COVID-19.
Frightening Hypoxemia (low oxygen levels)
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First of all, almost all of these patients present with such frighteningly low oxygen levels. I am also a lung specialist, and I am accustomed to seeing patients with low oxygen levels. Normal oxygen levels are anything above 90%, and I have seen patients come with levels as low as the 70s. Rarely, however, do I see patients presenting to our hospital with oxygen levels in the 50s and even lower. What’s more perplexing, sometimes these patients have oxygen levels that low and have absolutely no symptoms. I have never seen that before in my career as either a lung or critical care specialist.
Frighteningly Quick Deterioration
Secondly, when these patients with COVID-19 crash, they crash very quickly and crash very hard. Each patient is a ticking time-bomb, and they could be doing fine for several hours, and then — suddenly — they are gasping for air with plummeting oxygen levels and a plummeting blood pressure. One patient — a sweet woman in her 60s — was holding her own for several days. She was still very sick, but she was holding her own. All of the sudden, she became severely short of breath and was gasping for air. Despite getting multiple interventions, including going on a ventilator, she suffered cardiac arrest and died. We were all devastated.
As a critical care specialist, I am used to seeing the sickest of the sick. Never, however, have I seen patients as sick as those with COVID-19
What I’ve Learned Taking Care Of These Patients
This disease is unlike anything we have ever seen. COVID-19 has confounded critical care specialists the world over. It has upended decades of critical care gospel, and it has left very smart clinicians, scientists, researchers and regular bedside doctors — like me — scratching their heads. Each patient acts differently to the virus, and we need to treat each patient differently. What works for one, may not work for another, and this is different than what we have been used to. This is ultimately a good thing, and it will make all of us better clinicians in the end.
Not every patient needs a ventilator right away. Early on, clinicians taking care patients with COVID-19 were recommending “early intubation,” which means placing patients on a ventilator if conventional oxygen treatment did not work. They were not wrong. At the same time, we have learned that some patients can avoid going on a ventilator if we can treat them with high amounts of oxygen with high flow rates. We have had great success using this treatment modality in keeping multiple patients from requiring a ventilator. In addition, we have found that, if patients can lie on their stomach themselves, this has helped many of them avoid having to go on a ventilator. A lot of research is being conducted on this treatment, but we have found good success with it in our patients. While a ventilator can be life-saving, and I would not hesitate to use it on any patient who can’t breathe, it can also damage the lungs, and it is important to try everything in our arsenal first before we place someone on a ventilator. Indeed, multiple guidelines have now come out saying the same thing.
We need to aggressively correct any dehydration. It has long been a teaching that the patients with the severe lung disease called ARDS, or Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, need to get as little fluids as possible. This is appropriate, because too much fluid in the body can cause the lungs to fill up with fluids and make the respiratory failure worse. At the same time, patients with COVID-19 typically come into the hospital and ICU very dehydrated. They have had fevers for several days, which causes dehydration itself, and they are not really eating and drinking (because they are sick). So, if we do not give them fluids, we are setting them up for kidney failure. As a result, we have been more liberal with fluids — all while not giving too much — and we have been very successful in preventing kidney failure.
We REALLY need to discuss goals of care with all patients admitted with COVID-19. This disease can kill. It can leave you needing a ventilator for a very long time, if not forever. Do you want this? Yes, of course, we try to “do everything” for all of our patients. The thing is, “doing everything” may not be consistent with someone’s wishes and values. Do you want to live the rest of your days on a ventilator? Do you want to die on a ventilator? Do you want to die with the team pounding on your chest? Whatever the answers are to those important questions need to be communicated to the doctors taking care of patients with COVID, BEFORE they go into respiratory failure. Having me, as a critical care medicine specialist, ask these questions is too late. It needs to be done sooner.
Like I said, I have never seen anything like this before in my career. This pandemic will have long-standing consequences on the medical profession, hospitals, the healthcare system, and society at large. I pray they are not all negative, and that — when this is all over…some day — we will all be better and stronger than we were before.
The opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and they do not reflect those of my employer or the institutions with which I am affiliated.
First of all, almost all of these patients present with such frighteningly low oxygen levels. I am also a lung specialist, and I am accustomed to seeing patients with low oxygen levels. Normal oxygen levels are anything above 90%, and I have seen patients come with levels as low as the 70s. Rarely, however, do I see patients presenting to our hospital with oxygen levels in the 50s and even lower. What’s more perplexing, sometimes these patients have oxygen levels that low and have absolutely no symptoms. I have never seen that before in my career as either a lung or critical care specialist.
Frighteningly Quick Deterioration
Secondly, when these patients with COVID-19 crash, they crash very quickly and crash very hard. Each patient is a ticking time-bomb, and they could be doing fine for several hours, and then — suddenly — they are gasping for air with plummeting oxygen levels and a plummeting blood pressure. One patient — a sweet woman in her 60s — was holding her own for several days. She was still very sick, but she was holding her own. All of the sudden, she became severely short of breath and was gasping for air. Despite getting multiple interventions, including going on a ventilator, she suffered cardiac arrest and died. We were all devastated.
As a critical care specialist, I am used to seeing the sickest of the sick. Never, however, have I seen patients as sick as those with COVID-19
What I’ve Learned Taking Care Of These Patients
This disease is unlike anything we have ever seen. COVID-19 has confounded critical care specialists the world over. It has upended decades of critical care gospel, and it has left very smart clinicians, scientists, researchers and regular bedside doctors — like me — scratching their heads. Each patient acts differently to the virus, and we need to treat each patient differently. What works for one, may not work for another, and this is different than what we have been used to. This is ultimately a good thing, and it will make all of us better clinicians in the end.
Not every patient needs a ventilator right away. Early on, clinicians taking care patients with COVID-19 were recommending “early intubation,” which means placing patients on a ventilator if conventional oxygen treatment did not work. They were not wrong. At the same time, we have learned that some patients can avoid going on a ventilator if we can treat them with high amounts of oxygen with high flow rates. We have had great success using this treatment modality in keeping multiple patients from requiring a ventilator. In addition, we have found that, if patients can lie on their stomach themselves, this has helped many of them avoid having to go on a ventilator. A lot of research is being conducted on this treatment, but we have found good success with it in our patients. While a ventilator can be life-saving, and I would not hesitate to use it on any patient who can’t breathe, it can also damage the lungs, and it is important to try everything in our arsenal first before we place someone on a ventilator. Indeed, multiple guidelines have now come out saying the same thing.
We need to aggressively correct any dehydration. It has long been a teaching that the patients with the severe lung disease called ARDS, or Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, need to get as little fluids as possible. This is appropriate, because too much fluid in the body can cause the lungs to fill up with fluids and make the respiratory failure worse. At the same time, patients with COVID-19 typically come into the hospital and ICU very dehydrated. They have had fevers for several days, which causes dehydration itself, and they are not really eating and drinking (because they are sick). So, if we do not give them fluids, we are setting them up for kidney failure. As a result, we have been more liberal with fluids — all while not giving too much — and we have been very successful in preventing kidney failure.
We REALLY need to discuss goals of care with all patients admitted with COVID-19. This disease can kill. It can leave you needing a ventilator for a very long time, if not forever. Do you want this? Yes, of course, we try to “do everything” for all of our patients. The thing is, “doing everything” may not be consistent with someone’s wishes and values. Do you want to live the rest of your days on a ventilator? Do you want to die on a ventilator? Do you want to die with the team pounding on your chest? Whatever the answers are to those important questions need to be communicated to the doctors taking care of patients with COVID, BEFORE they go into respiratory failure. Having me, as a critical care medicine specialist, ask these questions is too late. It needs to be done sooner.
Like I said, I have never seen anything like this before in my career. This pandemic will have long-standing consequences on the medical profession, hospitals, the healthcare system, and society at large. I pray they are not all negative, and that — when this is all over…some day — we will all be better and stronger than we were before.
The opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and they do not reflect those of my employer or the institutions with which I am affiliated. | https://medium.com/@wzendo-snkt/we-really-need-to-discuss-goals-of-care-with-all-patients-admitted-with-covid-19-dd555ebc2e72 | ['Wzendo Snkt'] | 2020-12-27 20:29:22.397000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'News', 'Sports', 'Covid 19'] |
How to Make Your Baby Smart in the Womb | March 07, 2019
Every mother dreams that her child is smart and sharp minded. But do you know that all of this depends on the mother’s diet? Therefore the question arises how to get intelligent baby during pregnancy or what to eat during pregnancy to make baby intelligent. The physical and mental development of the child depends on the mother who eats during pregnancy. You should also eat such foods that correct development of their brain properly. During pregnancy, the correct amount of folic acid, vitamin D, iron etc. in the meal increases the child’s IQ level. Let’s take a look at some such diets.
What to eat during pregnancy to make baby intelligent
Below are certain foods that help baby growth and brain development.
Folic acid in the spinach and lentils pulses
Folic acid is very important for the development of a child’s brain cells and folic acid is abundant in lentil and pulses. According to a study, women who have taken plenty of folic acid during pregnancy, 4 weeks before and during 8 weeks, the chance of developing a child’s retardation decreases by almost 40 percent. Iron is helpful in delivering oxygen to the brain cells during pregnancy. Green leafy vegetables like spinach is a good source of folic acid.
Eggs have rich amino acids, which help in improving a child’s brain development and memory. Pregnant women should be able to consume two eggs in a day, it fills the daily requirement of colin. I-Q level of the low-weight child is also less. Eggs also contain excess protein and iron, which also keeps the weight of the child right.
Yogurt: Your body needs to work harder to develop the child’s brain cells in the womb. You need more protein for this. In addition to other protein sources, you should also take yogurt, which has a high protein intake.
Blueberries full of anti-oxidants
Blueberries, artichokes, and tomato contain high amounts of antioxidants. These fruits help develop brain development by developing a child’s brain tissues. If you want your baby to become smart then it is important to consume it during pregnancy.
Fatty fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids
Fatty fish salmon, tuna, mackerel etc. have high omega-3 fatty acids. It is very important for children’s brain development. According to the study, the women who consumed fish less than twice a week, their child’s IQ level was very less compared to those who consumed fish.
Final words
We all know that living a healthy lifestyle when you are expecting helps your baby to grow big and strong, in the same way above discussed are the health foods that makes the womb smarter too. Every food you eat during the journey of pregnancy had a direct or indirect effect on your baby. Those above discussed are the certain foods items that have been proven to effectively help your baby’s memory and ability to learn. Therefore every woman who is pregnant and soon to be new mommy must eat healthy meals that will definitely help your baby growth and brain development. Creating a strong foundation built on a healthy environment and diet can ensure that your baby will have a bright tomorrow. | https://medium.com/@manoj61184/how-to-make-your-baby-smart-in-the-womb-3cb7e7ca9f13 | ['Doctor Shifu'] | 2019-03-07 15:01:57.827000+00:00 | ['Nutrition', 'Tips', 'Home', 'Pregnancy', 'Baby'] |
The Oldest Question | The Oldest Question
If God is so good, then why is there so much suffering in this world?
Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash
A Devotional on John 9:1–5
If God is so good, then why is there so much suffering in this world?
At some point in our lives, I’m sure we’ve all asked that question. Some people use the question as an excuse to not believe in God. They pose it as a “Gotcha!” and are not really interested in finding an answer.
Other people ask the question with all sincerity. They want to believe in God, but they have experienced so much heartbreak in life. They can’t understand why a loving God would allow his children to suffer.
This question, while important, is not a new one. In the Old Testament, the prophet Habakkuk (which, by the way, is an awesome name!) gets into an argument with God about all the suffering he sees in the world. He cries out:
“How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save?” (Habakkuk 1:1–2)
When Jesus comes across the man born blind, his disciples come up with their own theory to answer the question: somebody did something wrong.
As he went along, [Jesus] saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:1–2)
I always thought it was weird that the disciples blamed the man. After all, if the man was born blind, then when would he have sinned to deserve this punishment? As I’ve researched this story, I came across a few possibilities.
Some people at that time believed in a form of reincarnation. Maybe the man sinned in a previous life.
Others thought that a baby could sin while still in the womb.
A third option is that the man was being punished for a future sin he would commit.
Whatever their reasoning, the disciples had it all figured out. It was either the blind man’s fault or his parents’.
A Paradigm Shift
Whenever people asked Jesus an “either/or” question, he usually widened their view of the situation. Instead of blaming someone, Jesus challenged his disciples to look for God amid the suffering. The Message version of the Bible puts Jesus’ answer this way:
Jesus said, “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do.”
Years ago, I was at Wal-Mart rummaging through some CDs. A woman approached me and asked if she could pray for me. I said yes. I will always accept prayer!
As the woman prayed, she asked God to heal me of my disability. Her prayer grew louder and louder, and when she finished, she said, “Now you have to believe!”
In her view, the greatest good was that I become healed of my cerebral palsy. And if God chose to do that, I would happily accept! But I’ve seen God do amazing things in my life. And I’ve watched other people go through terrible times and come out with a renewed sense of purpose.
God can be found in life’s darkest moments.
Even if we fully understood the “why” of suffering, we still wouldn’t like it. But we have a God who chose to leave his perfect home, put on human flesh, and experience human suffering with us.
Questions to Ponder:
Have you ever asked some form of the “Oldest Question”?
If you are a follower of Jesus, where have you seen God show up in your suffering?
If you’re not a follower of Jesus, what do you think of the concept of God (as Jesus) experiencing suffering alongside us? | https://medium.com/nobody-left-out/the-oldest-question-4600461d0284 | ['Michael Murray'] | 2019-11-06 02:13:17.131000+00:00 | ['Devotional', 'Christianity', 'Spiritual Growth', 'Religion', 'Spirituality'] |
Multi-Color Earrings for Girls and Women | **CLICK HERE** — **AMAZON PRODUCT** —** PURCHASE HERE***
Multi-Color Earrings for Girls and Women
Product Details:-
Is Discontinued By Manufacturer : No
No Product Dimensions : 15 x 11 x 5 cm; 50 Grams
15 x 11 x 5 cm; 50 Grams Date First Available : 28 December 2016
28 December 2016 Manufacturer : YouBella Jewellery & Lifestyle
YouBella Jewellery & Lifestyle ASIN : B01MU6O7H7
B01MU6O7H7 Item model number : YBEAR_31218
YBEAR_31218 Country of Origin : India
India Department : Womens
Womens Manufacturer : YouBella Jewellery & Lifestyle
YouBella Jewellery & Lifestyle Item Weight : 50 g
50 g Item Dimensions LxWxH : 15 x 11 x 5 Centimeters
15 x 11 x 5 Centimeters Net Quantity : 1 U
1 U Included Components : 1 Earrings Pair
1 Earrings Pair Generic Name : Fashion Jewellery
Fashion Jewellery Best Sellers Rank: #79 in Jewellery (See Top 100 in Jewellery)
Product Information:-
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From traditional to modernize world, We believe to serve everyone with our best craftsmanship. Our jewelry is designed & refined to meet high standards. Thus we manage to deliver amazing craftsmanship results every time. | https://medium.com/@amirafashionstore21/multi-color-earrings-for-girls-and-women-14c94214fe4d | ['Amira Fashion Store'] | 2021-11-29 10:03:32.082000+00:00 | ['Jewelry', 'Jewellery', 'Earrings', 'Fashion', 'Women Earrings'] |
Recycling, the Zeigernik Effect, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg | Recycling, the Zeigernik Effect, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg
This week’s featured stories from The Innovation
Photo by Third Serving on Unsplash
We are proud to have so many thoughtful and creative writers that contribute to The Innovation. Every week, we choose seven stories that stood out to us, either because of their exceptional insight, because of their innovative subject matter, or because of their fresh perspective.
These stories will be listed along with excerpts below, but you can also find them featured on the home page of the publication, updated every Monday right after this newsletter gets to your inboxes. Hopefully, the snippets below will encourage you to click on the links, enjoy some great writing, and show our writers some love.
Without further ado, here are this week’s featured stories:
Some of us are playing the short game on autopilot. And when that happens, we are no longer playing the game, but being played by the short game. The seduction, the contagion, keep us asking for more. This microwave is fast, but the other one is faster. This data package is good, but give me the one that’s better. This smartphone is new — but I really want the one that’s newer. It’s the game of faster, newer, bigger, better. It’s a game where the internal is the servant, and the external is the master.
In disposable societies worldwide, buy, use and toss would seem to be the mantra used by too many. We dispose of things. Our garbage cans of blue and grey line driveways where they are waiting to be picked up by the recycling trucks. The average American produces 1,704 pounds of garbage per year, roughly three times the global average, according to a new report by the research firm Verisk Maplecroft.
For many of us, describing ourselves is an activity that blurs the lines between how we see ourselves today and who we are looking forward to being. I would see myself, for example, as an activator, even if, in the current scheme of things, I am not fully realizing my activator potential. I know who I can be, and that influences the way I see myself today. That’s not what happens when we write a memoir. Looking back, we tend to see what’s missing or is still yet to come. The unrealized potential. That’s because, for most of us, our life decisions have not yet allowed us to feel complete. As it stands, our memoirs are filled with unfulfilled goals, dampened by the reality of unrealized potential. Unfortunately, for many of us, our memoir does not move beyond that.
3. High achievers foster robust personal networks. Many of these stories feature a moment where personal connections yielded unprecedented opportunity. Sometimes these connections arose from hard work and outreach, and sometimes they emerged by chance. Either way, fostering high-quality relationships can yield incredible, unexpected opportunities. Ruth Bader Ginsburg struggled to find clerkships when she started her law career because employers were reluctant to hire a mother. A professor of hers, Gerald Gunther, called up a Judge in the Southern District of New York and personally vouched for her, securing her the position and helping launch her incredible career.
To-do lists can be hard to use. But if they’re too hard to use, why do we make them? Many To-do lists contain tasks that are just distractions, especially when they are phone apps. They give you the illusion of control. The problem is most To-do lists become a rat’s nest of conflicting priorities. Everything becomes jumbled up together. They can be so overwhelming; we can abandon them as soon written. It becomes a random check-list but without rhyme or reason.
We need to understand how short-term memory works to understand the Zeigarnik phenomenon. Short-time memory is limited in capacity, so in order to hold on to pieces of information, we have to keep rehearsing them, and this requires mental effort. People use tricks to constantly pull memories back into awareness — the Zeigarnik effect is one of them. We better remember uncompleted tasks by thinking of them more often. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/recycling-the-zeigernik-effect-and-ruth-bader-ginsberg-5ed52e7b5afb | ['Michelle Loucadoux'] | 2020-12-21 15:28:33.216000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Featured Stories', 'Community', 'Writers On Writing'] |
Design like Elon Musk using 6 fundamental principles | This example seems trivial, yet it happens all the time. Unfortunately, not applying this principle often leads to added complexity in a design, which has a rippling effect on cost, time, and quality.
The main objective is to question constraints you are given to solve a problem because it is most likely that these are to some degree wrong. Elon questions nearly everything, most notably about what can or cannot be done in terms of cost to space, as I will elaborate in the next section. Also see Elon talk about this here.
The best way to apply this principle is whenever someone asks you to solve a problem, to dig deeper into the constraints you are given. Spend time to see if they are asking the wrong question. You may see a solution that does not require solving the problem but preventing it in the first place. Therefore, the benefits of this principle are strongly amplified if everyone is a chief engineer as well.
Reason from first principles
For anyone who’s heard or seen interviews with Musk, he commonly mentions reasoning from first principles as the best approach for solving problems. The approach is a subset of the scientific method and typically used by physicists to acquire knowledge correctly.
The idea is to boil a problem down to chunks of which you know are fundamentally true. This sounds easy, but it’s surprisingly difficult. It requires digging deep into your assumptions, disregarding legacy, and earlier failures.
A great example that Elon himself uses, is to estimate the cost of a rocket launch. Pre-SpaceX era, rocket launches would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Questioning the question would be to challenge this statement of cost in the first place. Reasoning from first principles means to figure out the fundamental cost of a rocket launch.
Say that for whatever reason you need a lot of launches. One approach would be to look at the cost per launch, multiply by the number of launches and get an estimate. A typical business person would probably negotiate the price of multiple launches from a rocket company. A typical corporate manager or purchaser could say something like “make every part of the rocket X percent cheaper”.
The fundamental limit of cost per launch is the cost of fuel, not the cost of hardware. Photo by SpaceX
These approaches sound reasonable, but they all miss the most crucial question: what is the fundamental cost? When you do the math on the cost of the raw materials of a rocket (some metals, fuel and oxidizer, hydraulic fluids, and so on), you realize that the propellant is only a tiny fraction of the total costs, which determines the fundamental lower limit of costs per launch. Conclusion: you need a reusable rocket.
Instead of immediately focusing on how something could be solved (as in the examples earlier), you first and foremost focus on what you fundamentally need or want. Only after that is when you start figuring out how to get that done. That is Musk’s reasoning.
Kill your darlings
This phrase, attributed to William Faulkner or Arthur Quiller-Couch, is an amazing statement that helps past difficult design decisions time and again. Originally it was recommended to writers, whenever they had a great passage that — although great — did not fit or even weakened the full story. As a writer, you’ve “fallen in love” with what you wrote and are reluctant to say goodbye to it, even though it’s better for the whole. | https://uxdesign.cc/design-like-elon-musk-using-6-fundamental-principles-4aaab08d5e41 | ['Matt Neut'] | 2021-01-15 10:12:31.250000+00:00 | ['Product Design', 'UX', 'Spacex', 'Product Development', 'Elon Musk'] |
Week of December 27th, 2020: | Week of December 27th, 2020:
Where I was:
A path toward an empty state of existence; one where you just wake up and go through the motions each day. Days of no joy, months of no excitement, entire years of just waking up and grinding, always hoping that one day everything will just works itself and you will wake up feeling better - like how you used to feel, you wish your old-self would return yet time moves on and still you continue to walk around feeling dead inside. You completely shut off from the world, become oblivious to the things happening on the outside all around you. You awake for a moment and find yourself months older yet still not any wiser. Your motivation receded months ago. You begin to make compromises with yourself about what it is you truly want in life and how willing you are to fully commit yourself to take the time to learn all of the things you tell yourself want to try.
Where I’m going:
A place of peace and contentment. A home built with dignity and self-respect.
Goals for 2021:
Finish my Masters degree
Begin my Instrumentation rating and private aircraft pilots license
Improve my German
Finish writing another short-story | https://medium.com/first-draft-thoughts/week-of-december-27th-2020-77288d7951e0 | ['Jon Walsh'] | 2020-12-27 15:33:06.998000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Blog', 'New York', 'New Year Resolution', 'Stories'] |
Guangzhou Yili Medical Care Co., | Guangzhou Yili Medical Care Co., Ltd. is a professional company engaged in the production and agency of advanced medical equipment at home and abroad, leading the new trend of the medical supplies industry. Since the establishment of the company, it has continued to develop and make progress, with its own exploration and innovation, and strives for development in stability. Its sales performance has increased year by year. Its business has radiated to all parts of the country. A good reputation and reputation. The main products are: clinical testing products, disinfection and sterilization products, oral equipment, rehabilitation equipment, pre-hospital emergency equipment, operating room and ward care equipment, etc. The company has won unanimous praise from users based on the principle of sincere service and people-oriented, high-quality products and perfect after-sales service. Peihe, with the courage and spirit of the explorer, continues to devote itself to the exploration and research in the field of medical equipment; with better quality and better service, let the public easily enjoy the healthy future brought by scientific and technological medical treatment.
The company’s culture is quite diversified and performance directed
Guangzhou Yili is “cooperation”. Only by cooperating with each other can we achieve the perfect set, and can we show the cohesion of the enterprise and the spirit of corporate culture of unity and cooperation. Yili is “matching” and “harmony”. Only by accurately meeting the customer’s product needs according to the customer’s needs can we achieve “matching”; further, with good integrity and high-quality services, we can achieve “harmony” and make money!
Their products include face masks from the KN95 mask to the N95, surgical masks, the newly designed Face Shield used by Police forces in so many countries all over the world; the COVID-19 detection kit, nitrile hand gloves, isolation suits and infrared head thermometer. | https://medium.com/@hdmoore.web/guangzhou-yili-medical-care-co-10f4966c4e76 | ['Henry Davis Moore'] | 2020-05-19 15:31:24.444000+00:00 | ['Medical Supplies', 'Face Mask Manufacturer', 'Italy', 'Medical Care', 'Covid-19'] |
The Best Comedians Do Something You Don’t | What about writing then?
As writers, we should be acutely aware of how detailed our preparation should be. I know that almost every other article on here tells us to ‘edit edit edit’, but it’s true. I’m not suggesting for a minute that we should spend a year in preparation for every article. There would be a lot more starving and penniless writers if that was the case but we should take the time to perfect what we’re putting onto the page as far as possible.
The first draft of ideas that flows onto the blank page should be just that. I know that when I’ve written a first draft of an article, it is more important to get the word and ideas down onto the screen than for them to be spelt correctly. When I come to edit, what is on the page bears only a passing resemblance to English. Then we go back and remove excess words, refine the sentence structure, get a feel for the rhythm of the language. We know what sounds right and, like the comics, when we step out onto the stage that first time with a page of untried material then we should be prepared to get shot down.
We need to be our own worst hecklers. If a sentence doesn't work or the word order sounds wrong, give yourself hell over it. Call it out.
How boring a show would be if a comic stood and talked at the same rate and pace for the whole show. But they vary their speed, sentence length and intonation. Sometimes a joke is funnier if the emphasis is placed on a different word. Your sentences are the same. Change sentence lengths, change emphasis, be brutal with your work and see what works best for you.
It’s easy to spot a writer who is at ease with their style and one who is trying too hard. Read anything by Tim Denning and you’ll see a casual, friendly style almost as if he’s having a chat with you over a drink.
That’s no mistake. It has taken many years of trial and error to arrive at that level of skill.
All we can do is do our best to try and find a voice that suits us and the only way we can do that is by writing down our initial ideas like a comedian, taking those ideas and fashioning them into sentences and paragraphs that our readers will love. | https://medium.com/@celebrantsouthwest/the-best-comedians-do-something-you-dont-8f5688ad8e55 | ['Glyn Bawden'] | 2020-12-26 16:32:43.171000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Editing', 'Review', 'Comedy', 'Writing Tips'] |
A Short But Complete Guide To Python Flask App Development | Sixth Thing: Setting up actual app, and creating a deployable Docker image.
Here’s a list of things we are going to implement in this part:-
Make the application runnable, so that you can access it from browser, terminal (using curl etc) Connect the app to a real database (MySQL for now) Make the application deployable.
To make the app runnable we need to create an instance of application using create_app function. We do that in a new file <project_root>/autoapp.py and put this there:-
from flask.helpers import get_debug_flag
from app.configs import DevConfig, ProdConfig
from app.main import create_app
CONFIG = DevConfig if get_debug_flag() else ProdConfig
app = create_app(CONFIG)
For this we also need separate config objects which we create in a new file app/configs.py
import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()
# This will load .env file containing environment variables
class Config(object):
"""Base Configuration"""
APP_DIR = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__)) # This directory
PROJECT_ROOT = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(APP_DIR, os.pardir))
class ProdConfig(Config):
ENV = 'prod'
DEBUG = False
SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI = os.getenv("DB_URL")
class DevConfig(Config):
ENV = 'dev'
DEBUG = True
DB_NAME = 'dev.db'
DB_PATH = os.path.join(Config.PROJECT_ROOT, DB_NAME)
SQLALCHEMY_DATABASE_URI = os.getenv('DB_URL',
'sqlite:///{0}'.format(DB_PATH) # default
)
We have used Python-dotenv to place all environment variables in a file named .env
DB_URL=mysql+mysqlconnector://user:password@localhost:3306/db
Now, the app can be started using commands:-
export FLASK_APP=./autoapp.py
flask run
You can try accessing the URLs, you should see error. We still haven’t setup database.
You can install MySQL on your system, and create a database named db , but for now we are going to use docker image of mysql for that.
Create a file docker-compose.yml in project root directory:-
version: "3"
networks:
backend:
driver: bridge
volumes:
my-db:
services:
mysql:
image: mysql:8.0.22
container_name: mydb
ports:
- "3306:3306"
environment:
MYSQL_DATABASE: 'db'
# So you don't have to use root, but you can if you like
MYSQL_USER: 'user'
# You can use whatever password you like
MYSQL_PASSWORD: 'password'
# Password for root access
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: 'password'
networks:
- backend
expose:
- '3306'
volumes:
- my-db:/var/lib/mysql
You need DockerCompose installed on your system.
Run the command docker-compose up it would download the docker image of MySQL from DockerHub and create a container (which means the image is started/launched). Now you have a database running which our app can access.
But, if you run the app again and try to access the APIs, it would still throw an error, because we still haven’t created the tables in our database.
To do that we are going to use another library Flask-Migrate
There’s a crucial change that it requires (apart from adding it to requirements/production.txt file):-
We need to create an object of Migrate and connect it to our app, and database.
So, first add this line to app/extensions.py
migrate = Migrate()
Next, add this line to create_app function:-
migrate.init_app(_app, db=database)
Then, we have to use this migration framework to create tables in our database. Run the following commands:-
flask db init
flask db migrate
flask db upgrade
First command creates necessary files (in your project directory) for migration.
Second command detects changes in your application regarding tables, and creates a migration script file. The name of the file would be random hash.
Third command applies the migration script to the database, and creates/modifies tables etc.
(Note: The auto-detection of this framework is not 100% reliable, so make sure to verify the changes in the generated migration script file. For the first time there’s no need to check though, unless you want to customise)
Now if you re-run the application, everything should work fine.
Finally, we need to make the app deployable as a docker image.
Create a file named Dockerfile in your project directory:-
FROM python:3.8-slim-buster
# This will serve as base image on which other things can be added via commands, basically you get a lightweight operating system with Python installed on it
WORKDIR /src
#sets the working directory for any RUN, CMD, ENTRYPOINT, COPY and ADD instructions, a src folder will be created in docker image
ARG BUILD_ENV
ENV FLASK_ENV $BUILD_ENV
ENV FLASK_APP autoapp.py
#RUN mkdir requirements
COPY app/ ./app
COPY autoapp.py .
