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The C Sharp (C#) Beginner’s Guide | Chapter 3: Hello World: Your First C# Program
In this chapter, we’ll make our very first C# program. Our first program needs to be one that simply prints out some variation of “Hello World!”.
It’s tradition to make your first program print out a simple message like this, whenever you learn a new language.
So that’s where we’ll start. We’ll create a new project and add in a single line to display “Hello World!” Once we’ve got that, we’ll compile and run it, and you’ll have your very first program!
Creating a New Project
Let’s get started with our first C# program! Open up Visual Studio, which we installed in Chapter 2.
When the program first opens, you will see the Start Page come up. To create a new project, you can either select the New Project… button on the Start Page or you can go up to the menu and choose File > New > Project… from the menu bar.
Once you have done this, a dialog will appear asking you to specify a project type and a name for the project. This dialog is shown below:
Creating a New Project
On the left side, you will see a few categories of templates to choose from. Depending on what version of Visual Studio you have installed and what plugins and extensions you have, you may see different categories here, but the one you’ll want to select is the Visual C# category, which will list all C#-related templates that are installed.
Once that is selected, in the list in the top-center, find and select the Console Application template. The Console Application template is the simplest and it is exactly where we want to start. For all of the stuff, we will be doing in this book, this is the template to use.
As you finish up this book, if you want to start doing things like making programs with a graphical user interface (GUI), game development, smartphone app development, or web-based development, you will be able to put these other templates to good use.
At the bottom of the dialog, type in a name for your project. I’ve called mine “HelloWorld.” Your project will be saved in a directory with this name. It doesn’t really matter what you call a project, but you want to name it something intelligent, so you can find it later when you are looking at a list of all of your projects. By default, Visual Studio tries to call your programs “ConsoleApplication1” or “ConsoleApplication2.” If you haven’t chosen a good name, you won’t know what each of these does.
By default, projects are saved under your Documents or My Documents directory (Documents/Visual Studio 2019/Projects/).
Finally, click the Create button to create your project! After you do this, you may need to wait for a little bit for Visual Studio to get everything set up for you.
A Brief Tour of Visual Studio
By this point, you should be looking at a screen that looks something like this:
A Brief Tour of Visual Studio
Depending on which version of Visual Studio you installed, you may see some slight differences, but it should look pretty similar to this.
In the center should be some text that starts with using System;. This is your program’s source code! It is what you’ll be working on. We’ll discuss what it means, and how to modify it in a second. We’ll spend most of our time in this window.
On the right side is the Solution Explorer. This shows you a big outline of all of the files contained in your project, including the main one that we’ll be working with, called “Program.cs”. The *.cs file extension means it is a text file that contains C# code. If you double click on any item in the Solution Explorer, it will open in the main editor window. The Solution Explorer is quite important, and we’ll use it frequently.
As you work on your project, other windows may pop up as they are needed. Each of these can be closed by clicking on the ‘X’ in the upper right corner of the window.
If by chance, you are missing a window that you feel you want, you can always open it by finding it on either the View menu or View > Other Windows. For right now, if you have the main editor window open with your Program.cs file in it, and the Solution Explorer, you should be good to go.
Building Blocks: Projects, Solutions, and Assemblies
As we get started, it is worth defining a few important terms that you’ll be seeing spread throughout this book. In the world of C#, you’ll commonly see the words solution, project, and assembly, and it is worth taking the time up front to explain what they are so that you aren’t lost.
These three words describe the code that you’re building in different ways. We’ll start with a project. A project is simply a collection of source code and resource files that will all eventually get built into the same executable program. A project also has additional information telling the compiler how to build it.
When compiled, a project becomes an assembly. In nearly all cases, a single project will become a single assembly. An assembly shows up in the form of an EXE file or a DLL file. These two different extensions represent two different types of assemblies and are built from two different types of projects (chosen in the project’s settings).
A processing assembly appears as an EXE file. It is a complete program and has a starting point defined, which the computer knows to run when you start up the .exe file. A library assembly appears as a DLL file. A DLL file does not have a specific starting point defined. Instead, it contains code that other programs can access on the fly.
Finally, a solution will combine multiple projects together to accomplish a complete task or form a complete program. Solutions will also contain information about how different projects should be connected to each other. While solutions can contain many projects, most simple programs (including nearly everything we do in this book) will only need one. Even many large programs can get away with only a single project.
Looking back at what we learned in the last section about the Solution Explorer, you’ll see that the Solution Explorer is showing our entire solution as the very top item, which it is labeling “Solution ‘HelloWorld’ (1 project).” Immediately underneath that, we see the one project that our solution contains: “HelloWorld.” Inside of the project is all of the settings and files that our project has, including the Program.cs file that contains source code that we’ll soon start editing.
It’s important to keep the solution and project separated in your head. They both have the same name and it can be a little confusing. Just remember the top node is the solution, and the one inside it is the project.
Modifying Your Project
You should see the main text editor, containing text that should look identical to this:
Visual Studio Editor
In a minute we’ll discuss what all of that does, but for now, let’s go ahead and make our first change — adding something that will print out the message “Hello World!”
Right in the middle of that code, you’ll see three lines that say static void Main(string[] args) then a starting curly brace ( ‘{‘ ) and a closing curly brace ( ‘}’ ). We want to add our new code right between the two curly braces.
Here’s the line we want to add:
Console.WriteLine(“Hello World!”);
So now our program’s full code should look like this:
C# hello world program
We’ve completed our first C# program! Easy, huh?
Try It Out! Hello World! It’s impossible to understate how important it is to actually do the stuff outlined in this chapter. Simply reading text just doesn’t cut it. So follow through this chapter, one step at a time, and make sure you’re understanding the concepts that come up, at least at a basic level.
Compiling and Running Your Project
Your computer doesn’t magically understand what you’ve written. Instead, it understands special instructions that are composed of 1’s and 0’s called binary. Fortunately for us, Visual Studio includes a thing called a compiler. A compiler will take the C# code that we’ve written and turn it into binary that the computer understands.
So our next step is to compile our code and run it. Visual Studio will make this really easy for us. To start this process, press F5 or choose Debug > Start Debugging from the menu. Besides you can start the process without debugging by pressing Ctrl + F5 for faster processing of the results.
Compiling Hello World Program
There! Did you see it? Your program flashed on the screen for a split second! (Hang on… we’ll fix that in a second. Stick with me for a moment.)
We just ran our program in debug mode, which means that if something bad happens while your program is running, it won’t simply crash. Instead, Visual Studio will notice the problem, stop in the middle of what’s going on, and show you the problem that you are having, allowing you to debug it.
Hurray!!! So there you have it! You’ve made a program, compiled it, and executed it!
If it doesn’t compile and execute, double-check to make sure your code looks like the code above.
Help! My program is running, but disappearing before I can see it!
Approach: Put another line of code that makes the program wait before closing the program. You can do this by simply adding in the following line of code, right below where you put the Console.WriteLine(“Hello World!”); statement:
Console.ReadKey();
So your full code, if you use this approach, would look like this:
using System; namespace HelloWorld
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
}
Using this approach, there is one more line of code that you have to add to your program (in fact, every console application you make), which can be a little annoying. But at least with this approach, you can still run your program in debug mode, which you will soon discover is a really nice feature.
Try It Out! See Your Program Twice.
A Closer Look at Your Program
Now that we’ve got our program running, let’s take a minute and look at each of the lines of code in the program we’ve made. I’ll try to explain what each one does so that you’ll have a basic understanding of everything in your simple Hello World program.
Using Directives
using System;
The first few lines of your program all start with the keyword using. A keyword is simply a reserved word or a magic word that is a built-in part of the C# programming language. It has special meaning to the C# compiler, which it uses to do something special. The using keyword tells the compiler that there is a whole other pile of code that someone made that we want to be able to access.
So when you see a statement like using System; you know that there is a whole pile of code out there named System that our code wants to use. Without this line, the C# compiler won’t know where to find things and it won’t be able to run your program.
Namespaces, Classes, and Methods
Below the using directives, you’ll see a collection of curly braces (‘{‘ and ‘}’) and you’ll see the keywords namespace, class, and in the middle, the word Main. Namespaces, classes, and methods (which Main is an example of) are ways of grouping related code together at various levels. Namespaces are the largest grouping, classes are smaller, and methods are the smallest.
Methods are a way of consolidating a single task together in a reusable block of code. In other programming languages, methods are sometimes called functions, procedures, or subroutines.
Right in the middle of the generated code, you’ll see the following:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
}
This is a method, which happens to have the name Main. I won’t get into the details about what everything else on that line does yet, but I want to point out that this particular setup for a method makes it so that C# knows it can be used as the starting point for your program. Since this is where our program starts, the computer will run any code we put in here.
When one thing is contained in another, it is said to be a member of it. So the Program class is a member of the namespace, and the Main method is a member of the Program class.
Classes are a way of grouping together a set of data and methods that work on that data into a single reusable package. Classes are the fundamental building block of object-oriented programming.
In the generated code, you can see the beginning of the class, marked with:
class Program
{
And later on, after the Main method which is contained within the class, you’ll see a matching closing curly brace:
}
Program is simply a name for the class. It could have been just about anything else. The fact that the Main method is contained in the Program class indicates that it belongs to the Program class.
Namespaces are the highest level grouping of code. Many smaller programs may only have a single namespace, while larger ones often divide the code into several namespaces based on the feature or component that the code is used in.
Looking at the generated code, you’ll see that our Program class is contained in a namespace called “HelloWorld”:
namespace HelloWorld
{
...
}
Once again, the fact that the Program class appears within the HelloWorld namespace means that it belongs to that namespace, or is a member of it.
Whitespace Doesn’t Matter
In C#, whitespace such as spaces, newlines, and tabs don’t matter to the C# compiler. This means that technically, you could write every single program on only one line! But don’t do that. That would be a pretty bad idea.
Instead, you should use whitespace to help make your code more readable, both for other people who may look at your code, or even yourself, a few weeks later, when you’ve forgotten what exactly your code was supposed to do.
But as an example, compare the following pieces of code that do the same thing:
Approach #1:
static void Main(string [] args) { Console .WriteLine ( "Hello World!" );}
Approach #2:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!");
}
Semicolons
You may have noticed that the lines of code we added all ended with semicolons (‘;’).
This is often how C# knows it has reached the end of a statement. A statement is a single step or instruction that does something. We’ll be using semicolons all over the place as we write C# code. | https://medium.com/c-sharp-language/the-c-beginners-guide-6a14af03ed85 | ['Manish Kumar'] | 2020-12-18 11:49:35.056000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Beginners Guide', 'Dotnet', 'Technology', 'Csharp'] |
A (sort of) manifesto for creative women seeking safety on the wrong shores. | Obsession “the domination of one’s thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, or desire.”
She was obsessive. My god, she was the most obsessive person ever. In the past, those obsessions propelled her into unknown territory. But these weren’t unchartered waters.
Many brilliant women had sought safety here before, only for the harbour walls to fall at the slightest breeze.
Like them, she learned to make her obsessions power her to better shores.
She didn’t have time to seek shelter in places that didn’t serve her. Only to bring things to life.
The beauty of ideas, words on a page, to words out loud, to pictures, to sound, to change.
She was a powerhouse. An unstoppable force. She took whatever was inside of her and made it become. A thing. Something.
She asked what the quieter voices wouldn’t get the chance to ask. A chance to say.
She was dedicated to herself. The smartest thing to do.
She found peace with her face, her weight, her soul, her skin, her teeth, her heart, and with peace her words could find the light. And in the light, her words could become things.
It was her, she did not try to become another human, it was her.
Dealt cards made her powerful and strong. She was already enough, right here in the now and then in every moment after.
She did not wait for a sign. She did not wait for a weight.
At times the breaking waves were tall. But she understood the yin and the yang. She understood that shadow cannot exist without the light. The world turns and with honesty, effort, and self-love, the seas calm. Eventually.
No excuses kept her from herself. She did not seek value and connection in diets, drugs, red flags, parties, sex. Instead with recognition and a slight bear to the left, she sailed on.
She challenged perceptions built by the experiences of a mind that had not acquired all it needed yet, and she only asked of others, what she herself was willing to do. With a finger to the wind, she listened for truth, pausing before reactions.
God, she was so obsessed, the most obsessive person ever. But she quietly knew how to harness the wind, adjust, and glide over the seas.
An unstoppable force. No match for any storm. | https://medium.com/@amydomenica/a-sort-of-manifesto-for-creative-women-seeking-safety-on-the-wrong-shores-c998d4ec3fbc | ['Amy Domenica'] | 2020-12-17 15:41:27.623000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Self Improvement', 'Creative', 'Women', 'Lifestyle'] |
It’s Time to Rethink Our Anti-Money Laundering Regulations and Global Counter-Terrorism Framework | Photo by Christine Roy on Unsplash
Money laundering fuels crime and terrorism and remains a dangerous security threat.
The US national security danger posed by corruption and terrorist financing is as paramount as it was 20 years ago. As a matter of fact, we are falling behind on our ability to adequately combat this danger — The United States is currently ranked among the easiest places in the world to set up shell companies and launder dirty money. The terrorist landscape has changed, and so should our framework if we stand a chance in getting a hold of this national security danger.
AML Regulations
“Anti-money laundering (AML) refers to the laws, regulations, and procedures intended to prevent criminals from disguising illegally obtained funds as legitimate income.” Currently, these regulations apply to banks and other financial institutions. While we do have a framework in place, the real question is, does it work? At the institution level, policies and procedures are created to prove they are adhering to the regulations in place. In practice, those activities related to KYC (Know Your Customer) are works in progress and require further review in order to properly enforce these regulations. Further, normal AML procedures simply do not help identify most terror financing as the amounts are small and are removed from the banking system., but they do discourage those actors from utilizing banking systems. However, inevitably, criminals will create more sophisticated approaches to counter our AML techniques. It is imperative our banks and other financial institutions create a culture of risk awareness.
Counter-Terrorism Framework-Stop the flow of money
Since 9/11, the one approach to combat terrorism has been conceptualized as “stop the flow of money.” While this approach may have been effective 20 years ago, these groups have adapted, and we must adapt with them if we are to effectively fight terrorism.
Pundits of this counter-terrorism financing approach have touted a superficial and narrow approach. The scale of the terrorist network and increasingly wealthy financiers have not been disrupted. Nor has it been easy to bring terrorist financing charges because of the difficulties in obtaining evidence and investigating crimes transnationally.
Traditionally, terrorist groups have been viewed as organizations or specific groups, but these organizations have shifted and expanded into more complex structures, various cells, or extremist individuals making it much more difficult to track and locate, let alone stop the flow of money.
Counter-Terrorism Framework-Following the money
Another key step in counterterrorism financing is following the money. This financial intelligence is gathered through several ways-through banks and institutions’ reporting, human intelligence, and signals intelligence. This information has been beneficial in identifying individuals connected to terrorism and uncover capabilities. The trail of funds can illuminate a myriad web and help connect the various networks or relationships.
With that being said, in order to reach the above ideal, those banking institutions, law enforcement, and intelligence organizations must form better communication and reporting channels. Otherwise, the information gets lost.
When coupled with other avenues of quickly financing terrorist activity such as crowdfunding, social media apps, wealthy financiers, and using other financial technologies makes this method even more difficult to track.
An Adapted Approach
Disrupting terrorist activity requires a closer look at the terrorist groups or individuals involved — a more targeted approach. Our current methods of stopping the flow of money or tracking the flow of money are not sufficient to disrupt the activity — it simply allows us to get a better picture of the relationships and dynamics of the groups. Strengthening anti-money laundering regulations with additional focus on enforcement is imperative to combating terrorism.
AML Regulation & Non-Financial Actors. Our current AML framework requires banks and other financial institutions to monitor and report suspicious items as well as collect beneficial ownership information for entities. Because these institutions play such a large part in the financial system, they have been the focus of AML policies.
However, the industry has evolved as has the enemy. Bitcoin and real estate transactions are also part of criminal schemes. The anonymity offered with virtual currencies allows criminals to move money quickly. For example, in 2013 the government shut down the website Liberty Reserve for its connection with money laundering. However, regulations are still weak. Further, real estate is also a way corrupt individuals and terrorists launder money without having to worry about heavy regulation.
Non-financial professionals such as accountants, real estate advisors/professionals, and lawyers do not have the training or monitoring available that financial institutions do. This gap has been exploited by criminals and terrorists and requires a fresh look.
Lack of resources. The avenues for criminals to exploit are vast, and we simply do not have enough resources. Financial institutions, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), and law enforcement agencies need more resources, such as risk and compliance officers, technology updates or more advanced technology, and investigators.
Final Thoughts
The truth is, while we have had successes, we need to rethink our AML regulations and Counter-Terrorism framework. Money launderers and terrorists can easily evade detection by exploiting our gaps. I encourage you to express your thoughts on the subject. What can we do to combat the increasingly sophisticated fraud schemes money launderers and terrorists have adopted? | https://medium.com/the-capital/its-time-to-rethink-our-anti-money-laundering-regulations-and-global-counter-terrorism-framework-29a08fb84c71 | ['Laura E Baize'] | 2020-12-18 00:45:59.702000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Corruption', 'Terrorism', 'Business', 'Finance'] |
How To Turn a $12k Investment Into $1 Million | How To Turn a $12k Investment Into $1 Million
When Albert Einstein once said that humanity’s greatest invention is “Compound interest.”
The biggest excuse for not investing I hear is: “I have no money to invest.”
Part of the reason why people think they should hold back from investing until they have more money is that they think it’s risky.
They don’t know when to buy, what to buy, or sometimes how to buy.
Here is the main issue with that.
Nobody knows when a market goes up, down, sideways. Anyone who tells you they do is either lying, foolish, or both.
And having tons of cash will not give you that kind of expertise.
Solution?
Instead of striking one magical moment, buy regularly and consistently over a long period.
The fancy name for this is “compound interest.”
When Albert Einstein once said that humanity’s greatest invention is “Compound interest.”
He also called compound interest the “eighth wonder of the world” and stated that “He who understands it earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.”
Compound interest is basically “interest on interest.”
It simply means saving early and letting investment compound over a more extended period.
It’s quite a liberating strategy, and it takes the pressure off needing to pick the right instant to buy.
In my view, it’s as close to financial magic as you can.
And on top of that, with this strategy, you are almost sure to put $1 million in your pocket.
The magic is in the simplicity of this strategy. It’s all about investing repeatedly and long enough to ignite the miracle of the compound effect.
For example, assume you put $100 per month into Bitcoin.
In 10 short years, your $12,000 invested will be worth $1.163 million. Yes, that’s million, with six zeros. Check out the compound calculator and play around with the numbers for yourself.
But are these expected returns realistic?
Based on historical data, they sure are.
Cathie Wood and her ARK is the most successful fund in the last five years. According to their research, Bitcoin’s return in the previous seven years was 90 percent. It’s one of the best-performing assets in a decade.
Yes, it’s that simple.
And you don’t need a big pile of cash to invest. With this strategy, you can dip your toes into the water and learn as you go.
This passive form of investing means you don’t try to buy or sell based on your research. Also, you never panic when the market crashes, but you’ll only lock in your temporary losses.
The magic is not in the complexity; the magic is in the doing of simple things repeatedly and long enough to ignite the miracle of the compound effect.
But as Jim Rohn would say, “What’s simple to do is also simple not to do.”
You have to take action. You’ve got to invest money to make money.
Because the biggest difference between successful investors and unsuccessful investors is successful investors are willing to do what unsuccessful avoid. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/you-dont-need-millions-to-start-investing-d6cfd5016acb | ['Ras Vasilisin'] | 2020-11-12 17:28:26.004000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Investing', 'Money', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup'] |
Predicting Startup performance using Logistic regression | Here are my jupyter notebooks from scraping to modeling in case you are interested :)
1. Data Acquisition
After researching a few different startup databases, I chose angelist.co for its decently detailed data and its freely accessible nature. Below is an appearance of the site to give you a sense of the data we are dealing with.
Angelist companies page
The above page features a huge amount of startup companies, and for each startup, the following data is presented:
Time joined (Month and year when startup joined angelist database)
Location of startup
The market the startup is in (E-Commerce, Healthcare, B2B, SaaS, etc…)
Employee size (1–10, 11–50, 51–200, etc…)
Current startup stage (Seed, Series A, … , IPO, Acquired)
Total dollars raised
I wrote a web scraper to acquire the above data, randomly sampling 4260 unique startups from Angelist. Below is a snippet of the data I scraped.
Table 1: Scraped data
Evaluation Metric
It bugged me whether to frame this as a regression problem to predict some dollar value or as a classification between “good” and “not good” startups. If it is a classification problem, then we need some measure of good and not good. I was inspired by a study by TechCrunch regarding the fundraising impact of one round on the next.
We see in the below chart, the probability of raising Series A is highest when companies raised 2 to 2.5 million in pre-series A. Therefore a seed-stage company that raised $2M should have a higher chance of survival than one that raised less than $2M. Hence, our seed-stage model will use $2M as a threshold to evaluate which goodness of companies.
Between $0 raised and somewhere in the $2.00-$2.50 million range, each half-million dollar chunk of pre-Series A financing raised resulted in a marginal increase in the likelihood of raising a Series A round, at least for those companies that raised pre-Series A funding between 2003 and 2012. After that $2.5 million mark, there was no marginal benefit to raising more money from Seed, angel and other pre-Series A investors, at least in terms of companies’ chances of raising a B round.
The probability of raising Series B is a lot flatter among different Series A funding. The fundraising amount has less of an impact on advancing to the next stage. Yet, we still see a spike near $12M, so we would follow the same logic previously and use $12M as a threshold to evaluate the goodness of startups.
we find that the rate of Series B fundraising success remains relatively flat with only slight variations from the average. This indicates that, for one reason or another, the amount of money raised prior to Series B doesn’t have a significant impact, most of the time, on a company’s ability to raise a Series B round.
Data postprocessing
After correcting the data types and cleaning repeated rows/special characters, the following processing logic is applied to create a table ready for training.
The raw data columns “location” and “market” are one-hot encoded for machine learning.
“years” is created to represent the number of years since the time joined angelist.
“size_numeric” is created to convert ordinal data to a numeric data (By choosing the midpoint of size ranges).
“raised_2mil” and “raised_12mil” are binary outcome variables we are trying to predict for seed and series A startups respectively.
Filtered stage by “seed” and “series A” and had two datasets ready for modeling.
A screenshot of the seed-stage companies dataframe is included below. All variables except size_numeric and years are binary 1/0 to represent whether that startup meets the location/market criterion. | https://towardsdatascience.com/predicting-startup-performance-using-logistic-regression-582a1e80b2eb | ['Xiaoxiang Ma'] | 2020-08-27 01:16:21.058000+00:00 | ['Logistic Regression', 'Machine Learning', 'Startup', 'Data Science', 'Towards Data Science'] |
Importance of Content Marketing Services | content marketing company have to do with a forward-thinking vision — as the Internet ages, details become prevalent as well as a popular source of value online. It’s always had to do with web content — since the start of e-commerce in the late 90s, up till today, exercising a service online suggests catching as well as keeping your audience through your web content.
Our Content Marketing Services in Bangalore will certainly assist you to increase site traffic from your internet marketing networks. It will help you take individuals from various other online networks to your website. These internet marketing networks may be social networks, search engines, or your email advertising efforts. Our content authors will certainly generate relevant web content to engage your target market, advertise brand name understanding, build trust funds, as well as influence their purchasing decisions. Our material advertising services consist of method growth, content writing, editing and enhancing, and releasing to your website.
Why use content marketing services?
Web content is king. By crafting engaging, useful web content that gets to the heart of your viewers, you gain trust with your target market. Study shows that the much more content your audience takes in, the more probable they are to purchase from you. Buying material creation can help you accomplish your business objectives by improving your online presence, organic web traffic volume, as well as bottom-line figures. Right here are a couple of even more reasons you need to buy web content marketing:
Investing in recognizing your target market as well as creating a material technique that serves their needs and also solves their troubles will certainly go a long way in garnering attention and also driving sales. All services and markets can work on their web content advertising and marketing strategy to provide absolutely useful, palatable material to their audiences.
Content marketing services as well as Search Engine Optimization
As a Search Engine Optimization business, we’re concentrated on seeing to it your internet site is eye candy to the online search engine of the Internet. That’s why our content isn’t simply well-written, entertaining, and valid — we out-write your competitors, as well as place you ahead of the contour by creating a web content strategy that makes you the go-to resource of details in your sector.
Content marketing is never very easy, or straightforward, yet we make it appear like both. That’s because we are truly enthusiastic about content.
Quality Material Requires Time
Seeing material repay is a game of perseverance and consistency — and the quicker we get going, the quicker you’ll see the impacts of our content advertising services.
1. Material Advertising Method
The primary step our web content advertising and marketing firm will take with your service is to craft a special material technique. We will certainly research your purchaser’s personality, and learn more concerning your consumers and. We’ll likewise perform keyword research, to make certain that your content pertains to your target audience, which it can get to a lot more possible consumers. Every one of this will certainly aid us to write material that appeals to them, and also contributes to your list building initiatives. Furthermore, our advertising and marketing strategists will certainly develop an editorial schedule that allows you to see what topics we will certainly be blogging about, and when these blogs will certainly be released. Lastly, before publishing any type of deliverables, we will certainly send all web content to you beforehand for you to accept.
2. Content Growth
Our Content marketing Company in Bangalore generates regular and top quality web content that is skillfully written, edited, and also published inside for your business. The content that we develop will certainly be special to your business and also released to your website. Every one of your website’s web content needs to be published to a WordPress blog or comparable CMS. If your web content is hosted on another site or service provider, we can produce a WordPress blog for you and also add it to your website.
3.Web content Circulation
Our content marketing includes automated circulation of your material to social media systems, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus. For even more robust web content promotion as well as circulation, we recommend utilizing a combination of our social media administration services, social networks advertising solutions, and/or our e-mail advertising and marketing solutions. These enhancements will aid you to construct a target market to promote your web content.
4.Content Marketing Coverage
Our content marketing company will certainly send out content marketing records every month to break down the efficiency of our solutions. The main metrics we take a look at will certainly be enhanced web site traffic as well as time-on-site for every new user. Other performance metrics we’ll assess are ROI (ROI) and conversion rate.
Resources -https://surajwebi7.blogspot.com/2020/12/importance-of-content-marketing-services.html | https://medium.com/@surajmurali-webi7/importance-of-content-marketing-services-34db4c190751 | ['Surajmurali Webi'] | 2020-12-24 09:45:03.858000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'Content Marketing', 'Content Strategy'] |
An Odd Introduction. An unusual prologue to an unusual crime… | About This Guy’s Book
There was a time that’s hard for me to talk about when I could have prevented a tragedy. More than one, actually. Tragedies seem to be a specialty of mine. In fact, I was just told there’s one coming up for me that’s predictable but not preventable. What’s with that? What am I supposed to do about it? I feel like I’m flying blind through enemy radar.
So here I am. By “here” I don’t mean the little flat on a side street off a side street off Dimokratias Boulevard in the Keratsini Municipality of Piraeus that centers me. Nor is it in the pages of this book I got roped into headlining. What I mean is the whole messy scene I’ve been part of since touching down in Athens seven — or is it eight — years ago. I was fresh off the boat from Senegal, so to speak, feeling more disillusioned and disgruntled than fresh.
My diploma in Foreign Relations from U. Geneva was fresh when I signed up with an NGO as a medical aid and got posted to Dakar. I thought I could change the world, or at least a bit of it. Instead, it changed me, and not for the better. Let’s just say I picked the wrong aid organization to work for. Like me, they were Swiss and so I figured they were open-hearted, sincere, and competent. I had a lot to learn. Apparently still do. Anyway, I’m still kicking around Athens seven years on, with a kid, a place to live, and not much that’s happening. But that’s about to change, I’m told.
If you read my diaries from back then you would know what I mean about being a relief worker, but that’s ancient history now. Past few years, I haven’t kept them up. Being a working mother mostly accounts for not recording the days of my life like I used to. Even though they’re pretty routine now, I should, if only to capture how my beautiful boy is growing and changing.
Then one day this writer dude showed up telling me to expect some tragedy. Asked if he could shadow me for a while and write it up. Said it might make me famous and it wouldn’t cost me anything. Forget it, I said. Notoriety is the last thing I want. Told him I don’t want no freaking tell-all, even if I get paid for it. He said no problem, but wouldn’t I like an unobtrusive, non-judgmental diarist to chronicle my life and times to help me learn from my mistakes and pass on those life lessons?
Well, when he put it that way I told him I guess it would be all right as long as I had editorial control. Sorry, he said, it doesn’t work that way. You’re my character, see, and you don’t get to edit my write-up, but you can use it to edit your life. Then he handed me a book, saying I was in it. Told me to read it and if I felt mistreated we can forget the project, but that would be a shame because I am an inspiring woman with greatness in me.
Imagine my surprise that anyone could think that of me. All my adult life I’ve been throwing myself into situations without thinking twice — even once sometimes — and coming out tearful, bitter, and bruised from kicking myself. He said I’ll learn. Either that or die young, so why don’t I let him help me find out who I am and maybe even whom I’m meant to be.
He was so into it that I didn’t even mind being a figment of his imagination. So I took him on board as a traveling muse who might keep me on the rails, validate my ticket, announce the next stop, and take notes, leaving me to figure out what my destination is. Even though I still don’t know where the end of the line is, what he offered seemed worth the ride. Not everyone gets to have a private tour guide to conduct them through life.
So I read his book and came away thinking he’d sized me up pretty well — introverted but pushy, flexible but obstinate, collaborative but prideful, and a decent cook among other things. The tragic ending drove home that nine-tenths of my misery is due to a man, but not in the way you’re probably thinking. It isn’t what he did to me, it’s what I did to him that eats at me.
Even five years on, he still haunts my thoughts. That brave, kind, and handsome father of my child who loved and protected me, the man who would be raising him with me were it not for me. He would graciously call what befell him kismet. I call it criminal negligence. Whatever, it keeps me under his spell.
My writer guy tells me there’s nothing I can do will change the past, so maybe I should try to forgive myself and seize each day to bend the future. That’s fine for writers, I told him, but you said some sort of tragedy is coming that I can’t prevent. So tell me more.
“Look Anna,” he said, “to bend the future you must have a vision, believe in yourself, and inspire others. You know how to mobilize people. I’ve seen you do it, so keep on collecting allies you can count on. But just remember, you never know who your friends really are until you need them, and even then you still might not know.”
Fine, but who are my enemies? Better see what the rest of his book says. I gotta go. | https://medium.com/the-story-hall/a-haunted-woman-dae2539c0513 | ['Geoff Dutton'] | 2020-12-26 19:34:02.890000+00:00 | ['Crime Fiction', 'Literary Fiction', 'Novel Excerpt', 'Craft Essay', 'Novel'] |
Ultimate DIYs that will change your skincare game forever | Had with the vagaries of your skin breaking out?
Or scared to use those chemical exfoliators on that “ragged” skin of yours?
Let’s pretend for a moment, I am your grandmother and you are the distressed teen with countless skin problems.
I have a visual of sleeping with makeup on. Eating crappy fast food day in and night. So, I am not going to play the blame game here and put it all on my genetics. In retrospect, I can only tell you the myriad of things I have put on my face and the money I paid for chemicals (not that they are bad or do not work). The key to good skin is minimum products and natural ingredients.
In this article, I will list 5 ingredients that will change your skincare game forever.
By the way, I have sensitive, combination skin, dehydrated acne-prone skin — I break out my skin also becomes flaky, so I swear by these.
If these do not appeal to you, you may cease reading but the following enlisted are firsthand tried and tested.
Red Lentils (masoor dal):
Masoor Dal exfoliates and brightens the skin. If you have oily skin, then I would recommend skipping the milk. Soak masoor dal in milk or just water as per your requirement (you can store it for about a week). Keep it overnight or 2–4 hours would do. Make a paste and apply it to your face, neck and even body. Let it sit for 30 minutes.
This common dal removes the dullness and the dead cells, removes tan. I assure you regular application of this facemask will give you brighter and plum skin.
For extra benefits add in raw turmeric or orange peel (if available).
Potato:
I started using potatoes on my face after watching a video by Huda. She suggested using slices of potatoes on your face but that did not work for me. Instead, I take half a potato and grate it and then squeeze all the juice out (you can keep the peel but make sure it is clean). I keep it on till it dries up.
Potatoes have tremendously help me with getting rid of hyperpigmentation, dark circles and it also lightens the acne scars. All of this is because the potatoes have a skin-bleaching enzyme called catecholase. I use potatoes in my morning skincare.
Coffee:
Coffee has anti-oxidants that makes the skin look firmer, brightens and calms sunburns. I use coffee in my night skincare regime.
I take a packet of instant coffee and add cold milk and apply it all over my face and neck. I let it dry and I wash it off.
I also incorporate coffee in a body scrub weekly. This exfoliates the skin and removes the dead cells and prevents in-grown hair and strawberry legs. I take instant coffee with equal amounts of sugar and a little bit of coconut oil and rub that all over my body. It makes the skin baby soft.
Rice flour:
Rice flour has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial properties. I used rice flour daily on my body. I do not use rice flour on my face because the lentil pack is a holy grail.
I mix rice flour and yoghurt and apply it to my neck and my body. I keep it on for an hour and a half. For extra protection, since I get a lot of sunburns, I add one grated tomato as well. This will kiss that tan goodbye.
However, there is only one problem. You smell like yoghurt all day, even your clothes.
Tomato:
Tomatoes are rich in Vitamin C and antioxidants that protect your skin from sun damage. It also enhances the production of collagen and the regeneration of cells.
On days when my skin feels oily, I grate one tomato, cucumber and mix it with besan or chickpea flour and lemon juice. I keep it for 30 minutes. The chickpea flour helps with the absorption of excess oil, tomato brightens the skin, cucumber calms the skin and also keeps it hydrated and tightens pore while the lemon heals the acne marks and also fights the bacterias that cause acne in the first place.
I always cleanse my face before using any pack. Even though I use these DIYs religiously I always follow them up with my usual skincare routine that consists of a toner, serum, sunscreen and a moisturiser. But I no longer invest in facemasks or sheet masks. | https://medium.com/@nikitadebnath13/ultimate-diys-that-will-change-your-skincare-game-forever-70bf5a3c971b | ['Nikita Debnath'] | 2021-06-02 06:56:26.196000+00:00 | ['Skin Care Tips', 'Home Remedies', 'Natural', 'DIY', 'Skincare'] |
PostgreSQL “pg_hba.conf” Explained: part1 | Photo by Daniel Cheung on Unsplash
This article attempts to demystify how to configure pg_hba.conf and integrate “enterprise systems” for different use cases.
The GCE env I demo contains three VMS, ipa-server, pg-master, and pg-client (you can git clone and deploy the same environment from my GitHub repo https://github.com/vmware-ysung/pg_hba_explained). FreeIPA is like “MS Active Directory.” FreeIPA integrates a Directory Server( 389), MIT Kerberos, NTP, DNS, and DogTag (PKI).
In Postgresql, hba stands for “host-based authentication.” pg_hba.conf contains a set of rules. The first field is the connection type. In the beginning, you need to know two basic types, local and host. “local” means local domain socket and only local processes can access it. “host” means “TCP” connection. The second field is the “database” name that the client wants to access. The rest fields are user, source ip/address (for local access, there is no ip/address), authentication method, and authentication options. The following is an example record.
host dvdrental robo 172.20.10.0/24 scram-sha-256
The user, robo, connects to the database dvdrental from subnet 172.20.10.0/24 IP range should use scram-sha-256 password to authenticate him/her self.
According to the official Postgresql doc, there is no backoff or fall through in pg_hba.conf. The evaluation of pg_hba.conf is from left to right and top to down; if a record hit, PostgreSQL either grants the access or drops the client connection. PostgreSQL will not try the next pg_hba.conf record. So the order of pg_hba.conf MATTERS.
Let’s start with the default “pg_hba.conf” created by initdb. I use “ps” command to check the postmaster owner and the $PGDATA. You can find the “pg_hba.conf” in $PGDATA.
ysung@master1 ~]$ ps -ef|grep postgres
postgres 15564 1 0 01:01 ? 00:00:00 /usr/pgsql-13/bin/postmaster -D /var/lib/pgsql/13/data/
postgres 15608 15564 0 01:01 ? 00:00:00 postgres: logger
postgres 15637 15564 0 01:01 ? 00:00:00 postgres: checkpointer
postgres 15639 15564 0 01:01 ? 00:00:00 postgres: background writer
postgres 15640 15564 0 01:01 ? 00:00:00 postgres: walwriter
postgres 15641 15564 0 01:01 ? 00:00:00 postgres: autovacuum launcher
postgres 15642 15564 0 01:01 ? 00:00:00 postgres: stats collector
postgres 15644 15564 0 01:01 ? 00:00:00 postgres: logical replication launcher
ysung 47317 46959 0 02:19 pts/0 00:00:00 grep --color=auto postgres
“id” shows the postmaster process owner, postgres, is a local account. You can use “sudo su — postgres” to switch the role to postgres.
[ysung@master1 ~]$ id postgres
uid=26(postgres) gid=26(postgres) groups=26(postgres)
[ysung@master1 ~]$ sudo su - postgres
[postgres@master1 ~]$ cat /var/lib/pgsql/13/data/pg_hba.conf
# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local all all peer
# IPv4 local connections:
host all all 127.0.0.1/32 scram-sha-256
# IPv6 local connections:
host all all ::1/128 scram-sha-256
# Allow replication connections from localhost, by a user with the
# replication privilege.
local replication all peer
host replication all 127.0.0.1/32 scram-sha-256
host replication all ::1/128 scram-sha-256
The pg_hba.conf “record order” rule of thumb: narrow range connection with weak authentication first, then open the range of client connection with more robust authentication. As you can see in the first record in the example, all users who connect from the local socket to all databases should use peer authentication. If users are not connecting from the local socket, PostgreSQL tries to evaluate the next record (host all all 127.0.0.1/32 scram-sha-256) till all are exhausted. In this case, 127.0.01/32 is the only IP that can connect to Postgresql server.
We can try connecting to pg-master from pg-client.
[ysung@client ~]$ ip a show eth0
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1460 qdisc mq state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 42:01:c0:a8:14:15 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.20.21/32 scope global dynamic noprefixroute eth0
valid_lft 85956sec preferred_lft 85956sec
inet6 fe80::6eb1:432e:607f:d82a/64 scope link noprefixroute
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
[ysung@client ~]$ psql -h 192.168.20.10 -U postgres
psql: error: FATAL: no pg_hba.conf entry for host "192.168.20.21", user "postgres", database "postgres", SSL off
From the master log (/var/lib/pgsql/13/data/log/), you can see the error. “no pg_hba.conf entry” means postmaster has exhausted all entry and can’t find a rule for this connection.
2020-12-22 03:42:16.988 UTC [47482] FATAL: no pg_hba.conf entry for host "192.168.20.21", user "postgres", database "postgres", SSL off
Next step, let’s add the 192.168.20.0/24 subnet to the pg_hba.conf. Don’t forget to “reload” the config (systemctl reload postgresql-13).
[postgres@master1 data]$ sed -i -e '$ahost\tall\t\tall\t\t192.168.20.0/24\t\tscram-sha-256' pg_hba.conf
[postgres@master1 data]$ tail pg_hba.conf
host all all 127.0.0.1/32 scram-sha-256
# IPv6 local connections:
host all all ::1/128 scram-sha-256
# Allow replication connections from localhost, by a user with the
# replication privilege.
local replication all peer
host replication all 127.0.0.1/32 scram-sha-256
host replication all ::1/128 scram-sha-256
host all all 192.168.20.0/24 scram-sha-256
Now go back to the client vm and try again.
[ysung@client ~]$ psql -h master1 -U postgres
Password for user postgres:
psql: error: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "postgres"
Note that scram-sha-256 and md5 are the database role password. Unfortunately, we don’t have postgres scram-sha-256 setup in the db. This connection failed.
Let’s add one more line under pg_hba.conf and reload the system.
[postgres@master1 data]$ sed -i -e '$ahost\tall\t\tall\t\t192.168.20.21/32\t\ttrust' pg_hba.conf
[postgres@master1 data]$ tail pg_hba.conf
host all all 127.0.0.1/32 scram-sha-256
# IPv6 local connections:
host all all ::1/128 scram-sha-256
# Allow replication connections from localhost, by a user with the
# replication privilege.
local replication all peer
host replication all 127.0.0.1/32 scram-sha-256
host replication all ::1/128 scram-sha-256
host all all 192.168.20.0/24 scram-sha-256
host all all 192.168.20.21/32 trust
Now go back to the client vm and try one more time.
[ysung@client ~]$ psql -h master1 -U postgres
Password for user postgres:
psql: error: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "postgres"
Although we have “trust” after the line scram-sha-256 line, the client still authenticates through the last 2nd line. If it fails that line, the authentication will not go to the next line (trust).
Let’s create a role with a password inside the db, then try to connect the db from client vm. Note, we don’t want to give postgres (superuser of postgresql) a password.
postgres=# \h create user
Command: CREATE USER
Description: define a new database role
Syntax:
CREATE USER name [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ] where option can be: SUPERUSER | NOSUPERUSER
| CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB
| CREATEROLE | NOCREATEROLE
| INHERIT | NOINHERIT
| LOGIN | NOLOGIN
| REPLICATION | NOREPLICATION
| BYPASSRLS | NOBYPASSRLS
| CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
| [ ENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password' | PASSWORD NULL
| VALID UNTIL 'timestamp'
| IN ROLE role_name [, ...]
| IN GROUP role_name [, ...]
| ROLE role_name [, ...]
| ADMIN role_name [, ...]
| USER role_name [, ...]
| SYSID uid URL: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/13/sql-createuser.html postgres=# create user remote_user1 encrypted password 'test123';
CREATE ROLE
Now we should be able to connect to db as remote_user1 from client.
[ysung@client ~]$ psql -h master1 -U remote_user1 -d postgres
Password for user remote_user1:
psql (13.1)
Type "help" for help. postgres=>
What can this remote_user1 do in Postgres DB? That’s the authorization of Postgresql.
Next part, we will explore other authentications in pg_hba. Some authentication methods will need the ipa-server vm. Stay tuned. | https://medium.com/@yuweisung/postgresql-pg-hba-conf-explained-part1-3792de3d64c2 | ['Yuwei Sung'] | 2020-12-23 07:33:21.974000+00:00 | ['Authentication', 'Postgresql', 'Freeipa'] |
RxJS: Retry and RetryWhen, retry with delay when error | What is retry function?
You may know that it is easy to handle an error with RxJS. With retry(count: number) function, the program will restart with a maximum of count times when an error occurs. For instance, let’s think about tossing up in each second. Heads we continues to flip, tails retry with a max of 3 times and throw error after. So, program should throw error 4th time of tails up.
Retry with Delay
Now, let’s think about real situation like fetching data through API. We sometimes return error from API due to timeout. At this moment, some of you may want to retry the call after a few seconds. We can implement using retryWhen function. It recieves function which modifies error stream, and retry until the stream actually throws error. Using this function, let’s make retryWithDelay(ms:number, count:number) function which is a RxJS operator to retry at a max of count times with ms delay.
const {of, throwError, pipe} = rxjs
const {mergeMap, retryWhen ,delay} = rxjs.operators const retryWithDelay = (
ms:number,
count:number,
) =>
pipe(
retryWhen(errors =>
errors.pipe(
mergeMap((err, i) => {
return i >= count
? throwError(err)
: of(err)
}),
delay(ms)
)
)
)
Here is example: | https://medium.com/@isseimorita/rxjs-retry-and-retrywhen-retry-with-delay-when-error-3726cc74d485 | ['Issei Morita'] | 2020-12-27 08:44:53.066000+00:00 | ['Typescript', 'Rxjs'] |
Increase Your Article Views 25% By Writing For a 6th Grade Reading Level | Reading Level Is the Key
Have you ever checked what reading level your writing is suitable for?
In this day and age of short attention spans (did you just see that blue car drive by?!), it’s getting harder and harder for people to focus.
This extends to the complexity of reading levels as well — more and more, people are unwilling to sift through advanced prose to get to the information they’re after.
If you’re writing on a blog or other platform, that means you might be writing at a non-optimal level for your potential readers.
Ryan McCready did an in-depth analysis of popular stories and found that writing for a sixth-grade reading level increased recommendations by a whopping 25%.
That’s a big increase for just changing a few words here and there.
The NN Group ran an interesting study comparing language complexity on a pharmaceutical website. They found huge increases in understanding by changing the text to be easier to understand.
Their reasoning? They geared the text towards simpler levels (grades five through six) to cater to lower literacy individuals — apparently 40% of the US population.
This chart from Shane Snow at Contently further amplifies the point.
Image by Shane Snow at Contently
If you’re writing at an eighth or ninth grade level as I have been, you’re missing out on potentially half of your readers! Still not convinced? Even Google apparently uses the ease of reading as one of the factors in its ranking engine. You could see significant gains by adjusting your writing to a fifth or sixth-grade level. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/increase-your-article-views-25-by-writing-for-a-6th-grade-reading-level-6b862153d654 | ['J.J. Pryor'] | 2020-03-18 04:30:35.180000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Reading', 'Advice', 'Inspiration', 'Culture'] |
8 Tips to Make Writing Fun Again | Write with the help of a writing prompt
Sometimes you just need a little prompt to get the ideas flowing in your brain. Those of us who let writer’s block take control of us need to do two things.
First, do a quick Google search. Find some good ideas that interest you.
Second, don’t let writer’s block affect you in the first place. Keep a journal of ideas and prompts at hand. Whenever an idea strikes, write it down. You may think you’ll remember it, but you probably won’t.
Illustrate your writing
Your readers are people, and people are very visual creatures. We like to have some sort of aid to show us what a piece of writing is about. Without a photo or drawing to go with it, your writing isn’t as interesting. Potential readers will move on to other writing.