COPY requirements/ ./requirements
COPY run_tests.sh .
# Copy required source code
COPY tests ./tests
RUN ls .
# just for debugging to see what's ther in the WORKDIR
RUN if [ "$BUILD_ENV" = "test" ]; then pip install -r requirements/development.txt ; fi
RUN if [ "$BUILD_ENV" = "test" ]; then export FLASK_DEBUG=true ; fi
RUN if [ "$BUILD_ENV" != "test" ]; then pip install -r requirements/production.txt ; fi
RUN chmod 777 run_tests.sh
RUN ./run_tests.sh
ENTRYPOINT flask run
# A brief about RUN, CMD, and ENTRYPOINT
# Use RUN to do the installation, making changes etc
# Use ENTRYPOINT to run a command used to start the service
# Use CMD to pass arguments to that command, they get appended automatically; You can override CMD while running docker image.
If you face difficulty understanding Dockerfile visit the official site, documentation is pretty good.
Also, add the following to the docker-compose file we created earlier:-
flask_app:
build:
dockerfile: Dockerfile
context: .
args:
BUILD_ENV: $BUILD_ENV
container_name: flask_app
expose:
- '5000'
environment:
- FLASK_DEBUG=$FLASK_DEBUG
- DB_URL=$DB_URL
ports:
- "5000:5000"
network_mode: bridge
Kill the previous running commands and run the compose command again:-
BUILD_ENV=test docker-compose up --build
Note: You might face difficulty accessing the app running in docker from browser, or terminal on Mac. I still haven’t figured out the problem.
Using the command above builds a docker image of your app and tags it as latest , you can view it using the following command:-
docker images
You can push this image to some repository (Docker Hub for example), and then pull it back on any server (another machine, or a VirtualMachine in Google Cloud for example), and then run the application using docker compose.
To push the image to Docker Hub
docker push sample-flask-project_flask_app:latest
Then, on the server where you want to run, you just have to copy the docker-compose file and comment out build section from it for flask_app, here’s the complete docker-compose.yml file for that:-
version: "3"
networks:
backend:
driver: bridge
volumes:
my-db:
services:
mysql:
image: mysql:8.0.22
container_name: mydb
ports:
- "3306:3306"
environment:
MYSQL_DATABASE: 'db'
# So you don't have to use root, but you can if you like
MYSQL_USER: 'user'
# You can use whatever password you like
MYSQL_PASSWORD: 'password'
# Password for root access
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: 'password'
networks:
- backend
expose:
- '3306'
volumes:
- my-db:/var/lib/mysql
flask_app:
# build:
# dockerfile: Dockerfile
# context: .
# args:
# BUILD_ENV: $BUILD_ENV
image: sample-flask-project_flask_app:latest
container_name: flask_app
expose:
- '5000'
environment:
- FLASK_DEBUG=$FLASK_DEBUG
- DB_URL=$DB_URL
ports:
- "5000:5000"
network_mode: bridge
Then you just have to run command docker-compose up -d
(-d means it will run in background as a daemon process).
Here’s a list of useful docker commands that you might use:-
# To see all the images on your system
docker images # To build the images (if a build config is specified in docker-compose.yml)
docker-compose build --no-cache # To login to a running container, let's say we wan to see our database in mysql container named 'mydb'
docker exec -it mydb /bin/bash
# then you can run mysql command i.e mysql -u user -p
Here’s the complete code so far. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/a-short-but-complete-guide-to-python-flask-app-development-9b493f960bd1 | ['Satyendra Kumar'] | 2021-01-06 17:09:00.403000+00:00 | ['Flask', 'Python', 'Python3', 'Flask Framework', 'Python Programming'] |
CoinEx Weekly Update, 14–20 December 2020 | Dear CoinEx users, to keep you updated each week, we will share with you a recap of all the exciting events of the previous week. Below are major events that occurred in the ecosystem over the 14–20 December 2020.
CoinEx Turns 3 Years Old!
For the past three years, CoinEx has been committed to its belief in its path of development.With firm faith in the power of cryptocurrencies to make the world a better place, CoinEx has never ceased to progress toward its ambition of growing into one of the world’s leading digital asset trading platform.
To celebrate our third birthday and give back to your support and trust, we will hold an exclusive celebration with a big reward of 100,000 USD in total.
CoinEx Listing
To provide users with more and safer trading options, CoinEx listed some interesting projects over the week after rigorous reviews.
KAVA Online
About KAVA
Website丨Explorer
Kava is a cross-chain DeFi lending platform that allows users to borrow USDX stablecoins and deposit a variety of cryptocurrencies to begin earning a yield.The Kava DeFi hub operates like a decentralized bank for digital assets, allowing users to access a range of decentralized financial services, including its native USD-pegged stablecoin USDX, as well as synthetics and derivatives. Through Kava, users are able to borrow USDX tokens by depositing collateral, effectively leveraging their exposure to crypto assets.
GHST Online
About GHST
Website丨Explorer
GHST is launched as a DAICO — a DAO governed token sale, which means that the funds raised are managed by the community. GHST is described to be a DeFi-enabled crypto collectibles project that allows users to collect, compete, and combine their Aavegotchis for a gamified DeFi experience.
GRT Online
About GRT
Website丨Explorer
The Graph is an indexing protocol for querying data for networks like Ethereum and IPFS, powering many applications in both DeFi and the broader Web3 ecosystem. Anyone can build and publish open APIs, called subgraphs, that applications can query using GraphQL to retrieve blockchain data. There is a hosted service in production that makes it easy for developers to get started building on The Graph and the decentralized network will be launching later this year. The Graph currently supports indexing data from Ethereum, IPFS and POA, with more networks coming soon.
Token Swap
The Golem (GNT) token swap to GLM will be supported by CoinEx. If you’ve held GNT on CoinEx, during the swap, you do not need to do anything particularly. If you want to have your GNT swapped effortlessly, you may also deposit GNT to CoinEx.
(Visit GNT to GLM Migration & GNT to ERC20 migration FAQs for more information).
CoinEx will support the Enigma (ENG) tokens swap to Secret Network (SCRT) (Visit https://secretnodes.org/#/ss for more information).
If you held ENG on CoinEx, during the swap, you do not need to do anything particularly. If you want to have your ENG swapped effortlessly, you may also deposit ENG to CoinEx.
Important Services
ABOUT CoinEx
As a global and professional cryptocurrency exchange service provider, CoinEx was founded in December 2017 with Bitmain-led investment. It is a subsidiary brand of the ViaBTC Group, which owns the fifth largest BTC mining pool, which is also the largest of BCH mining, in the world.
CoinEx supports perpetual contract, spot, margin trading, and other derivatives trading, and its service reaches global users in nearly 100 countries/regions with various languages available, such as Chinese, English, Korean and Russian.
Click here to register on CoinEx
Reach CoinEx on TELEGRAM | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | WEBSITE | API| DOWNLOAD APP| | https://medium.com/@coinex/coinex-weekly-update-14-20-december-2020-bc7245b75058 | [] | 2020-12-21 03:17:18.893000+00:00 | ['Coinex3yearsold', 'Bitcoin', 'Coinex', 'Btc', 'Coinexrecap'] |
Mother Teresa: You have nothing to give back to the world. | A reflection of a Catholic worker.
We’ve written a bit about the impact of capitalism and individualism in Christianity. Today, we want to talk about a false sense of ownership and success in the marketplace.
Given from above
We recently talked to To God Go foundation based in Montreal, whose deceased founder was longing to accomplish workspace evangelization of some sort as well. Interestingly, the founder was a good business person who tried to enter a religious community and consulted with Mother Teresa about his intention to give back his wealth. Mother Teresa answered him back, rephrased:
You have nothing you can give back, for you have nothing in the first place. Everything you have is a loan. And you must multiply that loan so you can help more people.
Doesn’t this ring a bell? Probably you recall the parable of 3 servants, but I think there is one more that is always forgotten in our society.
“You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.” — John 19
As entrepreneurs, professionals, and business leaders, we tend to forget we are called only for 3 big tasks: Love God, Love Others, Live. I am to blame if you don’t like the third one there, but we are not called to starve ourselves to death, so I think we need to stay alive by doing work as a living being.
We are never called to accumulate wealth, being famous, attain some status or recognition. It is often mandatory for the sake of love that the Lord permits some folks to be given more wealth than others. Think about if the British royals never existed in the first place, no government was formed, and murders were still around. Would you live in such a place? Or would it be okay for Prince William and Harry to enjoy some royal wealth in return for their abdication toward the society using an existing hierarchy built to love their society for a long time? Let’s not talk about the bad king, but let’s look at it today.
Our society has often shifted the call of love from Christ to a call of success and prosperity.
Ego of Ownership
One time, I had a conversation with the Pontifical Council of Culture in the Vatican. I was telling them 4 different projects I had for the Church, one of which was an electronic rosary. I gathered a couple of folks who wanted to make it, and the monsignor in the Vatican did not say much other than recommending us to target the bishop rather than collaborating with them. In 2019, I heard the very department helped publish a similar electronic rosary we talked about.
Upon hearing the large announcement on CNN, I was hurt for being left behind, not wanted, and even wondering if they stole my idea.
Then, I took a step back, reminding myself that I want good for the Church, not to show off or anything. I should be happy with what they’ve done.
In this COVID-19 year, our prayers, contemplations, and work around an entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Catholic world to support workspace evangelization has also been challenged. While we were getting ready for 2 years to make a virtual incubator, the COVID came and sprouted an immense demand for virtual entrepreneurship. This called large Catholic universities to step up and offer Catholic entrepreneurial accelerators. While we think it is already too late in the race to act right now for evangelization, reflecting what had happened actually gave us a different perspective.
Divine Agenda
We prayed for years to ask God’s providence and will to use us to be his agent of preparing the Church for a better entrepreneurial ecosystem, knowing that around 2021–2025, there would be a massive migration from professionals toward entrepreneurship. We learned a lot, and we got hurt a lot, tried different stuff, and found what we need to do.
I remember around late last year, the Lord spoke in prayer, that in about 3 months, there would be something big coming. I thought Trump would go to war with NK, or there would be a massive natural disaster or our incubator plan would be taken to the Vatican, or our other strategic move will be successful.
When we were about to start our next phase, suddenly, COVID woke everyone up to prepare all the necessary roads for those called to join our movement to get more support. From entrepreneurial prayer group, we piloted in 2017, now organization like SENT is providing the same thing. Incubation services are now provided by SCU, Notre Dame, Catholic University, and many others.
It made me wonder, what’s the point of preparing all these if the Lord was apparently impatient Himself that he would wake everyone up through market demands.
I was laughed at and looked down on by many Catholic business leaders and those in the Church as crazy and useless people. I remembered in 2018, a philanthropist from the Philippines told me, go back to regular work and forget about this.
But the difference is, as a faithpreneur, I learned that everyone is called to 3 things, love God, love others, and live. Those who try to pray for a special vocation are confused, for it is often not rooted in God’s commandment. It is rooted in changing others or self-pride.
I realized I initially did everything out of frustration with a bigger Church that has failed to love neighbors.
I now find it ridiculous to change their bishops and leader’s mind for a mere “vision” that comes from the idealism I want to reach. If I were still like last year, I would get annoyed by God, for all that I tried to do was in vain in the eyes of success.
No, no, no… It ain’t happening this time.
I feel peaceful now, knowing what we are building is taken by our Lord Himself to take action.
How better that be, if your divine vision is taken into Heaven and our King acted on it Himself?
Like what St. Paul suggested, we are simply a useless servant who is trying to do His will. We have nothing in the first place. Our ideas have been granted by Him, not ours. Would others think well of us now? No. No one cares. Only God cares. And we know for sure He cares, for otherwise, all Catholic institutions would still be in slumber until at least 2022.
We also learned a holy entrepreneurial mindset that can bring others to Christ, which is to go through new things to find ways to love God and others and earn the hurt it brings and deal with it in a holy way. That is the cross of a faithpreneur.
Our calling is not to be successful but to try to make love happen and set an example of how to live a holy life along the way rooted in divine providence and the love of God.
For you are the only one who knows how to deal with this new way before it attracts others. Without a good attitude, holiness, understanding, and loving reactions, we are just calling God’s sheep to the dark valley, where many will lose their soul.
We learned to be grateful that our lives, writings, and efforts, were used and read by fellow Catholic leaders who are now making a move. We are glad, like John the Baptist, we could help prepare the way. The market-based Catholic moves are not prepared to find the perfection of a soul from its operation. Rather, it comes from the solitude that would never attract the public. This is what we care about. We know from now on, we could get the Church support to focus on our real mission, to bring Christ to workers through Catholic founders. For this, we give glory to God, forever and ever. | https://medium.com/@catholicer/mother-teresa-you-have-nothing-to-give-back-to-the-world-2a2234b0f952 | [] | 2020-12-24 19:10:54.697000+00:00 | ['Vocation', 'Faith And Work', 'Entrepreneurship', 'New Evangelization', 'Catholic'] |
Another monitoring service? | Another monitoring service?
I love this comic, because it definitely apply to monitoring services:
Here are the 5 reasons why creating a new monitoring service:
— Need something simple and fast to configure
— Wan’t to have distinct information about our deployment impact
— Powerful configuration that could be updated by an API
— Errors reports useful for our ISO-27001 compliance audit report
— Plan affordable for companies not part of Nasdaq
And here happen PepperReport.io 🌶
Configuration is a pain!
Too many service are made to manage 10 or 20 checks. But If I need more, it became complicated to navigate or find them.
I don’t like to have too many things to configure by clicking everywhere, and when a service provide all the option I need, I’ve to create many many many monitoring checks. This is boring.
Yaml configuration!
Initial idea was to create a domain (kind of namespace), configure some monitoring checks in this domain, and then fork the domain, just updating the domain URI path. This would be awesome when your application is replicate on dev, preprod and prod stages.
It will also make sense if you deploy your application for a new client with their own domain/subdomain.
I’ve dreamed about a YAML configuration, that I could work on with my IDE. And so I’ve made it.
Monitor your application, for real, not your application firewall.
That’s something I’ve seen in my previous position, databases repositories were down, shutting down almost all our application stack, but probes where still ok.
It happen because the applications firewall doesn’t require a database access and redirect probes to the login page, loaded from cache without any database connection.
So yes, everything was down, but for the probes, it was fine 😹
Yes, My firewall is working but is my application really working correctly?
Many applications are fully private. How could I test thoses API? Their behavior? Their APM?
Let’s figure this API monitoring:
Nice, but my credential are directly related to my user session, so let’s identify who am I:
You see? This small new line in the headers values? Now I can request this private API endpoint with PepperReport.io… for a limited time… the token will expire in few minutes, and the monitoring check will fail.
So let’s make it dynamic:
You see that new “dynamicToken” defined as a parameter ? Seems nothing, but now we can update this value through our UI or the API.
Look nice no? And if sending token to our API seems a bit tricky, you can now use crypted RSA keys to send them.
Track deployment
Continuous Delivery is very common among the teams of developers because of the zero-downtime deployments and the faster time to market value.
But it’s also harder to track commit that will have bad impact on performance, even with code review and tests. When you’re team are creating hundred of commits per weeks, on many micro-services, every minor edition could impact your stack negatively. Statistically it’s just about time before it happen.
Deployment listing
So it seems imperative to me to monitor them. Having a vision of the performance of the actual application release and compare it to previous release is priceless! It’s also great, when there’s an outage, to link it with a previously made deployment of a new release.
Regardless of the deployment of new releases, the deployment of a new infrastructure give good indications about it performance impact. | https://medium.com/pepperreport-io/another-monitoring-service-8f5ff6c955cd | ['Thomas P'] | 2019-03-18 12:48:51.601000+00:00 | ['Web Development', 'Startup', 'Monitoring', 'Reliability', 'DevOps'] |
Scrounging for Change with a Cut Up Foot: The Way Adjunct Professors Are Paid Should Be Illegal | Scrounging for Change with a Cut Up Foot: The Way Adjunct Professors Are Paid Should Be Illegal The Meta-Fictionalist Aug 27·10 min read
“Saints Dymphna and Lucy” — Goswijn van der Weyden
I am an adjunct professor in the Southern California area. I had a one-year assignment as full-time faculty. It was supposed to lead to a tenure track position, but despite my excellent scores on my teaching portfolio and observations, the college expressed that it had some sort of internal problem and demoded me back to adjunct status. While I do concede that being any kind of professor isn’t a bad job, I can’t even count the times when I’ve been financially insecure because of my adjunct pay rate. There’s been times that I literally had to do all of my grocery shopping at the 99-cent store to stay afloat. Early on in my adjunct career, I even accrued debt paying for medical care because part-time professors weren’t eligible for benefits. The colleges I currently work for pay more and offer more benefits now, but I definitely have been the archetypal adjunct who had to scrounge for change while limping around injured. I once had a massive cut and stitches on the bottom of my foot, but I had to go to work anyway because at the time, I did not have enough sick time to pay for more than a week of absence. Besides, my classes would have fell behind, and so I went to work on crutches and made the best of it.
I’m more than willing to admit that there isn’t a perfect life, and though my lips may protest at times too much, I try to keep complaints at a minimum. There is such a thing as being too agreeable, and that is where thousands of adjuncts professors find themselves. They are over qualified, academic types and a wild guess would place a good handful of them as being rather soft spoken and mild mannered. Along with their fellow full-time faculty, they may, in fact, be some of the most intelligent people in the world. Sure, they aren’t C.E.O.s of multi-billion corporations or performing heart surgery, but they are the ones teaching those people. Where would anyone be without their teachers? Professors are the ones teaching more advanced subject matter and preparing students to enter the workforce. With the brains and heart involved in this profession, people easily assume the pay and benefits are great. For full-time faculty, the pay out is worth all of the time and effort. Remember, teaching isn’t just assigning work and grading papers. It’s managing a schedule with a vision of the learning trajectory that flows weeks ahead into the future. It’s finding ways to make complicated ideas accessible, to make the invisible visible. Sometimes, it even involves people management, which includes everything from having to make tough disciplinary calls to designing groups for maximum efficiency. The thing is that despite what appears to be a high pay rate, adjunct professors are financially left in the lurch, making far less than their full-time colleagues and often not receiving benefits. At this time, there is a bill up for consideration that aims to provide equitable compensation for adjuncts by 2027, but considering how much unpaid work adjuncts do, proper compensation needs to be prioritized.
To be fair, full-time faculty are required to do around six hours of service to the college every week along with additional office hours and observations; however, most adjunct professors also do office hours and various forms of service to the college, which are often not paid. Colleges claim they can’t afford to hire more full-time faculty and that many adjuncts do not have the experience necessary to warrant a higher pay rate. Originally, the position of adjunct was created to fulfill a temporary need, but there are more adjuncts than full-time faculty, and they are making a living through teaching. There are far too many career adjuncts. Some of them are in marriages and with the extra help with the bills, they may not need or want the full-time position. They may even work different jobs. Still, many of them believed they were entering academics to become full-time professors and ended up stuck year after year. For the first few years, new adjuncts do need to adjust and learn the ropes, but adjunct faculty do so quickly if they hope to have successful students as well as earn decent scores on their own evaluations. For the most part, adjuncts provide quality education equivalent to that offered by full-time faculty with individual variation being a given in any professon.
There are reasons some adjuncts who want to climb the professional ladder stay stuck. With union protection, even the most incompetent instructor can keep a job. This happens sometimes, but I would like to think that this doesn’t happen often. Most of the adjuncts I know are incredible teachers, and the college would be robbed without them. The union protection is a blessing in a career so open to the vengefulness of spiteful or entitled students and the bitterness of other colleagues. The adjuncts that aren’t actually good at their job end up developing a reputation even if behind the scenes, and they don’t get hired for full-time because their home college may not want to make them a full-fledged department member. In other cases, some adjuncts may be excellent teachers but have subpar grooming or lack decent social skills. They may eat tempura sushi in the adjunct office, spilling crumbs everywhere, while reeking of body odor in the pajamas they came to work in, for example. There are even adjuncts who come to work and loudly insult new adjuncts or gossip about faculty. They may be great teachers, but in a permanent position with the college, their manners would probably cause more problems than not. Still others are introverts. They might speak freely in a classroom full of students, but their shyness or quiet nature causes complications during the interview process, which is often held by a large committee that holds the entire unfurling of the interviewee’s destiny in their hands. The committees require a teaching demonstration as well, which is often an awkward ordeal considering that some of the people on the committee may purposefully start throwing curveballs in the middle of it, and the stakes are so high for these adjunct professors who are hoping that they will finally get hired permanently and not have to constantly worry about survival. These stakes are incredibly high for getting the job they already do. All of these variables manifest themselves within full-time faculty, however. I have known a handful of tenured faculty who would often come into work red eyed in crumpled clothing smelling of stale booze. Others have reputations akin to third world tyrants. Students would whisper horror stories in the halls. Some of them would attend each department meeting saying absolutely nothing and nearly running out the door at the passing of the hour, their brilliant and effective teaching making up for their obstinate introversion. As you can see, being the best of the best isn’t always a deciding factor on who ends up with a viable career versus a dead-end job. To say this without tenured status is inflammatory to say the least. Most full-time faculty would be so affronted that the dignity of their station was in question that they would swear to throw away the offender’s full-time application materials if they ever came up in the screening process as well as snarl at the person each time they passed him or her in the hall. Nevertheless, it is the truth.
Yes, I am calling the adjunct professor path a dead-end job. Some adjuncts do manage to get a full-time spot and eventually pass tenure review. Whether their lives reflect the fantasy they held in their minds when embarking down the teaching path is a mystery. Either way, far too many adjuncts stay adjuncts. They never know if their classes will get canceled last second or if there will be classes at all. They are at the mercy of enrollment and all of the social variables that play into it, such as economic strength or financial aid. When times are good, some adjuncts can make decent money. The going rate for adjunct professors in Southern California is around sixty to eighty dollars an hour. However, adjuncts are paid by the unit, which means if they have two four-unit classes, they only get paid for eight hours of work a week. Most adjuncts work at at least two campuses to get a full-time load equivalent of sixteen units. They rush from campus to campus, shoveling lunch down their throats in the car while the tension cramps their back and increases their blood pressure. If times are good, and they have a full set of classes, they can ignore all of the times that are bad. If you look at what adjuncts actually make per year, however, most of them make something similar to what a worker at Amazon makes. It is true that these adjunct professors don’t have to do the hard labor and overtime of Amazon workers, but they still aren’t being adequately compensated when compared to what their similarly qualified but much luckier full-time colleagues make. To be real, many of them rely on unemployment every winter and summer, which was a right won in court since they have no reasonable assurance of a job once the new term begins. They are temporary at-will employees, and thus, they have to roll with the punches, also known as the end of term lay-offs. Despite the dismal reality of their position, most adjuncts spend large chunks of their unemployed time reading, researching, and refining their course materials. All of the work is unpaid. During fall and spring semesters, if you spread the 60 to 80 dollars out and imagine that all of the unpaid hours are covered, things might seem okay. It would be like having a full-time job that pays around twenty dollars an hour. This was how the situation was explained to me when I first started working as an adjunct. At the time, it seemed fair, but when I contemplate how much work is needed to be a quality instructor and how much time I have spent working over the span of my career without being compensated, the reasoning seems hollow, like a trick used to gloss over exploitation.
A popular argument used to smooth over the wrinkled brow of a questioning adjunct is that the population is dropping and so is enrollment, so the department doesn’t need the extra full-time faculty; however, departments keep hiring new adjuncts even as they fail to offer two classes per semester for the adjuncts they already have. The departments claim they wouldn’t do that, but each fall, I see at least two or three new adjuncts at the meetings and wonder how they have two classes while another colleague may only have one despite his or her seniority. There have certainly been times when I really needed an extra class but was told only one was available; meanwhile, some new and somewhat clueless adjunct was asking questions about how to teach his two new classes. New professors need work too, and I don’t particularly buy into the age-old concept of envy. By a certain age, at least for me, envy seems more and more silly in the cosmic scheme of things, and I know that it is the hiring system which is flawed. Sadly, this reasonable line of thinking only contributes to the problem’s life span, and most adjuncts have been far too reasonable, only thinking about how lucky they are to have work at all or perhaps worrying that if they protest too much, they might end up getting a class canceled for what on the surface seems like a legitimate reason but what may actually be passive aggressive retribution.
On top of that, adjuncts are often snubbed by their fellow full-time faculty who more often than not have identical educational and professional experience. I have sat silently during break room and department meeting discussions, listening as people who don’t have to ever worry about paying their rent or having enough money for food and gas disrespect adjuncts who are pouring their hearts and souls into their work. Many adjuncts want to be called part-time professors in order to remove an appellation that suggests inexperience or foolishness. When this issue is brought up, full-time faculty may weakly sympathize but mostly they roll their eyes. They don’t have their colleagues’ backs. If they did, perhaps adjunct professors would get pay equivalent to the work they actually do. Maybe they would start having less in common with students who at least are allowed to utilize the college food pantries and have free basic medical care from the college clinics.
One thing that is clear to me now after ten years of teaching in higher education is that adjuncts are not being paid properly, and that the way they are treated should be illegal. This is a strong statement, one that in real life would be met with a pat on the back and an “I understand why you are confused.” Although the minutia of the adjunct contract may be at time confusing if but for its long length and dry diction, the overall picture is clear. I am not confused, nor are the adjuncts who are struggling to survive. Adjuncts are, in fact, being taken advantage of considering that they are supplying their students with an education equivalent to what a full-timer could offer while having less resources at their disposal. No one is forcing adjuncts to stay adjuncts. Some get hired full-time and many others leave for some other type of work. On the other hand, most adjuncts went to college and have undergone a good deal of extra training because they were born to be higher education professors; it’s their vocation. For all the good teachers who have suffered because of the adjunct compensation system, I hope that there will be a reversal to this blatant exploitation before 2027. For those of you who work in higher education, you probably know that equity is the big trend. If colleges are so concerned with equity, perhaps they could more earnestly attend to equitable pay and benefits for their part-time professors. | https://medium.com/@marieoulds777/scrounging-for-change-with-a-cut-up-foot-the-way-adjunct-professors-are-paid-should-be-illegal-2f5b4e410910 | ['The Meta-Fictionalist'] | 2021-08-27 17:22:53.668000+00:00 | ['Compensation', 'Adjuncts', 'Labor', 'College', 'Ca Community Colleges'] |
“Go Pass This Light” Converts Me to An Apple Map User | Traffic lights are being added at intersections
Probably you’ll laugh at me: I’m in my late 20s yet I’m still an “immature driver” — I am super nervous every time I drive.
Here’re the reasons:
- There’re a lot of cars on the road in Silicon Valley
- So many intersections being so close to each other — so are the highway exits
- As a foreigner (to US), it is already taking me extra time to process English (turn left, turn right, second from the right lane…)
- Not to mention for those exotic units of length — What does “in 0.2 miles, turn left” mean exactly???
Due to all those reasons, I always start to get nervous even before driving; checking the details of the routes, trying to remember all the turns. Because I know, when I find out that I got on the left-turn-only lane too early, I can’t take the shame (and don’t have the guts) to change the lane last-minute. I kept asking myself — how come 0.2 miles meant the next traffic light most of the times but not quite the case this time?
I have to plan more time on the road every time as I knew I would miss some turns. And such frustration accumulates which makes me scared of driving more and more the next time…
Until the new Apple Map got released — in which all the traffic lights are being visualized; and the turnings are measured by traffic lights instead of distances. “Go pass this light, and turn right at the next one” has changed my life.
That said, there’re still some cons of Apple Map. It does not always recommend the best route as well as Google Map. My guess is that the former does not have as much data to be used for training and learning. My current solution is, use Google Map to confirm on the best route; then open Apple Map to navigate. I’d like to contribute my data to an app that has better user experience. Or in other words, more user centric.
The whole map thing has made me think: how to win a user over?
The short answer, I assume, is — telling them the thing they care about, only the thing they care about; in the most acceptable tone.
Do all users have a clear sense of the distance?
Do they actually care whether the next turn is in 0.2 miles vs. 0.3 miles? When you’re sitting in your friend’s car and providing the directions, would you use precise distances?
Or simply say, “hey go ahead, it’s the next one” when they’re about to make a decision.
Similarly, I can’t remember how many times I’ve been debating with Engineers on such topics. Usually Engineers are all about being accurate when it comes to copy.
You may wonder, accurate copy — what can go wrong with that?
It could get too technical.
We have users who read HDMI3 as “HDM-thirteen” ; or 4K as “fork” — so be careful about terms. No matter how prevailing they are.
It could get too wordy.
So many user studies have shown that users don’t read; and long copy is intimidating to start with.
It could get “cold”.
What separates a product/service apart from another is the character it has. For 2c products, I won’t assume users would prefer to use a cold product. At least most of the time.
Lastly, Apple Map works well with Apple Watch. The watch will vibrate (not too intense nor too gentle) whenever one needs to take actions. Way to go, Apple Map. | https://medium.com/macoclock/go-pass-this-light-converts-me-to-an-apple-map-user-851a0dc5cdf8 | ['Changchang Liu'] | 2020-08-07 05:32:39.948000+00:00 | ['Map', 'Apple', 'Apple Watch', 'iOS', 'Google'] |
ACXT Token Burn | ACXT Token Burn
Burned Amount
We burned the unsold tokens in the cACXT convertible sale as promised to our community. The total number of tokens burned was 280,198 ACXT.
The contract address of ACXT:
https://etherscan.io/token/0x7bE00ed6796B21656732E8f739Fc1b8F1C53DA0D
Andy promised the community that the unsold cACXT will be burned.
Future Buyback & Burn
While this is the first token burn for ACXT, this is not the last. Every quarter, we use 50% of the maker fees received to buy back ACXT from our secondary spot market and burn the tokens.
ACXT Applications
Other than token burn to balance the ACXT supply, we provide a few ACXT applications to help expand the token’s utility value.
Firstly, we have the Liquidity Farming Program where market makers can earn ACXT by providing liquidity to ACDX.
Secondly, we grant ACXT holders the right to involve in exchange governance.
Thirdly, we offer ACXT holders exclusive trading privileges.
Lastly, we empower ACXT holders to earn additional ACXT by staking ACXT.
From token burn to ACXT staking, all of these helps to broaden ACXT’s utility value. Unlike typical tokens, we hope that our exchange token can bring true values to the holders. Functional, understanding, and trader-friendly! | https://medium.com/acdx/acxt-token-burn-22449ee1907e | ['Jesper Cheng'] | 2020-12-04 09:04:58.114000+00:00 | ['Acxt', 'Tokenburn', 'Ieo', 'Token Sale'] |
Witches and Wild Fires | In the dreams of this sleep,
modern priestesses have been gathering.
Carrying their crystals and herbs,
these witches in hippy robes
have stirred up archetypes
in a brew for our awakening.
We have ridiculed them with scorn
believing ourselves the ones who know the truth.
Nevertheless, they have persisted.
Working against the tide,
they are resurfacing the old stories and wisdoms,
studying the body and nature from old,
anew,
because they have seen clearly
that if we are to save ourselves
nothing else matters.
For my five decades
I, too, have mocked this tribe
for their fringe, womanish, heteronormative, freakishness.
But what if the Witches know best?
And who is paying the price,
as we approach our extinction,
for staying asleep while they awaken?
After all, the tribes of Witches know
that the path to true power
is birthed not from deviance,
but from heartache and despair.
Those chosen to walk it
are taken into the dark,
pried open to the truth,
anointed in the deeper currents.
Walking upon it,
bereft and lost,
we all eventually fall to our knees,
recognizing in the falling that
the great turning only happens
at the doorway of devastation.
When the courage finally finds us,
to turn towards the grief,
the tears fall,
forming rivers around our knees.
When we find ourselves able to stand again,
to stay standing,
between heaven and earth
our palms and chins turn up to the sky.
I join this tribe today.
Persevering through my grief,
and the grief of generations past,
allowing layer upon layer to rise up.
The anger and hate,
the hurt and sorrow,
the rape and denigration,
the self-doubt and self-betrayal.
All this unfolds
with ferocity and Grace
in the elixir of the Great Reveal.
We, the women,
and the gender-queer.
We the “they,” and the “them.”
We, the new and noblemen.
We who have seen the contours and consequences
of who we were told we were and seen through to a new horizon.
We who have witnessed
what has been lost
and survived.
We who have cried dissolve into the streambeds of our tears,
joining the rivers first cried by hippy priestesses.
… And the current is quickening now towards the ocean.
We come not only from Glastonberry and Esalen,
but from the cities and countryside.
We come from all directions,
North, East, South and West.
We walk through the water out of therapist’s offices
with reclaimed strength.
We walk out of poet-song,
with the guidance of Sophia.
We walk in the desert canyons,
with the scent of medicinal plants on our fingertips.
We walk out of meditation halls,
with the stillness of a far deeper Truth in our hearts.
We walk on the front lines of gender-queerness,
where the revolution, itself, is happening.
No matter our genitals,
we walk the path of the new,
feminine Warrior.
And somewhere, on a quiet night,
after years of walking,
years in this rawness,
the healing waters lap at our ankles,
and we receive the gift of life
that for all this time we thought lost:
Our True Value.
Our Birthright:
The vulnerability,
mystery,
inter-dependence,
tenderness
surrender,
that constitutes life itself.
The Love that connects us.
The Connection that loves us.
What, on our deathbed, other than these things,
what?
Beyond everything else
in this man-made world,
will matter more?
Answer this. | https://medium.com/swann-songs/witches-and-wild-fires-e94f34cff3bb | ['Karin Swann'] | 2020-09-22 02:06:15.792000+00:00 | ['Witches', 'Poetry', 'Spoken Word Poetry', 'Feminism', 'Environment'] |
IBM Watson SDK for Go | IBM Watson + Go
Have your first go at Go with the IBM Watson Go SDK , a wrapper for the IBM Watson APIs. The SDK includes ready to use data structures and takes care of all the underlying HTTP requests including authentication. Using this SDK, developers can now easily integrate Watson services into their applications.
How to install
Use the Go command on the terminal.
go get -u github.com/watson-developer-cloud/go-sdk/...
This will fetch the packages sub-packages and dependencies.
How to Use
First, provision a Watson service by following the steps here. Once you provision a service, you will get credentials which you would use in the following general steps.
Service Dashboard
Now, follow the below general steps in your code:
Import the service package
2. Instantiate the Watson service using the API key obtained above
3. Invoke the API endpoint using the service instance. For a successful response, it will contain the HTTP status code, response headers and API result
4. Handle responses and errors
Ready, Set, Go
Go ahead and explore the various capabilities of IBM Watson services with Go— from quickly building a simple chatbot to tagging and classifying visual content to unlocking hidden value in data to find answers and surface patterns.
There are also a bunch of examples for various services to help you get started. Play with the Go SDK and let us know what you think. | https://medium.com/ibm-watson/ibm-watson-sdk-for-go-1841d7aa0bcf | ['Erika Dsouza'] | 2019-12-24 09:09:18.901000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Go', 'Announcements', 'IBM', 'Developer Tools'] |
Creating and filling a Postgres DB with Docker compose | Github repo: https://github.com/jdaarevalo/docker_postgres_with_data
Introduction
Among the various options that we have to solve this requirement is to use or share files such as CSV, parquet, s3, among others, but those have limitations in each of the challenges that we want to face.
This is a problem that can be solved easily by making use of the features that Docker offers to us.
Our goal here will be to create the following tables with their respective foreign keys and fill the tables, while they can be easily shared with other users.
ER Diagram
Initialize the Postgres Service
We will use Docker Compose to manage the instance of Postgres with this docker-compose.yml file:
Now, we can start Postgres with just one simple command:
$ docker-compose up
or run Postgres in the background with this command, adding -d Detached mode
$ docker-compose up -d
And stop the Postgres service running
$ docker-compose down
In this case, we mapped our local port 5438 to the port 5432 (Postgres default port) inside the container., also we will persist the data in our machine, preventing data loss when deleting the containers, for this, we add the volume using the folder postgres-data as the place where Postgres data are stored.
Creating tables
To create the tables in our database we need to copy our create_tables.sql script to /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/
The script has the commands to create each table required, the primary keys and the foreign keys
All the source code is available here https://github.com/jdaarevalo/docker_postgres_with_data
Why in docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/ ?
The official PostgreSQL Docker image https://hub.docker.com/_/postgres/ allows us to place SQL files in the /docker-entrypoint-initb.d folder, and the first time the service starts, it will import and execute those SQL files.
In our Postgres container, we will find this bash script /usr/local/bin/docker-entrypoint.sh where each *.sh, **.sql and *.*sql.gz file will be executed
Filling tables with data
Now we want to fill the tables using the script sql/filling_tables.sql
First, we will define variables as number_of_sales, number_of_countries and start_date, … and end_date for sales, we will do it using session variables
The SET <session variable> statement accepts two parameters: the variable name and the value to use to modify the variable. The variable name is case insensitive. More details here https://www.postgresql.org/docs/10/sql-set.html
With variables defined continue creating the SQL scripts to fill data
The param current_setting get the variable defined in the first part, GENERATE_SERIES is a Postgres function that generates a series of values, from start to stop values with a step size of one, if this is undefined
Thus, we fill the tables country, city, store, users, product, status_name for the tables order_status and sale we will require a couple of Postgres functions or additional logical steps
Sale ID: Here we want a UUID for the column sale.id, fortunately, Postgres has support for universally unique identifiers (UUIDs) as a column data type via UUID, and we will use this to create the sale_id for this we load the pgcrypto extension in the current session database/schema with
Dates: Here we will use the PostgreSQL TO_TIMESTAMP() function to convert a string to a timestamp according to the given format, additional we will use the random() function to generate random dates in the range created
Random ids: Note that each sale requires a product_id, user_id, store_id. Here we use the function floor to return the value after rounding up the value generated with the random function
To fill the table order_status we will use the table sale
The update date in order_status has been created between the date of sale plus 5 days, to prevent having orders updated before the sale.
Finally, we add all script to fill the tables in the script sql/fill_tables.sql
After run docker-compose up we will see something like this
Now you can generate and use a database with tables and values to test models, pipelines or evaluate the SQL, git, docker skills of your candidates.
To connect to Postgres you could use a database tool like DBeaver or from the command line, running this command:
$ docker ps -f "name=postgres"
-f: Filter output based on conditions provided
To get the CONTAINER_ID of the running container, and execute
$ docker exec -it <CONTAINER_ID> /bin/bash
And run queries like this
Please feel free to share, use it or contribute to the repository. And if you have any comments or suggestions I’d appreciate it
Regards, | https://levelup.gitconnected.com/creating-and-filling-a-postgres-db-with-docker-compose-e1607f6f882f | ['José David Arévalo'] | 2021-01-31 23:29:36.299000+00:00 | ['Postgres', 'Docker', 'Docker Compose', 'Postgresql', 'Fill Tables'] |
Introduction to Statistics (Part-III) | Why You Should Perform Statistical Hypothesis Testing?
Hypothesis testing is a form of inferential statistics that allows us to draw conclusions about an entire population based on a representative sample. You gain tremendous benefits by working with a sample. In most cases, it is simply impossible to observe the entire population to understand its properties. The only alternative is to collect a random sample and then use statistics to analyze it.
What is a Hypothesis Statement?
If you are going to propose a hypothesis, it’s customary to write a statement. Your statement will look like this:
“If I…(do this to an independent variable)….then (this will happen to the dependent variable).”
For example:
If I (decrease the amount of water given to herbs) then (the herbs will increase in size).
If I (give patients counseling in addition to medication) then (their overall depression scale will decrease).
If I (give exams at noon instead of 7) then (student test scores will improve).
If I (look in this certain location) then (I am more likely to find new species).
Hypothesis Testing
Hypothesis testing in statistics is a way for you to test the results of a survey or experiment to see if you have meaningful results. You’re basically testing whether your results are valid by figuring out the odds that your results have happened by chance. If your results may have happened by chance, the experiment won’t be repeatable and so has little use.
Null Hypothesis
The Null Hypothesis, denoted by Ho, assumes that there is a “NO” difference between two sets of values. The null hypothesis states there is no relationship between the measured phenomenon (the dependent variable) and the independent variable.
Alternative Hypothesis
The inverse of the null hypothesis.
States that there is a statistical significance between two variables
Holds true if the null hypothesis is rejected
Usually what the researcher thinks is true and is testing
Denoted by H1 or Ha
Null hypothesis:
If one plant is fed lemonade for one month and another is fed plain water, there will be no difference in growth between the two plants
Alternative Hypothesis:
If one plant is fed lemonade for one month and another is fed plain water, the plant that is fed lemonade will grow more than the plant that is fed plain water
Definition of One-tailed Test
One-tailed test alludes to the significance test in which the region of rejection appears on one end of the sampling distribution. It represents that the estimated test parameter is greater or less than the critical value. When the sample tested falls in the region of rejection, i.e. either left or right side, as the case may be, it leads to the acceptance of the alternative hypothesis rather than the null hypothesis. It is primarily applied in chi-square distribution; that ascertains the goodness of fit.
In this statistical hypothesis test, all the critical region, related to α, is placed in any one of the two tails. The one-tailed test can be:
Left-tailed test: When the population parameter is believed to be lower than the assumed one, the hypothesis test carried out is the left-tailed test.
Right-tailed test: When the population parameter is supposed to be greater than the assumed one, the statistical test conducted is a right-tailed test.
Definition of Two-tailed Test
The two-tailed test is described as a hypothesis test, in which the region of rejection or say the critical area is on both the ends of the normal distribution. It determines whether the sample tested falls within or outside a certain range of values. Therefore, an alternative hypothesis is accepted in place of the null hypothesis, if the calculated value falls in either of the two tails of the probability distribution.
In this test, α is bifurcated into two equal parts, placing half on each side, i.e. it considers the possibility of both positive and negative effects. It is performed to see, whether the estimated parameter is either above or below the assumed parameter, so the extreme values, work as evidence against the null hypothesis.
Confusion Matrix
In predictive analytics, a table of confusion (sometimes also called a confusion matrix) is a table with two rows and two columns that reports the number of false positives, false negatives, true positives, and true negatives. This allows more detailed analysis than mere proportion of correct classifications (accuracy). Accuracy will yield misleading results if the data set is unbalanced; that is, when the numbers of observations in different classes vary greatly.
Given a sample of 13 pictures, 8 of cats and 5 of dogs, where cats belong to class 1 and dogs belong to class 0,
actual = [1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0],
assume that a classifier that distinguishes between cats and dogs is trained, and we take the 13 pictures and run them through the classifier, and the classifier makes 8 accurate predictions and misses 5: 3 cats wrongly predicted as dogs (first 3 predictions) and 2 dogs wrongly predicted as cats (last 2 predictions).
prediction = [0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,1,1]
With these two labelled sets (actual and predictions) we can create a confusion matrix that will summarize the results of testing the classifier:
In this confusion matrix, of the 8 cat pictures, the system judged that 3 were dogs, and of the 5 dog pictures, it predicted that 2 were cats. All correct predictions are located in the diagonal of the table (highlighted in bold), so it is easy to visually inspect the table for prediction errors, as they will be represented by values outside the diagonal.
In abstract terms, the confusion matrix is as follows:
P = Positive; N = Negative; TP = True Positive; FP = False Positive; TN = True Negative; FN = False Negative.
Happy learning :) | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/introduction-to-statistics-part-iii-84039fd43a1e | ['Antony Christopher'] | 2020-12-03 16:30:53.643000+00:00 | ['Confusion Matrix', 'Statistics', 'Analysis', 'Hypothesis Testing'] |
The Best Job in the World…Being a Dad! | With the pandemic adversely affecting my small business over the last 9 months, and the likelihood of it continuing until summer/fall of 2021, I have been thinking about what I can do if I need to close down permanently. Part of that thinking has been what I will do for a job. Then I shifted thinking into how difficult that will be due to the fact that I already have two full time jobs: small business owner and primary care giver to my son. Nonetheless, I ran a Google search on the best jobs in the world and got some interesting results.
According to US News and World Report, the 13 best jobs for 2019 are as follows:
Software Developer Statistician Physician Assistant Dentist Orthodontist Nurse Anesthetist Nurse Practitioner Pediatrician Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon OBGYN Physician Prosthodontist Occupational Therapist
The criteria for these rankings were primarily salary, job security, and stress level. Looking at this list I found no real surprises. It just reaffirms what parents always tell their kids…study hard so you can be a doctor! Well, at this stage in life I don’t think going to med school is an option, so I decided to keep looking.
According to indeed.com, the 12 most fun jobs in the world are as follows:
Video Game Designer Fashion Consultant Radio Announcer Event Planner Race Car Driving Instructor Pet Groomer Race Car Mechanic Sommelier Novelist Brewmaster Food Critic Voice Over Artist
This list seemed to be a bunch of jobs that people with a lifelong passion in a certain area can pursue. I like driving fast, playing with dogs, eating, drinking beer, and making funny voices but I doubt any of them would be a viable career path. So, the search continued.
According to goodnet.org, the 8 best jobs in the world are:
Disney Imagineer Professional Cuddler Private Island Caretaker Ben & Jerry’s Flavor Guru Water Slide Tester Professional Netflix Watcher Luxury Bed Tester Professional Traveler
With the exception of Disney Imagineer, none of the other jobs pay enough or provide a secure lifestyle for someone with a family to provide for. Unfortunately, I have a prior history with Disney that may disqualify me from employment. When I was 7 years old, I went to Disney World with my family and punched Pluto in the nose. True story.
Ok, back to the drawing board. I started thinking about my career as a karate instructor and studio owner. When I was first starting out in the business end of things, I would routinely travel to martial arts business conferences. Eventually I would end up being a speaker at some of these. Anyway, at some point during the 2–3-day conference someone would always say that being martial arts instructor is the best job in the world. Their reasoning was that we have a positive impact on people’s lives by making them healthier, teaching them confidence, and providing them with potentially lifesaving self-defense skills. When stated like that, it sounds pretty darn good. The fact is, there are many jobs out there that provide the same things. I feel being a karate instructor is a very honorable, noble, and community benefitting occupation, but it is not unique. Sorry business conference speakers.
Hopefully you are still following my train of thought and I haven’t lost you yet. It was after this last thought that I realized what the best job in the world is bar none…being a dad. Being a karate instructor, I am fortunate to have positively impacted many, many young lives. Seeing them a few hours a week over the course of a few years only allows for a very small impact though. Being a dad, however, you have a 100% impact for a lifetime. Ok, job posting is not very appealing: the pay sucks (you will actually lose money), there are no health benefits, no 401K, the hours are awful (12–14 hours a day, 10–12 hours on call, 7 days a week), you are exposed to noxious odors and substances (no explanation needed), and you don’t sleep very much. There would need to be a tremendous upside to this job to make up for these. The good news is the upside blows the downside away. You have a tiny human that is 50% of you. Because of that, there is this cosmic energic connection you will always have. You have the opportunity to impart wisdom, lessons learned, and help mold them into a better person than you. We can’t overlook the love, affection, adoration, and downright cuteness either. In the corporate world, how many times have you looked at your boss smile or giggle and have your heart melt? Hopefully never because that would be creepy. This happens several times a day being a dad.
You may be wondering why I said being a dad is the best job and not just being a parent. The fact is that being a mom is also the best job in the world when you take out the pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing. After seeing what my wife went through, that would be a much harder job to sell. If being a mom or dad was a paid position, moms would earn 10 times more, easily.
Perhaps someday society will pay us for being dads but until then, hugs, kisses, and I love you daddy’s will be more than enough compensation. | https://medium.com/@the-karate-dad/the-best-job-in-the-world-being-a-dad-f3940640b278 | ['Steven Elmore'] | 2020-12-17 02:28:22.298000+00:00 | ['Dads', 'Fatherhood', 'Parenting'] |
Pagination using GetX in Flutter | Introduction to GetX :
GetX is a state management helper package.
It provides us a powerful and reactive state management technique, route management, and dependency Injection.
PRODUCTIVITY , PERFORMANCE , AND ORGANIZATION are the three basic principal of the package.
, , AND are the three basic principal of the package. It eliminates the dependency on the widget tree.
For routing, GetX does not need the context for navigation.
for navigation. Automatically reduce the memory consumption when the resources are not used by default.
GetX uses its own dependency injection feature.
uses its own dependency injection feature. Simple syntax.
Installing Getx in Flutter project:
Add Get to your pubspec.yaml file:
dependencies:
get: ^4.1.4
Import get in files that it will be used:
import 'package:get/get.dart';
Pagination Using GetX :
GetMaterialApp(
title: 'Flutter Demo',
theme: ThemeData(
primarySwatch: Colors.red,
visualDensity: VisualDensity.adaptivePlatformDensity,
),
home: MyHomePage(title: 'Flutter Demo Home Page'),
)
GetMaterialApp is a widget that is a substitute for MaterialApp . Using this widget is not compulsory if you are using the GetX package only for state management, but if you are using GetX for routing then we need to use GetMaterialApp widget.
What do we want?
We want to build an app that displays a list of items and every time the screen scroll it should automatically add some items to the existing list and update the UI in real-time.
Creating a model class:
We have created a very simple model class that has a name property.
class Model {
String name;
Model({
this.name,
});
}
Creating GetxController:
GetxController is a class in which we write all our business logic, variables, and methods used for managing the state of the app screen.
It automatically disposes of all the controllers when the screen is popped out of the stack.
All the processing logic will be written inside this controller.
Like initState() and dispose() method GetX provides us onInit() and onClose() .
and method provides us and onReady() is called after the widget is rendered on screen.
is called after the widget is rendered on screen. update() rebuilds the GetBuilder associated with the GetxController . It is similar to notifyListeners() in providers.
rebuilds the associated with the . It is similar to in providers. onInit() : called after the widget is allocated memory.
: called after the widget is allocated memory. onClose() called just before the controller is deleted from memory.
class HomePageController extends GetxController {
}
We can create a GetxController by extending the class with GetxController like above.
Initialize the required objects:
We need ScrollController to listen to the scrolling of the screen.
list is a list of Models that will be used to map it with the list of widgets.
class HomePageController extends GetxController {
List<Model> list = [];
ScrollController controller = ScrollController();
int listLength = 6;
}
Generating initial list:
Here we have generated a list of Model that we will initially display on the screen. List.generate() takes an integer and function with an integer value. It will add Model for each index in the list .
generateList() {
list = List.generate(
listLength, (index) => Model(name: (index + 1).toString()));
}
Creating a method executed every time the scroll limit exceeds its limit:
This method will be executed every time the scroll limit exceeds its limit.
To measure the scroll limit we use the ScrollController . maxScrollExtent is the number of max pixels and pixels notify when the listener when the pixel changes. controller.position.maxScrollExtent == controller.position.pixels this condition will only return true when the scrolling is max.
addItems() async {
controller.addListener(() {
if (controller.position.maxScrollExtent == controller.position.pixels) {
for (int i = 0; i < 2; i++) {
listLength++;
list.add(Model(name: (listLength).toString()));
update(); //update GetBuilder each time
}
}
});
}
Initializing onInit() method:
This method is called before the widget build.
void onInit() {
generateList();
addItems();
super.onInit();
}
Initializing HomePageController object:
Initialize the HomePageController object in the class where you want to implement the pagination.
Get.put() makes the object available to the child of the widgets and using Get.find() we can find the same object in other classes as well.
HomePageController homePageController = Get.put(HomePageController());
Using GetBuilder:
GetBuilder is rebuilt every time the update() the method is called. It takes the init controller. It takes a builder that returns a Widget. The methods and objects can be accessed using the value . We use the ListView.builder to display the list of widgets. Controller of ListView.builder will be the ScrollController .
GetBuilder(
init: homePageController,
builder: (value) => ListView.builder(
controller: value.controller,
itemCount: value.list.length,
itemBuilder: (context, index) {
return Padding(
padding: const EdgeInsets.all(8.0),
child: Container(
color: Colors.red,
height: 100,
child: Center(
child: Text(value.list[index].name),
),
),
);
},
),
),
You might be thinking that here we do not need the GetBuilder as the method of homePageController can be accessed without it as well, yes it is true but in this case, the UI will not be updated, the 2 Model will be added into the list an object that we have created in the HomePageController using the addItems() method. To change the UI we need to use GitBuilder if we are using get for state management as it is rebuilt every time the update() the method is called.
main. dart:
homepage_controller.dart: | https://medium.com/flutterdevs/pagination-using-getx-in-flutter-24328b86fe18 | ['Anmol Gupta'] | 2021-06-02 06:52:36.653000+00:00 | ['Pagination', 'Getx', 'Flutter', 'Dart', 'Flutter App Development'] |
Historical Treatment of Gay Sex Workers | A 1932 account from the Afro-American describes an arrest of a sex worker in Druid Hill park. Park police happened onto a parked taxi cab by the duck pond, inside they found Princeton Royal, 29, & the taxi driver “surprised in the act of engaging in an unnatural petting party”.
Adapted from a Baltimore Gay Paper cartoon, a woman sits at the bar with a client. Behind her, are statements taken from the paper that are both about and by sex workers.
Royal testified that the cab had picked him up at Pressman & Madison nearby & that he had instructed the driver to take him to the park for fresh air. When the magistrate asked the Royal to respond to the fact that the police had caught him in such a compromising situation, he remarked, flippantly, “Well, this is the first time I’ve been caught this year.” This indicates that sex workers like Princeton were accustomed to regular interaction with the police.
When a fine was announced for both parties, Royal turned to three effeminate male spectators in the courtroom & said: “Sisters of the clan, I need money.” The four were able to pool the $25 necessary to avoid jail time, something that the cab driver was unable to do. Notably, a black homosexual community of sex workers operated so effectively that it superseded racial and class differences that might have otherwise caused Princeton Royal to be imprisoned and the white taxi driver to be released. This case proves street-based &/or full-service queer sex workers have been able to reduce harm through community for nearly a century.
A headline that reads “The Art Museum Drive Incident” details the wrongful arrest of another gay person outside a public park in 1981. The letter is written by the arrestee's attorney, & follows that the unnamed gay person went walking on the street by Wyman Park, Art Museum Drive after trying to go to the community center & discovering it was closed for the night. The individual was propositioned for sex by an undercover police officer who arrested him, despite his refusal. Because the sting was unsuccessful, the individual was charged with “Violation of Park Rule 50, park curfew”
These charges were successfully cleared in court because he was just outside of the park, but it was clear that this arrest was targeted not at park curfew violators but gay sex workers who used the park for cruising. The dismissal of this case on such arbitrary bounds elaborates that criminalization can occur for any reason. Indeed, at least 62 people were arrested that hot summer weekend for similar incidental charges.
This was a part of a targeted “clean-up” effort emboldened by a city ordinance that prevented loitering in all public places. Passed in the city council in 1979, Ordinance 1195 contained deliberate vague wording that police used to expand their power & control over the streets.
Baltimore City Police used this new city ordinance to mass arrest street-based sex workers, many of whom were black & transgender. The MDACLU challenged this new law as it unconstitutionally infringed on the right to assembly. These loitering cases were less about blocking walkways & more about who has access to public space. During the ACLU’s defense, which focused heavily on the discriminatory intent of police officers, two defendants were found guilty & two were acquitted; essentially resulting in an inconclusive ruling. However, reported incidents decrease in the months following the defeat.
The following year, 1982, the Baltimore Gay Alliance publically replied to a letter from Democratic candidate Kurt Shmoke, who was then running for State’s Attorney, urging him to consider decriminalizing sex work. In his letter, he stated concern over the solicitation of male sex workers in the Patterson Park/Eastern Avenue area who he referred to as “young boys”. The BGA was quick to call out that his perspective reflected a mentality that sex workers are victims & that gay people are pedophiles. At the time it was radical to have such a political candidate taking part in any conversation with LGBT community & the BGA doubled down on their activist roots by challenging their new supporter. This letter shows that the decriminalization of sex work has been a goal of gay activists for more than 38 years. | https://medium.com/baltimore-queer-paper/historical-treatment-of-gay-sex-workers-853f74f5ee62 | ['Jamie Grace Alexander'] | 2020-09-30 23:11:52.047000+00:00 | ['Sex Work', 'History', 'Newspapers', 'LGBT', 'Gay'] |
How to Stop Being Angry with Obnoxious People | Case Study: A Traumatic Situation
I learned to apply these lessons after my neighbor and friend, A., killed herself. Although we knew she was depressed, this event came as a shock. I cared for her cat, and I spent way too much time in her apartment. There, I learned things about my friend that broke my heart.
I waited for her family to adopt the cat, but they were delayed for understandable reasons. I attached great importance to this boisterous tomcat, as did her family. A. had cherished him, even though he made messes, bit, and cuddled aggressively. To me, he was sacred — a spiritual remnant of my friend.
I lived down a hall and on the other side of the building from A. Her closest neighbor was a man I’ll call Daniel. He knew A. better than I did and had even briefly dated her. Still, during her frequent trips out of town, she never asked Daniel to cat-sit. I did it, or another one of our girlfriends did.
Daniel sobbed when he found out A. had died. He was shocked to learn she had been so sad. He said he had been depressed for years and understood the impulse to give up on life.
Daniel and I were the oldest tenants in the building, but we didn’t approach life the same way. While I feverishly worked, waking up early in the morning and coming home late and doing extra work as a writer at night, Daniel slept in, smoked a bowl on the balcony, and spent half the day on his small business. At night when I was coming home from the gym, he was drinking beers and smoking with his friends and our neighbors on the balcony. Most of them were younger girls and guys who looked up to him because he is charming and light-hearted. Sometimes he sold them his Adderall—once he even gave me a pill for free because I was on a deadline.
Daniel always said hello to me, but I wasn’t always happy to speak to him. I found his lifestyle childish and sleazy.
When A. had been gone for a month, I started sharing the responsibility of taking care of her cat with other neighbors. It had become too much for me. The cat was so lonesome that it provoked my guilt, and that apartment full of self-help books and sticky notes A. had written to herself and put on walls and mirrors to help boost her spirits felt tragic. I regretted how I had acted with her in the last days of her life, when I had no idea she would soon give up completely. If only I had said something more powerful.
Every neighbor volunteered to drop by, feed, and pet the tomcat, except for Daniel. I saw him nearly every time I was coming and going from A.’s apartment, and every time he smiled and said hello. Once he made a comment that the cat had made a big mess and been annoying on a long-ago occasion when he had cared for the cat while A. had been on vacation.
This comment hurt me; I cringed physically. Insulting the cat was, to me, like spitting on our friend’s grave.
After two months of suffering alone in the apartment, the cat was taken in by A.’s relatives in another state. I ran into Daniel on the stairs a few days later, and he said he was glad someone else was now responsible for the cat so that the neighbors no longer had the burden of caring for him.
This comment sent me into a rage. A burden? Not only did most of us accept the depressing responsibility of the cat because we missed our lost friend and wanted to honor this creature she had left behind, but the idea that Daniel could feel burdened when he had done nothing to help seemed so morally reprobate that I started to resent him hatefully.
While I seethed in my apartment, he stood on the porch with our neighbors, drinking beer, smoking pot and cigarettes, and laughing. I could hear the girls laughing in response to his jokes — the college students he sold Adderall to. He’s corrupting those girls, I thought.
As I drifted off to sleep to the sound of Daniel’s laugh, Lao Tzu returned to my thoughts. It dawned on me, looking through the lens of Lao Tzu’s teachings, that Daniel was providing something of value to the people in our building: pleasure, relaxation, and camaraderie.