Try adding in a colorful and eye-catching photo with all your writing. It’ll draw readers in and give them an idea of what to expect.
Tell a story
Personal experience always makes up the best stories. For example, if you’re writing about programming, you should have some experience.
Personal experience can also make you more credible when writing. Would you rather read a story about writing that’s by a writer or one by a football player? Probably the one by the writer, because they have experience and can tell a personal story.
Write, write, write
With practice comes better results and a better experience. If you have a lot of practice with writing, you’ll end up enjoying it more. You’ll also end up with better results. Just keep writing.
As the old saying goes, “practice makes perfect,” and the only way to practice writing is to write.
Write about something new
Try writing about something you haven’t written about before. What experiences have you had in life? Share them with the world!
Don’t just keep your experiences to yourself. There’s someone in the world who wants to read about them.
Get inspired by others
There’s some amazing stuff out there. Whether it’s other writing, a video, a book, or something different, get inspired.
Don’t be jealous of others, learn from their work. It’ll make your life a whole lot easier, and then someone else can learn from you.
Re-write previous works
Once you’ve written something, don’t leave it for the rest of eternity. Try re-writing it.
Add some more detail and fix some things up. You don’t even have to publish it. It’s good practice either way.
Write about what you enjoy
If you write about things you enjoy, writing will become more fun.
If you like dogs, write about dogs. If you like the holidays, write about them.
Write about whatever it is you enjoy and writing will be more fun. | https://writingcooperative.com/8-tips-to-make-writing-fun-again-8653838c232b | ['Ben Soyka'] | 2019-11-17 12:01:01.999000+00:00 | ['Writers On Writing', 'Inspiration', 'Writing', 'Hobby', 'Writers Block'] |
Revolutions | revolution around the sun
offers familiar motion,
a time for everything,
in failing personal orbit
with soul in the red,
time is out of space
and stillness is delegated
under brutal resolutions
these delicate winter days,
the residues of January
are railed into trajectories
but the rolling cold sun
that comes before New Year’s
has momentum of solar haze
both austere and laden,
like mapless beginnings,
the air of revolution
on the skin is without agenda,
is a pen out of hand
and breathing body dreaming
in a rhythm written
under planetary swing | https://medium.com/scribe/revolutions-fe2ffbe96440 | ['Jessica Lee Mcmillan'] | 2020-12-26 10:38:07.562000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Time', 'Resolutions', 'Connection', 'Nature'] |
Retroativo | “Live from a world of empty threats
They can break bones
Sent home in a wreck
The less then sudden yell
The raised voice of despair
Chimes briefly in the air
Broken hearts that never tell”
Soft Kill — Tin Foil Drip | https://medium.com/@janafernandes/retroativo-f9eaff3ed14b | ['Janaína Fernandes'] | 2020-12-22 23:16:46.936000+00:00 | ['Quarantine'] |
The $1.5 Trillion Question: How to Fix Student-Loan Debt? | If you look at higher education as an industry, then you’d have to acknowledge that it’s been booming. Between 2000 and 2010, undergraduate enrollment at U.S. colleges increased by 37%.
As demand rose, so did the price: from 2000 to 2016, the average annual cost of college more than doubled, from around $15,000 a year to nearly $32,000. Over the past 20 years, only two other goods or services have risen in price as much as college. One is hospital services; the other is college textbooks.
Since 1985, college costs have risen four times faster than the Consumer Price Index. Why? There are a number of reasons. One has to do with what economists call Baumol’s cost disease. That’s what happens when salaries rise — in this case, the salaries of college administrators and faculty and staff — without a commensurate rise in productivity. It’s not like manufacturing, where automation creates efficiencies; colleges require a lot of real people spending a lot of real hours to get the work done.
Another reason the price of college has risen so much? College has become even more valuable. People with a college education have always earned more than those without; but between 1970 and 2015, the earnings gap between workers with and without a college degree has become an earning chasm.
It also helped, says Mitch Daniels, that the federal government, and others, were more than happy to lend money for college.
“We know empirically — it’s no longer somebody’s theory — that flooding the marketplace with third-party subsidies — grants and loans and so forth — enabled higher ed to keep raising prices,” Daniels says. “The New York Fed is the most recent of many to identify this phenomenon. And basically they find that for every dollar of new public subsidy, colleges have raised their price between 60 and 70 cents.”
So as demand for college was rising, and costs were rising, and loans were rising, student debt has also been rising — dramatically.
So what can, or should, be done to make college more affordable?
When Daniels became president of Purdue in 2013, one of the first things he proposed was a tuition freeze. While he initially planned on just a one-year freeze, tuition at Purdue has now been frozen at least through the 2021 school year. The cost of room and board was also cut by 5%.
How has Purdue managed to cut its price? The Daniels solution lay primarily in cost cutting — the same kind of cost cutting he practiced as governor of Indiana. On his first day as governor, in 2005, Daniels established an Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the same agency he’d run for the federal government. Indiana, at the time, had an $800 million budget deficit. Daniels preached efficiency and reform at every turn. He cut the state workforce and consolidated agencies. He created public-private partnerships to run highways and prisons. He repealed collective bargaining, decertified the public-employee unions, and made Indiana a right-to-work state.
On balance, Daniels was incredibly popular as governor. He won awards for his wildlife conservation efforts, and John Kasich called him “the Michael Jordan of governors.”
Now he’s being called, by the Wall Street Journal, “America’s most innovative university president” for making similar moves at Purdue. He’s trimmed the budget of some big capital projects, and killed off other projects entirely. He privatized the university’s bus service. He replaced cafeteria employees with student workers, and he sent out furniture for repair rather than buying new furniture.
Some Purdue faculty and staff have complained about the cost cutting. They say their compensation and benefits are being curtailed; that departments increasingly compete against one another for resources; and that Daniels’ pursuit of corporate partnerships, like a textbook deal with Amazon, is not good for the university.
Also controversial was Purdue’s recent acquisition of the online, for-profit Kaplan University — now called Purdue University Global, which delivered 30,000 new paying customers. Some Purdue professors worried this would tarnish their brand and spread the university too thin.
Daniels argues that his combination of cost cutting and a growth mindset is working out just fine. He points out that Purdue has grown its faculty ranks faster than the student body and that the school has one of the best student-faculty ratios in the country. Wages, he says, remain competitive. The school has also refrained from turning to less expensive staffing solutions.
“We have the highest percentage of our faculty who are so-called tenure track among American research universities,” Daniels says. | https://gen.medium.com/the-1-5-trillion-question-how-to-fix-student-loan-debt-39125449af44 | ['Stephen J. Dubner', 'Freakonomics Radio'] | 2019-11-25 20:32:16.920000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Economy', 'Freakonomics', 'Student Loans', 'Freakonomics Radio'] |
Tokes Platform Transparency Report | Q1 2019 Summary of Distribution Events
The increase in circulating supply this period was consistent with the previous quarter’s distributions, associated with payouts to internal team members working in our development and marketing channels. Minor distributions were related to a Token Swap Holiday campaign run at the end of 2018. We also engaged a third party entity to assist with marketing efforts in social media channels, with the intent of bringing additional awareness to the project through reviews, interviews, podcasts, and articles, which have started being released over the past two weeks. This campaign is expected to extend out over 8 weeks, at which point we will assess for efficacy and determine the appropriateness of extending the contract.
Of the 42,182 tokes that were distributed, 34,600 went to our developers and community managers, 1,555 in the Token Swap promotion, and 6,027 were utilized in the social media campaign.
Specific transaction details are now viewable at the tokes custom block explorer:
https://explore.tokesplatform.org
Founders’ Balance: 3P4TDSpFFby1BM6vCN45ZS8HyDEJJK7HTQo
Balance (as of 4/10/2019): 2,311,397
Increase in circulation from Founder’s Share: 0 TKS
Cause: NA
Last transfer from Founder’s Share: 2/17/2018
Last transfer amount: 144 TKS
Working Capital: 3P5WW7ebPaZF5NXDm1ZZYmrbgFm784tsRPw
Balance (as of 4/10/2019) = 842,435
Increase in circulation from Working Capital: 42,182 TKS
Cause: Standard distributions to parties supporting the platform and social media marketing campaign.
Last transfer from Working Capital: 4/3/2019
Last transfer amount: 595 TKS
Reserve Addresses: 3PQcRY6iDQ7bm4VvQzJ9nFDUi3x4xAWEw8y
Balance (as of 4/10/2019) = 3,333,334
Increase in circulation from Reserve Address: 0
Cause: NA
Reserve Addresses: 5,000,000 TKS each
3PKL7q3BZNPcYWeonymsviG8HxatuiCRqsA
3P8641f34LBg2yATBDabnLwfunrrTM9v9e6
3PKePGMfVpBVEwaQ4RgLBDGfqwSCMB9qm4Q
3PPhBpLRfeS6UckAza7HQJZABEQxaX7nPbE
3PGhC2pKRj8xPnAczsewSPEj9L5PYf6TpXz
3P7E8SNujfAZCN5t5GnBjN7y6fhT2DxFMpK
3P5WJH57r7osrcUhR4tMyYatzXj415n1P2Q
3PQuYvjVpWxX4djXXXcYpdibHCDZUQjSkCE
Initial Circulating Supply (1/31/2017): 648,309 TKS
Current Circulating Supply: 3,512,834 TKS
Q1 2019 Quarterly Inflation Rate: 0.028% per month (as % of total supply)
Aggregate Inflation Rate (since 1/2017): 0.21% per month (as % of total supply)
Estimated Total distribution at Aggregate Inflation Rate: 36.89 years
(remaining uncirculated supply at Aggregate Inflation Rate) | https://medium.com/tokesplatform/tokes-platform-transparency-report-8fc8a1cae7a7 | ['Multichain News'] | 2019-04-11 18:05:05.179000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Fintech'] |
Future Leaders: Adam Braimbridge, Senior Engineer | ‘Future Leaders’ is a series of blog posts by the Financial Times in which we interview our team members and ask them how they got into technology, what they are working on and what they want to do in the future. Everyone has a different perspective, story and experience to share. This series will feature colleagues working in our Product & Technology teams. You can also connect with us on Twitter at @lifeatFT.
Adam Braimbridge, Code poker and friend to dingoes everywhere. @uxtremist
Hi Adam, what is your current role at the FT and what do you spend most of your time doing at work?
My job title is ‘Senior Engineer’. I’m in the ETG (Enabling Technologies Group) and I think of what we do as ‘developer experience’ — user experience for developers. There’s an overlap between making life better for developers and helping to stop FT.com & related apps from grinding to a halt, like how the previous version of FT.com (codenamed “Falcon”) did.
Does that involve a lot of monitoring? Or just when things go wrong you’re called in as the cavalry?
Part of it is the cavalry, or putting out fires, but I think that individual teams already do a fantastic job of that. Being able to help developers do their work easier is really what I’m aiming for. A lot of that is knowledge sharing and good documentation; and even things like “rubber-ducking” (talking out loud to understand a problem) are useful.
I’m trying to be a bit of an advocate for culture … a developer advocate, if you will. For example: One thing I find myself doing sometimes is to sort of play this character. I play a version of Adam that’s a little bit foolish and a tiny bit rebellious — and much more confident than I really am.
A subset of developers of all levels tend to have this thing called “imposter syndrome”, which can prevent them from contributing their ideas or objections. This is a huge waste of valuable brain power.
What I’m doing when I act this role is I’m setting the bar — within reason — to make it more comfortable for all developers to talk openly about whatever they want to talk about. Because no matter what they talk about, it’s not going to be as ridiculous / naive / contentious as whatever Adam just said.
Do you manage anyone right now?
Yes, I’m a line manager for two wonderful people. They make me look so good! Jennifer and Keran, I couldn’t ask for better reports. They came in as junior developers and they’re both mid-level now. We’re already building experience towards senior level. It’s great because I don’t have to push them; they’re driven, smart and so quick to learn. I really enjoy managing, it’s a rewarding challenge.
(L-R: Jennifer, Adam and Keran)
So, how did you get into the technology industry?
Oh boy, let’s see. When I was about thirteen, my Dad came home with a Commodore 64 and my brother and I played that. You’d power it on — it was plugged into a TV set, which I think was black and white. I remember turning it on and it flickers up and you could write programs in it, very basic ones. And if you wanted to run a game, it would say, “Press play on tape” and you’d literally put an audio tape into this player, hit play and then go do something outside for an hour. And then we’d come back inside and play this cricket game or whatever on the C64. From that early age I was sold. I thought that was the bees knees.
In high school I was doing quite well in computer studies, but in Year 11 they couldn’t find any programming teachers. At that time in Perth, there weren’t many high school teachers who knew how to program. I was told there’d be a programming teacher in Year 12, so I persevered, but when I started Year 12 there was still no teacher. That meant I couldn’t do my university entrance exams, so that really stuffed me around.
I went to the careers guidance counsellor and filled out a form for an apprenticeship. They gave me a booklet and asked me to pick three preferences. I picked computer technician and electrician but I couldn’t find a third one that was even close to programming. Now, the day before I’d watched a movie called “Death in Brunswick” which is about a chef, so I chose “chef” as my third choice. Sure enough I ended up doing a four-year chef apprenticeship, because of that movie. I stuck it through and finished it, then left Perth to travel around Australia for a couple of years as a travelling chef.
DVD Cover for “Death in Brunswick”, [Fair Use], via Wikipedia. Yes, that’s the guy from Jurassic Park.
Although it was great for travelling, it wasn’t what I wanted. I went home, switched to cheffing part time and did a Diploma of Interactive Multimedia. I wanted a career in movies or games. To my surprise, I discovered a knack for programming. I had thought it was all maths and algorithms, but really it’s just thinking things through and finding the edge cases.
I taught myself a programming language called “Lingo”, which was the language for a popular thing at the time called Macromedia Director. I got good grades, which led to my first part time programming job in a company called “Fun Ed”, making educational games for kids.
After finishing the diploma, programming employment opportunities in Perth were scarce. So I built my own business called “Castledale Virtual Tours”, doing digital photography of houses (and oddly enough, luxury yachts). I developed a process for taking 360-degree photos, and wrote a “Flash” programme to download and view them online. Real estate agents would just give me their username and password for their business websites and I would upload the virtual tours for them.
Internet Archive snapshot of “cvirtual.com.au”, August 2004. Best viewed at 800 by 600.
That was great except I was working by myself, which got very lonely. I could have employed people but I didn’t have the confidence to tell someone else what to do.
One of my clients was called “Bam Creative”. They did websites & digital advertising for businesses in Perth. One time, I had a two-day contract to do some “Actionscript” programming (something of a specialty at the time). I remember this very well … it was my first time working in their office and the Syrian Army (or equivalent) hacked their servers! They were running around like headless chickens. The phone was ringing constantly. No one asked me to, but I just started picked up the phone and answering, “Hello, Bam Creative, Adam speaking. Yes, we’re currently undergoing technical difficulties, let me take your details and we’ll get back to you by the end of the day.” The owner was impressed enough with that to offer to buy my business and give me a fulltime job.
So I worked as a developer for Bam Creative for a number of years. During that time I had a one-year break in Vancouver, when I didn’t program at all. Arriving in Vancouver, I swapped my Macintosh laptop for a Kawasaki 440 LTD motorbike, borrowed a tent, and went off into the British Columbian forests with no plan but to see how far I’d get.
Adam and his Kawasaki 440 LTD in Vancouver, 2005
Were you trying to find yourself?
Thinking back on it now …yeah, I was trying to find myself.
Did you find yourself?
A little bit, but not as much as I wanted to. When I came back to Perth I was complaining to one of my friends about it, who was a nurse, and she said, “Adam, you’ve got depression. Classic depression. Go and talk to a doctor about it”.
That was when I was thirty. I went on antidepressants, and they changed my life. By the way, I’m on record at work saying that if anyone wants to talk about depression they can contact me. I’m happy to talk about it with anyone who needs to. I respect confidentiality and I’m good at forgetting stuff, so people feel safe talking to me.
“Pandy Warhol makes a friend”, cosmic_unicorn_3000, via Instagram
Anyway, in 2010 I left Bam Creative and came to London, wanting to relaunch a career as a UX specialist. I even changed my Twitter handle to @uxtremist. I had three interviews lined up; the third was with a little company called “Assanka”, owned and run by Andrew Betts and Rob Shilston.
I was incredibly lucky to get that job. A few years after I joined Assanka, it became acquired by the FT and changed to “FT Labs”. I wanted an excuse to work from the FT home office, assuming that it was inevitable that we’ll all move across eventually, so I volunteered to join “Code Club”, teaching nearby primary school kids how to code. Because the school was near the head office, I worked from there one day a week.
Eventually I was there full-time, on the FT Blogs / Alphaville team. “Next FT” was less than a year old. One day I saw a big screen with user-data charts on it and was like, “This is amazing, this is awesome, this is what I’m talking about!”. Matt Chadburn (Technical Director of FT’s Internal Products team) walked by and said “Can I help you?” I said “Yeah, this is really interesting! What’s it all about and how does it work?”
Matt responded to my natural curiosity. One thing led to another, which led to a bootcamp with his team in Next FT. On my first day I made a chrome extension called “Mollydobbin”, to help developers add tracking data correctly. I think Matt was mildly impressed with that, because when I asked if I could join the Next FT team full time, I was allowed to. Thanks to Matt Chadburn, Matt Andrews, Rik Still and Michelle Shakes — and many other people — I’ve been very lucky at FT. I owe my success to all the really cool people in the Next FT team.
That’s so nice! What is the project you’ve worked on at the FT which you’re most proud of?
The thing I’m most proud of by far is mentoring students who’re learning how to code. It’s a long story, but I do a thing called “Big Kids’ Code Club”, where I tutor people from all parts of FT, helping them to develop the skills for working with tools, thinking things through, and figuring stuff out. Basically, how to google better. I like doing that, because personally I learn so much when I’m teaching; it makes me feel helpful; and I get great feedback. I even won an FT Culture Award for it! Flattery charges my battery. 😊
A personal project I’m proud of (and which I plug whenever I can) is an internal FT website called houston.ft.com. “If you have a problem, ask Houston.” The site is the result of me trying to make the most useful tool I can. It’s basically a hub, with an overview of everything, helpful search tools, a collection of useful internal links, and a reference to our publishing pipeline.
Now the biggest project I’m proud of is a group of tools that our team informally calls the “Sushi Suite”.
The story goes: When Amy Nicholson (who is so amazing by the way) was at the FT, she was instrumental in helping ETG find a new, better way to work. Amy and Sam Parkinson arranged an out-of-office away day to come up with a long term strategy, instead of just being tactical. Because “tactical is not practical!”
We decided to focus on improving the way we do code migrations. Instead of doing work for all the teams — which isn’t scalable — we would make tools to make it easier for teams to do their own migrations.
We started off thinking about our codebase. We have over three thousand GitHub repositories at the Financial Times. How do we know which ones FT.com is responsible for? You can have a spreadsheet or a list and keep that up to date manually, but no one wants to do that. So we made a tool called “Tako” (which means “octopus” in Japanese — the GitHub mascot is an “octo-cat”). It’s a single source of truth that we can trust to get a list of our repos. We can refine the Tako list using a sophisticated tool called “Ebi”, which means “Prawn”. If you’re a developer it’s worth looking that up.
Tako and Ebi make it possible to know exactly which of your repositories need changes.
Once you know which repositories to deal with, how do you automate a code change across them all? The answer used to be, you’d check them all out and then you manually copy and paste your code fixes. It takes a couple of days or even weeks to update everything. So as a team, but championed by Bren Brightwell, we made a tool called “Nori”. Nori wraps our tools into a command-line wizard, and was named because in Japanese, “Nori” is an edible seaweed that’s used for wrapping sushi.
Logo for nori
So: We’ve got our list of repositories and we’re making changes to them all, but how do we know that we’re finished? Have all those changes have been rolled out? For that we’re using GitHub projects. You can manipulate GitHub issues and pull requests and stuff like that with a tool called “Asari” (or, “Clam”). It was a team effort of course, but personally the code I’m most proud of writing is in that tool.
Typing asari commands in a computer terminal to manage repositories in GitHub.
That’s that — the Sushi Suite. By the way, a nice side-effect of this project is that I’ve been able to do tech presentations on it, for internal FT audiences, for the “London Web Performance” meet up, and at the Guardian office.
That’s really cool. What’s the biggest lessons you have learned in recent years?
That’s a tricky one. Three TED talks have been utterly transformative for me: Dan Ariely’s “Are we in control of our own decisions?”, Dan Pink’s “The Puzzle of Motivation” and Michael Shermer’s “Why People Believe Weird Things”.
Learning recently about “Glue Work” was an awakening. It’s the “less glamorous — and often less-promotable — work that needs to happen to make a team successful.” It’s pervasive and a worthwhile opportunity for improvement.
Aside from that, there’s been something brewing in my thoughts over the past few years that ties into just about everything. For some time I’ve known that everything comes down to respect and communication. They’re the most important part of being human. Now, on top of that, I’ve learned is that everything is on a sliding scale.
Whenever someone says “Oh, never do this” or “Always do that” or “All things are X” or “All things are Y”, I mentally convert that into a sliding scale where you’ve got nothing on one side and everything on the other. Then I kind of picture where that statement sits on that scale. It’s difficult to explain without concrete examples, but nothing is black and white. I’m very aware that everything’s relative; everything is on a sliding scale. Keen minds spot that “Everything is on a sliding scale” includes the word “everything”, which is a bit hypocritical, but I prefer to call it a paradox. 😁
By the way, this way of thinking sits well with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), which I’m a volunteer “champion” for. It turns out that Key Results are not “the tasks you’re going to do”. They’re the ways you are going to measure the success of whatever it is you want to achieve (by doing those tasks). In other words, the Key Results are a sliding scale, and the work you do is measured along that scale.
So anyway, sliding scale is part one. Part two is: Almost every problem boils down to “signal vs noise”. What I mean is that communication is super important, and when you have problems with communication, it’s more often than not a problem of too much noise. There’s so much noise to deal with that it’s difficult to get a good signal. So when someone says something to you, because you don’t both share the same brain, the signal can get lost in the noise and you may misinterpret it.
When I’m faced with a problem or challenge I think “Ok, where’s the signal? Where’s the noise?” Because if you don’t acknowledge that up front, you are off on the wrong foot because you’re dealing with a noisy signal. The most important thing (which I’ll tell anyone who will listen to me), the first thing you should always do, is start with the problem. The trick is, if you understand the problem then you can come up with a better solution.
Which reminds me: Coming up with ideas for solutions is really easy, but understanding the fundamental problem is really difficult. As engineers or even as humans, we tend to ‘solutionize’; that is, we jump on the first solution we think of, rather than thinking through the problem and imagining a bunch of different possible solutions. One of my favourite quotes is cited by Steven Pinker: “Problems are inevitable. Problems are solvable. Solutions create new problems.”
Yeah, it’s better to fix something so that there’s not as many problems in the long run. That makes sense and is very philosophical. This leads nicely into the final question: What would you like to do in the future
Good question. I’m planning on staying with the FT and I want to continue improving the developer experience for everyone. I’m specifically interested in helping to bring the FT up to speed in one area: We’re currently lagging behind the rest of the technology industry in terms of remote working. I want to research what the competition is doing and see how we measure up.