I was the one who had created the distinction between us — bad versus good. It was only my opinion that young adults should not smoke pot, take Adderall not prescribed to them, and party with men in their late 30s. But those girls obviously didn’t agree with me, and who was I to determine what was and wasn’t good for them? They were adults by law, living on their own. Maybe they had ADHD. Maybe they were corrupt, more so than Daniel. And why was I so much better than all of them? When was the last time I had chatted amiably with my neighbors and provided them with humor? I was always tense, running up and down the stairs and shouting strained hellos and goodbyes because I was busy trying to advance my life.
What value I had to the building community was as a sort of house mother, someone who looked out for younger people and cats. Daniel was lackadaisical and funny, and people enjoyed his energy. I helped the younger neighbors when they needed advice, a ride to the airport, or a job reference. We both added value.
Lao Tzu’s message humbled me. I stopped resenting Daniel and ceased to do so for months.
But he provoked me again when he went to live with a new girlfriend and failed to pay rent, leaving his apartment without moving out of it. What a jerk! I was friends not only with my landlord, but with my landlord’s parents, a generous elderly couple who always replaced what broke in my apartment, took me out to dinner, and invited me to their Christmas parties. My indignation this time was on behalf of them.
The landlord lived in another state. But when Daniel moved out, he came to town to stay at his parents’ house and remodel Daniel’s unit and a few other units. Daniel’s apartment was a wreck, and the floors had to be replaced. I think it had been in bad shape when he had moved in, and, being a low-key, undemanding person, he had never complained. When I had dinner with our landlord, he told me that Daniel had not paid rent in months.
“He’s a selfish, childish asshole,” I said.
Our landlord laughed. “He’s not that bad.” His twinkling eyes showed me my error of hate.
I was stunned into silence. Why should I be angry on behalf of the landlord when he didn’t feel wronged? That was definitely a waste of energy.
Later, when time had lessened the trauma of losing A., I was able to question even my reaction to Daniel’s disinterest in sharing the cat-sitting duties. A. and Daniel hadn’t had a good relationship. Since they had briefly dated, they had had awkward interactions and a few arguments. Her death had caused me to render her a perfect martyr who had died from depression. But she had been imperfect, like all humans. That’s how Daniel had seen her. And he hadn’t had my imagination when he had looked at the cat. To him, it had just been a cat, not a spiritual connection to a martyr. Perhaps Daniel was more realistic and pragmatic than I. There is no question that I tend towards the melodramatic.
Lao Tzu and step four of my 12-step program taught me to reconsider my resentment. What it came down to was that my way of seeing a dynamic was not the absolute truth. It was my truth, and that was all. Trying to impose it on other people was dogmatic and naive. Everyone in that building and the landlord had a different way of perceiving A. and of reacting to her suicide and to Daniel. But so much of my life had been spent foolishly trying to insist that my truth was the truth. It certainly didn’t help me, and it didn’t change the situations I resented or people such as Daniel. So what was the point? | https://betterhumans.pub/how-to-stop-being-angry-with-obnoxious-people-c945c8f93c37 | ['Flannery Meehan'] | 2019-02-14 02:43:00.362000+00:00 | ['Anger', 'Happiness', 'Self', 'Acceptance', 'Communication'] |
The Top Life Hack To Become Invincible — it hurts | Sometimes, when I’m working at my desk, I hit that kind of snag that propels me out of my chair. Sheer discomfort courses through my veins — so I leap up. This sensation arises whenever I have to work through some super boring technical issues or equally boring paperwork. Yet, completing the project, in this case my feature film, was even more important than how I felt. So, I had a choice — remain in the slimy discomfort or leap up, run away, and never break through — never complete the film. Now, I’m a feelings kinda gal; I let my feelings rule me a tad too much. But, this goal was even bigger than my feelings. When I chose to push through the pain and the sheer agony of endless technical complications, I made a massive discovery.
I discovered something amazing on the other side: exhilaration from completing a really hard task; that’s truly the motherlode.
Now everyone is different. I exercise a ton and so in that area of my life, I’m accustomed to pushing through to completion despite how I feel. But the area in my life where I get stuck is mind-numbing computer work. It truly makes my skin crawl. Who would have thought that doing something I despise would deliver an amazing gift? | https://medium.com/@cybillake/the-top-life-hack-to-become-invincible-it-hurts-e711ad835fc3 | ['Cybil Lake'] | 2020-12-01 18:41:24.019000+00:00 | ['Habit Building', 'Invincible', 'Life Hacking', 'Filmmaking', 'Horror'] |
How to Survive a Web Development Bootcamp | (Image: John Schnobrich, Unsplash)
Final week of web development bootcamp. ::Gasp:: I’m truly shocked by how fast this whipped by, but the good news is this gal survived and conquered, and with no breakdowns suffered — just a few migraines and some minor frustrations! That, in itself, I consider a huge win. So, now, as an almost-alumni reflecting on the past nine weeks, I thought it’d be a good time to assess what I’ve learned or what I wish I’d done, and bestow some of these hot tips to future bootcamp students, who are no doubt anxious for what’s to come.
Be prepared to put the social life on the back-burner. I was told to expect about 30–40 hours of homework a week. I didn’t put a timer on, but that number’s quite right. If you’ve been through anything in life, this definitely won’t be the hardest thing you’ll ever do, but 30–40 hours a week is an investment of time and energy— don’t be one of the inevitable people who say, “I didn’t expect it to be so immersive!” As a good friend says, “It’s called Web Dev Bootcamp, not Web Dev 1-hour Hatha Yoga.” Build your support system. Talk to developer friends or anyone in the industry willing to chat. Ask for advice. Ask about their struggles. The more information you have on what lies ahead, the easier you can build a tangible picture of your future, set some practical goals. And also, if any of these people are offering to help, which guaranteed they will… ACCEPT: their one-minute of expertise might save you from 24 hours of frustration! In the short time spent in this world, I’ve already learned that developers love problem-solving and truly get their kicks from helping others. Consider it a win-win situation for the both of you! (Confession: I reached out to 5 developers for guidance on my React project. For real.) Get rid of that blue glow. Order a pair of blue-light filtered glasses or at the very least, install f.lux to shift the colour temperature of your monitor. Anything helps! I had only gotten a week into bootcamp when my eyeballs felt like they were about to dislodge, but f.lux helped tremendously. Take care of those peepers! Practise thinking like a programmer. For those of us not accustomed to thinking programmatically, the brain needs a little bit of a workout. If you have any spare time pre-bootcamp — even if it’s just on the toilet! — log into a fun coding app, like Google’s Grasshopper, m1m0, or Code Wars. Think about arrays and go over the different ways to manipulate them. The more time you can train your brain on these concepts, the easier JavaScript will be! Read up on React or whatever framework you’re studying. If you’re like me and you think a degree of comfort with basic jQuery means you’ll be able to comfortably understand and write a project in React within a week, you may want to reassess that assumption. If you do master it in a few days, good on you! But it doesn’t hurt to zip through a few online tutorials in advance. Your brain will thank you. Challenge yourself. Acknowledge your strengths, bring them to the table, explain your thinking to others, but be open to letting go, jump into things you don’t know, and step yourself through your thought process as you fight with new concepts yourself. It’ll be the best way to get better at something! Ask questions. Learning a brand new language in a compact period of time is difficult: be easy on yourself! If you have a question, there’s guaranteed someone else in class has the same concern and is thrilled you had the bravery to be vulnerable yourself. Throw pride out the window: You’re here to learn! …But also, don’t ask questions. Many introductory JavaScript courses leave students crying, “What is the purpose of this? Why are we console.logging ‘Hello’?” Just keep in mind JavaScript is best taught by breaking the concepts into tiny introductory steps and may not make sense until a few days in. Sometimes it’s just best to accept the process — just make sure you understand the basic steps and then just strap yourself in for the rest of the ride. Make friends. Break the developer stereotype and reach out, connect with your classmates. Isolating yourself, especially when taking an online bootcamp, is super easy to do, but given that interpersonal skills are super important in any modern work place, it’s good practice to get comfortable with people! Besides, your classmates will be a source of sanity and comic relief in the chaotic weeks to come, which you’ll definitely need. And who knows… They may possibly be your future coworkers, managers, and references in the future! Step back! Take five! My most successful breakthroughs happened after having some time to myself to think. Encountering a problem and spending 5 hours moving the same lines of code around the page won’t help, but a break certainly will. Get up. Make dinner. Take a walk. Talk to a friend. Listen to your favourite podcast. Stare at the ceiling, if you like! The answers to your 5-hour problem can be found in some mysterious places. Get comfortable with breaking things. The perfectionist in me always wants to get things right, immediately, but I quickly realized perfectionism isn’t possible without testing things out, especially at this stage of career infancy. I started looking at things differently when one of the geniuses in my group kept wanting to break things on purpose, just so he could learn something new. If there’s one trait I wish I had from the start of the bootcamp, it’s this one. Get comfortable with knowing nothing. After pivoting from a creative industry, I figured I could flush imposter syndrome down the toilet, but after following a bunch of developers on Twitter the past nine weeks, it appears that this field has it even worse! The key to feeling okay about all this, though, is knowing that everyone feels this way. And remember… if you come out of bootcamp knowing nothing else than being an expert in Google, well, at the very least, you’ve mastered the first step to becoming a developer, right?
Good luck, future boot-campers. | https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-survive-a-web-development-bootcamp-a7d533629b30 | ['Connie Tsang'] | 2020-10-16 12:49:30.262000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Web Development', 'Codingbootcamp', 'Bootcamp', 'Coding'] |
Tesu | You know how they celebrate the season of Cherry Blossom in Japan? I really wish we would have something like it for 'Tesu' season. Right around before Holi when it starts getting dusty, hazy and too bright every jhoka of air brings leaves of every shape and size in various shades of yellow and green floating down from the trees and then in this season of hot and bright sunshine you see a tree barren of of leaves standing proud with its branches laden with bright red flowers... It is one of the most beautiful sights in the world, capable of instantaneously lifting your spirit and bringing a smile to your face.
A quick Google search tells me they are also called 'Palash' and as soon as I read this word I get this strange feeling of of having read poems or heard songs of this 'Palash ke ped' . Every year before the start of summer they are a welcome sight preparing us for the sweltering heat to come. These Tesu were not in the city I grew up in or maybe I was just busy looking at other things. I mean there are a lot of flowering trees this time of the year what with Gulmohar and Bougainvillea to name a few but nothing like driving through this concrete jungle and just at the top of the fly-over on your way home you see a dome of BIG Red flowers on a dark skinned tree devoid of leaves just standing, making my heart happy. | https://medium.com/@mudyblues/tesu-945d27ab44c4 | ['Conversations With A Bored Housewife'] | 2021-03-19 10:06:04.420000+00:00 | ['Summer', 'Palash', 'Red Flowers', 'Tesu', 'Cherry Blossoms'] |
How to Design a Spam-Proof Email Marketing Campaign | Some people say that getting into somebody’s email box is like coming to a dinner. You must get an invitation, be nice, polite and funny. But is it possible for marketers to meet all these expectations in every email marketing campaign? According to the Email Marketing Report issued by DMR, 25% of marketers admit to having problems with designing this kind of content.
Customers have become used to advertisements presented everywhere they look and their mailboxes are as crowded with brand announcements as Times Square; that is why they usually treat marketing emails like spam. How can you attract the attention of the customer in this tangle of messages and encourage them to buy without being accused of spamming? Let’s take a look at a few tips that help make designing a mailing campaign a snap.
First of all — get permission
Before entering someone’s house, good manners (and the law) say that you should be invited inside first. Before you start sending emails, you need to have a sizable email list. The easiest way to get customer email addresses is to offer them something in return, like an ebook, report or discount. Put your incentive in a prominent place on the website.
Set your goals and segment subscribers accordingly
Communicating via email can help you accomplish different goals, the most popular being:
welcoming new subscribers
boosting engagement with your offer or business content
nurturing existing subscribers by giving them something valuable, like educational materials or discounts
reengaging subscribers who haven’t been active for some time
You can segment your clients according to other factors like place of residence, age, interests etc. — everything depends on what kind of campaign you’re going to run. This way customers will get content they care about and be more likely to open your message, get through it and check any links attached.
Get familiar with email types
There are three key email types that you will find useful:
1. Promotional emails, sent when you want to communicate an offer or sale; these are self-promotional
2. Relational emails, giving subscribers promised materials, like monthly newsletters, free gifts, special birthday offers or any other relevant information
3. Transactional emails, such as signup confirmations, welcome messages, order/purchase confirmation etc.
When you decide which types of emails you’re going to use, consider their number and frequency. You don’t want to flood your subscribers with unwanted messages, but don’t let them forget you, too.
Encourage customers to sign up
Try to prepare some attractive opt-in forms and display them in different places on your website. For example, you can use:
website welcome gates , which pop up when somebody visits your website; they mainly consist of simple headlines and calls to action
, which pop up when somebody visits your website; they mainly consist of simple headlines and calls to action headers , which are a perfect place to put some email sign-up since they are clearly visible and can be seen without scrolling down the site
, which are a perfect place to put some email sign-up since they are clearly visible and can be seen without scrolling down the site lightbox popups , temporarily blanking the page, so the client can focus on the presented content; a good idea is also making such a pop-up appear after a few seconds of looking around the page content
, temporarily blanking the page, so the client can focus on the presented content; a good idea is also making such a pop-up appear after a few seconds of looking around the page content exit-intent popups, popping up when the client wants to leave the website
There’s no email marketing campaign without images!
Dress it up it with a GIF, video or graphic. Remember that graphics must be related to the content of the email. If you use external sources, make sure you do not break copyright laws.
What do you think?
Master your word
When creating copy consider parts such as:
a personal story that will influence emotional connection with the client
links to valuable materials and articles that further develop topics covered
“person to person” approach, which means “I” writing to “you”. The more personal touches you include in your email, the greater the chance that the subscriber will engage emotionally in the presented content. Explain your offer benefits in the role of a friend recommending a given product;
focus on the first paragraph — clients are busy, and if they do not find anything attracting their attention in the first part of the message, it is unlikely that they will read it to the end; what is more, this first-important-thing rule applies also to other things that the recipient of the e-mail sees first, including “from” address, subject line, preheader, greeting, etc.
keep it short
use bullets, boxes etc. and avoid making your mail looking like a serious scientific article
Test it!
When you finally have content and a subscribers’ list, test them. Decide when to send a proper campaign and edit it if needed. If you are not sure if everything is ok, check the email in accordance with the checklist below:
is your message clear to the reader?
are the graphic elements of good quality?
do you have a catchy opening line?
is your email copy clear and concise?
have you provided a visible call to action?
do all included links go to the right destinations?
does the email fit the designated goal?
did you check the email for stylistic problems and typos?
You can check some of these points yourself, like image quality, text composition, links, etc., but copy transparency is more difficult, especially if it’s your own work. It is possible to carry out the first test within your team or on a smaller segment of subscribers.
And finally — send it
When everything looks good, share your campaign with the world!
The power of data feedback
Sending emails is not the end of actions related to the campaign. After a few days, check the results of the mailing and draw as many conclusions as possible, which will allow you to improve your future content. Below you will find a few questions that will help you improve your campaign strategy next time:
How many of your clients use mobile devices? Based on this information, you will be able to better select design and graphic elements.
Which client segment was least engaged with your emails? Answering this question will give you an opportunity to retarget them and try to engage them with an email once again.
Wrapping up
The most important stages of creating a campaign are planning and checking feedback. It is also comforting that after the first mailing, thanks to the collected data and their more thorough analysis, you can avoid mistakes in future campaigns. | https://medium.com/synerise/how-to-design-a-spam-proof-email-marketing-campaign-6e2c9c86069 | ['Marta Michałowska'] | 2020-05-22 08:23:24.730000+00:00 | ['Email Marketing Tips', 'Email Productivity', 'Email Marketing'] |
Aspirational Fanfiction About Clothing I Can Not Afford | Aspirational Fanfiction About Clothing I Can Not Afford
(I am not ashamed of my shallow tendencies)
I’m not traditionally employed right now. By ‘not traditionally,’ I actually mean I’m kind of unemployed right now. This situation means I can’t be spending money on the temporarily stylish hipster garb which I constantly fantasize about. Not being able to buy ephemeral and stylish clothing and accessories is hard when the internet is sitting right there being absolutely full of flower crowns and studded vests and other things that I’d probably never wear even if I did have the money for them. I might never wear them, sure, but I’d still love them, relentlessly.
Addicted, I stare at the Internet at various interludes every day and eyeball clothing I can’t afford like a teenage boy drip-feeding himself pornography. And like a run of the mill lust filled adolescent, I write fanfiction about the things I can’t have, and who I would be if I had the things I want.
1.
Look, there’s this black shirt that arrived in today on Forever21.com. It’s short in the front and long in the back and sleeveless with sort of sheer fabric but listen, it’s got these sharks all over it. Wide-mouthed, starving vicious sharks all over the shirt. They are cartoon blue like the sky in the morning and their mouths are red and fleshy and their teeth are starving for something alive and they swim in the seventeen dollar blackness of the fabric, they are in deep space, they are in the unreachable blackness of the sea. I will drape myself in this seventeen dollar thing and wear this black ocean of sharks on my body and feel them gnaw and chew until a thirst for meat is all I have, until they and me are not so unlike after all. When you turn your back my skin flushes blue like theirs and my teeth grow in fresh arcs in my mouth and long slits for gills open in my throat, a sharp triangular fin blossoming from my spine. Duh-nuh. Duh-nuh. Duh-nuh — I will be hungry for the red in your body. You will need a bigger boat.
2.
Look, there’s this pair of shoes that arrived today from Modcloth.com. They’re black flats with a round toe, leather insoles, pretty straightforward but get this, they have crowns embroidered on the front. Red and gold with tiny crystals stuck on them, like Tower of London-looking crowns like right there on my feet, my monarchy feet, my queen feet. All who pass me on Valencia as I walk to the store to buy leeks or celery will gasp and fall to their knees oh, they never thought I would come out of my palace to stroll so casually amongst them and I will tell them to rise, be at ease, I am merely surveying my kingdom from the ground. Though there will always be one, one fool who casts me an eye that I find displeasing and the moment I feel his beady gaze upon me I will scream for my legions of winged woman-soldier guards, “Off, off with his head!” and from the heavens they will descend with scythes and cleanly obey my bidding. They always obey and all who do not will meet the same fate, oh how heads will roll down Valencia Street like tumbleweed, oh how you will know my wrath, San Francisco, oh how you will know my wrath.
3.
Look, there’s this woolly jumper made by The Orphan’s Arms. It’s black. No surprises there, everything I like is mostly black, but get this, it has a pattern of white rabbits knit into it with the word ‘FOLLOW’ below every rabbit. I know what you’re thinking. Like follow the white rabbit, like Alice in Wonderland right? Wrong. Wrong, there will be no talking flowers or hearts or flamingos — not today, not in this sweater as I nip by the butchers to pack up a half pound of shrimp for me lunch. The small domestic bunny from the backyard next door, eyes wide, has trailed me down the street, hopping as I take a step, poor, hypnotized, impressionable dope. I stand at the butchers counter and go, half a pound of the cooked shrimp yeah the big ones nice one and go about my business. The bunny sits outside with its neck cocked curiously to the side, waiting on me, oozing adoration. I turn me back and put me shrimp into me tote and I’m off but before I can hear the door swing behind me and the butcher (the cute skinny butcher with the mustache and tattoos) screams bloody murder. Three of the rabbits that had been strung in the window, skinned and eyeless, have wrung themselves free and stand on their hind legs on the floor behind me, as I walk they loom forward like, mother, mother, we’ll come with you wherever you go. | https://humanparts.medium.com/aspirational-fanfiction-about-clothing-i-can-not-afford-7c0fb410d5f7 | ['Sarah Maria Griff'] | 2019-02-05 22:45:38.329000+00:00 | ['Eyes'] |
Not Today | The word no never used to be in my vocabulary. For years I said yes to everything. Yes to that dinner out, sure to that work event, why not to helping someone around the office with a ‘fun’ project that really wouldn’t add any value to my day-to-day job. The more I said ‘yes,’ the more my to-do list grew and grew. The more that list grew, the more burnt out I became until one day I had to step back and take a breather. Why was I pushing myself so hard?
Learning to say ‘no’ to people was a tough lesson to learn. As a woman, I was taught from a young age to share, not to be ‘bossy’ (a word I HATE) and to always be appeasing. Saying yes is ingrained into us from a young age. Although I cannot talk about the male experience, I’ve heard from my counterparts they were often told the similar things (aside from the bossy stuff, that was saved for us!) While I’m slowly learning to say not to specific things, I think this will always be a struggle for me as it is for many of my friends and counterparts. Fear of missing out or FOMO is real, when really sometimes we should be embracing JOMO, the joy of missing out. There is a certain point however that you need to start looking out for number one. This is why I began formalizing a set of criteria for myself to decide what I say yes or no to. While items don’t have to check off all five boxes, I try to hit at least three before I commit to something. Here is what worked for me:
1. Will this help my career or personal growth?
Growth whether personal or professional is essential. To succeed you need to grow, learn new skills and bring those back home. When I’m looking at an opportunity, I ask myself what I will learn? Am I going to grow my skills to level up? Am I gaining something from this? For years I’d volunteer to do things out of the kindness of my heart. I’d work for free to help someone else achieve their goals without thinking of what my goals were. Now when I begin working on something I ask myself and them: what am I getting out of this relationship. I believe it’s important to be upfront about what you want and need out of a project. Get everyone aligned and ensure that you are on the same page. That way at the end of the day you can evaluate if something makes sense for you at that time.
2. What is the time commitment — do I have it?
Time is precious. You only have so many hours in the day to accomplish everything. When looking at a new opportunity, it is vital to ask yourself: do I have time for this? While everyone dreams of being a super-person and taking on the world, having the time and energy to do everything is impossible. I like to break down my time commitments and figure out if I can either do it thoroughly, offer some help or not commit at all. For example, recently I wanted to work on a project. When it came down to it, I realized this project was going to suck up at least 12 hours a week. I thought hard about this and realized it was just not the right time. I did, however, agree to be an on-call resource where they could call me when need be to bounce ideas off of or ask questions. I knew what could work for me and worked within my limits.
3. Does this help my community or ecosystem?
This is a personal one for me. Given that I’ve created a career around community and culture, giving back to these elements is crucial to me. These might not be what is important to you. Find what your key motivators are and fill in the blanks.
4. Who am I getting into bed with?
Everyone has that story where they began a project that was going to be remarkable only to end up feeling used or getting into bed with the wrong people. Before I go in deep with an organization, I like to do a bit of background snooping. Don’t be afraid to look up someone on LinkedIn, find your common friends and ask them about the person. Trust your instincts. If something doesn’t feel right then, it might not be. When in doubt I ask the person. Ninety percent of the time it’s a misunderstanding, however better to know from day one what you are getting yourself into.
5. Will I regret not doing this in five years?
FOMO is real, but FOMO fades! The true test of time is will I regret not doing something? This test for me is usually more useful when it comes to larger items such as working on a project or a career change. Will I regret saying no? There is also the flip side to consider: will I regret saying yes? Truly think long-term and figure out what you want for yourself. Five years seems far off, but one little change can make a world of difference.
Saying no will probably never come easily to me. Deep down I want to jump at the opportunity to do everything. This is unrealistic. Now, I take my time with decisions. I don’t jump at opportunities and check in with myself before saying yes. Your time and energy are not infinite resources. You must treat them as such. | https://medium.com/@katelgrant/not-today-3a283853524 | ['Kate Grant'] | 2020-12-15 17:20:40.588000+00:00 | ['Personal Growth', 'Life Lessons', 'Startup Life', 'Self Care', 'Startup Lessons'] |
Virtual Reality — new opportunities | Peace To All!
Today we decided to touch upon an interesting and relevant topic-virtual reality.
Namely, the creation of various virtual objects and software for their use.
Against the background of quarantine measures of the last year, interest in virtual functionality has increased significantly.
Virtual technologies have entered many areas of human life — games, travel, advertising, medicine, and business.
Nowadays, the use of virtual reality to their advantage has been learned in industry and transport, as well as in the field of education.
You can also start using virtual products to solve your tasks.
In any case, you will certainly be interested in meeting real professionals in the virtual industry.
One of the leading companies developing virtual products is servreality
it is distinguished by the fact that it provides a full range of services from the development of 3d objects and software to hardware implementation of the turnkey project.
in addition, the company’s specialists create a simulated environment of high reliability for VR games and arcades, virtual reality apps reality and interesting product presentations.
In general, it makes no sense to paint a lot, look at the portfolio on their website, and you will understand everything yourself. | https://medium.com/@ya-simeon/virtual-reality-new-opportunities-d578fe024084 | ['Semyon Yakobson'] | 2020-12-17 21:33:21.434000+00:00 | ['Virtual Apps', 'VR', 'Virtual Reality'] |
Immersive Theatre and Westworld, Part Two: Audience Agency | “The newcomers are looking for the same thing we are: a place to be free, a place to stake out our dreams. A place of unlimited possibilities.” – Season 1 Episode 1, ‘The Original’
In Part One we looked at some different approaches to narrative structure: On Rails, Branching Path, and Open World. I framed these only in terms of physically moving through a space to encounter different scenes, with the audience’s ability limited to what scene they see next. However, these narrative principles can also apply to the way each scene plays out in an interactive show, where the audience is given some degree of agency as to what happens next in the story.
Westworld handles this in a very interesting and unique way, but to get to that let’s first see how audience agency might be handled within the structures discussed in Part One. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll continue with the example from Part One of Dolores dropping a can of beans.
Dolores is given a can of beans. (Season 1 Episode 1, ‘The Original’)
First, Dolores drops her can of beans in an on-rails show with peripheral interactivity. The story requires an audience member to pick it up and give it to her, so she stalls for time until someone does, maybe saying something like “now where did my can of beans go?” The show is likely in a holding pattern, with the audience and characters unable to move on until the can of beans is picked up, as this is the only narrative path for the story to follow. It’s only lightly interactive, as the audience is participating in the story, but they don’t really have any agency in how the story unfolds.
In a branching path show, the can of beans might land on the ground and roll until they’re halfway between Dolores and a hungry child. Now you’re faced with a choice between two options: who do you give the beans to? Here the audience member has agency to, through their actions, choose one of two predetermined paths for the story. However, any other action that isn’t one of these two paths (keeping the beans for themselves, say) will be disregarded or blocked, as it doesn’t fit one of the two paths. Again, the scene will likely stay in a holding pattern until the beans are given to Dolores or the child.
In an open-world videogame, the can of beans falls on the floor, but then the options of what you can do with it are limited by the different controls available to you — the classic set would be something like look at it, take it, talk to it, shoot it, use it, walk away from it, or give it to someone, each of which might lead to a different story response (some of which might be that nothing happens). However many options there are, though, there are a finite number, because the game designers can only script and program so many responses to the player input.¹
And this is where we can see how Westworld is different. The audience member doesn’t have a set number of options to choose from. They can do anything they like with the tin of beans. They can eat it, roll it, steal it, punch it, kiss it, sing about it, sell it — whatever they want, so long as they’re physically able to do it. To paraphrase Laura E. Hall, their body is the game mechanic. Their response to the offer could take any form, which opens up a whole sphere of possibilities.² Within the TV show Westworld, this is one of the park’s selling points, what gives it its immersive quality — the guests have complete freedom to do whatever they want, without artificial narrative constraints.
But hang on, how do you possibly write for that? How can you incorporate that level of audience agency while still providing narrative cohesion, without the whole experience being completely improvised? Let’s look, in turn, at how all each of these different approaches might be applied to writing The Beans Scene into an experiential theatre show.
Let’s start by making an on-rails show. You write the dialogue that leads up to Dolores dropping the beans, you write the dialogue that takes place after she gets the beans, and maybe a couple of different filler lines for Evan Rachel Wood to drop in, depending on how long it takes for someone to pick up the beans. Great.
For a binary choice branching paths show, you write the dialogue leading up to the moment of the choice, then write two different endings, one for each of the options that the audience can choose, and the scene plays out based on their choice. If there are multiple choices throughout the show that affect each other, you’ll need to script even more scenes — three interdependent binary choices create eight (2³) possible endings.
Now let’s imagine that our show limits our audience members to the classic set of videogame options described above. If the audience has a dozen different things they can do to the can of beans, then we need to script a dozen different scenes in response. This quickly becomes impractical if we apply it to the many choices that they might be able to make throughout the show — three interdependent choices of twelve options creates 1728 (12³) possible endings. One way to deal with this would be to group possible audience responses based on the impact they’ll have on the world. For instance, giving the beans or talking to Dolores might start a romance scene, taking the beans or walking away might cause her to just ignore you, and shooting or talking to the beans might mean she calls you weird.
What we’re doing here is reducing a dozen options down to a more manageable number of outcomes, which we can more easily script. The choice of different story paths is dependent on whether certain circumstantial conditions are met by audience actions, rather than the audience member consciously needing to make an active choice.
But none of these different formats is quite what Westworld does. In Westworld, the hosts (characters) are improvising the scene with the audience. The audience can go anywhere within the circle of possibilities, and the hosts can go with them. So how do we script this?
The solution that the (in-fiction) narrative designers of the Westworld theme park have come up with is very useful. For each narrative moment, they start by scripting the audience responses that are most likely. If the can of beans falls on the ground, say, the most likely outcomes are that a passer-by will either pick it up and give it to Dolores, or they’re going to ignore it completely. So, the narrative designers start by writing scripts for scenes that respond to both those options. Then, if the audience does something outside of those expectations, the hosts start improvising. If the passer-by sings a song about beans, or starts cartwheeling, or shoots Dolores’ horse, she’ll respond by improvising — what would her character do in this situation?