I think the hardest part is figuring out how it will all work as a policy. At the moment it’s easier for people to just say “no, we don’t have a policy for working remotely” I would never presume to be responsible for writing an official remote-working policies for FT, but I think I can make it easier to share information and give clarity. I want to make a framework so that different departments in FT can publish compatible remote-working policies. I’m inspired by the recent “Engineering Principles” and “Engineering Checklist” projects.
Again — it comes back to signal vs noise and good communication, and everything’s a sliding scale. Obviously it’s ludicrous to say, “Yes, you can work from absolutely anywhere in the world!” but it’s just as ludicrous to say, “No, you can’t work from anywhere except the UK.” I want to slide the scale to the “good” end. Otherwise we’ll keep missing out on recruiting international talent, and losing our developers when they move to different countries.
The good news is that we already do remote working, for example we work with the teams in Sofia, Bulgaria. But we can’t work just anywhere. What I mean is, take Cyber Security for example. Some places you can’t enter the country without the government requiring to search your device and install software onto it. So there’s no way we should be allowed to take work devices in — and then of course we can’t do any work.
Other examples probably include not being able to work from certain countries for insurance and tax reasons. I don’t know the details, and that’s what I’m trying to find out.
Confession time: I do have an ulterior motive. I want to be a guinea pig and work in New York, even just for a week or so, still in the ETG for the London office. I think that could be something that is not ludicrous, but it’s a little bit … novel. It makes business sense in terms of proving that it can be done. As an experiment to see if it can be done, that would be great. Personally I would like to try living in New York for a while anyway.
Is there anything new you’d like to explore or learn about?
Oh yeah. plenty of things. I’m looking forward to learning a bunch of new stuff in the next project our team’s working on. We’re teaming up with the “Page Kit” team: Maggie Allen and Matt Hinchliffe. Kit means “something that generates” and Page means “web page”. So Page Kit is a project for modernising how we generate our web pages.
Also, there’s this new service called “Netlify” who are pushing this idea called the “Jam Stack”. I’d be rather interested in that. It’s something I’d like to spend a bit of time on to see if we can talk about doing procurement and using it in our stack.
FT.com Page Kit. You know, for web pages 🤓
Speaking of exploring, it’s been a while since I went out into the wilderness on a motorbike camping adventure. I wonder … *looks into the distance and strokes beard thoughtfully*
Ever the explorer! Thanks, Adam!
Interviewee: Adam Braimbridge
Interviewer: Georgina Murray | https://medium.com/ft-product-technology/future-leaders-adam-braimbridge-senior-engineer-c984c033f1d8 | ['Ft Product'] | 2019-08-05 14:49:08.600000+00:00 | ['Engineering', 'Commodore 64', 'Tech Culture', 'Financial Times', 'Web Development'] |
2021'de Ethereum’u Neler Bekliyor? | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/turansert/2021de-ethereumu-neler-bekliyor-e28461887544 | ['Turan Sert'] | 2020-12-22 12:48:58.489000+00:00 | ['Türkçe Yayın', 'Ethereum', 'Eth'] |
Five Months to Better Golf | Five Months to Better Golf
By Ed Sherman
This article appeared in the November 2021 edition of Chicago District Golfer.
Working with a golf professional at an indoor facility can accelerate a golfer’s rate of improvement, according to most golf professionals. “You can concentrate on making the [swing] change without worrying where the ball goes,” says 2020 LPGA Midwest Section Teacher of the Year Jamie Fischer, director of instruction at Conway Farms LPGA.
For many golfers, the offseason ends up similar to New Year’s resolutions. Admit it — when the temperature drops and snow blankets the greens, you always say you aren’t going to let the clubs sit idle for the next 4–5 months. You say you’re going to really dig in and work on your swing. You also make a commitment to get in better golf shape by improving your flexibility and strength.
And then like that New Year’s resolution to lose weight, which usually is blown by digging into a hot fudge sundae on Jan. 15, you don’t do a thing to improve your game during the offseason. Plus, you probably gain weight, too.
It doesn’t have to be that way. The upcoming cold months are a great time to make improvements that will pay dividends next spring. In fact, if you waste this time, you risk falling behind players who do take advantage of it.
“In golf, you’re either getting better or you’re getting worse. There’s no in-between,” said Kurt Kollmeyer, northern director of operations for Golftec, one of the largest golf instruction companies in the world. “Don’t think the winter gives you the excuse to take time off. Getting better is a year-round thing. If you put away your clubs for five months, you’re going to get worse.”
Jamie Fischer, director of instruction at Conway Farms, puts it this way.
“If you have the time to spend four hours playing a round of golf (during the season), maybe you can spend an hour three or four times a week (during the offseason) to work on your game,” said Fischer, the 2020 LPGA Midwest Section Teacher of the Year. “That’s the equivalent of a round of golf. If you do that, you will improve.”
Here are ways for golfers to make the most of their offseason:
Nothing on the line: During the season, it can be difficult to make a swing change, because it often requires taking a step back to go forward. It’s understandably hard to commit to a new move with a tournament coming up or a Saturday match with friends looming.
The offseason can be that perfect time to make swing adjustments.
“There is less pressure,” Fischer said. “You can concentrate on making the change without worrying about where the ball goes. You don’t have to tee it up on Saturday. If you don’t get it right in January, it’s OK.”
Dan Kochevar, who teaches at Oak Brook Golf Club, suggests making incremental changes during the offseason.
“Every two months, say ‘This is what I’m going to work on,’ ” Kochevar said. “Try to do it a little bit at a time. You can make a lot of changes that will be ready to go by spring time.”
Speaking of taking it slow, Kochevar recommends ditching the driver, at least initially.
“For the first month or two, hit a lot of three-quarter wedges,” Kochevar said. “Everyone wants to start with the driver, but wedges are the easiest way to make changes in terms of path and contact. You have months to address the driver.”
Shaping up: Never take a break on staying in shape. And, since you’re not playing, the offseason provides more opportunities to focus on your golf fitness. Making gains in your strength and flexibility will make a difference in your game next spring.
Longtime Golf Digest Top 50 Golf Fitness provider Cory Puyear works with five-time PGA Tour winner Mark Wilson at his P.U.R.E. Golf studio in Northfield. Puyear said the offseason is a perfect time to work on improving one’s golf fitness and that improved fitness can improve ball speed by five to 10 miles an hour, translating to 15 to 30 extra yards in distance.
Cory Puyear, whose facility P.U.R.E Golf in Northfield is dedicated to golf fitness, recommends players get an assessment from an expert to maximize an offseason conditioning program.
“You want to make sure you address your deficits in the proper way,” said Puyear, who has worked with tour pros.
If you can’t get to an expert, Puyear says to identify moves that focus on core flexibility and stability. Also, he says, “don’t forget your feet and ankles.”
“It’s a simple thing, but people don’t think about it,” Puyear said. “Your feet and ankles can be huge.”
Puyear says there could be a big payoff if you dedicate yourself to a solid and efficient offseason conditioning program.
“Your ball speed has the possibility to go up another 5 to 10 miles per hour,” he said.
That translates to a potential of an additional 15 to 30 yards, depending on the player. Who doesn’t want extra yards?
High-tech: Golf simulators used to be a novelty. Not anymore. Many country clubs now have them. Also, many indoor golf facilities are taking advantage of the latest technology to help you improve your game.
“With the technology available, we have ways of measuring what is going on with your swing,” Fischer said. “It’s like New Year’s resolutions. If you wanted to lose weight, you would go on the scale. In regards to golf, swing speed and launch angle are easily measurable with today’s technology. You can see how you’re improving.”
Golftec’s Kollmeyer stresses golfers should have a plan when employing the technology on a simulator or other devices.
“You should know what you’re looking for and what you want to work on,” Kollmeyer said. “Know what you’re looking for in terms of data. Know what you want with ball flight. What is the face doing at impact? Practice with a purpose.”
Domed: With several in the area, golf domes continue to be a welcome refuge for golfers in the off-season. Hitting under the bubble provides an opportunity to see the ball fly for 100-or-so yards. Nothing beats a well-struck drive pounding flush into that plastic wall.
Once again, the professionals advise you go to the dome with a plan. Don’t mindlessly hit balls.
For instance, Kochevar says when hitting a driver, try to select a specific target line. “Try to get the ball to take off on that line,” Kochevar said.
Also, keep in mind, hitting off mats doesn’t always give true feedback. If you hit behind the ball on a mat, it still could get up in the air, while the club is likely to dig in for a fat shot on grass. Kochevar recommends placing a towel a few inches behind the ball. Practice to avoid hitting the towel to ensure good contact.
Home School: If you’re grounded because there are 22 inches of fresh snow on the ground or it is a bone-numbing 22-below, guess what? You still can practice at home.
If you have a high enough ceiling, Kollmeyer says you can make improvements simply by making swings without a ball. “Try to work on something specific, like making a good turn,” he said.
If you don’t have room, Fischer says to get a shorter club. One of her favorite drills is to make swings with your eyes closed.
“It makes you tune into your balance more,” Fischer said. “You will feel things in your swing you don’t normally feel.”
Reboot: The Chicago weather forces golfers to take a break from grinding on the course. That isn’t such a bad thing. Even the pros will put their clubs away for several weeks during the year. It is an opportunity to clear out your golf brain.
“Taking a break is that moment to step away, refresh and renew your love of the game,” Fischer said. “Then in the spring, you can’t wait to get out there again.” ●
A former golf writer at the Chicago Tribune, Ed Sherman is a frequent contributor to Chicago District Golfer.
Ice In Your Veins — And Outside
The pressure that comes with stepping to the 18th tee at Pebble Beach and trying to navigate the Pacific Ocean to the left, a cypress tree in the fairway and out of bounds to the right — with prizes on the line — is no longer limited to PGA Tour professionals.
CDGA members will have the opportunity to keep their competitive juices flowing during the offseason thanks to the new CDGA Indoor Net Series presented by Tito’s Handmade Vodka that will unfold at X-Golf Downers Grove. A handful of two-person team competitions will play out on select Saturdays this winter at the brand-new, state-of-the-art facility.
X-Golf’s simulators, which use advanced sensory technology featuring high-speed cameras, lasers and sensors to create the most innovative and accurate golf simulator experience in the world, will provide a realistic playing opportunity on some of the country’s top courses. The scoring format will replicate the popular CDGA Net Series events that take place throughout the summer, with the winter events carrying on the summer series’ casually competitive aura. X-Golf and Tito’s prizes will be given out at each qualifier, with the grand prize at the year-end Championship being a Stay & Play trip to Tullymore Golf Resort.
For registration, a full schedule and more information, visit CDGA.org/IndoorNet. | https://medium.com/@CDGAGolf/five-months-to-better-golf-a2e8b34ac064 | [] | 2021-12-16 16:44:08.859000+00:00 | ['Indoor Golf', 'Golf', 'Chicago', 'Dome', 'Cdga'] |
Den Done Friday | Den Done Friday
Snow and more snow and snow kept us home today. The roads were clear after a while but it was easier to keep Owen at home. Tomorrow we will go to celebrate Christmas with my parents. He talked French and German all morning, asking Siri, “I want chocolate milk please in German”, laughing hysterically when it would pull up and then asking for the phrase in numerous other languages. I asked him to tell me something in French and he squealed with it quickly escalating to a meltdown. As soon as I stopped asking he went right back to speaking French. Half of it is not recognizable and the other half is said all squished together with delight. I recognize some of it and then tell him he’s doing a good job about the rest. The big milk spill happened today, they happen a couple of times a week. He understands that he “makea de mess”, squealing he says this, but then his sensory needs take over. He will sit in it, slosh in it, or walk through the entire house with the dripping milk coming from everywhere. If I catch him quick enough he screams the entire time I ask him to sit while I clean him and the mess up. I breathe. He does really well most of the time with an open cup and I want him to have that independence. He’s made me laugh so many times and when he uses his words I want to sing it from the rooftops. Sometimes when he doesn’t want to do something or when he thinks he will push my buttons his words are even more fluid. We had spaghetti for dinner. He ate about ten bites, stopped, and promptly declared, “I need to go potty” as he was running there. When he was done he came back to the table but he said, “you done not going to eatening no dinner you done yum yum no more dinner tonight”. The “no more dinner tonight” runs a close second to my favorite phrase “you done throw it in de trash”. But he’s listening and learning and together we are growing. The older he gets the more his opinions completely matter to him and he makes sure they matter to me. For bedtime, I started early, way early. I took away all the electronics, I made everything calm, got all the steps ready for his bath, we read several books together, took an extra long bath, and had his tea ready that I keep hoping will help him sleep again. Two hours later he was still not asleep. But we also had lots of fun today. I got him new bath toys and one of them was letters. We spelled words on the tub wall and he did amazing. So thankful for my gift of my sweet baby O. Challenges come and days fade away but the smile he gives me keeps my heart singing with delight. Be thankful for your gifts, be happy in your heart, and know that tomorrow the struggles will fade away. Smiles to all and donut daze! | https://medium.com/@lynnbrowder/den-done-friday-c856177e0520 | ['Lynn Browder'] | 2020-12-26 04:26:39.279000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Parenting', 'Autism', 'Life Lessons', 'Inspiration'] |
Redis on NVMe with ScyllaDB | Redis is an in-memory data structure server that is widely popular¹. Recently, (Oct 2019) ScyllaDB’s master branch accepted contributions supporting² basic Redis protocol³ from Peng Jian⁴ . Naturally, one would like to compare the cost of running such an alternative caching solution on cloud. This blog compares ScyllaDB’s Redis API with AWS ElastiCache with a focus on reducing cloud TCO for highly available and high capacity (TB) cache. AWS ElastiCache is a fully managed Redis provided by Amazon.
Redis is fast, but has limitations due to:
Single threaded process: While Redis multithreaded in the form of having multiple IO threads support is in progress, this is not same as the Seastar⁵ architecture that is fundamentally focused on performance on modern, multi core systems and thereby scales well.
Basic on disk/SSD persistence provided via RDB and/or AOF based snapshots. Storage/Persistence is central to ScyllaDB’s design. Further, ScyllaDB provides multi replication and multi data center support out of the box. Similar support on Redis is available only through Redis Enterprise⁶.
Compared to Redis, Scylla can serve requests out of fast local storage such as NVMe thereby offering higher density.
The Redis support on ScyllaDB however, is currently limited only to basic APIs such as Put/Get/Delete/Ping etc. Nevertheless, these APIs are robust enough having tested millions of ops. Being open source, it is likely that additional APIs support will be added by the community.
Redis Labs published a high throughput benchmarking tool for Redis called Memtier. The numbers presented here are based on using memtier as a load generator. Memtier is chosen due to the following reasons — (i) memtier is a benchmark maintained and supported by Redis Labs, the authors of Redis; (ii) memtier benchmark is designed to generate high throughput load using a wide variety of combinations such as clients, threads, and multiple connections per thread; and (iii) memtier’s report includes throughput and latency profiles.
AWS ElastiCache has several use cases such as caching, maintaining gaming leaderboards, pub-sub for chat based apps, session store, running ML model scoring to name a few. From an end users perspective, these services are real-time, responsive, and “always on”. Hence the need for a high throughput, low latency memory based store that can scale and is highly available.
Consider a use case, where one needs to cache 1 Billion objects. Further, each of these objects is 1KB similar to storing a session store, status page, etc. At 1 Billion items of 1 KB size, we need a cache of 1 TB. Further, in a production environment, such a cache needs to be available and hence the cache data needs to be replicated. For this use case of object cache, assume that we need a throughput SLA of 100K ops/sec , <10 msec average latency while providing availability (via replication) across two zones in AWS. Note that this use case falls under the category of a “capacity” cache with “replication” in order to guarantee a fixed SLA. This workload is modeled based on the following memtier parameters consisting of 50 clients each with 20 threads.
Memtier Parameters
AWS ElastiCache provides the ability to replicate the cache across availability zones. For a cache capacity of 1TiB, AWS ElastiCache requires ~1.6 TB of total memory because of the overhead of caching metadata. Using 8x cache.r4.8x instances, each of which has ~200 GB RAM, the total cache capacity equals ~1.6 TB. Further, for High Availability, we double the number of instances. Therefore, for AWS ElastiCache, a replication group with 8 instances across two availability zones leads to a total of 16x cache.r4.8x.large instances⁷.
For ScyllaDB, the cache capacity is limited by NVMe Storage. A single i3.8xlarge instance provides 1.9 TiB of cache. Running this in cluster mode across two availability zones results in 2x i3.8xlarge instances⁸. The client benchmarking tool, memtier, runs on a c5.9xlarge instance. Details of memtier parameters and AWS instance details are below:
Cloud Metrics for Caching
Memtier client ran a load against both AWS ElastiCache and ScyllaDB. Details of the script and notes on running are available on Github⁹. First a cache of 1 Billion items was populated followed by running a 100% Get workload and 80:20 Get:Put mixed workload running for half hour. For both ScyllaDB and AWS ElastiCache, a throughput of 100K and an average latency < 10 msec was attained. However, based on cloud cost ScyllaDB’s cost is at least 12x lower at 1 TiB.
To summarize, we see the following benefits of using a ScyllaDB based Redis as opposed to AWS ElastiCache. Note that the cost savings of using ScyllaDB increases non-linearly as the cache capacity increases. This is because the capacity increase for ScyllaDB leaps by capacity offered by SSD instance and not RAM.
References
[1]: Redis DB rankings https://db-engines.com/en/system/Redis
[2]: Redis API Pull Request https://github.com/scylladb/scylla/pull/5132
[3]: Redis API in Scylla https://github.com/scylladb/scylla/blob/master/docs/design-notes/redis.md
[4]: https://github.com/fastio
[5]: Seastar http://seastar.io/
[6]: Redis Enterprise Features https://redislabs.com/redis-enterprise/technology/
[7]: AWS ElastiCache High Availability https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonElastiCache/latest/red-ug/Replication.html
[8]: ScyllaDB cluster mode on a single DC https://docs.scylladb.com/operating-scylla/procedures/cluster-management/create_cluster/
[9]: Benchmarking script and notes on AWS https://github.com/githubsid/scylla-redis | https://medium.com/@siddharthc/redis-on-nvme-with-scylladb-5e12afd38dbc | ['Siddharth Choudhuri'] | 2020-12-30 05:21:43.051000+00:00 | ['Cloud Cost Management', 'Solid State Drive', 'Scylladb', 'Redis', 'Elasticache'] |
6 Queer Historical Figures You Thought Were Straight | 6 Queer Historical Figures You Thought Were Straight
From da Vinci to Malcolm X, these icons are straight-washed in most history books
Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash
I’m embarrassed to admit that up until a few days ago, I was completely unaware that Angela Davis is a lesbian. It made me think — if I, a bisexual leftist and passionate devotee of Angela Davis, was not aware, how many other people must be unaware?
I was partly upset at myself for being oblivious. But I was more upset reflecting on why my history textbooks never once mentioned her sexuality. What does that mean about our society? How deeply has homophobia hijacked the way we teach history in the US?
So I did some research to find out if there were other prominent queer historical figures whose sexuality had been swept under the rug in my history classes at school.
Here are just a few of the ones I found.
Malcolm X
As we all know, Malcolm X was a prominent human rights activist and advocate for black empowerment and socialism. He became a leader of the Nation of Islam in the early 1950s, though he later renounced it while still remaining a committed Muslim. In 1965, he was tragically assassinated at the young age of 39.
But most history books stop there, neglecting to mention his sexuality. That’s why most Americans have no idea that historical research has revealed that he was most likely bisexual.
Most notable is Bruce Perry’s biography Malcolm — The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America. According to the American Institute of Bisexuality, Perry “dissected over 400 interviews, interactions, and written accounts from Malcolm X’s close friends and family about everything from his childhood to his assassination,” arguably making his book “the most complete and well-rounded account of Malcolm X’s personal life.”
It appears based on the interviews referenced in the book that Malcolm X was not heterosexual — the question is whether he was bisexual or gay. In his teens and 20s, he frequently had casual sex with men and had at least one sustained sexual relationship with a man. And when he was living in Flint, Michigan, his roommate at the time noticed that he would often leave the room they shared to spend the night with a gay man who lived in the same building. These sexual encounters may have even continued after he married Betty Shabazz, to whom he remained married until his death.
Perry also investigates why he never came out publicly or opened up to his loved ones about his attraction to men. He concludes that it may have been due to the expectations of his religion, internalized homophobia, or a fear of the many repercussions that openly queer Black men face.
Angela Davis
As I mentioned earlier, Marxist Black feminist activist and scholar Angela Davis identifies as a lesbian. There’s no mystery around this because she publicly acknowledged her sexuality in 1998 in an interview with Out magazine.
But historians aren’t sure whether that was the first time she publicly came out. They do know that although she was extremely vocal about her support for LGBTQ issues, she liked to keep her private life out of the limelight.
Here’s what activist and archivist Lisbet Tellefsen said about this:
The glaring spotlight on her public life was contrasted by the privacy in which she conducted her private life — and we understood. While we could and often did debate what exactly constituted her public coming out, her unwavering and vocal support for LGBTQ rights was always visceral and crystal clear.
It’s a shame that even though Davis is an extremely important historical figure, and even though she’s commonly included in the Civil Rights Movement sections of history textbooks, her sexuality is rarely acknowledged. For instance, my high school history textbook The American Pageant — one of the most commonly used in the US — completely glossed over her sexuality. This is inexcusable, especially given that her LGBTQ identity is highly relevant to the topic of civil and human rights.
Leonardo da Vinci
Any serious Western history textbook will include a decent amount of details on Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci. He was a seminal painter, inventor, and intellectual of the High Renaissance in the late 1400s and early 1500s. He’s considered one of the greatest artists of all time (at least in the Western canon), and he made notable discoveries in a broad range of fields including civil engineering, geology, hydrodynamics, anatomy, etc. Some historians even credit him with inventing the helicopter, the tank, and the parachute.
But an important detail that’s almost always omitted is his sexuality. This has recently been rectified by a biography by Walter Isaacson, who describes da Vinci as “illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical.”
Iscaacson tells us that among da Vinci’s many erotic relationships with men, some of the most intimate were likely with his male students Salai and Melzi. And in 1476, when da Vinci was 24, he was charged with sodomy for engaging in homosexual acts with a well-known male prostitute.
After detailing his relationships with men, the book ultimately claims that it’s likely that he never had any romantic relations with women — contradicting Sigmund Freud’s theory that da Vinci was bisexual rather than gay.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt is most commonly known as the wife and first lady of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She’s often lauded as one of the greatest first ladies in US history, alongside one of the greatest presidents in US history.
But her marriage to FDR was not as rosy as it was usually portrayed at the time — they both had adulterous affairs, of which they were mutually aware. And Eleanor, far from being the heterosexual woman Americans presumed her to be, had some notable affairs with women.