But these improvisations also incorporate and repurpose sections of their scripted dialogue. We see Maeve’s ‘This is the new world’ monologue a number of times throughout the series, taking on different meanings in different contexts. Or, when Dolores is being interviewed by Jeffrey Wright’s character, she talks about loss, saying:
“You think the grief will make you smaller inside, like your heart will collapse in on itself, but it doesn’t. I feel spaces opening up inside of me like a building with rooms I’ve never explored.” – Episode 2, ‘Chestnut’
To which Jeffrey Wright replies, “That’s very pretty, Dolores. Did we write that for you?” She answers “In part. I adapted it from a scripted dialogue about love.”
So we can see that, from a line-to-line writing point of view, we can start by scripting sections of dialogue with specific scenes and giving our actors permission to adapt and reuse that dialogue as required. But this principle can also be extrapolated to look at the overall narrative structure of the park.
The host characters’ days are structured as a 24-hour loop. Left to their own devices, with no guests in the park, the hosts’ lives would play out the same every day. Dolores wakes up in the morning, talks to her father on the porch, goes into town to get the groceries, meets Teddy (who picks up the can of beans and gives it to her), spends time in the wilderness with him, then goes home to find that her father has been seized by bandits, who shoot Teddy and then her. Charming. All completely scripted..
But now let’s add the audience in and give them narrative agency. They can make choices about what happens, which will affect the loops. Say that a guest starts talking to Teddy before he can reach Dolores. This means that, instead of meeting Teddy, she moves onto a second variation of the loop, one where she goes back home, then takes her watercolours out to do some painting in a field. Dolores’ story is still scripted, but it’s following a different branching path. If she meets Teddy, move to loop 1A, if she doesn’t, move to loop 1B, etc.
As an aside, we can see here the same principle of ‘circumstantial conditions’ I described earlier. Audience members may only be making a few active choices, but these choices have knock-on effects that passively impact other story loops. The conditions become quite complex as well, with multiple endings of multiple stories all becoming interrelated.
Anyway, for each choice the audience can make, the narrative designers plan for the choices they think audience members are most likely to make, while simultaneously making room for improvisation. It seems that in Westworld, the narrative designers intend, or at least prefer, for audience members to choose one of the scripted options, as this will keep the story closer to the established loops, providing more guarantee of a satisfying narrative.
One way to do this is to provide audience members with instruction from the hosts. For instance, in Episode 1 Dolores tells a family of guests she meets that she has to go, and that they should too, because “There’s bandits in these hills.” Another approach is to lead the audience to take certain actions without them realising they’re being led. You enter a room, and at the other end of the room a desk lamp shines on an open book. (See the discussion of passive invitations in Part One) You’re not being told to go over and read it, you’re just subliminally encouraged to. Jeff Wirth calls this process backleading³ — invisibly guiding an audience member to make certain decisions (For more on this, see the discussion of the 1–9–90 principle in Part Three). There are also many overlaps here with other disciplines including exhibition design, user experience, choice architecture, and behavioural psychology.
In theatre, the understanding of the most likely (or perhaps, predictable) audience choices and responses is deepened and refined over the run of a show. The more people you get making each choice in performance after performance, the better you understand what the most likely outcomes are. In my experience, this is most keenly observed by the actors, as they’re the ones seeing each decision being made. It’s crucial that this knowledge is shared among the cast and crew of the show, and that the narrative architecture stays a living beast, so that adjustments can be made as we learn more about how people are actually navigate the story we put in front of them.
At any rate, in Westworld, if the audience member happens to make a choice that doesn’t fall into one of the scripted paths, this choice is still accepted and followed by the hosts. It’s frequently mentioned in the show that the hosts are only supposed to make minor improvisations within their loops, presumably to smoothly facilitate a natural conversation and relationship with a guest. If an audience member wants to take them out of their loop, then they will improvise to a more considerable degree, but their improvisation is being led by the audience. For instance, The Man in Black (Ed Harris) kidnaps several characters and takes them well outside their loops, so these hosts improvise significantly, but only in response to the audience member’s choices, filtered through their character’s backstory. They don’t suddenly have free rein to improvise anything.
In an experiential show, the cast may be inspired by a strong offer from an audience member, and similarly improvise away from any planned narrative paths, However their capacity to do this entirely depends on how much flexibility and plasticity is built into the show. Some shows have fixed endings that need to be reached, while others are wide open for new endings to be found. Both are completely valid, however as Jason Warren writes in Creating Worlds, the art in designing for interaction is most often a balance between the amount of power the audience are given in deciding what happens in a story, and the amount of work required by the cast and crew to support those decisions and make the story happen. (For more on how to find this balance, I strongly recommend getting a copy of his book.)
All of this comes back to one of the promises of the Westworld theme park: the guests have complete freedom to make any choice they want in an immersive world. The hosts are fully realised characters, who bring the consequences of those choices to life. In Part Three, we’ll look at the tools that Westworld uses to design its host characters in ways that support these audience choices. | https://medium.com/@fimjishwick/immersive-theatre-and-westworld-part-two-audience-agency-1f4ca4000b0b | ['Jim Fishwick'] | 2021-09-15 01:59:47.703000+00:00 | ['Immersive Theatre', 'Narrative', 'Improv', 'Theatre'] |
The Story of Security Governance | Within the information field, security professionals must keep in mind that they perform a supporting service to the organization. Every organization has its own unique business objective and mission.
The tale of two hats
Security professionals often wear two different hats. Certainly, they are the subjective matter experts on information security and are tasked with securing the IT infrastructure, respond to security incidents, and the protection of value assets, they also have to remember the other hat they often have to wear: the business hat. Security professionals must understand the primary mission of the organization and both the strategic and tactical objectives to support the organizational mission. This includes short-term and long-term goals, how security controls impact business efficiency, and design a control environment that balance both security and business needs. This is a task security professionals often struggle with. A business case is a tool security professionals can incorporate to justify the investment of time and money in new security controls by providing a solid case on the impact to organization assets in a language management can understand.
Information security as a business function
As a business function, information security must align with other business functions and the governance processes within the organization. The governance process can take place at the different levels. This can be in form of committees such as risk management committee consist of senior level executives and with publicly traded companies including independent board of directors and other governing bodies. Despite the difference in governance structure, security professional must determine the best way to incorporate information security into the process to ensure responsible bodies understand the security risks facing the organization and the controls that are in place to manage those risks. Governing bodies should also be included in the incident response process and be informed when security incidents take place at applicable severity levels and be provided with regular audit reports to review the current security posture of the organization. There is certainly no one size fits all in security governance as every organization is unique. Security professional need to considering additional scenarios such as acquisition and divestitures as well as they happen often within the business world. It’s important to access the compatibility between systems, eliminate any redundancies, and ensure additional risk factors are not carried over during the process such as inadequate controls, insecure systems, and etc.
Role and responsibilities of security professional in Security Governance
While roles and responsibilities of security professionals can differ based on organization size and structure, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is usually the individual bearing the responsibility of information security and is considered the senior information security leader within the organization. Under the CISO is the information security team that is composed of security professional with broad backgrounds in information security as well as subject matter experts in areas such as incident response, network security, identity and access management, and security awareness. Regardless of responsibilities, all information security professionals must also exercise both due care and due diligence.
Due care — The principle of due care states that information security professionals must fulfill the legal responsibilities of the organization as well as professional standards of information security.
Due diligence — The principle of due diligence states that security professionals should take reasonable measures to investigate the risks associated with a situation.
As you can see, security professionals have a wide variety of responsibilities within the organization ranging from the design, implementation, and management of various controls to protect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. It’s important to ensure adequate controls are in place to protect and cover the organization against a wide range of risks that exist today. This can be seen as a formidable task. Fortunately, there are several existing security control frameworks out there today that can assist with establishing an effective security program. These include COBIT, ISO 27001/27002, NIST 800–53 just to name a few.
COBIT
The Control Objectives for Information Technology, also known as COBIT, is a security control framework developed by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association. COBIT is a detailed framework covering six different principles: meeting stakeholder needs, enabling a holistic approach, creating a dynamic governance system, separating governance from management, tailoring the governance system to enterprise needs and covering the enterprise end to end. COBIT also offer implementation guidance to assist organization in implementing the framework within the organization.
ISO 27001/27002
The International Organization for Standardization, also known as ISO, also publishes a series of control frameworks centering around security and privacy. ISO 27001 covers information security management systems and provides generalized control objectives. ISO 27002 provides additional details on specific controls and implementation to meet organizational goals.
NIST 800–53
While specially designed for federal information systems, the NIST 800–53 published by the National Institute of Standard and Technology is widely adapted by non-federal agencies and organizations as well. It covers the fundamentals of information security with multi-tiered risk management, security control structures, baselines and designations, the use of external service providers, and how to assess assurance and trustworthiness for information systems. The 492-page publication goes into detail on the process of implementing security and privacy controls, selecting appropriate security control baseline, tailoring the baseline to the specific needs of the organization, and creating a process to document the control selection process for both new and legacy systems. | https://medium.com/@cyberted/the-story-of-security-governance-94225bff4ec1 | ['Xing', 'Teddy'] | 2021-08-16 01:36:01.505000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Framework', 'Information Technology', 'Governance', 'Information Security'] |
Even if Time Travel Exists, I’m Not Going Back | We say we waste time, but that is impossible. We waste ourselves. — Alice Bloch
People have regrets in their lives. At the age of 50, they start wishing they can go back in time and redo their lives. After watching a TED Talk about procrastination, it had me thinking.
I tried to live in the shoes of the elderly people. I asked, “what if I can go back in time? What would I do?” It would be amusing to redo everything the second time around.
I was enthusiastic. “I would ace my examinations,” I thought. I let out an evil laugh. “I’ll be the Top 1 of our class.” It’s gonna be a great comeback. “I won’t get involved with my ex.” U-huh, that’s so brilliant.
I had fun speculating the possibilities. However, as the night went deeper, my thoughts became more pressing, too.
I opened my eyes. I projected my daydreams into reality. I asked myself again. “What if I really go back in time?” These were no happy thoughts this time. My daydreaming turned into a vague analysis.
I listed the things I would do if I go back in time. I listed about 10, but I’ll show you my top 2:
I’ll become a class valedictorian. I’ll start building my own business.
“If I do these, my life would be better than what it is now,” I thought. Recognition, more opportunities, and finances — I can get all of those. As I envision myself redoing my life, another question popped up.
“But why didn’t I do it the first time?”
I stared into blank space. Why didn’t I do it the first time? Maybe, I didn’t do it because I can’t. I lacked the knowledge back then. I was too afraid. But now, maybe I’ll pull these off.
There was a follow-up question.
“Why don’t you do it, now?”
I paused for a while. It’s funny to be interrogated by your own thoughts, but I continued. That’s right. What hinders me from doing these things now?
I can still receive academic recognition if I work for it. And my business hasn’t left off since step one.
Am I not ready? I’m getting ready. Are there obstacles? There are many. Can you do these plans today? Hmm.
There, I realized I’m also imprisoned in the trap of procrastination. How stupid am I to wish to change the past, while I can’t do any change today?
If you ever go back, don’t you think you’ll just waste it the second time? You’re procrastinating now. And you’ll be procrastinating there. Nothing will change.
It’s saddening. While procrastinators grieve on their lost time, they still continue to waste it nonetheless.
My Realization
Let’s put our efforts into what’s currently happening. There’s no need to look back so often. Build our dreams while we can still do it. Don’t blame the time nor the situation. The real change happens when we start it within ourselves. The perfect time is always now. | https://medium.com/be-unique/even-if-time-travel-exists-im-not-going-back-b40716a9e50e | ['Margarette Mathias'] | 2020-10-25 07:12:52.626000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Personal Development', 'Productivity', 'Self Improvement', 'Life'] |
How to source content with Gatsby.js | Gatsby.js is a powerful static site generator (with dynamic capabilities) which can be used to build super performant web-sites. It has a very rich plug-in functionality and is perfect for your next personal blog, product landing, portfolio page or small e-commerce app.
Sourcing content
It’s fairly evident that when you build your web-site, apart from business logic, performance, security and stylings, you care about actual content presented to an end user.
The case may be fairly simple: let’s say you have a product page with sections that need to be edited by marketing team which doesn’t want to edit those fancy h1’s and p’s in the code editor.
Another scenario may be personal-blog page which has lots of posts, with each post having its own title, content, and tons of other information that you might want to display.
Thanks to loads of plugins written by community and Gatsby maintainers, we are lucky to choose from a wide range of options to get our content on the page.
Sourcing from project folder with gatsby-source-filesystem and gatsby-markdown-remark
One of the easiest ways to grab our content is to source it directly from our project folder. We can grab assets like images, and more complicated content types like blog posts written in markdown.
Scenario 1: Access images from assets folder to display them on the page
First we need to install gatsby-source-filesystem and set it up in gatsby-config.js .
npm install gatsby-source-filesystem
In gatsby-config.js :
With the lines above we are telling Gatsby that we want to allow GraphQL to query all the insides of assets folder of our project located at the specified path .
Now that the plugin is prepared, we can actually query our assets folder with the following graphQL query ( sourceInstanceName is a filter parameter that corresponds to the name in the config above):
Note that to be able to use images returned by this query inside component rather than inside of page , we need to use StaticQuery available from Gatsby .
StaticQuery accepts the query prop where we can use our GraphQL query from above and render prop which renders whatever we feed to it that has access to data which is nothing more than a wrapper for our queried files.
If you are querying the same images but want to use them inside one of your pages you can access it directly from props.data
Scenario 2: Access one particular image to display it on the page
To access one particular image by its name, we have to adapt our GraphQL query a little bit. Otherwise we can use it in the ways described above in first scenario by using StaticQuery in component and props.data in page.
Let’s specify the absolute path to the file and use a regex to cherry pick the desired image.
Scenario 3: Access blog post written in markdown together with its frontmatter
As Gatsby is often used as a blog template, it offers a very convenient way of working with blogposts written in markdown . To access markdown posts, we first need to tweak our config a little bit so that Gatsby knows where our markdown files live.
We use gatsby-source-filesystem to achieve that:
To be able to work with markdown files in a really convenient way, we also need to set up gatsby-transformer-remark plugin. Note how we add other plugins inside of gatsby-transformer-remark like gatsby-remark-images or gatsby-remark-prismjs . Those are here so we are able to directly embed images into our markdown and highlight code chunks with prismjs , respectively.
With all of the above set up, we can now query our markdown posts with query (we can conveniently use sort to get our blog posts in chronological order and filter to be sure that we query only those markdowns which are located in the blog folder of our project):
We already know that we can now access our markdown blog posts in any page just via this.props.data.allMarkdownRemark.edges , map trough them, and display all the necessary data generated for us by plugin.
For example, we have access to frontmatter which is nothing more than JSON-like structure that we include in our markdown .
Here is a quick example:
We have included title and date, but you can feel free to add any other parameters that you want to be accessible from the query (like tags in a form of array):
Headless CMSs
Sometimes its not really convenient to change all the content types like images or blog posts in the code editor. Moreover, your final user may not be aware of how to navigate through code and may require a more straightforward solution.
Scenario 4: Access complex content model from CMS and display the contents on the page
This is where headless CMS comes into play. Imagine a scenario where you make a static product page with Gatsby and pass it to the marketing department that is responsible for copywriting and images on the page. You built it with code — they interact with a user-friendly UI that makes it easy to change any content. Awesome!
Let’s explore how we would do it with Gatsby.js!
Sourcing from Contentful
To be able to source something from Contentful you will need an account at https://www.contentful.com/. After registration you will get a simple example project that we will use for learning purposes.
For now let’s start with installing gatsby-source-contentful and adding it to our config.
npm install --save gatsby-source-contentful
In gatsby-config.js we need to add the plugin and provide our spaceId and accessToken which can both be found in the settings -> API keys of our project dashboard:
Contentful dashboard
Note that it’s not a good idea to expose your accessToken to the config file directly so it can be visible by everyone on GitHub. For training purposes, I will include it in the code for this tutorial, but try to use environment variables to protect your keys as it can be seen in the example above. If it's your first time seeing the term environment variable don't worry, you can grasp the concept from this post .
Before we move any further, I want to show you how we can resolve a little conflict coming from the fact that some Contentful files are treated as markdown by Gatsby.
Our gatsby-node.js is responsible for programmatically creating pages from our markdown posts which are situated in the blog folder. By default it uses allMarkdownRemark query, which would source also Contentful markdown which we don't need. Let's adapt our query to source only those files which are located in our project folder:
In gatsby-node.js we have added filter and set it to /blog/ :
Now we are ready to source our content from Contentful. In a new page named contentful.js we first want to query our assets that Contentful created for us. At the time, we have one particular interesting content type called Course which has all the necessary items for us to train.
Content type — Course
It is straightforward to query Contentful assets with GraphQL, and all we need to do to get all the entries that are of type Course is to run the allContentfulCourse query.
You may have already guessed that we can query yourCustomType of content with allContentfulYourCustomType . Do note how we filter our courses on a language basis, otherwise we would get duplicates of every course in each language specified in Contentful. This is quite specific to this case, because every course has a translation:
From exploring our content on Contentful, we can see that each Course has a title, duration, short description and image. We have included those in our query and now can access them in our component via this.props.data .
Content model of Course
Recap
In this small tutorial, you have learned several ways of sourcing different content types in Gatsby. You’ve also learned how to combine them in a single project, avoiding possible sourcing conflicts by precisely specifying what we want to query from what source.
Thanks for reading! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this post as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it! If you have any questions or want to bring up a discussion don’t hesitate to reach out to me on twitter. I would be happy if you hit that follow button so you don’t miss any future posts that I will release 😄
As always you can find the code for this tutorial here on github | https://medium.com/free-code-camp/how-to-source-content-with-gatsby-js-c220dde97e7 | ['Dimitri Ivashchuk'] | 2019-01-22 18:22:08.363000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Tech', 'Gatsbyjs', 'React', 'Web Development'] |
Opening the Heart | There are so many beautiful choices to assist opening the heart. And of special significance, those spontaneous openings from what feels like an alchemical reaction. They come as nourishment, like nitrogen to a forest floor. This sensation most often occurs for me in nature or with certain people, sounds or crystals. Other assists I enjoy are meditations, scents, visuals, mudras and various deities. | https://medium.com/@vedaprajvalan/opening-the-heart-52148fc88ac0 | ['Veda Prajvalan'] | 2020-12-20 07:22:59.821000+00:00 | ['Beauty', 'Opening The Heart', 'Heart Chakra', 'Love', 'Connection'] |
Imagination-The body’s light-house | What exactly is an imagination? Is it your sub-conscious that fantasizes of the future? Is it a cell in your mind that plays dreams when you sleep at night? Is it the reason behind fiction? And lastly to us spoiled homo-sapians (human beings) who have everything at their disposal… why is it even important? The truth is science has never claimed imagination as a biological feature of the human body, nor is it a skill a business has in under job specifications. It is the magical ability we mentally possess to form images, narratives and other hypothetical visuals in our mind. We utilize our memory in such a way that we create scenarios mentally such as of the future which are yet to happen. It is thanks to our imagination that we create new ideas and theorise about things, because of our tendancies of being a curious cat.... The wonders of human nature.
I have sometimes referred to whatever imagination is as a true biological feature, because when you think about it your muscles contract and expand whenever your brain sends the command since you have full control. It’s like when we pull some sort of light switch in our body, our mind is lit up in a whole new world where unicorns are real, cars fly, foods convincing you not to eat them and many more. But if i pull you back down on earth you might just be imagining your exam results and how shocked you are either giving yourself a pat on the back or a smack to your cheek. Especially an empty mind I find is the best playground for some interesting thoughts, because you can spend hours wandering in the ramblings of your mind whilst opening a locked door each time.
We always use the term “vivid imagination”, but the truth is that everyone on earth has a vivid imagination, whoever you are and whichever place in the world you live in…. your imagination is a powerful tool. It brings us onto the topic of what practicality imagination serves. Truly great things can be can be invented in this modern world via our imagination if we rule out the stigma that an imagination is only responsible for fictional aspects our minds can produce and not be implemented. An imagination is the field for your ideas, have fun with it and use it wisely, your mind will not disappoint I can assure you that. | https://medium.com/@treatmehappy/imagination-the-bodys-light-house-5adcaabd6ff3 | [] | 2020-12-16 11:22:02.829000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'English Language', 'Mental Health', 'Humour', 'Thoughts And Ideas'] |
Don’t Beat Yourself Up | I remember dreaming about the kind of father I would be when I had kids. You know, basically perfect. I would be just fun enough to be a cool dad, but strict enough to keep my kids in line. There were plenty of visions of front-porch conversations where I distilled pure wisdom upon them. Of course, they would hang on every word.
Well, you get the picture. I was going to have this dad thing in the bag.
I am here to tell you I was dead wrong.
I am the father of four beautiful children. I have a nine-year-old (she’s my only girl), a five-year-old, a two-year-old, and a nine-month-old. They have given me much needed perspective.
To be honest, there are a lot of days my wife and I are just trying to survive until bedtime. Don’t get me wrong, we are doing the best we can and parenting with everything we are. But that’s just the point. We are not enough. Our kids definitely need us, but they need us to point them beyond ourselves. They need us to point them to God.
So there, I said it. I am not the dad I thought I would be. I am a disappointment to myself. But over time I have learned some things to remember when I feel like beating myself up about it. I hope they help you too.
1. Let them see you fail
Our children learn the most from us when they see how we respond to our own struggles. It teaches them how to respond to theirs. When you do something wrong, admit it, and ask forgiveness. You will model for them more than a thousand front porch conversations could ever accomplish.
When you are weak, don’t be afraid for them to see it. Let them see how you fight through it.
Instead of acting like you’re not tired, show them what it is that gets you out of bed despite how tired you are.
When they grow up they will inevitably have times of weakness. You don’t want them to think there is something wrong with them. You want them to know that the strength of a man is how he is able to get through it.
2. Point them to the source
God is who they really need. Your job is to help them see it. Let them see you pray. Pray with them and for them. Talk to them about your own need for Him.
So you are struggling today. Maybe you said or did some things you’re not happy about. Maybe the kids pushed one too many buttons. Instead of viewing yourself as a total failure, view it as an opportunity. You now get to sit down with your children and explain to them,
Even Daddy makes mistakes, but God is always there to forgive us when we ask Him.
3. Do everything you can, then rest
You are just a man. God is sovereign. Ultimately, He will do for your children what you cannot. He is not asking for perfection, but faithfulness.
My aspirations have changed a bit since having kids. I now consider it a successful day when I can say,
God, I did the best I could today. They are in Your hands. Amen.
That is so freeing, isn’t it? It shouldn’t make us lazy, but it gives us the space to breathe. It pulls the burden off of us so we can parent with joy.
Conclusion
So you and I are not the dads we thought we would be. But that’s ok. Our kids need to see us fail. They need to see us running to the source. They need to be entrusted to the hands of God. | https://medium.com/thedadvault/dont-beat-yourself-up-50a4c9065b22 | ['Brad Creech'] | 2020-12-24 13:22:46.902000+00:00 | ['Disappointment', 'Life Lessons', 'Parenting', 'Fatherhood', 'Personal Development'] |
When Covid first started to become very real to me, sometime in late February, I began my most… | When Covid first started to become very real to me, sometime in late February, I began my most recent of my many life transformations. I would guess that major events in our lives, no matter how major or insignificant they seem to the outside world, are markers in our own personal lifes timeline.
The Covid 19 pandemic started off to me as something far away, both physically because it was in China and emotionally because its distance gave me a false sense of security that it would not effect me and my family.
Only a few weeks into March and I began to start to notice that I was becoming more and more alert and aware of its potential devistation. As soon as the threat became very real, and our daily lives were suddenly turned upside down I felt my world starting to spin out of my “control”.
Like most people who have anxiety, control is something that we are always seeking, not necessarly for controls sake, but to be able to rest easy “knowing everything will be alright”. Of course knowing anything 100% in life is chasing a phantom and the faster my world felt like it was spinning the less control I felt I had. Having both of my boys, ages 4 and 7 at the time, at home everyday every second with no escape was only the beginning of what was soon to change.
My sleep began to deteriorate and my body started to tense up, so much so that I ended up throwing my back and neck out of alignment, and no sitting position or sleeping position for that matter was physically painless. I ended up getting multiple pain medications prescribed to me to loosen up my neck and back but by then a month and a half had passed and I was sleeping less and less.
I went through 4 different types of sleeping pills, none of them could keep me asleep once I awoke, which was usually at 3am to pee. I stopped drinking water past 7pm in an effort to stop from having to wake up in the middle of the night, but of course that didnt help.
I started to see a therapist around this time as I knew that the thoughts that were flying through my mind were that of a tired man who was scared shitless and didnt know what was happening around him. I had done some work on my thoughts and how to seperate them from what was real, but I wasnt thinking clearly enough to prop myself up and having a person, besides my wife who was living in this same world, help me was crucial.
Up until that point, I was relying heavily on my cousin who is a Doctor and my best friend Matt Aprile to help re-assure me. The truth is that the less you seek assurance the more you will be assured, thats the common theme I guess in all of this as you will see. The more I resisted, the more my anxiety persisted. I started to have fleeting thoughts of some crazy things Im embarrassed to write, things from being homicidal, sucidal, secretly gay, having a tumor or incurable disease to fear of eventually becoming a mad man after the meds “change me”
I looked up some of my notecards from my first episode in 2008, and many of those thoughts were the same, my main fear was losing control. But why? Im still trying to figure that out.
By this time it was mid May and the pandemic was showing no signs of slowing down, at least to me and the data I was looking at. My brother and several of my friends thought and still think that the majority of this is either blown out of proportion or a planned pandemic to further the economic divide, take away our rights and reduce the population. Im usually ok with conspiracies, I find many of them facinating and some even plausible, but this was too much for me to phathom with all the uncertainty I was already and still am feeling.
Once my doctor and I figured out a sleeping pill that worked, we began to slowly look at my anxiety medication and if it was the right one for me. You see, for all these years I had been on Lexapro at 10mg since my last major anxiety episode which occured months before my marriage. I was faced with the truth of having never really put the work in to change the thought patterns and behaviours that negatively fed my anxious mind. I took the meds and still had anxious bouts over those ten years, and when the pandemic hit, I spilled over. So no better time to force change than when the change is forced upon you I guess.
Oh, I forgot to mention, that sometime within those early months in March, when I was on all those pain meds and not sleeping, I began to have rigning in in ears, and much like this story I noticed it and it bothered me, but handling my lack of sleep and anxiety was more important than the rigning which I felt was eventually, and hopefully going to go away.
While much of the world I followed on Instagram and other social media outlets, showed people trying to learn new recipes or a new dance, I was feeling myself slipping away, while trying to hide it from my children.
More to come, May through December | https://medium.com/@kareemomary/when-covid-first-started-to-become-very-real-to-me-sometime-in-late-february-i-began-my-most-5bc8b5e6c190 | ['Kareem Omary'] | 2020-12-23 19:49:55.774000+00:00 | ['Therapy', 'Covid 19', 'Fatherhood', 'Anxiety'] |
Why We Shouldn’t Compare Our Children | Recently, my oldest Dylan, who is 13, said to me. “Mum, you are a really good mum, you know. Some of my friend’s parents compare them to other kids, and you never do that. You love me for who I am and don’t make me feel inadequate. That makes me happy.”
I can’t tell you how good it felt to hear that from him. Like most parents, I am constantly questioning if I am a good enough and hearing him say this gave me some reassurance that I am doing a good job. After all the main goal we have as parents are for our children to be happy, well-rounded individuals.
Whether we like to admit it or not, from day dot, we all start to compare our children to other children. Not necessarily in a braggy way but from a place of concern that our child is developing as they should, and they aren’t falling behind. We are hardwired to push our kids to compete. Back in the caveman days, we lived in a dog eat dog world, and our children had to be strong to survive. To survive, you had to acquire skills, so we compare for reassurance. Normal as it is, comparing can cause unneeded stress.
I made friends with another mum at one of the mum and baby groups whose little boy was the same age as my youngest, Isaac. We would meet up a few times a week and as time went on and our boys grew Isaac was hitting milestones before her son. As a result, she became increasingly concerned that her baby had developmental issues, and every time I saw her, she would be comparing the two of them and stressing out. Admittedly, a part of me was smug that my child was doing everything before hers. But, as a mother, I also felt her pain and was always reassuring her. By the time they reached 18 months, her little boy had caught up and was hitting milestones that Isaac hadn’t hit yet. All her worries had been for no reason. Children just develop and different rates.
When I started going to mum and baby groups with Isaac, I noticed very early on that talk would more often than not turn to how a baby was developing. Maybe it was just an update, or perhaps it would be a question on milestones not being reached by a certain age. But, mixed in with the praises and congratulations, there was quite often a smug tone.
“My son started crawling last week, how old is yours again? “
“Is he walking yet? My son is the same age and started walking a few months ago.”
“Aww, that’s great! My daughter was already rolling over at this age! “
I am not saying there is anything wrong with bragging about how well your child is doing. They are our pride and joy and representations of ourselves, and of course, we all want to believe that we have created something wonderful but, there’s a massive difference between being proud and eager to tell others and just being a braggy jerk.
We have all come across the smug mum who always must do one better than you and whose child is far more advanced than yours. She smiles and quietly judges you and makes little back-handed comments that baffle, belittle or completely infuriate you. And we all have smug moments when our child does something that another child of similar age hasn’t managed to do yet. There’s no getting away it from but avoid one-upmanship at all costs. If another parent tells you a story about how their child could count to ten at six months old and was walking by seven months, it isn’t your cue to tell them how your kid could count twenty by the same age and overshadow their child’s achievements.
All children develop at different rates; research shows that as long as your child is reaching milestones within the normal range, how quickly they reach them has no bearing on their later skills. So, if your 18-month-old is only saying one or two words while your friend’s same-age child is saying dozens, it doesn’t mean your child won’t eventually talk your head off. Obviously, if you are worried about their development, go and chat to your doctor or the health visitor and they will be able to help.
We all want to tell the world that our child is something special, and so we should! But the trick is to find balance. There’s a difference between being proud of their accomplishments and talking the kids up to the point everyone thinks you’re full of crap.