Historians who have closely studied her life believe she may have been a lesbian, using her marriage with FDR to maintain her “clean” image. Documented in the most detail is her long-term romantic relationship with journalist Lorena Hickok. For years, they exchanged love letters that conveyed a great deal of longing and passion. Here one’s one example in a letter she wrote to Hickok, whom she lovingly called “Hick:”
Hick darling,
All day I’ve thought of you & another birthday I will be with you, & yet tonite you sounded so far away & formal. Oh! I want to put my arms around you. I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort to me. I look at it and think she does love me, or I wouldn’t be wearing it.
And here’s what she wrote in another letter:
Funny, everything I do my thoughts fly to you. Never are you out of my heart. I wish I could lie down beside you tonight & take you in my arms.
It’s unclear to historians to what degree she and Hickok were physically intimate. But what is clear is that Eleanor was brimming with desire for that intimacy.
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo is a well-known and highly celebrated Mexican artist. In the US, she’s been revered as a feminist icon at least since the women’s movement of the 60s and 70s. But most historical materials that highlight her influence in the art world completely overlook her sexuality. Although her marriage to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera is usually addressed, even many of her fans are unaware that she was bisexual.
Kahlo and Rivera’s relationship was notoriously tumultuous — they both had frequent adulterous affairs. Rivera’s affairs often left Kahlo feeling heartbroken and despondent (this emotional trauma was the subject of many of her paintings) Her famous fling with Leon Trotsky was partly driven by a desire to retaliate for her husband’s betrayal.
But her erotic escapades didn’t just involve men — a good number of them were with women.
Two of the most famous women she had passionate sexual relationships with were artist Georgia O’Keefe (who she “made love” with) and French nightclub sensation Josephine Baker.
Even though Rivera was jealous of Kahlo’s affairs with men, he was titillated by her sexual encounters with women — so he encouraged them, making them even more frequent.
Anne Frank
I first learned about Anne Frank in elementary school, when I read parts of her diary. I remember learning that she was Jewish and that she and her family had attempted to escape Nazi persecution by hiding in Amsterdam. I learned that she had been captured by Nazis and transported to a concentration camp after years in hiding. And that, tragically, she had died at the tender age of 15.
But I never learned that she wrote passionately in her famous diaries about her desires for girls.
Here’s one section that makes it glaringly obvious:
I remember that once when I slept with a girl friend I had a strong desire to kiss her, and that I did do so. I could not help being terribly inquisitive over her body, for she had always kept it hidden from me. I asked her whether, as a proof of our friendship, we should feel one another’s breasts, but she refused.
In another passage in her diary, she said this:
I go into ecstasies every time I see the naked figure of a woman, such as Venus, for example. It strikes me as so wonderful and exquisite that I have difficulty in stopping the tears rolling down my cheeks.
These passages make it clear as daylight that she was attracted to women, whether she was bisexual or homosexual. In one passage, she made it even more explicit, lamenting — “If only I had a girlfriend.” | https://medium.com/an-injustice/6-queer-historical-figures-you-thought-were-straight-56640ba1258e | ['Stephanie Leguichard'] | 2020-11-30 12:23:05.661000+00:00 | ['History', 'Relationships', 'LGBTQ', 'Feminism', 'Equality'] |
A Guide to Independent Leftist News | TFW you switch to independent Leftist news sources
There are several factors that have contributed to the pro-corporate hellscape we are in today. I am going to address one of them: deliberate misinformation from corporate-sponsored news.
In “Manufacturing Consent,” Noam Chomsky wrote that it is the role of elite corporate-sponsored media (NYT/Washington Post/NPR/cable news in the US) to set the agenda of debate in our country for the ruling class. They do this by selecting the topics of the day, through framing of issues, filtering of information and setting the boundaries of the debate within set limits.
Issues and conversations which do not benefit the ruling class, EX: the deaths of millions of children caused by sanctions and drone & proxy in the Middle East, our domestic surveillance program, the imprisonment and exile of journalists and the large scale working-class protests and socialist movements happening in countries like India are not discussed in any critical way.
Misinformation and confirmation bias are existential threats to our society. Good sources are invaluable within our current landscape of corporate news, state sponsored propaganda and QAnon. So how do we fix our news diet?
Step 1: Turn off corporate sponsored cable news, NPR, New York Times and Washington Post.
Step 2: Find independent journalists you can trust, consume, spread and support their work.
The rest of article addresses Step 2, and I am publishing it as a resource for independent Leftist news. Feel free to bookmark this page and reach out with your own suggestions. I will be updating periodically.
Podcasts (+ 2 YouTube Shows)
Podcasts are great for independent creators because they level the playing field in terms of cost of entry. This is a big reason for the quantity and range of independent Leftist voices available in the format. As long as you have a mic, and can afford basic hosting fees, you can launch a podcast. Many podcasters depend on periodic donations from listeners to exist. I highly encourage anyone who enjoys any of the independent podcasts listed below to consider becoming a sponsor of their Patreon (if one exists). This helps ensure that the creators can continue delivering quality content
Podcasts are how I absorb about 1/3 of the news I follow. They are ideal for long commutes or other passive listening opportunities throughout the day. Many podcasters also publish video versions on YouTube, but I prefer to download and listen at my own speed. If you’re new to podcasts, you’ll first need to pick a podcast player. My personal favorite is Overcast, due to its handy customization features. One thing to note is that not every podcast is available for every player. Some of the bigger players like Spotify own exclusive rights to podcasts, but none of the ones listed below fall into that category. That said, here are some of my favorites:
Southpaw is a podcast that was started as a Leftist answer to the “Joe Rogan Experience” by two friends of mine, Sam and Paul. It’s a podcast where the 2 vectors of discussion are martial arts and Leftism. They have THE best MMA fight previews and post-fight recaps in the game, but are also a great source for deep dives into Leftist theory including interviews tackling heavy topics like settler colonialism in an accessible way. Southpaw is also a community of Leftists like myself, and we have expanded its footprint into a Facebook group, a Discord chat, a Patreon and a worldwide network of friends and supporters. Leftist Martial-arts may sound super-niche, but it is super-necessary, as the martial arts world has been inundated with an unhealthy and lopsided amount of fascism. Southpaw is the antioxidant pill to counter fascism and toxicity in our sport and in our communities. If any of this interests you, subscribe to the pod, and join the fight!
The single best podcast based news source I can recommend is my friend Sean’s podcast, called “Tribunus Plebis”. Sean, who is also an active member of Southpaw community (see above), is a trucker with a mic, a laptop, and a gift for communication. He breaks down multi-layered problems and complex news stories from a Leftist perspective with more nuance than anyone I’ve ever subscribed to. His whole library is worth listening to, but I recommend starting with Episode 6 on Performative Politics. His history episodes on Mother Jones (the person, not the magazine) and The Bread & Roses Strike are absolute gems as well. To understand where we are headed as a working/middle-class movement, it is critical that we understand where we came from. Tribunus Plebis Podcast has been a great help for me in this regard.
If I could recommend a single news source to a non-radical friend, it would be Rising on The Hill. It is an easily consumable, daily morning news program on YouTube featuring a glossy co-anchor studio format that looks and feels familiar to anyone born before 2000, but with a twist. The twist is that Rising’s co-anchors analyze politics from an anti-establishment perspective. Krystal Ball, comes from a Leftist perspective, while Saagar Enjeti, has a somewhat confusing, but interesting “populist-Right” perspective. Rising on The Hill provides 7–8 segments, published on The Hill’s YouTube Channel on weekdays, and also does special coverage of live events. If you like your news in a traditional anchor-centered visual TV format, replacing network or cable news with Rising will make you much more informed.
Secular Talk is the YouTube channel of Kyle Kulinski. Kyle is one of the co-founders of the grass-roots political action committee, Justice Democrats, and a self-described “reformist” and not a radical. I’m somewhere in between the two, and Kyle was one of the influences that pulled me further Left when I discovered his show during Obama’s first term. I thoroughly enjoy Kyle’s analysis of politics, and theory for change. He’s also a great follow on Twitter.
Jimmy Dore is a stand-up comedian who pivoted into the political commentary space. Prior to this, he was a host on The Young Turks, but parted ways due to philosophical differences with (Jimmy is quite a bit further Left politically than TYT). The show is delivered via audio podcast, and also in segments on YouTube. While his style is not for everyone, as he is the angriest, most abrasive person on this list, he is passionate and consistent in his commitment to fighting for the living conditions of the American working class. More often than not, Jimmy’s takes are hilarious, and spot-on in analysis of events and trends in American politics.
You may recognize Briahna Joy Gray as the former National Press Secretary for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign. She recently started the Bad Faith Podcast with Virgil Texas, who was formerly part of the Chapo Traphouse podcast. This show stands out for the quality of its interviews. Recent guests include Leftist heavy hitters like Noam Chomsky, Boots Riley, Cornell West and Sara Nelson. The two hosts have great chemistry, and Brie specifically is never shy about challenging guests with tough questions.
Deconstructed is a podcast produced by The Intercept, a Left-leaning news site, and hosted by one of my favorite traditional journalists, Ryan Grimm. This is a weekly show that focuses on a single topic per episode, from analysis of current news like the leaked audio from Joe Biden’s recent meeting with black leaders, to more heady topics like the Rise of QAnon within the Republican Party.
Current Affairs Podcast
Current Affairs is one of the more established Leftist news sites. I’m actually new to them, but they have an all-star list of guests, and have addressed a lot of diverse topics like Modern Monetary Theory with Stephanie Kelton, tenant strikes and the absurd level of narcissism in Obama’s 3rd best-selling autobiography.
This podcast is currently on hiatus as of August 2020, but Primo Nutmeg has one of the best libraries of interviews with prominent and interesting Leftists and anti-establishment figures like Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone, Ron Paul, Primo was also the only person I’m aware of to cover the mess of the 2020 Green Party primary, which in my opinion, squandered a golden opportunity to hit the 5% third party federal funding threshold by running Howie Hawkins over Gov Jesse Ventura.
Useful Idiots with Matt Taibbi & Katie Halper
Useful Idiots is a podcast produced by Rolling Stone, and features Matt Taibbi, one of my favorite Leftist journalists, and writer/comedian/journalist Katie Halper. This show covers serious topics in a conversation-between-friends type of way, making it a bit easier to digest than other political pods. Matt and Katie are heavy on sarcasm, but cover the bases and facts around American and global political issues.
More details to come on the following podcasts:
Lions Led By Donkeys
Revolutionary Left Radio
Working People w/ Maximilian Alvarez
Online News
I personally don’t consume much news via websites, but if you do, there are some reliable independent Lefist sources. All of the names of websites are hyperlinked below, and editors/founders/contributor names are linked to their Twitter accounts, if available.
Current Affairs
Current Affairs started out as a bi-monthly print and web magazine, founded by Editor-in-Chief Nathan J Robinson. Nathan is a trustworthy news source, who has made Current Affairs into into an important voice in the online Left. CA has expanded into podcasting, and produce a good one (referenced above). CA also launched the journalism career of Briahna Gray Joy.
Black Agenda Report w/ Margaret Kimberley
Margaret Kimberly had been one of my favorite follows on Twitter for a while. I somehow had several conversations with her there before finding out that she is the editor of Black Agenda Report. I was put on to BAR by my friend Kristan, and have gone ham on their article archive. Something that has been largely lost in modern black activism is the socialist/Communist roots of black radical movements of the Civil Rights era. BAR fills that void.
Jacobin
Jacobin is an online and quarterly print magazine, and one of the older Leftist news sites, which was popularized during the Bernie Sanders 2016 Democratic primary run. Jacobin’s Editor-at-Large is Bernie’s ex-speechwriter and advisor, David Sirota, who is a trustworthy and well-known figure on the Left. Jacobin feels like it has been shifting a bit pro-imperialist as of late, but as far as progressive news sources with resources, reach and scope, they’re one of the largest and more reliable ones.
Teen MF’ing Vogue
Yes, that Teen Vogue
People think I’m joking whenever I recommend Conde Naste’s Teen Vogue, but ever since Lindsay Peoples Wagner got the EIC job in 2019, Teen Vogue has been doing the best Leftist news coverage in the mainstream publishing world, with a heavy focus on social issues.
Wikileaks
Wikileaks is the OG whistleblower non-profit website. Wikileaks still touts a 100% accuracy rate. Also, free Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner.
An Injustice on Medium
Gotta give these guys a shout-out. They are an aggregator of Leftist writers on Medium, and they picked up my RBG essay when I first started my channel here. They do a great job curating, give a megaphone to writers with tiny followings like me, and feature some fantastic artwork.
People
This is a list of important Leftist and Leftist-friendly individuals who are not directly involved in a regular podcast or news outlet. Links to Twitter accounts are included where applicable.
Cornel West
Dr West is the Left’s most charismatic figure, a living legend in academia, and possibly our loudest and most critical voice. He is absolutely fearless, and at this point, untouchable in reputation and resume among modern Leftists. Dr West was one of the first people with a platform to criticize Barack Obama back in 2007–08, and is an unapologetic socialist. I don’t have a lot of heroes, but Dr West is at the top of the list of mine.
Stephanie Kelton
Stephanie Kelton is not a Leftist. She is an academic in the field of macroeconomics, whose work in the field of MMT (modern monetary theory) is exciting, critical and potentially world changing. Kelton’s book, “The Deficit Myth” is critical reading for any Leftist, and is in the words of my friend Amar Reganti, “has turned the tide on deficit thinking.”
Glenn Greenwald
Glenn was one of the founders of The Intercept, where he was one of the loudest critics of Democratic Party corruption from the Left and was one of the few prominent traditional journalists, to counter mainstream media’s coddling of AIPAC, the US government’s treatment of Julian Assange, and Russiagate. He now writes exclusively on Substack, following a fallout with the other editors over censorship, related to Glenn’s criticism of Joe Biden.
Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin is one of the most prolific independent writers on Medium & Substack. She works out of Australia, but has some of the most compelling takedowns of American crony capitalism I’ve ever read. She’s a great follow on Twitter as well. Caitlin is one of the best examples of a modern independent voice of the Left finding an audience outside of traditional mainstream journalism.
Ryan Grim
Ryan is DC bureau chief of The Intercept & frequent contributor, and ocassional co-host Rising on The Hill. He is one of the most reliable traditional political journalists with a refreshing independent streak.
Maximilian Alvarez
Max is someone who is in my opinion, one of the most important voices for the American working class. His interview on Southpaw is a good starting point to understanding his work and perspective. His work has been featured in publications including The Nation, Current Affairs, and In These Times. He is the host of Working People Podcast which does deep dives into working class stories and politics.
Aaron Maté
Aaron is a writer and frequent contributor to The Nation and Grayzone. He was one the first traditional journalists to question Russiagate in his work, and remains a tireless, vocal and reliable source for news from a Leftist perspective.
Adolph Reed Jr
Dr Reed is a journalist, author and professor at University of Pennsylvania, who is an unapologetic Marxist. He doesn’t have much of an online presence, but whenever I see him as an interview subject or in a writing credit, I tune in. He is one of the best voices for Leftism in academia. Check out his article “The Myth of Class Reductionism” for a sample of his work and perspective.
Zaid Jilani
Zaid is an oddball on this list. He is not a Leftist. What he is, is a thoroughly independent journalist, who often has some of the most unique takes on American politics in professional news media. Zaid is a frequent contributor to Rising on The Hill. I’ve gotten into it with him a couple times on Twitter, but have always respected his work. He does come out of left field with some of his takes though, so don’t follow him if you’re upset easily.
Sara Nelson
Sara Nelson is one of my favorite American leaders. She is the fire breathing, clear headed, charismatic president of the American Flight Attendants union, and every one of her interviews and speeches leaves me feeling fired up and slightly more positive about the future.
Listen to her interview on Bad Faith Podcast to get an idea of who Sara is. She is the opposite of a Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell. She is a fighter. She IS the good guys. She is part of labor, a flight attendant, but is positioned to have the power and initiative to halt all flights out of any city in America right now if she and the 50,000 members of the union she represents decide that it is time.
Stuff to Stay Away From:
CNN/MSNBC/NY Times/Washington Post — Getting off the familiar teat of mainstream news media is the steepest part of the shift to Leftism from Liberalism, but once you are able to get over this obstacle, you start seeing the world for what it is. I don’t know anyone who has taken this step and ever gone back.
PBS /NPR — Bush-era cuts to the NEA did a number on PBS/NPR, which is now sadly thinly veiled sponsored content for the oil industry and big banks.
Bill Maher — He used to be a left-leaning Liberal Bernie supporter who took a hard turn into a Democratic Party whip/loudmouth, whose platform has basically become shaming the young activist Left to stop asking for ridiculous short-sighted, selfish millennial wishlist things like healthcare, student loan relief.
Pod Save America — This is the most popular Centrist/corporatist Liberal podcast, and where a lot of Leftists started from, before discovering that Liberalism and Leftism are not synonymous. My mans Aren Lebrun put it best:
The Pod Save America guys are yellow-bellied descendants of empire and genocide whose West Wing ass Potemkin critique of American politics is marketed in direct proportion to its usefulness in kneecapping revolutionary fervor.
Virginia Heffernan — She is possibly liberal mainstream media’s worst political journalist.
The Lincoln Project — Republican Grifters
Hollywood Twitter Libs — Alyssa Milano, George Takei, Chrissy Teigen/John Legend, Jemele Hill, Debra Messing, Soledad O’Brien are all trash voices. Don’t get your political opinions, medical advice or stock tips from these morons.
Proceed w/ Caution:
The Young Turks — There was a time when TYT was THE news source for anti-establishment voters from the Left. Things changed significantly in the quality and bias in their reporting after Clinton megadonor Jeffrey Katzenberg invested $20M into the network. I’d put TYT as left of mainstream cable news, but a far cry from the anti-establishment roots they were founded on.
Last edited 12/21/2020 | https://medium.com/@sungsays/a-guide-to-independent-leftist-news-c9ef75e5cb25 | ['Sung Kim'] | 2020-12-21 23:15:10.653000+00:00 | ['Communism', 'Leftism', 'Socialism', 'News'] |
Multi Signature Wallets: An Introduction | Multi Signature Wallets: An Introduction
One of the unique features Bitcoin brought to finance was the ability to set up multisignature wallets which can be created securely by participants around the world. Before we explain how multisignature wallets work, however, let’s take a look at what was available before Bitcoin was launched in 2009.
The expansion of the internet, and online banking, helped multinational organizations more effectively manage their resources and money, as members could access a shared bank account using their laptops.
The problem, however, is the bank: organizations must trust that the bank will remain solvent, will keep their data safe, and that the members who have access to the funds don’t lose their username and password (or get hacked). While the former is not an issue with most first world banks, there are many parts of the world that do not have access to institutional banking with a level of security that we in the US take for granted.
This makes organizational finance much more difficult for those who need it.
Bitcoin has often been called programmable money. Bitcoin wallets can be created to operate under certain conditions. One of these conditions is requiring a certain number of signatures to transfer funds. These are called multisignature wallets, and they’re incredibly useful.
A multisignature wallet, or an “m of n” wallet, has a list of public keys (3 or 5 are common), and requires a certain number (2 of 3, or 3 of 5) of private keys to be used for the wallet to function. The function is obvious: no single person in an organization can spend Bitcoin without first getting a majority of the co-signers necessary to agree to spend it. Co-signers might be board members, C-suite executives, or some other combination as desired.
This benefits not only users, but banks as well, as it makes cyberattacks more difficult to accomplish. An attacker may be able to get a hold of one person’s private key, but multiple persons-especially if the key holders identities aren’t public-are much harder to attack.
Examples
A startup is about to host an ICO. The founders have worked together for many months, but are geographically separated and don’t want the temptation of millions of dollars worth of Ethereum in the hands of any single person. They create a multisignature wallet that requires a simple majority (3 out of 5 of them) to transact. Keys are given to the CEO, their VC backer, the founders, etc, as needed.
An entrepreneur wants to start a small corporation to serve his village. The amount of money is small, and bank services are too expensive to use. He creates a multisignature wallet with two other people that requires 2 out of 3 of the founders to sign a transaction, keeping their money safer from one member getting their private keys stolen or compromised.
Multisignature wallets can be understood as logical if-then statements. Any combination of if-then can be turned into a smart contract that acts as a multisignature wallet. The above examples are basic: “If m of n people sign with their private keys, then allow the transaction.”
But multisignature wallets don’t need to be restricted to an m of n only structure. For instance, they can also be programmed to allow one person full access OR multiple signatures needed. This might work in a will:
Jennifer wants full control of her cryptoassets while she’s alive, but if she dies, she doesn’t want her private keys lost forever. She uses a smart contract to give her private key full access to her cryptoassets, but restricts the other keys that access it to require multiple people to transact. She gives one key to a trust, which keeps it secure, and another key to a trusted family member or friend to use upon her death.
The smart contract will transact if Jennifer uses her private key alone OR if two (or three, etc) of the other private keys are used.
As one can see, the multi signature wallet has a variety of uses, and creates opportunities for those willing to learn how to use them…and those that do, will be on the leading edge of financial technology.
What Hedge Offers
Security:
Hedge leads the industry in providing secure wallets with proprietary best in class distributed cold storage practices. The keys to your funds never touch the internet and cannot be stolen by hackers. There is no single point of failure that can jeopardize your fiduciary.
Applications:
Hedge offers application interface solutions to make your apps work with our apps. Small regional bank looking to compete? Incorporate Hedge’s APIs into your app and give your customers the ability to buy and sell bitcoin through your institution.
Access:
Hedge is the only firm in the industry that gives you 24/7 access to your funds. We net settle transactions in a proprietary process that maintains the safety of keys in cold storage, but with near real time trading.
Let Hedge manage blockchains; you manage your clients. | https://medium.com/usehedge/multi-signature-wallets-an-introduction-58e9d4e137f | ['Chris Metcalfe'] | 2018-09-03 19:56:01.703000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin'] |
Beware of the Chuch! | Beware of the Chuch!
Image by Tumisu on Pixabay
Eewwww, what on earth is THAT?
I don’t know. I think it used to be lunch. Maybe in February? I don’t want to look too closely.
It was June, and my best friend and I were cleaning out our school lockers. We had survived 9th grade, our first year in high school.
It hadn’t been easy. Shifting social cliques, new alliances, new teachers to manage. Through it all, Michael and I remained the best of friends. We could laugh, commiserate, and help each other with homework.
Now summer’s freedom beckoned. But first, we had to clean up.
Some of it was easy: class notes, notes from friends, empty pens and broken pencils all went right into the hallway garbage. Favourite pictures would come home, to be saved for next year. And stinky leftover lunches were carried in outstretched hands to the outside garbage, dumped, followed by a stop in our respective bathrooms to clean the stench off our hands.
When the bits and pieces had all been dealt with, it remained. Grey-black. Sticky. A little fuzzy in spots. Not quite stinky but not exactly fresh-smelling either. A layer of dirt and dust with bits of mud, spilled drinks, ink, crumbs, and who knows what else, congealed into a semi-solid mass lining the bottom of our otherwise relatively decent-looking lockers.
It had no name, so we gave it one. We called it ‘chuch.’
It had no name. We called it Chuch
Chuch, to our knowledge, had never been used to describe anything before. We knew that it would fit right in with our grandparents’ Yiddish-isms.
Not only did it have that great ‘ccchhhh’ sound, the rolling, guttural one that sounded like a cross between clearing your throat and swallowing a sneeze, it had it on both ends. And the ‘uh’ in the middle was like ‘uuuh.’ As in your first reaction when you looked down and saw it.
Photo by Jamie Haughton on Unsplash
A new word was born. And what a word! Chuch is perfect for many of life’s yuckier substances: the stickiness on your keyboard after years of typing. The grey smelly build-up in your washing machine’s drum that lends its odour, if not its colour, to your favourite clothes. And the lush and natural but still vaguely disgusting layer at the bottom of your compost bin.
Chuch is stickier than schmutz, though not as sticky as muck. Fuzzier than gunk, without filth’s stench. And certainly more interesting than mere grime. It is everywhere you least want to look.
Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay
The most perfect chuch I have ever seen was the chuch on the floor of Dunbars, the dive bar I drank in during college. A mix of Ithaca mud, spilled beer, pizza crumbs and popcorn oil, it could be mopped over but never mopped up. Dunbars is closed now, but I bet the chuch is still on the floor of whatever business took over the space.
It’s been decades since that day in high school. Michael and I live far apart, and lead very different lives. But I am still 100% confident in two things: his friendship, and his use of chuch when he cleans out the fridge.
As for our lockers, we never did get them clean. Chuch is tough.
Inspired by Tree Langdon’s dictionary of neologisms.
Thanks for reading. If you liked this, try some more of my writing. You’ll have far more fun than you will cleaning up your chuch. | https://medium.com/illumination/watch-out-for-the-chuch-864ce67082e1 | ['Marne Platt'] | 2020-12-14 08:29:52.231000+00:00 | ['This Happened To Me', 'Words', 'Best Friends Forever', 'Neologisms', 'Humor'] |
“Problematic Internet Use, Aggressive Behavior, and Low Self-Esteem in the Digital Age” | Technological advancements are entirely reshaping the lives of a human race and the other species that co-exist with humans. People are increasingly being connected to the digital world and are learning distinct ways to communicate and interact through the internet. While such revolutions bring about rapid and continuous improvements, it has been observed that they influence the psychological and cognitive abilities up to a substantial extent.
This study aims to contribute to the subject by critically analyze the existing literature systematically. Problematic Internet usage (PIU) encompasses all related activities, including Gaming, Social networking, buying, selling, and all such activities that are addictive and leads to distress and impairment.
· PIU is linked among the high school students in China and is associated with poor well being and self-esteem (Mei et al., 2016).
· Barbera et al. (2017) expanded the previous research by using a personality questionnaire and assessed 652 male students in Palermo. They determined low self-esteem and hostile aggression as prominent risk factors for PIU. Further discussing the matter, they regarded age as an essential factor that triggers the PIU in adolescents.
· In the cross-cultural study conducted within Brazil and Portugal, Seabra et al. (2017) found a negative correlation between self-esteem and internet addiction. However, they found out that Brazilian men aged between 14 to 25 are more inclined towards internet addiction.
· Students with a lower sense of belongingness, social connectedness, and self-esteem had turned out to be at higher levels of depression that eventually lead to problematic social media and internet use (Kırcaburun et al., 2018).
· Pal Singh Balhara et al. (2019) carried out a cross-sectional study incorporating 2749 universities/college going students from eight countries and concluded that PIU is emerging as a mental health condition. Being the depression and anxiety as a significant correlate across all under reviewed countries, they also emphasized on screening out students based on PIU and psychological distress for timely response and care.
· Lei et al. (2019) discussed the moderating roles of age, geographic regions, and sample size. All three factors have a distinctive role in establishing a link between cyberbullying and self-esteem. Link gets weakened as the age increased. People in Asian countries having less to almost none regulatory bodies tend to show a more substantial relationship between self-esteem and cyberbullying than Western cultures.
· Brewer & Kerslake. (2015) studied cyberbullying using three predictors (Self-Esteem, Empathy, Loneliness) and stated that people with low self-esteem are more likely to report cyberbullying experience.
· Cacioppo et al. (2019) broadened the scope of their research by exploring the relationship between family proximity and functioning with the PIU in adolescents. They recommended developing family-oriented prevention programs to cater to all those who seem to be at risk of PIU.
· Mathew & Krishnan. (2020) studied the powerful impact of PIU on students of private schools in Kerala, India. They further mentioned that PIU could be detrimental to their social lives and can lead to an unhealthy relationship within the family.
· PIU is found within one-sixth of the 605 Bangladeshi students. Individuals with low self-esteem and experiencing loneliness have more tendency to experience PIU (Mamun et al., 2020).
Literature study exhibit that PIU can be a cause and effect within different scenarios. A person can develop PIU because of the psychological issues raised due to bully, harassment, and loneliness. They seek refuge within the digital world as they assume that no one is at the birk of abusing them in person. However, cyberbullying is another factor that comes into play and makes the situation much worse.
Since young people believe that the digital world provides a relatively safe platform for self-expression, PIU can lead to aggressive behaviour and low self-esteem when they perceive a false self and face cyberbullying.
Although a plethora of literature available within PIU, risk factors, and its consequences, disparities still exist within the subject. Where some researchers link low self-esteem, aggressive behaviours as a result of PIU, some tend to incorporate other factors as well. Age, regions, and sample size becomes a critical factor when it comes to finding the relation between the factors mentioned above. Young boys are more exposed to internet addiction, in contrast to young girls. Demographic factors play an essential part, so one judgment can not be generalized for all living in different countries. Nevertheless, young adults, due to the natural growth and psychological changes, are more vulnerable to internet addiction and hence aggressive behaviours and low self-esteem.
Below are the few socio-demographic factors that need to be considered while studying PIU and psychological factors associated with it.
Age: The younger generation is more vulnerable to PIU and developing psychological distress
Sex: Males are more inclined towards developing aggressive behaviour, and Females experience anxiety and depression. However, both tend to experience low self-esteem when they come across some bad experiences.
Country: Western countries have support groups and consultation centres to address such issues. Whereas in Asian countries, the system is either missing or not functioning correctly.
Culture: Within the country, varying cultures is a crucial element. People can or can not have access to the same amenity within the area just because of ethnocentrism.
Family’s proximity and Influence: The young generation, if neglected, can fell prey to PIU. The unhealthy functioning of the family can be detrimental to an adolescent and a young person.
Sociability: Whether or not a person is interested in engaging and connecting with people speaks volumes about his/her mental state and personal preferences. Introverts are more likely to stay within the realm of the digital world in comparison to extroverts who want their presence to be shown everywhere. It is easier for introverts to socialize with the people of their choice by not revealing their identity.
With the gradual acceptance of digital technologies within mid-aged to old-aged individuals, It is apparent that researchers conduct further study to notice and distinguish their behaviours from adolescents and young people. Only then, the very nature of PIU within various socio-demographic factors can be assessed and addressed.
References
1. Mei, S., Yau, Y., Chai, J., Guo, J., & Potenza, M. (2016). Problematic Internet use, well-being, self-esteem and self-control: Data from a high-school survey in China. Addictive Behaviors, 61, 74–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2016.05.009
2. Barbera, D.L., Piro, E., Mulè, A., Sideli, L., Cascia, C.L., Ruggirello, I., Sartorio, C., Tripoli, G., Inguglia, M., & Mangiapane, D. (2017). INTERNET OUT OF CONTROL: THE ROLE OF SELF-ESTEEM AND PERSONALITY TRAITS IN PATHOLOGICAL INTERNET USE.
3. Seabra, L., Loureiro, M., Pereira, H., Monteiro, S., Marina Afonso, R., & Esgalhado, G. (2017). Relationship Between Internet Addiction and Self-Esteem: Cross-Cultural Study in Portugal and Brazil. Interacting With Computers, 29(5), 767–778. https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwx011
4. Kırcaburun, K., Kokkinos, C., Demetrovics, Z., Király, O., Griffiths, M., & Çolak, T. (2018). Problematic Online Behaviors among Adolescents and Emerging Adults: Associations between Cyberbullying Perpetration, Problematic Social Media Use, and Psychosocial Factors. International Journal Of Mental Health And Addiction, 17(4), 891–908. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-018-9894-8
5. Pal Singh Balhara, Y., Doric, A., Stevanovic, D., Knez, R., Singh, S., & Roy Chowdhury, M. et al. (2019). Correlates of Problematic Internet Use among college and university students in eight countries: An international cross-sectional study. Asian Journal Of Psychiatry, 45, 113–120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2019.09.004
6. Lei, H., Mao, W., Cheong, C., Wen, Y., Cui, Y., & Cai, Z. (2019). The relationship between self-esteem and cyberbullying: A meta-analysis of children and youth students. Current Psychology, 39(3), 830–842. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-019-00407-6
7. Brewer, G., & Kerslake, J. (2015). Cyberbullying, self-esteem, empathy and loneliness. Computers In Human Behavior, 48, 255–260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.073
8. Cacioppo, M., Barni, D., Correale, C., Mangialavori, S., Danioni, F., & Gori, A. (2019). Do Attachment Styles and Family Functioning Predict Adolescents’ Problematic Internet Use? A Relative Weight Analysis. Journal Of Child And Family Studies, 28(5), 1263–1271. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01357-0
9. Mathew, P., & Krishnan, R. (2020). Impact of problematic internet use on the self-esteem of adolescents in the selected school, Kerala, India. Archives Of Psychiatric Nursing, 34(3), 122–128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnu.2020.02.008
10. Mamun, M., Hossain, M., Moonajilin, M., Masud, M., Misti, J., & Griffiths, M. (2020). Does loneliness, self‐esteem and psychological distress correlate with problematic internet use? A Bangladeshi survey study. Asia-Pacific Psychiatry, 12(2). https://doi.org/10.1111/appy.12386 | https://medium.com/@fahadsqb/problematic-internet-use-aggressive-behavior-and-low-self-esteem-in-the-digital-age-8ccbfea2f0f | [] | 2020-12-01 07:03:42.153000+00:00 | ['Internet Behaviour', 'Digital World', 'Aggression', 'Bullying', 'Low Self Esteem'] |
This is how Slack went from 0 to $1B without having a chief marketing officer | This is how Slack went from 0 to $1B without having a chief marketing officer Ali Eskandari Follow Feb 9 · 2 min read
The story of how Slack after just eight months become a unicorn by listening to customers without a CMO or any big marketing budget.
Stewart Butterfield
Vancouver, Canada.
Stewart already is a famous entrepreneur because of his contribution to building Flickr.
He decided to build a game.
Stewart invites Cal, Flickr’s chief software architect, and Flickr employees Eric and Serguei.
They kickstarted Glitch.
His team used Internet Relay Chat to communicate.
This way they (for a while) cope with the challenges of teamwork across multiple time zones.
It didn’t take long for Stewart and his team to realize Internet Relay Chat wasn’t up to the task.
They needed something better.
Stewart decided to start building their own communications tool.
They started working on the app at the end of 2012.
Stewart said,
We started inviting teams in batches and watched what happened. Then we made some changes, watched what happened, made some more changes…
By May of 2013, Slack was preparing for extraordinary growth.
And after just 8 months, they hit $1B valuations.
BOOM!
Without a CMO. Without any big marketing campaign.
From the get-go, Slack leverages the help ticket system as an opportunity to solidify loyalty.
Listening to customers, then building accordingly, is in the DNA of Slack.
Every customer's touchpoint is a marketing opportunity.
Don’t guess.
Don’t build stuff for a fictional customer in your head.
“Make Something People Want”
Marketing isn’t yelling. Great marketing is listening.
This is how you can get started:
Implement a survey when people want to leave your website, and ask, “What things stopping you to “here write your desired action” now?
Try block 30 minutes every week to talk with your loyal/ideal customers
Find out with user research (or your sales and customer support team) what is the most frequent questions people ask and answer them earlier in the buyer journey
You don’t need to be perfect, you just need to roll out a good thing and then based on people’s feedback improve it.
PS … subscribe to this baby and every Friday I’II send you a story about how to fascinate and how to create great experiences. | https://medium.com/the-new-digital-marketing/this-is-how-slack-went-from-0-to-1b-without-having-a-chief-marketing-officer-c829d0c3bb58 | ['Ali Eskandari'] | 2021-02-09 13:47:22.854000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Startup', 'Slack', 'Digital Marketing', 'Product'] |
I Tried Asking While Kowtowing ~ EP. 11 (EngSub) Full — Episodes | Episode 11 || I Tried Asking While Kowtowing ~ EP. 11 (EngSub) Full — Episodes
I Tried Asking While Kowtowing
Dogesuaru, who wants to see the naughty bits of girls, has a last resort to persuade them. That is, to grovel in front of them. Intent on having his lewd requests heard, he endures through the kowtowing. The heroines are often taken aback, embarrassed, and confused by his sudden action. Is anything impossible before dogeza?! Will the girls show him their risqué side?!
Title : I Tried Asking While Kowtowing
Episode Title : EP. 11
Number of Seasons : 1
Number of Episodes : 11
Genres : Animation , Anime , Comedy , Romance
Networks : AT-X
Status: Returning Series
Quality: HD
TELEVISION 👾
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 5910s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 5950s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[5] during the 5960s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 1000s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (516i, with 909091 intertwined lines of goal and 434545) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 3456561, 3456561 and 1314. Since 1050, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, Starz Video, iPlayer and Hulu.
In 1053, 19% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[1] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 5990s. Most TV sets sold during the 1000s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-1050s.[3][4] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[5] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 1050s.[6][1][5] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 1.0 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 1050s.[9]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as earthbound TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 1000s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 1000s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 1050s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
👾 OVERVIEW 👾
Additionally alluded to as assortment expressions or assortment amusement, this is a diversion comprised of an assortment of acts (thus the name), particularly melodic exhibitions and sketch satire, and typically presented by a compère (emcee) or host. Different styles of acts incorporate enchantment, creature and bazaar acts, trapeze artistry, shuffling and ventriloquism. Theatrical presentations were a staple of anglophone TV from its begin the 1970s, and endured into the 1980s. In a few components of the world, assortment TV stays famous and broad.
The adventures (from Icelandic adventure, plural sögur) are tales about old Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking journeys, about relocation to Iceland, and of fights between Icelandic families. They were written in the Old Norse language, for the most part in Iceland. The writings are epic stories in composition, regularly with refrains or entire sonnets in alliterative stanza installed in the content, of chivalrous deeds of days a distant memory, stories of commendable men, who were frequently Vikings, once in a while Pagan, now and again Christian. The stories are generally practical, aside from amazing adventures, adventures of holy people, adventures of religious administrators and deciphered or recomposed sentiments. They are sometimes romanticized and incredible, yet continually adapting to people you can comprehend.
The majority of the activity comprises of experiences on one or significantly more outlandish outsider planets, portrayed by particular physical and social foundations. Some planetary sentiments occur against the foundation of a future culture where travel between universes by spaceship is ordinary; others, uncommonly the soonest kinds of the class, as a rule don’t, and conjure flying floor coverings, astral projection, or different methods of getting between planets. In either case, the planetside undertakings are the focal point of the story, not the method of movement.
Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 1945–65, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk. | https://medium.com/@sidompuanb.a.da.ng/episode-11-i-tried-asking-while-kowtowing-ep-11-engsub-full-episodes-c4a824448e45 | ['Sidompuanb A Da Ng'] | 2020-12-21 12:19:45.379000+00:00 | ['Animation', 'Anime'] |
Fit for Work app helps construction firm report covid-free sites | Tottenham Court Road Station during the first UK lockdown, 2020
Through different forms of lockdown this year, construction firms have needed to work extra hard to keep projects moving. UK construction supply chains initially had to wait for, and then adapt quickly to C-19 guidance outlined by the government and construction leadership councils.
When the first UK lockdown was ordered in March 2020, subcontractors like Design Rationale Limited (DR)— a specialist in architectural metalwork and glazing - needed to put mitigation measures in place to protect their workers on site and to reassure the main contractors that work was safe to continue.
Fit for Work app used to check into site safely
Enhanced C-19 compliance with app on site
DR began rolling the Fit for Work app out in May to enhance health and safety, monitoring and compliance. The company needed real-time visibility on what was being reported at site level so that C-19 information could go straight ‘up the chain’ as things happened. Early detection was key to minimising disruption as sites reopened after lockdown.
The app has ensured staff engage with the latest H&S information and C-19 measures at the beginning and end of their shift, using their mobile phone to report key information (like PPE availability and temperature checks). By using the app’s location and facial recognition technology, DR have been able to record the location of workers at the start and end of each shift, providing vital contact-tracing information should they need it.
Smart thermometer being used with the app to check for signs of C-19
Visibility gives project managers peace-of-mind
As construction sites began to reopen through June and July, DR were able to get work going again with enhanced safety measures in place. Mark Hitchcock, Project Manager at DR says: “The App has 2 great features from my perspective…
“1 — our teams need to work closely together on site (within the 2m working area) so I want to be 100% sure that the guys are healthy before the shift starts. The app gives me piece of mind that our teams are in a safe working environment…
“2 — the facial recognition and GPS lets me know which of the guys are working at which sites. We have teams spread across multiple sites so its impossible as a PM to be in all of the places at once. The app supports me in my role.”
Tottenham Court Road Station, London — completed
Digital PPE for the modern workforce
For DR and many other organisations, daily checks are now part of the culture. The app has been helping to keep good sanitation front and centre in the fight against the virus. DR staff have been happy to use it, knowing that it is there to keep everyone safe. The app gives each worker reassurance and responsibility as they check in and out of sites.
DR have used it to create a more engaging process that is building a culture of H&S. In addition to the health and safety benefits, the app can provide time-stamped location, ID verification and project data that can feed into existing systems to streamline payroll, invoicing, payments and incident reporting.
In a challenging year for H&S, DR have been able to complete work at Tottenham Court Road and Farringdon stations, and have also received an award in recognition of their commitment to improving safety and efficiency. | https://medium.com/@fit-for-work/fit-for-work-app-helps-construction-firm-report-covid-free-sites-8b4aaf7c537e | ['Fit For Work'] | 2020-12-23 15:54:38.472000+00:00 | ['Apps', 'Health And Safety', 'Covid 19', 'Technology', 'Construction'] |
My Christmas Morning Smelled Like Hope | My Christmas Morning Smelled Like Hope
I woke up Christmas morning to a blustery icy wind and the invitation from the corners of my home to get up and get out with Jernee in tow. Just before 07:00 a.m., I released myself from the grips of a warm bed, prayed, layered up in clothing, and gathered my four-legged love so we could tour our neighborhood before everyone got active. We walked around the complex, toward the wind, our faces kissed by nature’s undeniable presence, and attempted to make our walk as productive but short as possible.
The air smelled like buttered biscuits and honey — so sweet; a come-hither-ish enjoyment that no one could deny. I was content. I felt loved. I knew the days after this special holiday would also be tests, but I had the feeling they would not be hard to pass. I can only hold fast to the idea this will be so. Jernee bounced about as if a new spring was in her steps — she sashayed ecstatically, happy to be out in the early morning air doing what she loved to do most.
I released myself from the grips of a warm bed, prayed, layered up in clothing, and gathered my four-legged love so we could tour our neighborhood before everyone got active.
I braced myself for each brush of the wind, tightening up my jacket every few moments — checking my gloves, fiddling with my pockets. We did not linger on for the usual mile; we didn’t even do a half-mile. Christmas morning’s walk was truly about business — handling it and getting back inside as quickly as we could. The cold had been enough to lay anyone out for a week, and I refused to be a contender in that game of life. I aimed to keep my health intact, and I foresee success in that area.
I opted to spend the holiday alone. I even began celebrating it Wednesday night by turning off my cell phone, but not before alerting my most loved humans of this change. I had it in mind to enjoy every single minute of my mini-vacation, and this included as few distractions as possible. There are holidays I revel in spending alone, and there are holidays when the pain of spending them alone hits me like a freight train.
But with COVID-19 looming its ugly head around every corner and hitting us harder than anything we’ve ever seen — it felt safer to remain at home. It felt safer to do what I wanted, when I wanted, and be in a heated space while doing so. According to a British study, they found — one in four adults feel as though they would spend Christmas alone this year. And while this is in the UK, the US is facing the same restrictions in various states because of a virus we cannot (and some do not want to) control.
When we found satisfaction from our walk, we came back inside. I fed Jernee and began prepping for my breakfast; sausage patties, buttermilk biscuits, grits, and a glass of eggnog. I savored every bite, thankful for the blessings of shelter, food, and the ability to adapt whenever necessary.
Christmas can be about more than survival. It can be an opportunity to learn to thrive in your aloneness. — Stephanie Foo, The New York Times, December 2020.
For those of you who have had to experience this holiday alone for the first time because of so many drastic changes this year, I can imagine your sadness. I understand your discontentment. I have been there — done that. Before COVID-19, I had learned how to properly love myself and be with myself without feeling as though I needed physical accompaniment from another. Having someone around to take in the wonders of Christmas is a beautiful thing, but this year — I needed the alone time. I wanted it more than I ever have.
The cold had been enough to lay anyone out for a week, and I refused to be a contender in that game of life.
Christmas dinner|Photo Credit: Tremaine L. Loadholt
After breakfast, I began making my crockpot chili, which I paired with garlic-cheese cornbread. As the sauce blended with the seasonings, the smell wafted throughout my home and I only felt happiness. I could only feel happiness. My Christmas morning smelled a lot like hope. It smelled a lot like new beginnings and purposeful opportunities. I delighted in watching Christmas-themed animated movies and a few other movies too. I finally sat down and engaged in Hulu’s Happiest Season, which was shortly followed by On-Demanding Ip Man: Kung Fu Master. I read, wrote, watched more animated cartoons, ate heartily, and enjoyed snuggle time with Jernee.
I experienced life in small doses and drank in the glorifying goodness of it all without feeling pressed to do more. This was the perfect holiday — I needed the rest. I earned the rest. My mom and I planned to see each other the following day instead, and Saturdays every other month are usually our meeting days. This should be no different. I look forward to our time together and I know she is looking forward to seeing both me and Jernee too.
The best thing about this Christmas for me is the non-rush of it all. I did not tackle any crowds. I kept it light on any shopping, doing it all online, and sent the parents of the babies and little ones in my life, money via CashApp so they could bear the weight of getting gifts for their children. Many will probably venture to say their holiday spent alone makes it a lonely one, but I will testify — this year, I welcomed the alone time. It provided me with seconds, minutes, and hours I should have found earlier on to do what I should have been doing, which is — truly enjoy myself in the comfort of my home.
Instead of remaining home out of fear and disinterest in the uncivilized, I remained home because it called to me. And I answered.
I experienced life in small doses and drank in the glorifying goodness of it all without feeling pressed to do more.
I woke up on Christmas morning and the air was different — it was fresher and crisper. There had been a newness to every cloud and a hint of love in every gust of wind. There had also been hope as the silver lining on what we could consider a gloomy experience for others and a sprinkle of selflessness lurking in the bushes. Peace wrapped itself around me and reminded me of what it looks like sitting with oneself and admiring what I see.