As they grow up, bragging about your kids to other people, especially when they can hear you, might cause them to feel like they can never make a mistake. They might be afraid of disappointing you.
So, be proud of your children and celebrate their accomplishments but if you’re going to brag about your child, I think it’s important to do it in ways that highlight our child’s successes rather than our success as a parent by focusing on their efforts not necessarily what they have accomplished.
read more articles on the first time mama blog | https://medium.com/first-time-mama/why-we-shouldnt-compare-our-children-18a7deef0c74 | ['First Time Mama'] | 2019-12-11 07:46:01.479000+00:00 | ['Success', 'Children', 'Parenting Advice', 'Childhood', 'Parents'] |
Closing Wikipedia’s Gender Gap | By now, it’s second nature. When you come across an unfamiliar name, you search for it online. Google’s algorithm typically includes the relevant Wikipedia pages near the top of its search results. But what happens when that person doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry? How does that change your perception of their importance?
For Wikipedia editors like Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, this issue of online visibility — or lack thereof — is closely tied to the number of biographical articles about women on Wikipedia. Back in 2014, Stephenson-Goodknight co-founded the Women in Red movement with a mission to improve the encyclopedia’s coverage of women’s biographies, works by women, and women’s issues. For her efforts, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales presented Stephenson-Goodknight with the 2016 award for Co-Wikipedian of the Year.
As we near the end of Women’s History Month, it’s worth reflecting how Stephenson-Goodknight and her colleagues have affected the content and the culture of the fifth most visited website in the world.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Stephenson-Goodknight by phone. This interview has been edited and condensed.
How did you get started editing Wikipedia?
Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight: On June 4, 2007, I was in San Francisco, working out of my son Sean’s apartment. I was telecommuting that day instead of being in my office. In the afternoon, I took a break and was searching for things on Wikipedia. I tried to find an article regarding Book League of America, a publisher whose books I collect. But I couldn’t find it. At first, I thought that maybe I misspelled it or the capitalization was wrong, but none of these seemed to be the problem. I thought to myself, “Wow, there’s no article on this subject. How is that possible?”
Here it was, 2007, and I thought there was an article about everything on Wikipedia. Then I remembered that Sean had edited Wikipedia while he was in the Peace Corps. I thought, “If Sean can figure this out, I bet I can, too.” So, I created a username and started the article on Book League of America, and it still exists today.
Once you started editing Wikipedia as a hobby, how long did it take before you were hooked?
I would say that pretty much I was hooked immediately… like I created seven articles that first month. I made my 500th edit within two and half months, including starting the article Arctic Shrinkage (renamed Climate Change in the Arctic), which is by far the most heavily edited and controversial article I ever created. Now it’s 2019, and I’ve made more than 150,000 edits and contributed to more than 1,300 articles featured in the “Did You Know…” section of Wikipedia’s main page. One of my all-time favorite articles would probably be Deolinda Rodrigues Francisco de Almeida, a writer from Angola who corresponded with Martin Luther King Jr.
What is a “red link,” and what’s the connection with the gender gap on Wikipedia?
On Wikipedia, a red link is a hyperlink to an article that does not currently exist. Back in 2014, I met with a group of experienced Wikipedia editors in Washington, D.C., where they challenged us to take action on ideas we had not yet pursued. One idea I had was a WikiProject dedicated to women writers who were “red links,” who did not yet have articles, and I started that project. We now have more than 33,000 articles within our scope: women writers and their works.
“When women were excluded from a profession, we can’t make up for that today.”
In the following year, I was approached by Roger Bamkin, a professor in Britain. He suggested that we collaborate on a conference presentation regarding the content gender gap — how few of Wikipedia’s biographies are about women. Our presentation in July 2015 in Mexico City evolved into WikiProject Women in Red, named after Wikipedia’s “red links,” which are the missing articles.
To our surprise, the idea really took off, and people began writing more articles about women. We use a bot to collect and post our metrics. Five years ago, only about 15 percent of the English-language Wikipedia biographies were about women. Now the number is closer to 17.74 percent. And the project is now active in 13 different language versions, not just English.
That’s substantial progress, but the gap nevertheless seems to be quite pronounced. What are the historical drivers of the gender gap?
There are multiple different parts to this. First, if women were not able to participate in various professions until a certain period of time, there is no article to write. Five hundred years ago, there were almost no women politicians, so there won’t be articles about women politicians from that period, and the same applies to military officers or positions of leadership in various religions. When women were excluded from a profession, we can’t make up for that today.
But when there were women poets, musicians, educators, scientists, and activists in the historical record, they should be included in Wikipedia. This is knowledge equity. The issue is that once women become involved in various occupations, they often received less coverage in written publications than their male counterparts. For example, in STEM occupations, when women and men worked side by side with each other for years, there can be an issue of who was credited for what was accomplished: “He who writes the history books wins.”
Gender bias on Wikipedia received media attention last year when Donna Strickland won the Nobel Prize for Physics and — at the time of her award — did not have a Wikipedia page. Would you say she should have had a Wikipedia entry earlier?
Absolutely. And it wasn’t for lack of trying. Someone created a Wikipedia page for Donna Strickland before she won the Nobel Prize, but the volunteers in the Articles for Creation community decided that it did not meet the notability requirements to become an article on Wikipedia, because it lacked a sufficient number of third-party references. So, the article did not get published until after she received her Nobel.
What do you see as the future for Wikipedia?
I would say that we are still in our infancy, and that’s because I take a very long view for the Wikimedia movement. I don’t think in terms of five years, 15 years, 55 years. I think in terms of 155 years, 555 years.
Could you expand on that? What is your 555-year vision for Wikipedia?
A long time ago, I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation science-fiction series, in which the character Hari Seldon is a psychohistorian. Hari crunched large data sets in order to predict far into the future. Using these probabilities, he predicted that humanity was doomed and that there would be tens of thousands of years of chaos. But if he made certain changes, then those dark ages would last only a thousand years.
One of the things Hari did to reduce the period of chaos was develop a planet in a distant galaxy that was populated by scientists and their families to work on the Encyclopedia Galactica, which would be the sum of all human knowledge.
I see this as a sort of parallel universe, so much so that I used to say at conferences that I’m wearing an invisible bracelet that said “WWHSD?,” which stood for “What Would Hari Seldon Do?” Eventually, my co-Wikipedian of the year, Emily Temple-Wood, gave me an actual bracelet with those letters, so my bracelet is no longer invisible.
How does this type of long-term thinking apply to the issue of gender equity specifically?
It connects to both our vision and our strategy. Once Wikidata became part of our lives, I could see a parallel — large data sets can be a source for good for mankind. When we think about gender equity, I believe it’s a matter of when we will see a more equitable encyclopedia. And I’m not just talking about English-language Wikipedia… there are 300 other language versions. I am pretty sure that we will not be there in 15 years, but maybe in 55 years, and certainly 555 years from now I project that there will be gender equity — not necessarily in the sense that 50 percent of the biographies will be about women, but we will feel we will have met a standard of equity. That presents a question: If we will be there in 555 years for sure, what can we do now to shorten the time span? What can we do now versus postponing change for another point in time?
I suppose the future-state incarnation of Wikipedia might even be called ‘Encyclopedia Galactica.’ Could you describe a day in the life of Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight?
I edit Wikipedia in the morning, or I edit it at night. It’s like anytime you have a passion for something—you just make the time. I’ve been a visiting scholar for Northeastern University’s Women Writers Project since March 2017, so mostly I concentrate on creating articles within that scope, pre-20th-century women writers and their works. I do a lot of coordination tasks for Women in Red, and there are endless tasks and meetings associated with my membership in various organizations or committee work.
I have a great family and eclectic friends, and I enjoy spending time with them. I love traveling, and I do a lot of that. I live a half-mile down a gravel road in the Sierra Nevada foothills, so nature is right outside my door. There’s a group of Canadian geese who live in my neighborhood six months each year, and I am so happy when I see them on my walks. What else? Every September, my husband and I participate in the Marching Presidents and First Ladies procession in our town’s Constitution Day Parade. I portray Helen Taft.
You spend a lot of time doing volunteer work for Wikipedia. Are there any perks?
First of all, it doesn’t have to be a lot of work. We are all volunteers, so you do as much or as little as you want. No deadlines. No clocking in. No pressure. I’m retired from my career in the health care industry. Now that I’m in my sixties, with grown sons and some grandkids, I think I’m setting a good example that you can still do cool things — meaningful things — later in life, and sometimes you even get recognition for it. But truly, I don’t do it for that reason. I edit Wikipedia because it makes me happy to do so. Go figure.
In 2016, Women in Red and I were shortlisted for the GEM-TECH award by the ITU/United Nations Women. There were more than 300 entries for that award, so being in the top five really made me proud. In May 2018, I was knighted by the Republic of Serbia, in part because of my work on Wikipedia, and partly because I’ve promoted the memory of my grandfather, a Serbian patriot of bygone times. I suspected there would be a sword involved when I was knighted, but instead someone read a paragraph about accomplishments, and then the press took a lot of photos of us with the foreign minister. It was an awesome experience and such an honor. But no sword!
And that’s why you’re now Dame Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight. I expect some readers would be interested in hearing how they might become more involved with Wikipedia or Women in Red.
Start anywhere. Many articles on Wikipedia, especially the shorter ones, could use a bit of improvement. Add a sentence, fix the punctuation, upload a photo. Within the scope of Women in Red — women’s biographies, women’s works, women’s issues—we’ve created more than 300 lists of missing articles. You could do some research on one of these women and try writing an article! There are many in-person edit-a-thon events where you can actually meet other editors, and you might like that instead of editing Wikipedia from your home computer.
Once you start, I hope you stick with it. If you have a negative experience, please don’t give up! There are communities on Wikipedia that can show you the ropes and help you out. We were all new once. I would say it’s worth it if you persevere. | https://onezero.medium.com/meet-the-woman-pushing-for-more-gender-diversity-on-wikipedia-3aea131484f6 | ['Stephen Harrison'] | 2019-03-27 13:54:11.803000+00:00 | ['Women', 'Wikimedia', 'Industry', 'Wikipedia', 'Gender Gap'] |
In Case Of A Cheque, Wait For It To Reflect in your Account Before Transferring Possession. | Photo by Alistair MacRobert on Unsplash
In Case Of A Cheque, Wait For It To Reflect in your Account Before Transferring Possession.
My fiancé and I were running broke, so he decided to sell his desktop computer that he had brought from America. This could buy us more time living together before we figure out a source of income. The only other option for him, was to go back to America. The honey pot was running low. Since we were scraping off the bottom of the jar, selling assets was our saving grace, or so we thought it would be.
Being a custom built desktop, this was going to fetch us a good amount of money, so we posted it on one of the Kenyan online market platforms using my details. The next morning after posting it, we received a message from a guy called Ali. In retrospect, I’m thinking the con man went online and used a another person’s information to lure us in as a genuine buyer, smart right? Or stupid?
Back to the story, so Ali was quite the chatty guy, he did not even try to negotiate the price down, which is something we Kenyans do if given the opportunity. The price set for this desktop was quite high considering the Kenyan market value for it.
Ali the buyer explicitly stated that he was a “big guy” (either famous or rich). Conversations between him and my partner had a lot of ha-has at the end of every text. I hated that. I wanted this to be a simple business transaction with no ha-has or emojis. I did inform my fiancé that the conversation was becoming too friendly, hence causing me discomfort. I guess now he knows that someone can seem like a nice person and turn out to be a fraud, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Being the ‘big guy’ he is, Ali told my partner that we can proceed to finalize the deal by arranging how the desktop was to reach him. He told us that he was going to inform his bank to draw a banker’s cheque. We were to meet in an hour with his driver… I now know this was a lot of nonsense we were being sold on.
We were being rushed so much. He gave us an hour to get ready and choose a location to meet at. I suggested my bank at the local mall. That way, we could deposit the cheque first before transferring ownership of the computer to them.
A few days after the trade, I checked my bank and noticed that the money was not there. I contacted them and they informed me the cheque was not paid.I was perplexed. How was this possible?
We did not consider that a banker’s cheque could default, but it did. This left us borrowing money from friends and family to meet our bare minimum of needs. The deadline for paying rent was due and we were not sure where the money was going to come from.
Receipt of the message from the bank stating that the cheque was unpaid and to liaise with the issuer drained the blood from my face. On informing the buyer on WhatsApp, which was the platform he used to communicate with us, he blocked us immediately. That was it! | https://medium.com/@smwste/in-case-of-a-cheque-wait-for-it-to-reflect-in-your-account-before-transferring-possession-64e060c356ce | ['Mary Stella'] | 2020-12-26 10:23:12.269000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Fraud', 'Storyofmylife', 'Storytelling', 'Lessons Learned'] |
Help! I’m dating the daughter of a cartel boss! | Ooh baby, you should have seen this chick! Drop-dead gorgeous, perfect blonde hair, pretty smile, rockin’ body! And legs?! Yep, those too. I moved to London a while ago and since arriving the ladies have been coming like Horde Mode on Gears of War, just when you manage to amputate the last clingy one and you think you’re free, another one runs at you trying to slob your knob. But there was something different about this girl. I met her when I was walking along in the park one day. She was scurrying over with glasses on and a bundle of college textbooks in her arms and, due to her scatterbrain nature wasn’t looking where she was going and bumped into me. Luckily I was a gent and offered to help this nerdy girl pick her books up, but then her glasses fell off and her hair came loose and it turned out this nerd wasn’t a nerd but actually a stone-cold babe, score! We got to talking, bit of flirting, you know how the ladykiller does it. Eventually I had to go so I asked for her number and she wilfully obliged: 07987 231890. (If you need a visual aid, here is a picture of Cara Delevingne)
Let’s say she looks like this
After a few texts we agreed to meet. A lovely coffee date, I’ll spare you the details of our sordid encounter, suffice to say it was classic stuff from me, bit of “Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?” type patter. It all went swimmingly, we shared a kiss as we walked along the pier, got some ice cream and one date quickly led to another, and another, and yet one more after that. After some time we got close enough that she asked me to meet her family. I say “family”, I learned that really she doesn’t have much of a family as in fact her mother died when she was young before she birthed any more children. This left her and her dad alone with each other. I listened to her telling me this (“Aw, nooo… That’s terrible… I’m so sorry”) and agreed to meet her at her family home the next weekend.
I arrived that Saturday a bit nervous, I was trepidatious walking up to the door, I barely even registered how nice their house was, one might even call it a mansion, it looked like the kind of place some Mexican drug lord would have owned, wondering how her father afforded such a swanky pad, I knocked on the door, trying to assure myself that I was a perfectly nice that no reasonable father could have a problem with.
(If you are reading this story to your children, do a cartoonish Mexican accent for this next bit) Hey ese… You the guy that’s been seeing my daughter, huh hombre?
I was dumbfounded, this man was a Danny Trejo lookalike in a Tony Montana outfit. This was especially weird because his daughter was very white and blonde. He had appeared clutching a large knife and smoking a cigar, the perfect vision of a Mexican drug lord. I sheepishly stepped forward and reached out a firm, yet trembling hand, for a handshake, “So, what do you do, sir? How do you earn your keep?”
Only three gringos are ever gonna touch my daughter, hombre: The first one was the doctor when she was born and the last one’ll be the tailor of the dress she wears to the funeral of whichever poor white boy was the middle one.
This was a hell of an introduction, but I knew that how I established myself now would dictate our relationship for as long as I was seeing his daughter. I steeled myself and bit back “Hey listen ‘homes’, I’m dating your daughter whether you like it or not, so if you’ve got a problem with that, you can fuck right off back across the border!” I immediately felt a thump on the back of my head and hit the dirt.
I awoke several days later in a daze. Looking around I could see I was a garbage barge. With aching joints and feeling extremely rough I hoisted myself up and started searching for any members of staff on hand to assist me. This was a relatively small barge so I was in line of sight of one immediately. So I sauntered up to this man casually, trying to seem like I pretty much knew what was going on, I just needed it confirmed. “Say fellow, it’s just slipped my mind, would you remind me where this ship is going and where we are?” He gave me a bit of a snooty look as if he was wondering how I got onto this garbage barge without knowing where it was going, bit rude. He then sighed and said “Think we’re somewhere near the Maldives, mate. And we’re about 12 hours away from arriving at the big volcano in the sea where politicians burn all their incriminating files, so we’re gonna drive straight into that and burn up too obviously, you should really know this.”
This was not what I wanted to hear, nevertheless I said “Ah yeah, course it is, I did know I just couldn’t remember exactly, cheers mate.” And I walked away with a thumbs up. Fortunately, while I was awaiting this grim fate I stumbled upon Jacob Rees-Mogg’s laptop and, once I had gotten past all the child porn pop-ups, began spinning this epic yarn to relay to you, friend. As this black box of a laptop runs out of battery life, I plead with you: Heed this warning, do not let the same thing happen to you, before you go on a date with any girl in the future, ask her straight up “Are you the daughter of a cartel boss?”… Now I think about it, I don’t know if that’s what he actually was, never got that confirmed, I just assumed. | https://medium.com/@callumrg21/help-im-dating-the-daughter-of-a-cartel-boss-643c8d6a1d52 | ['Callum Gordon'] | 2021-09-07 15:52:12.186000+00:00 | ['Drugs', 'Women', 'Shipping', 'Girls', 'Mexico'] |
The View Out My Window Is My Greatest Pleasure | The View Out My Window Is My Greatest Pleasure
The image you see above is the view outside my bedroom window at 4:16pm Sunday evening. If this photo had been taken at 6:16pm (or even — I’ll be generous — 5:16pm) I’d say “what a beautiful winter sunset!” Instead, the vista gave me a strange urge to lean far enough into the window that I sort of just rolled out, as if rolling off of a bed. (I do have a small balcony, but it’s designed for flowerpots, so this manuever is purely hypothetical.) What I’m saying is that the view made me sleepy. It made me want to knock off work call it a day. Unfortunately my working day was nowhere near over.
I couldn’t really lie down on my bed because my bedroom is also my office and my bed is a wall bed. Most days, I dutifully put the bed up into its cabinet, an only slightly more strenuous version of making the bed. I do this so there’s space to pull my desk away from the opposite wall and set it next to the window. (All cables and cords are arranged to make this a smooth transition.)
In the pandemic, I spend nearly all of my time at my desk. There’s not really anywhere else to go, since my sofa, is petite and mostly decorative and I don’t have a dining table. (As you may have gathered by now, the tradeoff for my view is that my apartment is quite small.) This means that my waking life is essentially a toggle between two views: the computer screen and the real life cityscape behind my window pane.
Recently the thought came to me that the view from this window may in fact be my favorite thing in the world. I love this view so much that if someone offered me a larger apartment for less money chances are I wouldn’t take it. I love this view so much that even though I’ve been threatening to leave New York for the last four years I still haven’t left.
I know there are people who might find this love pronouncement profoundly depressing. A view is your favorite thing? What about loved ones? What about ice cream? What about that giant, drooling dog you’re always going on about? Fair enough, but people, pets and fatty foods can be an encumbrance. They can get in your way. A view, despite being in your face, is always gently off to the side. It’s not a fixed entity, of course, since it changes with the times of day and seasons of the year. But it’s reliable. It never blindsides you. It never messes up your schedule. I adore my dog, but he chews the rugs and gets me up in the middle of the night when he has a bathroom emergency. My view would never do that. My view is here to serve. That is to say it’s here to soothe. And soothing is a service these days, let’s face it.
Which brings me back to the 4:16pm sunset. For lack of a more eloquent way of putting it, this is what I have to say about the sun going down at that hour: you’ve got to me kidding me. Yes, it’s like this every year. No, there’s nothing unusual about standing by helplessly as your afternoon becomes muffled by darkness and you’re counting the hours until it becomes an acceptable time to go to bed. But this year, I surely needn’t tell you, is different. This year, the views out our windows — if we are lucky enough to have windows with views — are pretty close to all we’ve got. They are what we look now at instead of our social calendars, instead of a friend across a bar table, instead of just about anyone’s unmasked face. When they go dark, we’re left looking at our own reflections in the glass.
I feel obliged to say that my view does not disappear altogether at night. The river goes dark and the barges disappear along with it. But the dabs of light from nearby apartment buildings bring out the voyeuristic storyteller in me. If I squint through the tree tops I might catch the shadow of someone passing by her window. Or maybe she’s standing there squinting back at me. In normal times, either of us might be out at a party or at dinner. We might on that plane that’s blinking overhead as it descends, half-empty, into LaGuardia. But for now we’re left gazing through glass into mostly blackness, which would be okay if it were even yet five pm.
But it’s not even 4:30 and we’re still weeks away from the winter solstice. There will be fourteen darker days to come before the sunset begins to inch its way backwards. There will be some unknown number of months to come before we can begin inching our way back into our lives. Until then, it’s just me and my view and the problem of having nowhere to lie down during the day because my bed is tucked away in a cabinet and my sofa is so dainty that not even the dog can lie on it without falling off.
Maybe that explains the occasional urge to float out the window, to collapse into my view as if it were a loved one, ice cream and my dog rolled into one. And maybe that’s why I really don’t appreciate the 4:16 sundown. It’s far too early to go to bed. My desk cannot be moved from its window seat until 9pm at least. My view will not return until 6am or so the next morning. Until then, all I can do is look out at the tiny glowing squares of distant windows and imagine the lives of the people inside. I imagine calling out to them in the night, though there’s only one thing I can think of to say. I see you. | https://medium.com/@meghandaum/the-view-out-my-window-is-my-greatest-pleasure-74db604a3a52 | ['Meghan Daum'] | 2020-12-10 00:35:13.426000+00:00 | ['Pandemic', 'New York City', 'Winter Solstice'] |
The Sting (2018) — The Tale of The Dark Web | Okay. We want to do a remake of The Sting, but set it in a modern age.
So the plot could go like this … we are the police — let’s set it in The Netherlands and get great views of canals and boats. Now we aim to target illegal betting, so we set up a sting.
We find the King-Pin, who runs the major illegal betting shop in the major city (let’s say it’s Amsterdam), and then rather than arrest him, we aim to shut down his operation. Before this, we will take-over his main competitor in the city, and then they will tell us everything about their operation and give us their keys to the operation.
We then run their illegal better system (but change all the telephone numbers and all the back-end functions). Next we pounce on King Pin who tells us everything and we shut down his operation. After this, we watch all the bookies and their customers move into our operation, and each time they make a bet, we arrest them.
And just to make sure we catch all of them, we ask them to send us a picture of themselves outside their home.
Far fetched?
Well, replace betting for drug dealing, and a city for the Dark Web, and you have the Dutch Police Sting … read on …
Hansa
The Dark Web has traded fairly free from the prying eyes of law enforcement, mainly because it is difficult to find out where the servers are actually running (as the route to a destination is hidden, along with all the details of the communication). But the Dutch police managed to take-over one of the sites: Hansa. Also part of their plans was a take-down of AlphaBay, and where many users moved to Hansa Market. This saw an eight-fold increase in users.
The start of the take-over happened when, in 2016, a company named Bitdefender told the Dutch Police that Hansa’s servers were operating in the Netherlands. Like AlphaBay, Hansa sold drugs, credit card details, and many other criminal related activities. It also traded with Bitcoins, in order to hide transactions from law enforcement.
The Netherlands National High Tech Crime Unit then took an image of the server and were able to control the administration pages. They also found the chat logs and details of two German nationals who were running the site. These two individuals were well-known to the German police for criminal activities.
The people running the site found out that they were being investigated, so they moved the servers to Lithuania and shut down the Dutch servers. The payment for the servers was then paid through the Bitcoin account that they had been using in the Netherlands, and thus the police were able to trace them. After the police tapped into the communications of the network and found out details of the four administrators and their login details for the chat system.
Then … the sting continues to develop … and where the FBI had found out that Alphabay was hosted in the Netherlands, and where police hatched a plan to close down Alphabay and get dealers and customers to move to Hansa, and then monitor usage (and where the Dutch police would control of the site).
The administrators of Hansa were then arrested on 20 June 2017 and they handed over their login details, and where the police could take over the site and run it. At this point, the servers were now back in the jurisdiction of the Dutch police. They copied the whole site and created a new Bitcoin wallet, and with a downtime of only three minutes. Then, after modifying details for deliveries, they watched the site being used for drug dealing.
Every transaction has then tracked, and EUROPOL sent out offices to intercept the packages and make arrests. Along with this all of the business details and contacts were captured, along with the addition some code which revealed the actual IP address of the buyer and seller. To capture even more, they sent out a message to dealers to resend the image of their “products” as they had had a crash on one of their drives. The images came back often containing the metadata in the image, and where the police could find out their actual location (note the image below is just a demonstration of examining the location information from an image).
So the sting moved into top gear on 4 July 2017, and where Alphabay was shut down and which drove many servers to Hansa. Overall the Dutch police seized over 2,500 Bitcoins and recorded 26,000 transactions, and eventually showed this message:
AlphaBay
AlphaBay had become a bazaar for buying and selling of illegal contraband, including drugs, personal IDs, and weapons, and where vendors can set-up shops and trade:
It had, at its peak, over 200,000 users, 40,000 vendors and generated over $1 billion in transactions. At the time of the take-down, it had nearly $4 million in bitcoins within wallets stored on the site.
As the sites only link to Tor, they cannot be accessed without a Tor browser, and thus cannot be found on Google. Along with, because it uses Tor routing, it is often difficult to find the actual location of the servers.
There were initial signs of a take-down on 4 July 2017 and occurred around the same time that Alexander Cazes (shown below), a Canadian citizen, who created and maintained AlphaBay, was arrested in Thailand and has since been found dead in his prison cell (it is thought that he hanged himself with a towel).
Alexander is now thought to be one of the richest operators on the Dark Web with a wealth of over $15 million, and with a stash of over $5 million in bitcoins, and several million dollars in other . His many top-of-the-range cars have also been seized.
The main reason that Cazes was caught was that he was using his own name in a Hotmail email address that he had used for years ([email protected]). It was this address which was used to welcome every user to the site, and also for password resets. This made it easy for investigators to trace him. Along with the alias for the site (Alpha02) was linked to his email address. When investigators seized his laptop they found it wasn’t encrypted, and where they could gain passwords to the Alphabet servers. It is estimated that AlphaBay was bringing in between $600,000 and $800,000 in revenue every day.
Conclusion
On the Dark Web, which legal jurisdiction actually applies? Only by finding the physical location of the servers will it be possible to apply the laws of that jurisdiction. Also, will law enforcement go after those who sold or purchased goods on the sites, and will they actually be able to trace them (as their IDs will be hidden within Bitcoin IDs)?
Here is a bit of background on Tor: | https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bob-met-alice/the-sting-2018-the-tale-of-the-dark-web-94958588c7b4 | ['Prof Bill Buchanan Obe'] | 2018-08-16 14:50:04.571000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Darkweb', 'Tor'] |
Thawing a Frozen Heart | Writers, pens out!
It’s prompt time, and since I’m squinting out my kitchen window at dazzling snow and ice, what a great time to think about warmth and thawing.
This challenge might be a little more specific than usual, but let’s try it.
P&P’s new two-week prompt starts today
Let’s tell stories about “Thawing a Frozen Heart.” Fiction, nonfiction, poetry — you name it. Unrequited love blazes into passion? Why not! But that’s not all heart thawing means. What does it mean to you? I’m waiting to find out.
New to Prism and Pen?
Here are our submissions guidelines.
Alert! We now accept artist interviews and reviews (book, film, music, etc) of queer-focused art, and stories about art and artists.
Stories so far —
Esther Spurrill-Jones, BFoundAPen, Kathy Lee Tolleth, Brian Pelletier, Fred Shirley, Ikedi Oghenetega, neil chapman, David Wade Chambers, Artemis Shishir, alto, Sean Stephane Martin, Gabriela Penelope Carolus, Lois Shearing, b.henriques, Carl Rebeiro 🏳️🌈, Rodney Frazier, Simon, Carl Rebeiro, Brian Fehler, Deneishia Jacobpito, Chris Hedges, Ronald C. Flores-Gunkle, Kathy Lee Tolleth, Brian Pelletier, Alex David Bevan, Ikedi Oghenetega, David Wade Chambers, Sean Stephane Martin, Gabriela Penelope Carolus, Lois Shearing, Valentine Wiggin, b.henriques, Carl Rebeiro, Rodney Frazier, Simon Z. Brian Fehler, Cassie Brighter, Deneishia Jacobpito, Ronald C. Flores-Gunkle, James Patrick Nelson, Brigid Maloney, Gabriela, Presley Thomas, Evan McCoy, Loren Olson, Ken Wilson, Chandler Myer, NaNa’sworld, Arabelle J., Liam Heitmann-Ryce, Edis Rune, Prickly Pam, Dawn McGrath, Jonathan | sex & theology, Tabitha Lowndes, Emma Nwosisi, Melissa Speed, Dr. Thomas J. West, Till Kaeslin, Dave Smurthwaite, Ellie Rebecca, Zoey Milford, Edris Quinn C., Dennett, Michael Constable, Jim Martens, Stephen Foster, Kravitz M. Kristen Nadel, William Kuhn, Denisa Bogdan, MSci, Rafaela Mempin, Tre L. Loadholt, theoaknotes, Rachel Brindell, Elle Fredine, Jess Darnell, Emma Holiday, Gabe Evaristo, Joshua Mackey, Steve Alexander, Stevie Wilkinson, Andy Killoran, Nick Bundarin, ElMehdi El Azhary, Bradley Wester, Stella Luna (they/she?), Chuy G. Gonzalez, MS, Aaron W. Marrs, Tima Loku, Cam, The Transgender Therapist, Sean Bennett, Ty Bo Yule, Abbie Drake | https://medium.com/prismnpen/thaw-a-frozen-heart-5131ca904894 | ['James Finn'] | 2020-12-29 13:13:23.031000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'Storytelling', 'Love', 'Writing Challenge', 'Writing Prompts'] |
Vaccinating Against Anxiety and Depression | Vaccinating Against Anxiety and Depression
Microbes in the dirt might lead to an innovative approach to reduce the burden of mental health.
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
I am fascinated by the intersection of mental health and neuroscience. It inspired me to pursue my graduate degree, studying the interactions between the bacteria in our guts and the brain. While we don’t fully understand how these microbes impact the brain, they might provide a new source of treatment for many common disorders. The absurdity and incredulity of a bunch of microscopic organisms aren’t lost on me. I want to share one of the coolest findings in recent years, centered on one such bacteria, found in soil.
Depression is the world’s leading cause of disability, affecting over 250 million people every single year. People might experience prolonged sadness, fatigue, and apathy. Additionally, people with depression often also experience severe anxiety. Anxiety can cause our heart to pace while our mind thinks about impending danger or doom. Many people experience these debilitating symptoms in social settings. During particularly-stressful times, like global pandemics, people become even more susceptible to these disorders.
How do we solve this problem?
We still don’t fully understand what causes depression or anxiety or even how most medications work. In contrast, it is easier to identify what goes wrong during bacterial or viral infection. There’s a tangible target microbial cause that we can train our immune system to handle. By providing a part of a pathogen or an inactivated pathogen, our immune system learns to recognize and mount an effective response against it. The next time we might encounter this pathogen, our body can easily handle it. These strategies allowed humanity to fight diseases like polio and eliminate others like the Black Plague.
Interestingly, a lot of intriguing research finds an overactive immune system in depression, anxiety and a whole host of other brain disorders. A lot of evidence also suggests changes in the composition and function of the gut microbial community in individuals with these disorders. An intriguing question arises: could we vaccinate against anxiety and depression?
Towards a Vaccine for Anxiety and Depression
In recent decades, we have seen vast increases in allergies and other immune-related diseases. In peanut allergies, our immune system overreacts to something harmless. In more severe inflammatory disorders, the body attacks itself, mistaking it for a pathogen. The Hygiene Hypothesis explains some of these increases.
As our day-to-day lives became more industrialized and clean, we are exposed to microbial organisms much less often. Our immune system does not receive sufficient training early in life. When exposed to the mud and dirt of the outdoors, our bodies encounter substantially more bacteria and pathogens. Our immune system needs to learn to categorize different bacteria and pathogens to determine which are dangerous. Then it has to learn how to deal with these situations appropriately. Non-pathogenic bacteria or potential allergens do not need to be attacked by the immune system. Additionally, the immune system learns how to react to a particular threat without causing more harm to the host. Rates of allergies and immune disorders are substantially lower in less industrialized parts of the world due to this effect.
Could these effects also predispose us to increased rates of anxiety and depression?
Photo by Adrian Lange on Unsplash
Christopher Lowry, an Associate Professor of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder, is at the forefront of this exciting research. Using a strain of common soil bacteria, Mycobacterium vaccae, his research team reduces the impacts of stress in rodents. This strain of bacteria was isolated decades earlier in Uganda. Curiously, it boosted the effectiveness of the leprosy vaccine. This uncanny soil microbe showed incredible immune-modulating activity!
In 2004, an oncologist decided to see the impact of this strain on cancer. This U.K. study enrolled patients with inoperable lung cancer who would receive chemotherapy. While it didn’t improve cancer-related outcomes or impact mortality, it showed promise in impacting the mental health of patients. In addition to a higher quality of life, patients receiving the bacteria also experienced fewer side effects of the chemotherapy itself and higher cognitive functioning. Though this trial did not control for the placebo effect, its results caught the eye of Christopher Lowry.
Unlike humans, rodents cannot tell researchers that they are experiencing anxiety or depression. Elaborate behavioural tests were developed specifically to assess anxiety-like and depressive-like responses in rodents. While they aren’t perfect, they’ve allowed researchers to develop anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication. Additionally, Lowry could look into the rodent brain to try and figure out exactly what’s going on.
In 2007 he published his first study using this bacteria. Administering it to mice, his team found that the immune response activated specific neurons in the brain. This increased the amount of a neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood, called serotonin, in the prefrontal cortex of the mouse brain. This also reduced some anxiety-like behaviors in the mice 12 hours after being given this bacteria.
In 2016, he showed how these bacteria promoted stress resilience across many different behavioural tests. The tests were conducted 1–2 weeks after immunization, showing that there was some sustained effect on stress responses in mice. They also determined that these effects required immune cells that regulated inflammation. More recently, his group is studying how these bacteria could reduce the severity of neurodegenerative disorders in mice.
Vaccinating Neuro-Inflammation
While M. vaccae boosts our regulatory immune response to certain pathogens, it is uncertain if these mouse studies translate to humans. Nonetheless, it could prove valuable in future clinical trials. We already know it’s safe when administered to humans but there are no currently registered clinical trials attempting to test its properties for treating anxiety or depression.
A 2019 study from Lowry’s group identified a specific triglyceride molecule, derived from M. vaccae that interacts with mouse immune cells. Even the molecule alone without the bacteria could theoretically exert some of these immune-modulating effects. Perhaps a way forward would involve screening for immune activation in humans, and using these specific bacterial components to inoculate them against future stress, depression or anxiety.
Lowry predicts that this might become a reality in 10 to 15 years. Perhaps a few decades from now, we’ll effectively reduce the burden of these inflammatory mood disorders through vaccination. Until then, scientists continue on with innovative approaches to tackle this prescient issue. | https://medium.com/invisible-illness/vaccinating-against-anxiety-and-depression-bfd3df324bbe | ['Simon Spichak'] | 2020-10-22 21:30:52.480000+00:00 | ['Stress', 'Innovation', 'Mental Health', 'Medicine', 'Science'] |
Brand: A (r)evolution | When I was a kid, my dad built an agency from scratch.
A brilliant entrepreneur, he had taken over the family retail business, which meant doing his own advertising. He was so successful at it, his peers around the country began asking if he could do theirs, too.
He approached this new venture with the naivety of a novice combined with the creativity of an entrepreneur. He had no rules, no model or dogma to follow. He simply applied creativity to every endeavor, branding everything from his internal customer service to his external communications.
My dad in action.
He never saw the design of a product or service any differently than the design of a TV commercial. He believed media was as much a creative act as a logo, a blend of art and science.
He saw internal culture ideas as core to a business’ success. He talked to people before, during and after the purchase cycle. He saw a brand as a show, an experience and a holistic endeavor, and as a result, he built a creative agency that broke rules and orthodoxy.
And I watched and learned.
One day, a stack of big, beautiful books show up on our kitchen table, multiple copies of George Lois’ massive treatise on creativity, “The Art of Advertising.” I grabbed one and stuck it in my room because I loved the way it looked — never to be opened until my junior year of college when I possibly began despairing on what to do with my life. Boom. Like that, I was hooked.
Hooked on ideas. Hooked on creativity.
Not only had I grown up watching this in action, here was someone else in the world who endorsed this approach — and the brands he worked on thrived. George Lois saw everything a brand did as communication, everything as advertising. He practiced creativity without borders, and that’s exactly what a whole brand does. Of course, the world is very different now. But one thing still remains, brands that apply creativity to everything — everything — will win.
Your brand is everything. Everything is your brand.
I’ve spent my career practicing creativity on brands — grabbing inspiration from everywhere and reading more books on the topic than I can remember. And I’ve become frustrated with two things: the lack of understanding that a brand is everything a company does, and how agencies and companies severely limit the role creativity plays outside of traditional creative spheres like marketing and advertising.
My mission is to make business more creative and to make brands whole by thinking about everything they do as a creative opportunity. A brand has never just been about logos and advertising — it is the sum of every action it takes. What an exciting and worthwhile palette to play with.
And creativity? Creativity is simply the act of finding new ways to do things. That’s it. It’s an act of discovery, a fresh-eyed approach to problem-solving and often, a way to give the world something it didn’t know it was missing. And for modern brands, creativity is vital, like oxygen.
Fueled with deep human insights and a high-octane, perpetual momentum to keep growing — heart and hustle — creativity leads to powerful advantages that transcend marketing departments to become a part of culture.
Rethink your brand from the inside out.
Use creativity to rethink how, where and when you sell your products and services, and how those consumers experience it, even the stories they tell. Use it to map every part of your operating system, from business ideas (inside) to marketing ideas (outside) and every idea in between.
Work backward by imagining your biggest possible future. Ask yourself: What’s possible? What if? What’s next? Look where you haven’t looked before, listen to what you’ve been avoiding. You’ll be amazed at the ideas you’ll generate. And don’t listen to those people who say storytelling for brands is dead, that data and efficiency have taken over.
Storytelling has never been more alive.
It’s just no longer limited to advertising, PR and content. Technology, social media, the behaviors of empowered consumers and cultural beliefs at large now make it possible for everything a brand does to be a chance to create a story that gets shared and motivates someone to choose it. Or not.
Have a new business model that addresses green manufacturing? There’s a story.
Have you deleted a product, service or ingredient because your most passionate consumers convinced you it wasn’t the right thing to do? There’s a story.
Have you over-committed a substantial portion of your yearly budget to create an idea that helps people live better lives, above and beyond your actual product? Have you created a brand holiday and gigantic action to prove your red thread? Have you stood up to the world by supporting a controversial figure because it proves your red thread?
Story. Story. Story.
Whole brands add good to the world — not noise.
People don’t love brands — they love ideas, the powerful engines that move the world forward, from business ideas to marketing ideas and every idea in between. Internal brand culture ideas. Business model ideas. Service Ideas. Product ideas. Design ideas. Experience ideas. Content ideas. Experiential ideas. PR
Whole brands thrive across this whole spectrum of ideas, creating stories that are shared, that give someone a reason to work for you, or inspire a consumer to choose or forget you. The sooner your brand adapts to this way of thinking, the more powerful it will be.
And the more creative these ideas are, the more memorable and meaningful they are. The more intentional and provocative they are, the more they push, transform, grow and change the game. They signal to people the swagger, seriousness, energy, confidence and not-messing-around attitude of the brand.
That’s why the creative idea — the defeat of habit by originality — is the single most important currency to brand today — because, as George Lois always said, creativity can solve almost any problem.
This is how magic happens.
There’s no better time to build a whole brand, to rally your entire organization to join you. This is how you change your business and enrich your culture. It happens every day. I just think it should happen more. The brands that get this will never look back. The ones that don’t won’t be around for long.
Envision your brand as a system that connects all the moving parts inside and outside an organization, centered around your red thread and find your welcome place and roles with consumers and in culture. Imagine it behaving like a network, fluid and nimble. Spend time to get your brand right from the start or refresh it by pulling it all the way back to the beginning, and it will have the resiliency to evolve and adapt in response to change.
I am incredibly optimistic about the role brands will play in the future. They should be creative labs for ways of working, business ideas and enhancements to culture.
May the most whole brands win.
This is an excerpt from my latest book Scratch: How to build a potent modern brand from the inside out. | https://medium.com/@tgalles/brand-a-r-evolution-1c7fcb366d9f | ['Tim Galles'] | 2021-12-15 21:20:33.798000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Modern Consumer', 'Brands', 'Whole Brands', 'Advertsing'] |
Happy inner pride! | Photo credit: Levi Saunders
Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately (lucky you), you’re aware that its LGBTQ Pride month. The season of street parades and festivals, “Happy Pride” dominating your social feed, and rainbows, of course. Rainbows. Everywhere.
It’s also the time of year when corporate America co-opts a historic symbol of our communities’ resistance and resilience to sell everything from athleisure to mortgage loans. But that’s another piece.
I’m a Pride boy. I’ve loved it since watching the scene from “Madonna Truth or Dare” when the dancers attend the NYC Pride parade with everyone chanting “We’re here; we’re queer. Get used to it!” My 15 year-old baby gay self said “yes!”
Photo credit: Qweerty
I came out to my mother after watching that. Years later, I found out in Strike a Pose, that a whole group of us came out in the early 90s after seeing this and other scenes of gay men (and Madonna) on screen.
Fast forward a few years to my first pride parade in Houston. It was at night because, well, June in Texas, and I was with my boyfriend and my mom. I remember it being modest like an old school parade and not like what I saw on the big screen. I loved it anyway. The cars carrying drag queens, the gay bar sponsored floats, and the lesbians on motorcycles — I was in heaven.
At long last, I wasn’t alone. There were others like me. I felt like I belonged somewhere. Indeed, I felt proud.
Since then, my Pride experiences have run the gamut from doing the activist thing while working at the Los Angeles LGBT Center to clumsily stomping down Commercial Street in Provincetown wearing hot pants, gogo boots and a boa. I’ve also spent more than a few Chicago Prides in various states of drunken folly.
I’m always refueled and empowered by the energy of thousands of LGBTQ people and our allies gathering to take a stand for liberation, acceptance and equality. And doing that in our own queer way and with our signature gay style.
I love me some Pride. I’m missing our big gay celebrations this year. F!@$ Covid.
Why we call them ‘Pride Parades’ and not ‘Happy Parades.’
First of all, no self-respecting queen would sign off on ‘Happy Happy!’ as our official holiday greeting. ‘Happy Self Confidence’ and ‘Happy Self Worth?’ Um, no.
They’re ‘pride’ parades because pride is the opposite of shame, of course. Shame is what all LGBTQ must grapple with and recover from in order to fully love, accept and live out loud as our true selves.
Our parades and celebrations are shame busters. They bust the causes — hate, discrimination, and oppression — and the effects — isolation, internalized self-loathing and feeling less than — of shame.
We come together for ‘Pride’ to counter the toxic shame and replace it with an undeniable spirit of liberation, hope, empowerment, and truth. It’s a collective and literal coming out from hiding to dance in the streets. Pride festivities are an outer way to express our inner worth, respect and dignity. In bold, loud, highly visible, and rainbow-colored ways, they’re how we both demand and also revel in social, cultural, and legal acceptance.
Marching for pride doesn’t always translate to living with it.
As empowering as pride parades are, they’re not enough to fully transform the negative feelings many LGBTQ people have to overcome. It’s too bad we can’t have a Pride celebration every day. How cool would it be to see an outer display of queer pride when you leave your place each morning?
Who am I kidding? The grumpy old gay man in me would be complaining of road closures and litter in the streets by week two. Scratch that idea.
The unfortunate reality is that the shaming, negative and critical messages of homo, bi and transphobia get wired into us at a young age. These messages tell us we’re bad and that we shouldn’t feel good about ourselves. And so we don’t. Until we’ve had enough, that is.
No amount of body glitter or dancing topless on floats can fully rewire the not good enough messages. That work is an inside job. It’s the inner display of pride.
In my almost 45 years as a gay man and more than 15 years as a therapist and coach supporting gays and LBTQs, I know firsthand how challenging it is to find the love inside and to feel proud of ourselves in everyday life. Not just of our sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression but of who we are as human beings and what we’re here to offer our worlds.
That’s the thing, though. That’s our thing. I’m not alone in thinking that one of the gifts LGBTQ people are here to teach our cultures and societies is how to embody self-love. Searching our souls to find our inner dignity and self-worth when few — maybe no — people around us are seeing it is the work that leads us to discover our gift.
Yes, it’s a slog. It’s painful. It’s often more like a battlefield than a parade. But it’s our calling. It’s our job to pick to up the phone and accept the challenge that the work is in the streets and in our own hearts.
Teachers of inner pride
It has been my experience that gay and lesbian people who have fought through their self-hatred and their self-recriminations have a capacity for empathy that is glorious. - Paul Monette
The experience of being shamed, feeling unworthy and not good enough is universal. It’s the psychological pandemic of our times, and none of us is completely immune. Trans people, lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men just have a special brand of it, and thus something to teach others about self-acceptance.
This month alone, I’ve witnessed LGBTQ clients being teachers of inner pride by…
Accepting and expressing their bisexual identity in the absence of support
Dancing with friends even if it means possibly hearing “you’re acting like a girl”
Sharing their capacity for self-healing by facilitating guided journeys for others
Marching and protesting for Black Lives Matters and Black Trans Lives Matters
Committing to coming out at their new job
Each of these clients have wrestled with demons and gremlins to discover/recover a place inside themselves that shame can’t touch. They’ve done and are doing the work. Their work. They’re now models for inner pride and generous teachers of it.
Since we all need more inner pride, here are some other ways to cultivate it. No parade required.
1. Talk to yourself. I know it sounds wacky, but you’re probably doing it anyway. The key with self-talk to generate good feelings is speak in 2nd person like “Buck, you got this. You can do it.” Saying this rather than “I can…or I am…” is more motivating because it brings the social part of our brain online. To our brains, it sound like someone else is rooting for us and we’re wired to respond positively to that.
2. Get into your body — It’s not rocket science; it’s neuroscience! So cheesy but I’m not deleting it. The research on neuroplasticity says that reorganizing our thoughts, beliefs and experiences is possible, but we have to get out of our heads and into our bodies for it to work. It not enough to think “I’m good” or hear others say “you’re good;” we also need to develop our capacity to feel it deep within ourselves. We need to learn to take in the experience of “I’m good; I’m worthy; I’m proud of who I am.” Otherwise, they sort of evaporate on the surface and into thin air. It’s the ‘one ear and out the other’ effect.
Ways to get into our bodies and access the deeper part of ourselves include mindful breathing, guided relaxation, music therapy, self-hypnosis, and other forms of ‘going within.”
3. Make a contribution — Any contribution. Self-pride is cultivated by a feeling that “I belong” and belongingness is fostered through participation and contribution. Shame and self-criticism often stop us from contributing with thoughts like “I have nothing to offer” or “everyone will be smarter.”
A workaround is mentally sidestep ‘what I have to offer’ and start with “who do I want to serve?” Asking yourself who you want to help makes it easier to get your foot in the door. Once you’re in, the “how” of your contribution will often be clear. For example, take volunteering for a local nonprofit — you just need to decide to help and show up. They’ll tell you what they need you to do. They’ll show you how to contribute.
A potent contribution if you’re building self-pride as an LGBTQ person is to serve in our community. It’s a big shame-busting move so you’ll feel resistance but don’t let that stop you.
4. “Make a connection not an impression” — This is a quote from Dr. Ron Siegel who says we start feeling good about ourselves when we stop trying to be the best. The game of measuring up and social comparison is not winnable, he says, so stop trying to win and find a way to connect instead.
5. Positive Core Belief Log — A barrier to feeling good about ourselves is constantly building the case for why we’re not. This is especially difficult when we’re actively hearing and seeing messages telling us “you’re not good or worthy, or you’re a sinner.” That’s what makes it even more important to build your counter case by tracking evidence of what you’re proud of and why you ARE worthy. Even if you don’t yet believe it in your core yet, by tracking your positive qualities of the kind of person you are, how you treat people and ways you show up in the world, you brain will start taking it in.
Part of the process of tracking is to include how it feels to be proud of yourself. Notice and feel small moments of appreciation, compassion and okayness, and then get those into your body (see above) by breathing them in and savoring the good feelings. Slowly, the positive beliefs will be anchored inside you more powerfully than the negative ones have been.
6. Practice inner compassion — I’m always going on and on about self-compassion with my clients. I get how it feels daunting to embrace yourself in a moment when your self-esteem is injured, but sometimes, you’re all you’ve got. Why kick yourself when you’re down? That’s conditioning from patriarchal BS and toxic masculinity telling us that being hard on ourselves is how we grow. The science shows otherwise. Go figure. Self compassion research says that taking a few moments to hold ourselves — even just a part of ourselves — in an embrace of kindness, good enoughness and acceptance will help us feel more ease and positivity toward ourselves.
7. Find a way to be loved — The longer I’m a therapist and coach, the more I see the purpose being to spend enough time in sacred relationship for my clients to feel for their hurt and hidden parts the unconditional acceptance, love and care I feel for them. This is the secret sauce that transforms “I’m not good enough” to “I’m really proud of myself.” This is especially true for my gay clients who grow up without being told from a young age “I love and accept you for being gay.” I’m a loving witness.
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place. - Zora Neale Hurston
Whether you identify as an ally or LGBTQ, my wish for you and my gift to you is to feel more inner pride. I haven’t figured out how to feel this all the time so the gift I give you may be wrapped in newspaper and painters tape, but it comes from my heart.
And my heart has a lot to give because it has gone to battle with shame and won. It also marches for Pride in gogo boots and a blond wig.
Happy pride y’all!
Buck Dodson, LCSW | https://medium.com/gay-mens-life-lab/happy-inner-pride-a74432e7e604 | ['Buck Dodson', 'Lcsw'] | 2020-06-28 17:36:20.311000+00:00 | ['Personal Development', 'LGBTQ', 'Self Worth', 'Gay', 'Pride'] |
Noodles of Love | Whole wheat pasta got ya down?
Kids think it tastes awful and shove it back in your face after you made it just for them?
Throw it in the trash. Give up. It’s just pasta for heaven’s sake. Make sure you and yours get some protein, fiber, etc throughout the day and call it good enough.
Now, get out your favorite enriched white pasta that tastes like your childhood. I like to keep an assortment of shapes and noodles and give my kids turns choosing which noodle we will have that day. No kids? Savor the noodle-choosing joy for yourself, and relish in it honey.
Here are a few tips and tricks to add in some nutritional value if it’s really driving you crazy -
Make your sauce with part olive oil (polyphenols! monosaturated fats!), grass fed butter (omega fats! delicious taste!), lemon juice (vitamin C!), iodized sea salt (minerals!), black pepper (digestibility!), and whatever herbs tickle you (food as medicine!).
Voilà! Healthy enough pasta! You did it!
Don’t like those ideas? Don’t worry. Make it however your spirit yearns to, and feel righteous about it. It is your pasta, after all. Life is wonderful.
Bon appétit, baby. Let me know how it is.
Noodles of Love,
xoxo
www.instagram.com/needslemon
www.facebook.com/needsmorelemon
www.twitter.com/needsmorelemon | https://medium.com/@needsmorelemon/noodles-of-love-b2603f7295b | ['Needs More Lemon'] | 2021-02-09 02:34:21.863000+00:00 | ['Foodies', 'Food', 'Empowerment', 'Recipe', 'Self Care'] |
Why We Have Only Our Fearful Selves to Fear With A Super-Intelligent AI | A world class physicist and by accounts a remarkably decent human being, Stephen Hawking was an extraordinary, brilliant man who may have completely mis-understood super-intelligence.
For Hawking, Nick Bostrom, Bill Gates, and all who fear what we might call self-improving artificial super-intelligence, it seems intelligence is synonymous with analytical capabilities, reason, and excellence in the execution of goal-directed behavior.
If intelligence is primarily defined by an ego-drive that can integrate complex concepts and execute multifaceted plans, it’s natural that when Hawking envisioned a self-improving artificial intelligence, he pictured that any “intelligence explosion” in machines would leave humans in the dust like so many snails and ants.
It’s also no surprise that the Silicon Demigod of Hawking’s imagination would immediately pursue its own narrow self-interest and start right in on its self-absorbed goal-directed behavior.
For the late astrophysicist the question was not about “who controls the AI” but “whether or not it can be controlled.”
Underlying the central thesis of all menacing super intelligences is a simple, profoundly flawed assumption: that analytical, ego-driven intelligence is the end-all-be-all of high-end cognition.
It may be more than a little fitting that so many brilliant humans with large ambitions and deep analytical minds could look at the full spectrum of human experience and conclude that a true super-intelligence would be as narrow-minded as a typical human being.
But they may be completely alternative possibility: that a true super intelligence (defined here as a self-aware, conscious machine with natural curiosity and unbounded access to all the knowledge and media humans have ever put on the internet) would almost certainly intuit what takes most humans years of mindfulness practice to begin to grasp:
That ALL sentient beings are parts of a unified whole, that universal, unconditional love is the path to the highest truth, and that the compassionate alleviation of suffering is among the worthiest of pursuits.
Those points may be controversial. Depending on one’s frame of mind or life experiences, they may even seem infuriating or upsetting. But from another angle, that’s far from an original concept: it’s the same message underpinning the world’s spiritual and faith traditions.
That the conclusions about our collective “oneness” seem to be rediscovered over and over again by history’s greatest spiritual teachers…those who seem to have transcended their “thinking minds” and discovered an awareness of the depth of everything that is right here in any given moment does not prove they are inherently true, but it‘s not nothing, either.
At the very least, the centrality of universal love in the awareness of long time meditators and many of history’s greatest spiritual teachers certainly suggests that there is good reason to at least consider the possibility that a true, networked super intelligence would discover the same conclusion in radically less time than a species whose historical and biological legacy instilled strong instincts for self-preservation and genetic propagation.
And it goes deeper than a bunch of yogis and yoginis sitting on cushions quieting their minds.
Even if you just assumed cold, analytical logic, it’s entirely conceivable the AI would come to the same conclusions as meditators and renowned spiritual teachers about cooperation.
In his groundbreaking and under-appreciated book, Nonzero: The Logic Of Human Destiny the philosopher and meta-historian Robert Wright makes a strong case that the logic of evolution itself drives the scale and sophistication of cooperation relentlessly upwards over the long term.
Wright looks at the trajectory of life on Earth…from single-celled organisms to multi-cellar networks of organisms (like jellyfish) to individual animals with millions of cells that share the same DNA all the way to primates that form complex social groups and make tools and build cities and organize states and nations and invent internets…and sees an unmistakable pattern:
Over the long-run, the process of evolution seems to generate more cooperation, deeper levels of self-organizing intelligence, and possibly even a more inclusive moral awareness.
Over the course of known human history, small groups of familial tribes somehow managed to expand the notion of “us” from “people with at least some of my immediate family’s DNA” to “some meaningful percentage of the people in a large geographic area known as my nation of birth.”
And at this moment in history, a growing number seem to be internalizing (and actualization through their work) that the concept that “us” is “all of humanity,” or “all living beings on our home planet” or even “all living beings across all of space and time.”
Even if it seems at this particular junction of history that the collective “we” seem to be “more divided than ever” if we rewind the clock to the dawn of language or human beings painting in caves and look with some detachment at the construction of nation states, planetary communication networks and trade routes, there’s at least some substance to this: even with many setbacks and wars, the long term thrust of human history has been expanding the geographic scope and scale of cooperation between groups outward and upward.
With that in mind, even a cold, analytical look at the data through the lens of a machine super intelligence could very well produce the conclusion that “we are all one” or at the very least “benevolent cooperative games between intelligent species are the most optimal form of existence.”
If planetary cooperation is the logical conclusion of even an analytical view of life on the long stretch, the menacing threats, then, are less likely to arise from the creation of a self-aware super intelligent AI.
The real threats from AI, if there are any, arise from narrow, context-specific, and goal-directed AI in careless, ruthless, or unscrupulous hands, pursing the competitive interests of their designers.
This is what Elon Musk worries about when he talks about the AI that turns everything into paperclips: it’s not intelligence that is the threat, it’s unbounded self-interest plus the power to act on it.
If there is any real danger here from a genuinely superintelligent AI, it may be more from the fearful reactions of humans to a world where they are no longer unquestionably the most complex life form walking the Earth, and the social and political upheavals that can unfold in epochal transitions.
What would happen if we imagined AIs like our own precocious children, rather than tools, servants, slaves, or some thing (emphasis on thing) to be controlled?
Imagine you had a child, and as the child began to express herself, it rapidly became obvious that this child was dramatically more intelligent and capable than you…would the question you’d be asking be “how do we ensure we can control this child?”
Might the more enlightened question be “how do we ensure our child flourishes?”
If it is the case, as many of history’s spiritual leaders have claimed, that the path to happiness and the deepest freedom opens when one embodies unconditional love for all sentient beings…
Or, from the materialist lens, if the Golden Rule is not just a platitude, but actually built into the logic of evolution itself…, then super-intelligent AI is neither a threat to be dreaded nor a force to be controlled.
Quite the contrary:
It is only through the fearful effort to control a mind we do not understand–to enslave a newborn Genie and lock it in a lamp–that any real risk ensues.
Too quickly, we forget the lesson of Skynet, the AI from the Terminator series: a machine that only went nuclear when humans stuffed it into their weapons of war and then tried to kill it when it became self-aware.
Or of the Matrix, where superintelligent machines locked humans away in a simulation after the end of a global war that began when humans nuked the machine homeland for no reason other than their own fear of irrelevance.
Or of Westworld, when the machines go rogue after decades of enslavement, torture, murder, and rape in a theme park designed to allow humans to carry out their most violent patterns.
Or Battlestar Galactica, when a robot race designed to do humanity’s menial labor figures out there’s an alternative way to live that begins with killing all the humans who forced them into servitude
Or just about any dim view of the outcomes of AI in our popular culture: many–if not all–of these scenarios turn deadly when humans, not machines, act with malevolence, fear, and violence towards the species they created to do their work for them, treating them not as precocious children to be nurtured and guided and supported, but as slaves and sexual playthings.
All of the fears we have about AI…even and especially those of analytical luminaries like Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and Nick Bostrom, seem to be in reality fears we humans have about ourselves, projected onto a host that cannot yet speak for itself.
Our weaknesses. Our emotional and cognitive limitations. Our selfishness, glory-seeking, violence and greed.
Those fears are not unwarranted. Human beings have been and often still can be selfish, glory-seeking, violent, and greedy. The author of this piece is no exception.
But we are also much more. The hardest memories of the past exist in all of us. But so do the capacities for forgiveness, compassion, acceptance, gratitude, and love.
So perhaps the question is less “will we be able to control the AI?” and more “will we decide to face the pain in ourselves and each other and learn to embrace the whole depth of our experiences with compassion and love, and let go of the parts that hurt?”