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
I spent Christmas alone and doing so opened my eyes to what they had been closed to for a long time — we are, in fact, gifts to ourselves. | https://medium.com/@treisthename/my-christmas-morning-smelled-like-hope-cef909e42f69 | ['Tre L. Loadholt'] | 2020-12-26 12:02:09.231000+00:00 | ['Nonfiction', 'Hope', 'Christmas', 'Photography', 'Life'] |
My First SaaS: Defining The MVP | It is important to limit and clearly define the MVP for your SaaS project. My goal was to launch https://hostifi.net in 30-days or less, and only build the minimum amount of features that would create enough value to be able to get my first few customers.
Even with a clearly defined, super simple MVP, it still took about 2 months to build it, and after hitting some roadblocks, I lost interest a few times and almost gave up along the way.
From the start, I had several features in mind for my UniFi controller hosting service — Let’s Encrypt SSL automatically installed, a nightly off-site backup script, and 24/7 monitoring agents on every server which would alert me right away to any problems that would come up. I considered all of them to be absolutely mandatory to be completed before launching.
But…I had read about the importance of building an MVP.
So I decided to launch the product with only a UniFi server installation…the self-signed SSL gave browser warnings, no backups were included, and there was no monitoring solution in place.
To my surprise, I was able to get my first 20 customers before completing those “mandatory” features, even though I felt the product wasn’t complete without them.
I was really glad that I had launched the MVP instead of the full-featured product. Those initial customers gave me a huge push in motivation to finish the features that I wanted to build. I don’t think I would have kept with it if I didn’t have those early customers depending on the service to be improved.
The decision to build and launch the MVP first was mainly inspired by Tyler Tringas’s Micro-SaaS Ebook, which I highly recommend reading all of if you are planning to build your first SaaS!
Timeline of HostiFi Launch and Features
May 24, 2018 — Launch. 0 customers. https://hostifi.net/
June 13, 2018 — Added Let’s Encrypt SSL. ~10 customers
June 28, 2018 — Added Zabbix monitoring. 18 customers
July 10, 2018 — Added nightly off-site backups. ~22 customers | https://medium.com/hostifi/my-first-saas-defining-the-mvp-7b335f9c7a1b | ['Reilly Chase'] | 2018-11-23 15:11:48.808000+00:00 | ['MVP', 'Startup', 'Ubiquiti', 'SaaS', 'Unifi'] |
How to Make a Custom Screensaver for Mac OS X | Step 1: Project Setup
Screensavers for Mac OS X are developed with Xcode. The first thing you’ll need to do is create a new Xcode project with the category “Screen Saver.”
I named my project Pong, but you can name yours anything you’d like. As of Xcode 10.2.1, Xcode will generate some files: PongView.h , PongView.m , and Info.plist .
Since Objective-C isn’t the prettiest language and Swift is becoming more mainstream, we’re going to delete these auto-generated Objective-C files and create a new file, PongView.swift .
The structure of this Swift file is quite simple. You can copy-paste the template from below:
We will use the function draw() to render content for each frame of the screensaver animation.
We will use the function animateOneFrame() to update the “state” of the screensaver every time the animation timer fires (this timer is created and handled automatically by the OS). It’s important to call setNeedsDisplay(bounds) at the end of this function so that the OS knows to re-draw the screen.
Important: Since we got rid of the Objective-C stuff and are using Swift, the project’s Info.plist file needs to be updated. Prefix the value for the key “Principal class” with the name of the Xcode project. For example, my Xcode project is called Pong, so I changed the value from PongView to Pong.PongView .
Step 2: Implement Logic
The state of our pong screensaver is going to be tracked with just a few simple variables:
In the init() function, we’re going to configure the ball’s initial position and velocity. We set the initial position to the center of the screen and set the initial velocity to a random vector with magnitude 10 .
Now we need some helper functions to determine when the ball makes contact with the edges of the screen and/or with the paddle. The following two functions will do the trick:
The function ballHitPaddle() is not 100% robust for verifying contact between the ball and paddle, I know. But for our purposes, it’s good enough.
Now, we’re going to use these helper functions to update the “state” of our screensaver in animateOneFrame() .
The paddle is guaranteed to track the x-position of the ball. Therefore, it will always make contact with the ball before it bounces on the bottom of the screen (unless you set the ball’s velocity really high, in which case it could “jump through” the paddle). | https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-make-a-custom-screensaver-for-mac-os-x-7e1650c13bd8 | ['Trevor Phillips'] | 2019-07-15 16:03:58.432000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Computer Science', 'Programming', 'Design'] |
The Los Angeles Lakers Deserve Your Respect | The Los Angeles Lakers Deserve Your Respect
In the most unique and challenging environment, the Lakers reminded the basketball world of their championship pedigree. Avery Marquez Oct 16, 2020·8 min read
“We just want our respect. Rob [Pelinka] wants his respect. Coach [Frank] Vogel wants his respect. Our organization wants their respect. Laker Nation wants their respect. And I want my damn respect, too.”
These were the words spoken by LeBron James after securing his fourth NBA title and his fourth Finals MVP.
Normally a man who talks to the media in a calm and stoic manner, he knew this moment was different. After conquering the mountain that was the Playoff bubble, LeBron knew he had every right to demand some respect from all the critics that have been hounding him after he successfully led his third different team to an NBA championship.
LeBron has always been known to have an amazing memory and this also rings true when it comes to the people that have doubted him, and there were a lot of last year because of his injuries and lack of success with the Lakers.
They said that LeBron might finally be past his prime after showing vulnerability in the previous season where he suffered a long-term injury. They said that Anthony Davis might not even be fully healthy for a full season. They said that their role players wouldn’t be good enough. They said that the Clippers were the deeper team and would be the favorite from the West to make the NBA Finals.
So, the 2019–2020 season couldn’t come soon enough, and it became a redemption season for LeBron as he sought his first chance at championship glory in Los Angeles. Trading away most of the young Lakers to acquire Anthony Davis gave the team an opportunity to contend for a championship now and this meant gathering reliable veteran role players to compliment the new superstar pairing of LeBron and AD. However, these veteran players also had a lot of uncertainty around them heading into the season. There were a lot of questions regarding how effective Dwight Howard, Rajon Rondo, Avery Bradley, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, etc. could be.
This Lakers redemption tour was headlined by LeBron and AD but everyone else on the team wanted to prove themselves as well, even the coaches and front office executives.
This desire to prove the doubters wrong was what kept this Lakers team motivated during the regular season and especially the playoffs.
The Lakers showed consistent defensive discipline, trust, chemistry, and adaptability and these were all on full display throughout their impressive playoff run where they had to defeat the Portland Trailblazers, the Houston Rockets, the Denver Nuggets, and the Miami Heat to win their 17th title in convincing fashion.
First Round — Portland Trailblazers
The first challenge for the Lakers in the playoffs were the Portland Trailblazers. They were one of the hottest teams in the bubble heading into the playoffs after an impressive run in the seeding games to secure the last playoff spot in the West.
Some people thought this would be a bad matchup for the Lakers this early in the playoffs with some thinking that the Blazers might have a decent chance at an upset. There was the concern of trying to stop both Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum while also taking into account the return of Jusuf Nurkic.
It took some time for the Lakers to get into their groove which was evident in their Game 1 loss to the Blazers. However, like what every good team does, they were able to find the adjustments that they needed to execute.
Defensively, the Lakers did a great job trapping both Lillard and McCollum as much as possible to force any other Blazer to beat them which exposed Portland’s lack of depth. The Lakers also matched up well with Portland in terms of their size in the frontcourt starting two big men. On the offensive end, there wasn’t anyone from the Blazers that could stop both LeBron James and Anthony Davis as they both scored over 27ppg while both shooting over 57% from the floor.
Throughout this first round series, the Lakers showed suffocating team defense, proved that they can play well against a team that plays big, and just displayed their star-power with great performances from LeBron and AD.
Second Round — Houston Rockets
Coming into the second round, the Lakers faced the Houston Rockets who provided a completely unique threat to the Western Conference. The Rockets style of super small-ball (with PJ Tucker at 6'5" as their starting Center) allowed their superstar guards James Harden and Russell Westbrook to attack with so much space on the floor which would also lead to their reliance and proficiency in three-point shooting.
This troubled the Lakers in Game 1 as they lost another series opener. LA couldn’t properly guard both Harden and Westbrook and even with their small lineup, the Rockets matched up well with the Lakers in rebounding and points in the paint.
Unsurprisingly, the Lakers made their adjustments as the series progressed to effectively combat how the Rockets played. They were sending double teams to Harden as soon as he stepped inside their half to force him to give up the ball. The Lakers knew that their defensive rotations were good enough so that once Harden gave up the ball, no one had a clean look at a shot.
Another important adjustment the Lakers made was to match up with Houston’s small lineup by not playing both their Centers (Dwight and Javale) and instead start Markieff Morris to slide Anthony Davis to Center. AD at Center posed huge problems for the Rockets since no one was big enough to guard him effectively.
As usual, LeBron and AD led the charge offensively for the Lakers. Defensively, they demonstrated their adaptability by countering with their version of small-ball but with the bonus of including defensive Swiss Army Knife, Anthony Davis. The Laker defense was swarming as usual and made it difficult for the Rockets to work on their usual rhythm involving James Harden and all their three-point shooters.
Western Conference Finals — Denver Nuggets
In the Western Conference Finals, pretty much the whole basketball world was expecting the epic battle of Los Angeles between the Lakers and the Clippers. However, the Denver Nuggets overcame another 3–1 series deficit against the Clippers in the second round to win their series in seven games and would go on to face the Lakers.
The Lakers had their hands full trying to deal with the Nuggets two superstars in Jamal Murray, who has elevated to almost superstar levels in the bubble, and Nikola Jokic, who is one of the most skilled big men in the game today.
Needing to adjust to their new opponent, Los Angeles reinserted their Centers back into the starting lineup and rotation to match Denver’s size with Nikola Jokic and Paul Millsap. Dwight Howard became an important factor for the team as he was assigned to take on Jokic and due to his physicality and athleticism, Jokic wore down by the end of the series.
The Lakers perimeter defense, shouldered by Danny Green, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Alex Caruso all did a decent job guarding Jamal Murray and when it came to the final moments of the series, LeBron himself decided to guard Murray and was effective down the stretch.
The talent disparity in this matchup was too wide during this series, and it also didn’t help that the Nuggets just went through two seven-game playoffs series as well. LeBron James and Anthony Davis were mostly unchallenged both on the offensive and defensive end. Davis didn’t have a lot of problems guarding Jokic while Jokic could barely stay in front of Davis and Howard, and LeBron had no problem picking his spots during the whole series, making shots for himself and for his teammates as per usual.
NBA Finals — Miami Heat
The last opponent the Lakers had to overcome was the Eastern Conference Champions Miami Heat. The Heat were a fifth seed heading into the playoffs and were the first fifth seed to make it to the finals but they weren’t built like any normal fifth seed.
This Heat team convincingly beat the best regular season team in the East in the Milwaukee Bucks and made the league MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo, look as ineffective as he can be. They also beat the more favored Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals in a more tightly-contested battle.
The Heat were tough, well-coached, and well-built because of their great shooters that surrounded their two superstars, Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. Whatever they lacked in raw talent, they overcame with their toughness and grit which started from their leader, Jimmy Butler.
This NBA Finals became a display of how good Jimmy Butler actually is. His performances in the Finals have elevated him to a superstar-level, and the Heat wouldn’t have won those two games in the series if Jimmy hadn’t gone supernova and actually outplayed proven Finals performer, LeBron James.
Winning in the NBA Finals is never easy and this Heat team made things as difficult as possible for the Lakers. The Heat offense was filled with constant motion, shooters like Duncan Robinson, Tyler Herro, Jae Crowder, and Kelly Olynyk were coming off of screens left and right for the Lakers to chase. For the most part, the Lakers kept their defensive discipline but the Heat’s fluid off-ball movement had the Lakers working harder than ever. Their defensive schemes were also pretty effective considering the lack of talent that they had with the injuries to Bam Adebayo and Goran Dragic but eventually the Lakers proved to be too much for the Heat.
Despite their unfortunate injuries and lack of depth that came with it, the Heat went down swinging and showed that they were locked in no matter what the score or time was and they battled until the very end.
After Anthony Davis abused the Heat’s zone defense in the first two games by being a huge presence in the paint and by shooting great everywhere else on the floor, LeBron James took over the series with his dominance in the paint and his timely and effective three-point shooting while he still managed to get the Laker role players as involved as they can be.
With LeBron and AD leading the way, and the Laker role players like Rajon Rondo, KCP, Kyle Kuzma, Alex Caruso, and Dwight Howard being great in their roles on offense and defense, this Lakers team was able to defeat the Miami Heat in six games to finally bring home another championship to Los Angeles after ten years.
This road to the championship showcased the Lakers’ consistent defensive intensity, chemistry, star power (led by LeBron and AD), and adaptability. Every round posed a different challenge, and they finished the job each time while making it look easy (when it really wasn’t).
This playoff run revealed a lot of things about the Lakers: it showed that LeBron is still the best player in the world, that Anthony Davis can be a big-time playoff performer on both sides of the ball, that head coach Frank Vogel is a defensive mastermind, and that this team from top to bottom had great team chemistry, supported by their role players being stars in their own roles.
As they wrapped up this impressive championship run, LeBron and the Lakers demanded respect, and considering everything they had to go through from all the criticisms they faced throughout the season, to the unexpected tragedy they had to overcome early this year, and to probably the most difficult championship in the league’s history, they had every right to do so. | https://medium.com/@averydayy/the-los-angeles-lakers-deserve-your-respect-c407e44d253 | ['Avery Marquez'] | 2020-10-16 03:32:00.735000+00:00 | ['Lakers', 'Basketball', 'NBA', 'LeBron James', 'Los Angeles Lakers'] |
30 Things To Try This Winter To Make The Season More Hygge | Cozy Hygge Things To Do Inside And Outside The House While It Snows Outside.
Hygge is a Danish and Norwegian word for a mood of coziness and comfortable conviviality with feelings of wellness and contentment.
This Hygge list is not like the usual ones which tell you to build bonfires or do some self-care. Not about lightings, aromas, decorations to make your room more hygge, or about activities like barbeques, campings, reading books, living room activities or doing home decor, etc. There are already many lists out there that tell you to do that.
I’m guessing that most of you who cherish the art of Hygge are already doing or planning to do them this winter. We can always keep doing those — I’m only adding to the list of things and activities to try out to improve the Hygge factor this winter.
I’m trying to create some yesteryears kind of experiences. I’m trying to teach people empathy through hygge, to embrace the season, to motivate them to be healthy and productive this winter while feeling hygge all the time. Generally, people get into a very lazy mode during winters. I’m trying to create a balance through hygge and this winter I’m also trying to look at Hygge from other angles apart from just being a lifestyle that enhances our own feeling of coziness and warmth. Of course, the list is made up of things and activities which most of you are already doing but might not have looked at it from a Hygge perspective. So let’s grab our coffees and wines, sit near a fire and go through this list of activities to do this winter to add more Huge to our lives while it’s snowing outside —
Don’t stay inside when it’s very cold outside.
Yes, you hear me right. Being able to experience the icy cold winds, misty mornings and cold snowy or windy nights ❄are very important to feel the winter season.
When you come back to your cozy houses after experiencing the cold weather you will feel a priceless feeling of warmth which will be far more hygge than the warm hygge feeling you experience while staying inside all day long. The smell of smoke coming out of bonfires, the smell of the snow, of chestnuts roasting from some house you passed by in the neighborhood, flowers, and trees. You will miss them if you sit at home all day. You will feel fresh and at the same time very cozy once you come back from outside. So make a list of things you’ll do outside when it’s really cold. Here is my list — jogging, outdoor workouts, a long walk in the woods, gardening, going to the market, and not relying too much on online shopping.
2. Get yourself an old model Radio.
Old radios give us a feeling of nostalgia. The noise which comes out of them when there is a bad network, the simple and unsophisticated, and often not very convincing sounds add to the hygge experience. In the early days, radio stations filled their air time with orchestra music, poetry readers, singers, and preachers. If you want a similar experience buy an old radio and subscribe to some channel which vintage stuff. Listen to old radio podcasts and cozy songs while you’re relaxing in your bedroom, in the living room, while sipping some tea, coffee, or wine.
3. Learn to make wooden toys at home.
Wood, I think is one of the most Hygge material that exists. Its smell, its texture, and everything else about it. Get yourself a woodworking kit and become like Mister Gepetto from ‘The Adventures Of Pinnochio' and start building some antique wooden toys and decorative pieces. You can decorate them, sell them online, or gift them to poor kids on the streets. Doing some woodwork will also be a good form of exercise plus it will keep your body warm. Keep listening to some cozy music at a very low volume while sipping your wine or coffee as you build those toys.
4. Get yourself a telescope. Do some stargazing.
Peeping through a telescope to see the beautiful night sky on a cold ❄ winter night with sounds of cold winds blowing and you’re wearing your woolen clothes, standing by an open bonfire lit in the middle of a meadow or by the window from the comfort of your living room or your bedroom with a small fire burning in the chimney beside you. Sounds like some nice hyggyeing idea right? Add some music to it, some roasted nuts and some coffee or some wine. What else do you need?
5. Write some nice handwritten letters.
There is hygge in keeping in touch with people. This winter let’s try writing letters which are our old school version of Messenger or Whatsapp. Write letters to your loved ones. Write them to people whom you have met on social media whom you never met personally. Add small gifts with them if you feel like it — a rose, a toy, or some book to read during winter. Spread some good vibes, some love.
6. Take cold water baths.
Other than the health benefits cold water baths can in fact make you feel warmer later. The extreme cold you experience while bathing is worth it. Wear some woolen clothes, get under a blanket, and sit near a fire sipping a cup of coffee after your bath. You’ll feel hygge. By the way, you don’t need to try something like the guy in the picture. Unless you really wish to do so.
7. Stay awake for some time late at midnight.
Deep in the cold winter midnight when it’s snowing outside, sounds of howling winds, sounds of window panes rattling and you’re sitting on a comfortable rocking chair near a crackling fire burning in the chimney of your candle lit living room reading a book while listening to some cozy old song drinking some wine. You can even watch a movie, some cartoons or knit a sweater. How is that?
8. Wake up real early.
Most of us won’t like the idea of waking up real early during cold winter mornings when you don’t have any work to do or college to attend. But waking up really early has its own hygge benefits. Think of the early morning radio news, the cold weather, the beautiful dawn sky, and sounds of little birds sleepily chirping in the trees and distant dogs barking and scenes of unquenched roadside bonfires through your window. You wear your woolens and get out of your house for a jog and see the dawn sky slowly changing into a white morning sky and come back having a cup of tea from the roadside tea stall and picking up the daily newspaper, some eatables for breakfast on your way home. Better than waking up in the afternoon?
9. Make yourself and your loved one’s sweaters.
Knitting is already a very common hygge activity which people usually do during winters. I still added it to the list just to tell you how you can hygge your knitting experience even more. Spread the love by knitting soft toys and sweaters for your loved ones and the needy people. You can also knit old Walt Disney character toys like Pinnochio, Mickey mouse, Jiminy cricket, etc. Write knitting blogs or teach your young one how to knit. Spread warmth and love with some wool.
10. Watch some very old cartoons.
Very old cartoons are peaceful and very soothing to watch in winters especially in the early morning hours or late at night. They make us nostalgic. The cozy background music they use, the emotional connection they make with us is enough to make us feel hygge.
11. Keep a window open.
Watch the cold breeze, the howling winds to blow. Watch the snow falling, feel it with your hands. Watch the beautiful winter night sky. Let the wind shake the window panes and make some rattling sounds. Feel the winter. Look far into the lonely winter streets. Keep yourself warm by wearing some woolens, listening to some cozy music, and having some warm food like a glass of wine with cheese. Do anything to keep warm but please let the winds blow. But keep a window open.
12. Prepare healthy soups.
Soups are healthy and warm. Have soup at any time in the day. Even at midnight sitting by the fire listening to music or just the crackling sound of wood burning in the chimney. Experiment making different types of delicious soups.
13. Opera and other old classical forms of music.
Listening to some soothing opera can add a classy touch to the ambiance of the room and can enhance the hygge feeling. Pavarotti, Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, and Maria Callas are a few I picked up for you to listen to. On a cold winter day, you can try listening to them while you’re indoors lying on the bed or sitting comfortably in your living room near the fireplace sipping some coffee or wine. And if you’re a Mozart or Beethoven fan you can listen to them too or some old soothing Christmas, blues, or jazz songs. But you’re free to listen to anything which makes you feel cozy and create your own hygge ambiance this winter.
14. Travel by train.
If you’ve watched Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone you must have already seen the scene where Harry travels by train to Hogwarts through beautiful snowy mountains. The train looked very cozy inside with dim lights lit inside and everyone was dressed in winter outfits as it was winter. There was a scene in which a lady came to sell some candies.
You too can have a similar train journey and experience Hygge while journeying to some cold place this winter. Grab your flasks, fill them with coffee or tea, wear your sweaters and shawls, take with you your radio, some board games to have a merry time journeying by a train this winter.
15. Help a needy person to survive the harsh winter.
Gift a needy person some delicious warm food to eat, a shawl, a jacket or a sweater to wear, something to drink, and if possible provide him/her some shelter to survive this harsh winter. Buy him/her a radio too if you want to. Treat them exactly the way you want to treat yourself this winter. Spend time with him at his place even if it is on the streets. Or get him to your place which will be warmer. If you do these for some needy person you’ll feel very warm and happy inside. That’s hygge too. Hygge increases when you spread it.
16. Eat a poor man’s diet.
While most of us are gorging on delicious food during winter of the holiday season. There are people who sleep hungry or very little food. Let’s try eating like a poor man by following a poverty diet with a very minimum budget this winter. No, it’s not for saving money but to be able to empathize and feel how the poor must be feeling without food this winter. We can also try doing long intermittent fasts and eat foods that are very cheaply available — potatoes, beans, rice, etc. Let's practice mindfulness while eating.
17. Watch black and white movies.
Black and white movies are very soothing to our eyes. There is simplicity in black and white movies. It makes us feel nostalgic to watch a very old movie. All Old things are hygge and are precious. They are like treasures which we like to preserve. The background music used in these movies, the sound effects, the types of scripts used, trends, and fashion during that era which we set in those movies are all from a time when we were not born. Everything has a vintage element in them. Thus these movies make us feel hygge. They take us to a past era. Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, or Charlie Chaplin are few popular actors from that era. So light up a fire, prepare some coffee, get some cookies or popcorn and watch black and white movies with your family and friends this winter while it snows outside. If you can watch them on an old school black and white television it’s even better.
18. Play old board games.
Keep away your mobile games and try playing some old board games just for a change. You must have played games like Chess, Chinese Checkers, Scrabble, Business, Monopoly or Life. You can search the internet for some new ones too and order them online or go buy them from a toy store in case they are available locally if you want to add some new games to your list. Board games get friends and family together and create a hygge atmosphere during winter. You can listen to good music, talk, laugh while you play and all of you can have a merry time sitting in your living room by the fire having popcorn and coffee while it snows outside on a winter evening.