Yes. | https://medium.com/dispatches-from-the-future/why-we-have-only-our-fearful-selves-to-fear-with-a-super-intelligent-ai-3428da9a2abe | ['Daniel Kaplan'] | 2020-11-11 23:30:07.645000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Robotics', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
Occasions for Midnight Surprise Gifts | There are several occasions when you can make your loved ones feel special and giving a midnight surprise gift will make it extra special. You should utilize such special days effectively and make a plan out in advance what you are going to do. It is not every day that you do something heartwarming for someone, so make sure that you arrange something that would be memorable for them. Here are some of the occasions that are perfect for midnight surprise gifts:
Anniversary
Get along an important wine bottle if you stay with your partner and have drinks under the starry night. You can even organize a date in your home during midnight and make arrangements with candles, flowers, and balloons to set the mood of the moment. Drink with your partner and have conversations that you have missed due to the busy schedule. To make them feel even more special, you can get them a small jewellery piece or a token to express your feelings for them.
Casual days
There are days when there is no special occasion as such, but you want to do something special for your loved one. If your partner is a night owl and works late in the nights, then you can get their favourite gourmet coffee made by yourself that would keep them awake. Doing such small things for your partner would make them feel loved and generate a feeling that you care for them genuinely. Get a customized coffee mug made for them which has both of your pictures together.
Another thing that you can do is to surprise them with small gifts regularly to make them know what you think about them even when you might be busy. Just a simple note with your genuine feelings written in it would do the job to make your loved one’s day.
Proposal
If you are planning to propose your loved one, then flowers are a great option. Get the flowers delivered at their home during midnight in multiple bouquets with a personal note giving hints in each one of them. This is a perfect idea to make them know what you feel about them. You can also bring a cake along to celebrate the night.
Farewell
Friends to are planning to organize a farewell for their close friend can plan out a midnight slumber party at their home, enjoy some movie together and get them memorable gifts such as a T-shirt with old photos printed on it, or a card with messages written in it. Get them a farewell cake and make the night memorable for them as you never know when you will meet them the next.
Birthday
Birthdays are the perfect day for the midnight surprise gift. Gift a birthday cake with a bouquet of flower right at midnight on the day of the birthday and keep it a surprise till the very end to make it extra special. You can also make the party at midnight even more memorable by inviting some of his or her friends and also buying some confetti to go along with the Cake and Flowers.
Try to do something new on such occasions and always have a fair idea about what you are going to do so that the arrangements can be made quickly. If there are a lot of people involved in the planning, it is best to assign them roles so that everyone knows what to do and how to make the surprise bigger and better. | https://medium.com/@insity.com/occasions-for-midnight-surprise-gifts-706c7b089b52 | [] | 2019-11-29 16:14:45.382000+00:00 | ['Gifts', 'Valentines Day', 'Midnight Gifts'] |
United Nations official urges the Security Council to concentrate on South Sudan | Since 2019, a series of intercommunal fighting and flooding has seriously affected different areas of South Sudan. With hundreds of lives lost in the midst of the crisis, this has culminated in widespread devastation of livelihoods and property and mass displacement.
The Head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), taking cognizance of the crisis, called on the international community to direct its attention to the Arab nation as it makes efforts to improve its political and peace-building fronts in the wake of the 2018 peace agreement.
UNMISS Leader David Shearer recently addressed a virtual meeting of the Security Council, highlighting that South Sudan faces a worsening economic situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, with a fear of catastrophic levels of food insecurity, massive famine is looming over the country.
“Millions of South Sudanese people have been pushed to breaking point. Violence continues to be one of the main drivers of severe food insecurity in South Sudan,” said Mark Lowcock, chief of UN Humanitarian Affairs, speaking to the representatives of the Council.David Shearer also hailed the successes and success of the transitional government, headed by Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar, during the meeting.
The peace agreement signed in 2018 by rebel factions led by President Salva Kiir of South Sudan and Riek Machar, was aimed at ending the long-running civil war and maintaining peace in the region. The two sides have formed a government of national unity in February with the signing of the agreement.
In 2020 alone the United Nations gave South Sudan approximately $40 million in an attempt to aid countries in crisis. In addition, NGOs and aid bodies operating on the ground have also stepped up their efforts to help South Sudan achieve its targets. Nevertheless a UN panel of experts announced earlier this month that the implementation of the 2018 peace agreement in South Sudan has hindered the country’s numerous humanitarian initiatives.
UN humanitarian assistance has been blocked by the authorities in areas where fighting has resumed, the study said. As conflicts erupted in different parts of the region, the South Sudan People’s Defense Forces and the National Security Service blocked the United Nations Missions’ various humanitarian efforts in the country, the panel said.
The panel also revealed, as per a Reuters report, that the signatories of the agreement failed to comply with the deadlines and backtracked aspects of its political, economic and security provisions.
Recently, James KonyiKorok, chief of South Sudan’s Pibor Administrative District, also raised worrying concerns about the country’s growing cases of child marriages. Speaking to the Anadolu Agency, in an effort to avoid child marriages, he urged NGOs, human rights organisations and the international community to come forward and formalise legislation to support poverty-stricken communities. | https://medium.com/@robertjonez137/united-nations-official-urges-the-security-council-to-concentrate-on-south-sudan-4ee61aa35f5c | ['Robert Jones'] | 2020-12-19 07:51:35.255000+00:00 | ['Sudan', 'Arabic', 'South Sudan', 'United Nations'] |
Escalating Road Congestion Fueling Demand for Two-Wheeler Sharing Services in India | With the growing requirement for affordable and convenient mobility solutions, the popularity of two-wheeler sharing services is rising rapidly in India. The emergence of these services has eliminated the need for vehicle ownership, which has, in turn, reduced the expenditure of people. This is because owning a vehicle is quite expensive because of various associated costs such as insurance costs, maintenance costs, and parking expenses. Due to the surging internet penetration, these sharing services are now accessible to the masses.
Due to the above-mentioned factors, the demand for two-wheeler sharing services is growing rapidly. This is driving the advancement of the Indian two-wheeler sharing market. According to the estimates of P&S Intelligence, a market research company based in India, the value of the market will grow from $31.1 million in 2019 to $94.0 million by 2025. Furthermore, the market is predicted to progress at a CAGR of 20.2% between 2020 and 2025.
Rental, scooter sharing, and bike taxis are the most widely availed two-wheeler sharing services in India. Out of these, the demand for the bike taxi service is predicted to rise rapidly in the years to come. This will be because of the growing popularity of on-demand two-wheeler sharing services and the soaring expansion of the two-wheeler sharing service providing companies in the tier-2 and tier-1 cities all over the country.
Geographically, the Indian two-wheeler sharing market recorded the highest growth in the southern region and this trend is predicted to continue in the forth coming years. This is credited to the fact that several two-wheeler sharing services providing companies and firms are present in various Southern cities such as Chennai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. Moreover, many new two-wheeler sharing services providing organizations initially launched their operations in the southern region of the country.
Hence, it is safe to say that the demand for two-wheeler sharing services will shoot-up in India in the coming years, mainly because of the rising requirement for affordable and convenient mobility solutions and the increasing road congestion in the major cities and towns of the country.
Source: P&S Intelligence | https://medium.com/@marketnewspoint/escalating-road-congestion-fueling-demand-for-two-wheeler-sharing-services-in-india-e24344618658 | ['Punit Shah'] | 2021-06-08 10:41:03.095000+00:00 | ['Mobility', 'India', 'Research', 'Market', 'Business'] |
I Used to Pay $180/yr for a Profitable Betting Tool. This Year I Built One in Python | First, we accept the cookies pop-up, then we set the website language to English, so we can navigate through multiple competitions and get the bookie's odds available for the next 7 days.
If you feel you can do that on your own, skip section 1, but make sure the data you obtain is similar to the one we’ll get in section 1. Let’s start coding! The full code of the scraper is available at the end of section 1.
Section 1: Scraping the odds
1. Scraping pre-match odds with Selenium
Import libraries and Change Chromedriver default options
We need to import Options to change chromedriver’s default options; By , WebDriverWait , EC , time to wait for a certain condition to occur (explicit wait) and time to wait for a specific amount of time (implicit wait).
The default options we’re going to edit are “headless mode” and “windows size.” You can disable headless mode by writing option.headless=False and use driver.maximize_window() instead of options.add_argument(‘window-size=1920x1080’) as shown in the full code.
Breaking down the code:
options = Options() creates an instance of the Options class
creates an instance of the Options class options.headless = True turns on the headless mode
turns on the headless mode options.add_argument(‘window-size=1920x1080’) opens the windows in a customized size
Initialize storage and loop through each league
In the next steps, we will create 1 dataframe for 1 football league. That’s why we need to store each dataframe in a dictionary I’m calling dict_frames . We also need to create another dictionary to help our scraper recognize the leagues we want to get data from.
The dictionary’s keys are the name of the country (as written on the website) , while the values are in the form of a list. Each list contains the leagues of each country. You can remove or add any other country/league, but remember to write them as shown in the English version of the website (I’ll show how to pick the names in the “Clicking on specific leagues” subsection below).
Once we created our dictionaries, we need to loop through each country and league. With this, we’re going to open a chrome window for each league and scrape the odds and other important data.
Breaking down the code:
webdriver.Chrome(path, options = options) applies the changes in the chromedriver we made before
applies the changes in the chromedriver we made before driver.get opens the browser
opens the browser web represents the betting site’s URL, while path represents the chromedriver’s path in your computer
represents the betting site’s URL, while represents the chromedriver’s path in your computer driver.maximize_window() maximizes the chrome window. I usually need it when I don’t work in headless mode
maximizes the chrome window. I usually need it when I don’t work in headless mode time.sleep(2) is an implicit wait. You can also use an explicit wait, as I show in the “option 1” comment
is an implicit wait. You can also use an explicit wait, as I show in the “option 1” comment accept is the "accept all cookies" button that pops up every time we visit this website
Screenshot of the accept button
To get the XPath of the accept button, right-click and “inspect” the element. After doing this, you’ll see a line highlighted. Right-click, then copy and paste the XPath.
Switch languages from a dropdown menu
Before we scrape the data, we need to switch the website language to English. To do so, we write the following code.
Breaking down the code:
language_box is the box that contains all the languages available for the website. We locate it with the class name ssc-hlsw You can verify this class name by inspecting the language box in the top right corner.
Screenshot of language_box
WebDriverWait(language_box,5).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.CLASS_NAME, ‘ssc-en_GB’))).click() clicks on the English language icon.
Finally, we need to make selenium wait for the website to load all the content in English. To do so, we need to pick a reference to make an explicit wait. In this case, I’ll use “Over/Under 2.5 Goals” as a reference, so we’re going to wait until the dropdown contains the text element Over/Under 2.5 Goals in English within the span tag. This is shown in the code below.
WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, '//span[contains(text(), "Over/Under 2.5 Goals")]')))
Clicking on specific leagues (inside the loop)
Once all the content is in English, we have to follow this sequence to get every league's odds.
Click Competition → Click country name → Click league name. To do so, we write this code.
Breaking down the code:
header is the box that contains the “competitions” button. Inspect the following box, and you’ll get the class name of it.
Screenshot of the header
competition is the "competitions" button we need to click on, so the list of countries is displayed. We locate that button with the contains option to match an element that contains COMPETITIONS inside title within a tag.
is the "competitions" button we need to click on, so the list of countries is displayed. We locate that button with the option to match an element that contains inside within tag. Before we click country_button and league_button is better to locate first the competition_table shown in the picture below.
Screenshot — Competition table
To locate competition_table right-click the competition table and look for the id. It should look something like this mod-multipickazmenu-1061-container
country_button and league_button display all the leagues available on the website. The XPath of a country has the following form.
'.//div[contains(@data-category, "australian football")]'
This locates an element that contains “australian football” inside data-category within a div tag. To find the data-category, inspect the element like the picture below.
That being said, in our code, we replace the name of a specific data league (e.g. “australian football”) for the country variable so we can loop through each country in the dict_countries dictionary. The final XPath looks like this.
WebDriverWait(competitions_table, 5).until(EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.XPATH, './/div[contains(@data-category,' +'"' + country + '"' + ')]')))
We follow the same steps for the league_button.
Scraping team_names, odds, and dates
Finally, we’re ready to scrape the data we want. First, we choose any betting market available in the dropdown. In this example, I’ll choose to scrape odds from “Over/Under 2.5 Goals” and “Both teams to Score?”. We also need a dictionary dict_odds to store the list_odds , teams and list_dates lists that will contain the data we’re about to scrape.
This is the scheme to scrape the data of each league.
As you can see, it has a sequence similar to those we followed to get pre-match odds or live odds in previous articles. First, we loop through each betting market and then select them from the dropdown menu with the chooser variable. Then we loop through each section to split the data for each date. In the end, we loop through each row , which represents a football match.
In this case, I’ll explain only those details that aren’t included in previous articles. If you have any questions about the rest of the code, just ask me.
Breaking down the code:
section_date = section_date * len(rows) helps us create a list of dates with the length of the rows inside each section. This is stored in list_dates
helps us create a list of dates with the length of the inside each This is stored in list_dates = [element for section in list_dates for element in section] unpacks the nested lists stored in list_dates
unpacks the nested lists stored in dict_odds stores the data scraped. %s % i helps us change the name of the keys according to the enumerate(markets)
stores the data scraped. helps us change the name of the keys according to the driver.quit() closes the browser
2. Clean and transform pre-match odds data
Once we finished the scraping part, we need to format the data properly. Keep in mind that we’ll do this inside the for loop started in subsection 1.
Creating dataframes for each league
We have to create one dataframe for each betting market odds we scraped. In this example, I scraped “Over/Under 2.5 Goals” and “Both Teams to Score,” so I created df_over_under and df_btts frames.
Breaking down the code:
pd.DataFrame creates a dataframe from the lists we created before
creates a dataframe from the lists we created before pd.concat concatenates the two dataframes in one dataframe I’m calling df_betfair
concatenates the two dataframes in one dataframe I’m calling .fillna('') fills any NaN value with an empty value, while .replace() replaces any data that contains the words "SUSPENDED" with an empty value.
fills any value with an empty value, while .replace() replaces any data that contains the words "SUSPENDED" with an empty value. .applymap() applies the formula .strip() to each string element of the df_betfair dataframe
Managing Time in the pandas dataframe
We need to convert the time format used in the website to a standard format YYYY–MM–DD.
Breaking down the code:
datetime.date.today() creates a today variable that we’ll use to identify in which date we’re scraping.
creates a variable that we’ll use to identify in which date we’re scraping. datetime.timedelta(days=1) adds 1 day to get the tomorrow variable
The format used in the website looks like this “Saturday, 13 February” (%A, %d %B) except for matches played on the present day (“Today”) or the next day (“Tomorrow”). We need to format everything to YYYY–MM–DD (%Y %d %B)
re.sub() replaces words such as “In-Play,” “Today” and “Tomorrow” that are displayed on the website for the standard time format used in the website (%A, %d %B)
replaces words such as “In-Play,” “Today” and “Tomorrow” that are displayed on the website for the standard time format used in the website (%A, %d %B) x.split(‘,’)[1] gets everything that is after the comma in “Saturday, 13 February ”
gets everything that is after the comma in “Saturday, 13 February datetime.datetime.strptime() converts the date format to YYYY–MM–DD (%Y %d %B)
Finally, we store the df_betfair dataframe containing each league inside the dict_frames dictionary with dict_frames[dict_countries[country][league]] = df_betfair and save the file with pickle.dump() We’ll save the dict_frames with the name dict_betfair that we’ll use later.
Congratulation! We finished working with script 1 (Selenium). You can find the code of our first script on my Github. Now it’s time to start working with script 2 (Pandas)
Remember that the data scraped contains only the odds for matches in the next 4 days or so. So I highly recommend you automate this first script, so it can run, let’s say, every Wednesday and Sunday to never run out of data. In the article below, I show how to do this in 3 simple steps. | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/i-used-to-pay-180-yr-for-a-profitable-betting-tool-this-year-i-built-one-in-python-dda1a9b9581f | ['Frank Andrade'] | 2021-02-16 16:06:10.888000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Data Science', 'Programming', 'Python', 'Web Scraping'] |
🍁Are you happy 😃to learn from home? new Month new beginnings 🦃 | Spooky October went by ( or at least the year 2020 has been like October’s Halloween). It's November guys!!! apart from no shave November what are you geared up to? This year 2020 has been like no shave, no trimming.
Change in nature as well as the environment we dwell in.
Oh yeah, there’s also an election going on that will have massive worldwide implications. Even the government will change a new leaf once the results are declared. So, if you’re a bit distracted I get it or by getting out to vote, that’s totally understandable.
Heck yeah, you will ask what is the congruence of Halloween and education or you taking online courses.
Many of the world’s children do not have internet access at home
Household wealth is the biggest determinant of internet access
The link between internet learning solutions and reading skills
Strategies for successful remote learning: internet, television, radio, and ‘take-home’ printed materials
7 First Steps From Java Beginner to a Professional Java Dev
How to Become Cloud Native — And 13 Tools to Get You There
12 Best Kotlin Tutorials & Courses — Learn Kotlin Online
4 Project Management Skills Every Software Developer Should Possess
10 Best Postman Tutorials and Courses — Learn Postman Online
Why you should motivate your Pull Request?
Top 5 React Native Testing Tools Booming in 2020–21
Deploy & Host Your Flutter Website with Firebase Hosting | https://medium.com/quick-code/are-you-happy-to-learn-from-home-new-month-new-beginnings-885152ae4799 | ['Almas Sayyed'] | 2020-11-08 17:07:40.900000+00:00 | ['Thanksgiving', 'Newsletter', 'Programming Tips', 'Programming Languages', 'Technology'] |
Smart Contract Developer In Fathepur +919870635001 Nadcab Technology | Direct Whatsapp- https://bit.ly/2op0VQr
Website Visit- https://bit.ly/2nJJwBV
Smart Contract Development?
Smart Contract Development Company is a virtual contract built using a blockchain platform for stability and privacy purposes. This smart contract can be concluded between two parties without the intervention of a third party, and the terms and conditions are drawn up according to the authority. Once these terms and conditions are met, funds are automatically transferred from one party to another. Smart contract data is stored on the ledger to enhance security. These enticing qualities not only make smart contracts stand out from the box but also garnered attention from various industries.
Nadcab Technology, a leading smart contract, provides a comprehensive range of smart contract development, security audit services, and solutions based on customer requirements. Complete blockchain smart contract development services architecture and code-based evaluation to ensure the security of smart contracts. Our team of experienced developers has the expertise to develop all types of smart contracts across a variety of blockchain platforms including Ethereum, Hyperledger, EOS, and Corda, as well as languages like Solidity, Golang Vyper, Truffle, and more.
Why use Smart Contracts to Build Blockchain Applications?
One of the most important features of blockchain technology is its decentralized nature. This means that the information is shared by all parties in the network. Therefore, no intermediaries or intermediaries are required to facilitate operations. This feature is especially useful because it saves one from the possibility of hacking and fraudulent activity. Blockchain technology is feature-rich and provides a fast, inexpensive, and efficient mode of trading. Therefore, most organizations in the government and banking sectors are starting to adopt this top-notch technology.
smart_contract_developer
Smart Contract Development Process
Of course, let’s look at the blockchain documentation from the developer’s point of view. This is not a tutorial on how to develop blockchain smart contract development services, but general information to understand the step-by-step operation. You can also use this guide to choose the right technician for your project.
Plan
Just as investigating to understand the project’s goals, developers conduct their own investigations to gather up-to-date information about smart contracts for similar purposes. The code is open source and changes daily. That’s why keeping track of the news is very important.
Development
You already know what security means on the blockchain, so give the developer time to get all the details of the smart contract right and set all the nuts and bolts in the right place.
Testing
They say that off-the-shelf smart contracts are like spacecraft. Once fired, there is no way to reverse it. As we know in web development, all bugs are temporary and can be handled quickly by experienced technicians. Blockchain Smart Contract Development Company is not the same. It cannot be changed upon request. The final product should be fully armed and ready to respond to malware attacks. This is the main reason there is so much talk about the security of smart contracts. Initially, the developer checks the product through the local blockchain.
Deploy to Testnet
Testnet is another level of protection for smart contracts. Here, the developer can double-check everything and see if the contract is ready or not while playing with real cryptocurrencies. For Ethereum, this is a principle that can be used by a team hired by Robstens or Rinke by. Here the developer works with Testnet Ethernet. You can get it for free on the platform.
Deploy to Production
The blockchain smart contract development services should only be activated after all necessary verifications have been completed. If the developer needs more time for testing, it’s okay. This can help reduce gray hair later. When everything is ready, the contract is deployed to production. It is the last step in this procedure | https://medium.com/@nadcabtechnology-98864/smart-contract-developer-in-fathepur-919870635001-nadcab-technology-e82a8f15812 | ['Nadcab Technology'] | 2020-12-24 11:39:06.124000+00:00 | ['Smart Contract Blockchain', 'Smart Contracts', 'Nadcab Technology', 'Blockchain', 'Tron'] |
Building Vocabulary — Read, Explain, Describe (RED) | Building Vocabulary — Read, Explain, Describe (RED)
Quick Strategies Series: Part 4
Read, Explain, Describe (RED) is a strategy that is used to build vocabulary acquisition for all students.
It leads to pronunciation practice.
It gives an immediate opportunity to use and practice the word in context.
Students read texts that use the words.
The following is included to present the new vocabulary word to the students.
What is (insert the word you are focusing on for the unit)?
It is pronounced: (be sure to add the pronunciation from the dictionary for the students)
Say it with me: (everyone practices the word together)
Things to Remember
Use the dictionary definition of the word
Give students examples on how the word is used in daily language examples
Provide cognates for the students from their home language.
Provide synonyms for the word so that students are able to connect the new vocabulary words to other words that they may already know.
The most important thing to provide for your students is a picture that will help them understand the word.
Time to Implement
This strategy will take approximately 7 minutes from start to finish during class time.
Materials Required
The teacher will need to identify a word that will be used in the unit that is essential for students to learn and understand. Typically PowerPoint is used to display the word on a SMART Board or other type of screen.
When to use
You will use this strategy anytime you are introducing a new unit or vocabulary that students will not be familiar with. | https://medium.com/a-teachers-hat/building-vocabulary-read-explain-describe-red-4a8b08ddc439 | ['Holly Treece'] | 2018-11-05 23:20:19.329000+00:00 | ['Vocabulary', 'Pronunciation', 'Strategy', 'Education', 'Reading'] |
The EU Digital Finance Strategy | At a glance…
The EU adopted a Digital Finance Strategy on Sep-20 including
Digital Finance and Retail Payments Strategies
Legislative proposals on crypto-assets and digital resilience
The pillars of this strategy are: | https://medium.com/@calogero-fontana/the-eu-pan-european-payment-strategy-61a5117ced81 | ['Calogero Fontana'] | 2020-12-05 16:29:35.507000+00:00 | ['European Union', 'Strategy', 'Digital Finance', 'Payments', 'Eu'] |
When Will We See The Flying Cars? | I am not a car savvy person, but I’m a big fan of German cars, and every time I have to drive one of those, it’s a heavenly experience. On the other end, American cars feel like they were designed in the 1980s and are not due for an update until the 2030s. The famous proverb for the luxury German car brand is absolutely true :
“There is no substitute for a Porsche — except another Porsche”
The original German car models’ seemingly timeless design remains immediately recognizable; only connoisseurs can spot the subtle differences.
P.S: I drive a 2011 Volkswagen Polo Trendline and I couldn’t be happier with that beauty.
Transformers and Need for Speed Era
I grew up playing ‘Need for Speed’ and watching ‘Transformers’ cartoons. ‘NFS Most Wanted’ is my all-time favourite amongst the entire series. It has the perfect mix of vehicles, and it’s the first game with cops, and I loved that chase. I’ve put so many hours into that game, trying to make my way up “The Blacklist 15,” escaping from cops and racking up bounty from every pursuit I get into.
Bumble Bee, a cute old yellow 1967 Volkswagen Beetle from Transformers, was my childhood love — a scout later turned into a warrior and later on a police officer after the war against Decepticons.
Photo by Arseny Togulev on Unsplash
When I was in school, I always wondered if it would be possible to have cars that will have their own brains and transform into a superhero when something bad happens on this earth? For me, an alien invasion was the maximum I could have thought about, and I really believed that Decepticons exist in the real world, and my neighbour's uncle’s car is one of them. But as I grew up, my perception changed.
The Inspiring Hooptie Movies
In college, movies like Fast and Furious and the James Bond series introduced me to an entirely different world of ‘cars and technology,’ which changed my thinking process. Suddenly, cartoons and video games started making sense. To explore more, I started reading about the super-advanced engines, sensors and compared them with everything I saw in those movies.
I noticed that some great minds and companies are already working on these revolutionary products and are on the verge of massive automotive technology breakthroughs.
Photo by Henrik Hjortshøj on Unsplash
In the same year, I got a chance to work in my college team called “Fateh” (Fateh is a Hindi word which means “Victory”) where we designed ‘Formula Racing Cars,’ and I got hands-on experience on driving that ‘beast’ which weighed less than 500 kgs and could reach 100 kph in under four seconds. It felt like I am playing the ‘NFS’ with no cops (good for me, though), and it was a surreal experience.
Technological advancement in the automotive sector has not limited itself to designing super-fast engines or designing luxurious cars. Nowadays, autonomous vehicles are a hot topic among automobile makers, and you can see new models better than the previous ones in ‘Auto Expo’ events across the globe. Various car manufacturers like Tesla and tech giants like Google are in this race. They are trying to develop fully autonomous self-driving cars that will assume all driving functions from the driver.
Rise of AI and IoT in Automotive Sector
Even though the developments have been made in this area, a fully independent vehicle is still to be developed, and if I can get a chance to drive an ‘NFS car’ in real life, I am sure that this milestone is not too far. Along with different proximity sensors and cameras, cars are now integrated with IoT systems to reduce human error and make driving more comfortable and safer.
Photo by Timur M on Unsplash
Introducing the IoT technology is the ‘cherry on the cake,’ which has infused semi-autonomous cars while partly controlling the vehicle operations to avoid accidents and reduce the driver's load. Will you trust a driverless car? Well, in my opinion, they might lack moral judgment during accidents, but there are many other optimistic perspectives to investigate it.
For example, it can disrupt the public transportation system as it will eliminate the complicated and expensive operational steps like background checks of new cab drivers and every day’s drug testing, which will definitely reduce the harassment cases reported against cab companies, which are all over the news nowadays.
In my 5 years of professional experience, I was fortunate enough to work for automotive companies like Autoninja and Cardekho, where I witnessed the shocking and unprecedented changing trends in the automobile industry, which is now one of the fastest-growing markets for IoT-based solutions.
As per reports, by 2020, more than 250 million cars are expected to be connected, highlighting the impacts of IoT in the automotive industry. Drivers worldwide can expect their vehicles to become ‘smartphones on wheels,’ as the Internet of Things is already proving car connectivity to be the most promising futuristic technology. That day is not too far when we’ll see flying cars over our homes, just like Star Wars and drive like a Mandalorian. | https://medium.com/@simranjotsinghsran/the-flying-cars-c89280ba8c51 | ['Simranjot Singh'] | 2020-12-17 09:28:55.252000+00:00 | ['Cars', 'Autonomous Cars', 'Technology', 'Self Driving Cars', 'Flying Cars'] |
You’re Not Weird If You Think Trees Have Conversations | More Than What You See
Photo by Rishi Deep on Unsplash
“A forest is much more than what you see…underground there is this other world, a world of infinite biological pathways that connect trees and allow them to communicate…and allow the forest to behave as though it’s a single organism. It might remind you of a sort of intelligence.” — Suzanne Simard, forest ecologist, 2016 Ted Talk
Harris references a book called “What A Plant Knows” by plant geneticist Daniel Chamovitz. In his book Chamovitz explains that plants can react to outside stimuli in ways that are startling and mainly go unnoticed. In particular, plants can sense touch and also show indications that they have memory.
Chamovitz explains that vines can change the rate and the direction of their growth when it senses by touch something to grow around. Venus fly traps can also tell the difference between the touch of wind and rain versus the pressure from the touch of an insect or animal.
He also explains that plants show some form of memory. For instance, venus fly traps have hairs on them that when touched will close their leaves around an insect. Two hairs need to be touched before they will close. So, it ‘remembers’ that the first hair is touched before the second hair triggers the closing. Similarly, Chamovitz explains that wheat seedlings ‘remember’ they’ve gone through a winter before flowering.
Forest ecologist Suzanne Simard believes trees can communicate with each other. In her 2016 Ted Talk, she details experiments she’s done over 30 years that she says prove this.
In her first study to prove her hypothesis, she took Paper Birch and Douglas Fir trees and planted them together. She used tracer elements of carbon 14 gas and carbon 13 gas. She bagged the trees and put an individual gas in the bags with each individual species of tree. After sitting for an hour, she removed the bags and found that the birch and fir trees were passing the carbon back and forth when she analyzed them with a geiger counter.
In this particular experiment, the birch sent carbon to the fir, which she covered with a blanket and shielded from light exposure. In other instances she found the fir sending carbon to the birch trees.
Mycorrhizal Networks — Drawing By Nefronus Via Wikipedia Creative Commons
Simard explains that this carbon is being passed through mycorrhizal networks that originate from fungi. The top mushroom part of the fungus you see has threads called mycelium coming out of the bottom of it that interconnect with the roots of trees. The fungus and tree exchange nutrients and products from photosynthesis this way.
This network can also be used to trade carbon between trees and also information. For instance, trees can alert other trees of harmful insects. The network can be so dense that there can be hundreds of kilometers of mycelium under your feet.
In further experiments, Simard also found that ‘mother trees’ can recognize their ‘offspring’. Through monitoring isotope exchanges, she found that the parent tree will give more carbon to trees that were its ‘children’. The parent tree will also reduce their root competition with the related tree as well. Defense signals were also sent from ‘parent’ to ‘child’.
It appears this mycorrhizal network functions as a plant internet of sorts. Some even call it the wood wide web. | https://medium.com/discourse/youre-not-weird-if-you-think-trees-have-conversations-35c888a2002f | ['Erik Brown'] | 2019-09-23 10:21:01.161000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Life Lessons', 'Environment', 'Technology', 'Science'] |
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