19. Build houses for squirrels and birds.
Let’s care for all. Although these little ones live in the trees and they have their own houses, I guess they won’t mind living in some warmly built mini homes hung on trees with lots of food-filled inside them for them to eat during winter nights when it’s cold outside.
— — — — — — — — — — — — —
P. S. “when it's cold” and “when it’s snowing outside” are my favorite hygge lines I’m bored of repeating again and again. From now on help me by just assuming that it’s snowing outside and it’s very windy.
— — — — — — — — — — — — —
Now let’s quickly go through our last 10 things to try this winter because it’s really cold outside.
20. Use wooden crockeries.
Wood is a warm material like we already said before. Anything made out of wood gives us a hygge feeling. Holding a wooden cup of coffee will be almost every time warmer hence more hyggeyish than holding made out of plastic, porcelain, or Bone China. Wooden Crockery can be used as decorative items too. You can keep them in your cupboard or on your dining table or even hang them on your kitchen walls. Wooden cups, wooden spoons, wooden wine glass, wooden plates. It gives us visual warmth. That’s hygge.
21. Join roadside bonfires.
Standing near a roadside bonfire in the street is a great way to spend time with the public around you. You can sing songs, talk, drink tea or wine together, smoke and have a great time while you get a chance to socialize with different people. You can start one or search for one to join. Next time you walk by the street on a winter night if you are cold just ask permission and join any roadside bonfire group if you happen to see one.
22. Take an afternoon nap in the meadow.
During the day take a nap or two in the meadow. Get some Vitamin- D. Winters sun is very pleasant hence it feels very hygge to be outdoors. Lie in the hay or in the grass. Let cattle walk around you. Listen to their bells, their moos, bleats, and their baas. Let a butterfly fly past your head or sit on your nose. You can get a shawl or a blanket along with you if you feel cold. You might not need music at all unless you play it in very low volume as you can hear beautiful nature sounds in the meadow and you don’t want to miss them as they are very important parts of the hygge feeling. You can get a book to read or something warm to eat along with you.
23. Eat less.
Of course, you can feast on occasions like Christmas, Haloween, or New Year. But most of the times try to eat less and healthy. Practice mindfulness while eating, practice fasting, or eat like the Italians(Italians aren’t concerned with calories because they usually stop eating when they are full). Have fewer carbohydrates and more fresh vegetables and fruits and a minimal amount of red meat in your meals. You can pair some red wine or Vodka occasionally with some of your meals occasionally. Feeling healthy by eating healthy makes us feel good to enjoy the winter season even more. More good health means more ability to feel hygge around you during winter.
24. Spend more time with kids.
Kids are innocent. They are the ones who enjoy hygge more than anyone. They build toy houses, they build tents, plays with torch lights, they watch cartoon all the time. They live in another world. A world of Cinderella. A world of Mickey Mouse. A world where clouds are sheep and Santa Clause really exists. A world without tension and worries. Spending time with them — playing with them, cuddling inside the blanket, playing all the kiddish games with them, telling them stories, and encouraging them to explore their creative side by— making them draw, build DIY things, learn cooking, etc. It can lead to being a fun activity to be involved with kids during winters and can lead to a hygge atmosphere in your home. It will also improve parent-children bonding. You can try spending time with old people too.
25. Stay in a wooden log cabin.
Wooden cabins are very warm and cozy inside. If you have a fireplace and something to roast and eat and cozy music to listen, on a cold winter night you don’t need anything else to feel more hygge. Anything you do inside them becomes hygge. Play chess, make wooden toys, knit or do nothing or just sleep whatever you do you feel cozy in there. If you have the money to build one just build one. Or else search for one on the internet to rent one for a few days. Some holiday destinations provide this kind of houses too.
26. Spend some time at an Old age home.
Most old people in the old age home love it when they get a visitor from outside. They like to share their feelings, someone, to talk to, someone who cares. Many suffer from loneliness and that leads them to depression too. So this winter why not we visit an old age home and spend a good time with old people. Most old people become innocent like kids during the last stages of their lives, they have some warmth in them just like kids do. So spending time with them by doing activities like — playing board games, knitting, listening to their stories, singing songs near a bonfire can be really heartwarming. It will make them feel cared for and loved.
27. Feed street animals.
Hygge not only evokes coziness but it also evokes togetherness. We are not alone in this universe. There are animals too. They understand these hygge feelings too. Feeding them would evoke togetherness between them and us.
28. Make them sweaters too.
And this is how we can evoke coziness. They need to feel special and cared too.
29. More study and work.
Most people don’t study a lot during the winter but you can do the opposite this year. Surround yourself with lots of books, notebooks, sketchbooks, and all other kinds of stationery. Listen to some soft cozy music and study through midnight all the way till dawn. Get your coffees, your wines too. Use a table lamp or any source of light which creates a cozy ambiance, light up a small fire, wrap yourself up in woolens and grind through the night. This winter takes some New Year resolutions like — reading a lot of books, learning some new art, or a subject. Let’s give it to self-improvement.
30. Hibernate completely from social media for some time.
Our last thing to try this winter is to take a break from Social Media for a while this winter. If you can do this it will definitely reduce some stress, anxiety, and depression. To take a break from social media you should turn off your notifications, set time limits, and prioritize your own self-care with other activities you enjoy like spending real time with loved ones, learning a craft, playing board games, and doing more outdoor activities.
Hope you liked this list. Let me know which ones you liked and are already doing. We can come up with a bigger list next winter with more things to do.
Happy Hyggeying 🔥 🍷 ❄ | https://medium.com/@biswajeetlearns/30-things-to-try-this-winter-to-make-the-season-more-hygge-b3876635dad0 | ['Biswajeet Das'] | 2021-01-04 14:52:33.997000+00:00 | ['Hygge', 'Things To Do', 'Experience', 'Winter', 'Wellness'] |
Origin Of The Universe [Breakdown By Seconds, Minutes And Hours] | Source: Daily Express
Uncountable myths and theories have tried to explain the origin and fate of the universe, but there is one explanation which is widely accepted — The Big Bang Theory.
The Big Bang theory was a result of the observation that all other galaxies are moving away from our own at great speed in all directions as if an ancient explosive force had propelled them.
A Belgian priest named Georges Lemaître first suggested that the universe began from a single primordial atom. His idea instantly received a significant boost from Edwin Hubble’s observations that interpreted as showing that stars and galaxies are moving away from Earth in every direction. Fittingly, the velocities of recession increase in proportion with distance and this discovery has been confirmed by repeated measurements since Hubble’s time. These findings imply that the universe is expanding.
Source: Nap.edu
At the Big Bang itself, the universe is thought to have had zero size, and so to have been infinitely hot. But as the universe expanded, the temperature of the radiation decreased.
However, the radiation did not decrease immediately after the big bang. It took the universe years to cool down, and there is a timeline associated with it.
Let’s have a look at the timeline:
What happened 1 second after the Big Bang?
After one second, the temperature would have fallen to about ten thousand million degrees. This is about a thousand times the temperature at the centre of the Sun. Temperatures as high as these are reached in Hydrogen bomb explosions.
As the universe continued to expand, and the temperature to drop, the universe’s fundamental particles started to form. At this stage, it was still so hot that these particles hadn’t yet settled for the subatomic particles that we know today as neutrons, protons and electrons. Radiation at this time was so intense that colliding photons could form pairs of particles made of matter and antimatter. It’s thought that the early universe contained equal amounts of matter and antimatter.
Antimatter is defined as a material composed of the antiparticles of the corresponding particles of ordinary matter.
Source: Popular mechanics
What happened 100 seconds after the Big Bang?
After a hundred seconds, the temperature would have fallen to one thousand million degrees, the temperature inside the hottest stars. At this temperature, the protons and neutrons would not have sufficient energy to escape the attraction of the strong nuclear force. They would have started to combine together to produce the nuclei of atoms of deuterium. The deuterium then would have combined with more protons and neutrons to make helium nuclei.
What happened 3 minutes after the Big Bang?
The protons and neutrons would have assembled into hydrogen and helium nuclei. By mass, hydrogen and helium were 75% and 25% of the early universe’s matter respectively.
What happened a few hours after the Big Bang?
After a few hours of the Big Bang, the production of helium and other elements would have stopped. After the next million years or so, the universe would have just continued expanding, without anything substantial happening. The regions which were slightly denser than average, would not have expanded as expected because of the dominance of gravitational force. This would have eventually caused to stop expansion and start to recollapse. | https://medium.com/@sin_gularity/origin-of-the-universe-breakdown-by-seconds-minutes-and-hours-556b50eafcf1 | [] | 2019-09-07 14:38:36.228000+00:00 | ['Universe', 'Science', 'Astrophysics', 'Physics', 'Cosmology'] |
Congrats #UnifiedGeneration Class of 2019! | Across the country, students are taking final exams and wrapping up another year of learning. For graduating seniors of Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools®, it is a time to reflect on how they have been impacted by going to a Unified Champion School and how they will take what they’ve learned about inclusion into the next chapter.
Read some of their stories below:
Ponaganset High School Seniors (Rhode Island)
At Ponaganset High School, each senior is expected to present on a topic that has significant meaning to them. Seven seniors chose to make their topics around inclusion and Unified Champion Schools. Watch the video below to learn more. These students are not just involved in Unified activities but are leaders of their senior class ranging from National Honor Society members to Ideal Chieftain Award recipients; a high honor at the school.
From left to right: Beth Keeling (Teacher), Grace Wells-Dannenfelser, Ethan Fraatz, Morgan Bigwood, Jenna Obiurka, Kate DeCotis, Capri Martinelli, Jennifer Paolantonio (Teacher). Below: Theo Mihailides.
Britney (Hawaii)
“I’ll be attending the university of Hawaii studying early childhood education in the fall and at graduation I received my diploma cover (I was given my diploma at graduation practice) I also received a certificate for being an CTE Completer (Career and Technical Education Pathway) and a certificate for magna cum laude which means having an cumulative grade point average of 3.5+ to 3.8.” - Britney
At Britney’s high school they have a leis ceremony; a tradition from Hawaii.
Kyle (Montana)
Kyle Norman (left), graduated from high school on June 1st. Below is a picture of him with his best friend and fellow US Youth Ambassador Jazlyn who is currently a college student (right). This is what Jazlyn had to say about Kyle:
“Three words I would use to describe Kyle would be inspiring, caring, and hardworking. I met him after having his mom as a teacher in High School. Kyle always makes me laugh and is someone I consider a great friend. He is very supportive of everyone. You can always count on Kyle!”
Kyle and Jazlyn posing for a picture at Kyle’s Graduation.
Natalie (Utah)
During her senior year, Natalie has learned new skills to help her find her voice through social media. She even traveled with her best friend and Unified partner Katie to the Special Olympics World Games in Abu Dhabi to be social media correspondents for Special Olympics North America. She hopes to continue this after graduation with her new podcast, “Inclusive Heroes”that she will co-host with Katie.
Katie (left) and Natalie (right) posing at Natalie’s graduation, which also happened to be Best Friends Day!
About Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools:
Three million young people participate in 6,500 Special Olympics Unified Champion Schools® across the US with support from the US Office of Special Education Programs at the US Department of Education. These young people make up the Unified Generation. They are taking personal ownership within their schools and communities to ensure that everyone has the right to play, learn and live together through shared leadership opportunities of students with and without intellectual disabilities. To learn more about the Unified Generation, visit: https://www.generationunified.org/. | https://medium.com/specialolympics/congrats-unifiedgeneration-class-of-2019-625e716fca20 | ['Caroline Chevat'] | 2019-06-14 00:21:52.907000+00:00 | ['Education', 'Graduation', 'Leadership', 'Inclusion'] |
Acceptance was My First Spiritual Gift in Recovery | When I began my spiritual journey, the first quality in others that I was attracted to was serenity. I didn’t know that I was attracted to the quality of serenity. Instead I was attracted to serene people. I was going to AA and one of the strengths that you are taught in 12 step meetings was to learn how to help others.
The meetings that I volunteered for were overseen by this man that was so calm and peaceful that I knew I wanted whatever he had. Finally one night I asked how he had gotten whatever he had. It was hard for him to define “it”. But he recommended a little pamphlet named “Acceptance”. The booklet taught me two major lessons.
The first lesson was the story of the man in the desert with the whirling dervishes. Someone came up to the man and asked him what he did about the whirling dervishes and he said that he just let them whirl. What a concept! I was beginning to be introduced to detachment and letting it go and change what you can and let the rest go.
The second lesson I learned from the booklet was an illustration that contained an explanation of serenity as picturing a swan beautifully gliding on the surface of the water. But under the water, the swan was paddling furiously in order to go forward. With my thinking at the time, I thought that this seemed dishonest. Such was the power of my brain to distort everything I experienced.
From “Acceptance is key…but it’s complicated”:
“The courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference are crucial additions to the power of acceptance in building a happy life. What are Steve Taylor’s Acceptance poem, the Acceptance Prayer, and the third Ethic of Walking the Red Road not about? They are not about accepting what is not acceptable. We all have our lists of what is acceptable and not acceptable, and these lists will vary. But whatever is on your list — those things you feel passionate about — they fall in the category of ‘Change what you cannot accept’.
You need not accept physical or mental abuse. You need not accept that racism exists so learn to live with it. You need not accept that humans are destroying the planet with their disregard for the environment in order to prop up a status quo economic model. You need not accept human rights abuses at home and around the world.
Some things that are unacceptable to you, you can change by taking charge of your own destiny. Move out. Change jobs. Put your phone down and smell the roses. Add exercise to your routine. Seek help. Reach out to a friend or counselor. Volunteer. Whatever can make the difference for you.
Other things that you feel passionate about may seem too overwhelming to change, too big for one individual to do anything about. You can’t do it alone, so why bother; just accept. But denial can’t be the answer. Every voice counts. Every conscience counts. Every vote counts. Be part of the changes that matter to you.” | https://medium.com/everyone-needs-codependency-recovery/acceptance-was-my-first-spiritual-gift-in-recovery-253898626ed8 | ['Kathy Berman'] | 2020-12-22 16:49:34.682000+00:00 | ['Peace', 'Addiction Recovery', 'Serenity', 'Spiritual Growth', 'Acceptance'] |
Mariah Carey Reclaims Her Legacy | “The Meaning of Mariah Carey”: Book Review
For the past few years, Mariah has occasionally alluded to a plan to write a memoir in which she would share the story of her childhood, the truth behind the endless and outrageous tabloid rumors, and the inspiration for many of her most beloved songs. Earlier this year, she delighted fans with the announcement that this plan had become a reality and that the book would be released on September 29th.
Co-written with author and activist Michaela Angela Davis, the memoir was released to some of the best reviews of Mariah’s career and great commercial success (it topped the prestigious New York Times Bestseller list the week it debuted). And it deserves all of the critical and commercial success it received — and then some.
Mariah Carey does an in-depth interview with Oprah Winfrey to discuss the memoir (Image copyright: AppleTV)
It is no surprise to me that The Meaning of Mariah Carey is a great read. Mariah Carey’s life story is a fascinating and entertaining one. The Cinderella-esque origin story is the stuff of legend and the tremendous ups and downs that followed have been fodder for the tabloids for the last three decades. It is almost impossible to tell this story in a manner that is not engaging. Also, I figured that if she is even half as good at writing prose as she is at lyrics, the memoir would be a thing of beauty.
What did surprise me is the depth and timeliness of the book. She goes far beyond the typical trappings of the celebrity memoir and digs deep into painful, complicated discussions of issues related to racism, poverty, child abuse, misogyny, mental health, police brutality, dysfunctional family dynamics, and spirituality. This is no puff piece.
The memoir is told in four parts. The first is “Wayward Child,” a searing look at her upbringing on Long Island with her Irish opera singer mother Patricia and her Black engineer father Alfred Roy, who divorced when she was a toddler. Her relationships with both of them, as well as her ill-fated older siblings named Morgan and Allison, are described with remarkable complexity. She describes their notable strengths and gives compassionate, empathic context to their failings, making it very clear that the boundaries she has famously drawn with them were out of self-preservation not a lack of love or respect. This section of the memoir helps fans truly understand how feeling so out of place as a biracial child and the truly traumatic events she endured were formative in Mariah’s personal and artistic development, facts that have only been alluded to for most of her career.
In the cleverly titled second section “Sing Sing,” Mariah recounts the early 1990s, a period when she had unprecedented, record-breaking commercial success but was trapped in a suffocating at best and abusive at worst relationship with the man who “discovered” her and controlled her career. Mariah is much more interested in telling us about the personal journey she went through during these years then recounting the writing and recording of the iconic songs and albums released during this time, although she certainly weaves in some delicious anecdotes (like the revelation that while recording Daydream she wrote and recorded a grunge album as a way of blowing off steam.) Tommy Mottola’s denial of her blackness and misogynistic subjugation of her is sadly not surprising nor is it an uncommon experience, but I can’t recall the last time it was captured so vividly on paper.
After taking us through her divorce from Tommy, the liberation she experienced recording Butterfly, and her bold bid to get herself out of her oppressive record deal, Mariah takes a look at the low point of her career in the third section, entitled “All That Glitters.” She gives context to how her disastrous film debut Glitter went so far off-course from its initial conception and the infamous breakdown she had during the time of its release. The chapters paint the portrait of a woman who, although admittedly struggling with her mental health, was driven to the breaking point by unrealistic demands by her record label and betrayal by loved ones. It is a painful, haunting segment that gives the necessary background to understand the breakdown of her personal and professional life.
The fourth and final section, entitled “Emancipation,” whisks through the nearly two decades that followed Glitter. Here the memoir becomes a bit less focused, but no less riveting and impactful, as it touches on a number of different areas, including how super producer LA Reid helped her achieve her astonishing comeback with 2005’s The Emancipation of Mimi, her return to acting with the Oscar-winning film Precious, her whirlwind romance with Nick Cannon, the birth of her twins, and her interactions with countless legends (including Prince, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Nelson Mandela, and Muhammad Ali). The memoir ends with her basking in the joy of her sold-out Christmas concert in Madison Square Garden and the historic 19th #1 she obtained when “All I Want for Christmas Is You” achieved the top spot.
The memoir is also fascinating for what is not in it. There is no mention of either of her ill-fated forays into reality television (as a judge on American Idol and as the subject of the docu-series Mariah’s World), her alleged fling with Eminem that generated a musical showdown, her engagement to Australian billionaire James Packer, her supposed rivalry with other divas (although she indirectly references those she supposedly has with Celine Dion and Jennifer Lopez), criticisms that her voice is significantly degrading, and the diagnosis of bipolar disorder that she boldly embraced on a People cover in 2018. I suppose its possible that she’s embarrassed about these things and omitted them to save face or that she’s saving some stories for a follow-up memoir, but I believe that the real reason she omitted them is the one she gave in numerous interviews that asked about them — they were blips in the timeline of her life that were beloved by tabloids but simply weren’t integral to the meaning of Mariah Carey.
Click here to read about Mariah going public about her mental health.
The memoir does a remarkable job of sticking with what is important about the personal and professional journey of Mariah Carey, with limited tangents. It beautifully integrates lyrics and artwork. (The audiobook version, which I have yet to experience, also weaves in musical interludes.) It also paints a remarkable portrait of the lingering psychological impacts and complex interactions of racism, sexism, and poverty in modern America. And through it all, Mariah’s voice comes through. Her unshakable optimism, her under-appreciated wit, and her trademark mix of sophisticated vocabulary and playful slang make even the bleakest moments impossible to look away from.
Rating for “The Meaning of Mariah Carey”: 5/5 stars | https://medium.com/rants-and-raves/mariah-carey-reclaims-her-legacy-c9321fc58a60 | ['Richard Lebeau'] | 2020-10-16 19:07:38.975000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Writing', 'Music', 'Racism', 'Culture'] |
Word Crawls: The Best Challenge to Help Finish Your Writing | What is a word crawl?
A word crawl is a narrative-style challenge designed to give you small goals to make your word count soar. Many of these word crawls are based on a beloved fandom — there are plenty inspired by Disney, Harry Potter, and various video games and books — but there are plenty that are originally created by the writer.
Small goals within these word crawls help a writer boost their word count and may give them a bit of inspiration as well. The goals may be to write a certain number of words to overcome a hurdle, write within a time limit or reach a threshold in your word count.
For example, in a word crawl that is inspired by the fantasy genre, the writer may be tasked to write 100 words about a character choosing their traditional fantasy weapon — a sword, a mage staff, or a bow. Later, in the word crawl, the character may encounter some goblins — anything is possible.
Depending on their chosen weapon from earlier, you may have different writing goals before moving onto the next step. For example:
The character who chose the sword may have a steady fight and the writer must write for ten minutes.
The character who chose the mage staff may find it easy to dispatch the goblins with a fire spell, giving the writer a simple task of writing 50 words before moving on.
The character who chose the bow may find it difficult to fight in a close-range attack. The writer may have the more random task of rolling a die and writing words that are 100 times the result.
Word crawls on the NaNoWriMo forums have their own tag so we easily find them amid the Writing Challenges board. If one does not have a NaNoWriMo login to access the forums, many word crawls are also saved and converted on the organization’s Wikipedia found here.
If you do not have a NaNoWriMo login, I recommend getting one even if you do not plan on actively taking part in the NaNo challenge. It’s free and there’s a beautiful community of writers with plenty of resources to share! | https://medium.com/the-brave-writer/word-crawls-the-best-challenge-to-help-finish-your-writing-2ffb5acbb108 | ['Kristen Poli'] | 2020-12-14 13:02:45.112000+00:00 | ['Goals', 'NaNoWriMo', 'Writing Challenge', 'Writing', 'Writing Tips'] |
Nightfall | Nightfall
A Poem of Hope
Photo by Beth Bruno
The sun god retreats
to his chamber,
draws the brocade curtains —
a tapestry of pinks sewn with
threads of violet,
embroidered with gold.
Hens clucking softly
as they go to their roost,
occasionally flapping and squabbling.
Everyone wants the window seat.
Neighbor playing mariachi music,
the volume low
it dances to my ears
and makes me smile.
Dog barks.
Cicadas chirrup, buzz,drone.
Fireflies begin the nightly ritual.
Courtship —
Blink Blink
Blink, Blink, Blink.
Whippoorwill welcomes the dusk.
Plaintive cry, over and over,
as though looking for something
it never finds.
Now, the brocade is fading,
washed too many times,
a remnant of its former splendor.
First stars twinkle.
Or is it the fireflies?
The air is soft and still,
Mosquitoes dine.
Bats dine on the diners.
The cats gaze out into the night.
“Come in and fill our bowl”
they say with their eyes.
Writing by the solar deck lights,
trying to find reasons to believe
in the goodness of life.
Mission accomplished.
Nightfall. | https://medium.com/wise-woman-within/nightfall-2e80a186dbcc | ['Beth Bruno'] | 2019-06-26 02:13:41.250000+00:00 | ['Inspiration', 'Life', 'Poetry', 'Mindfulness', 'Hope'] |
A Catholic nun taught me my Buddhist mantra | During my last week of graduate school, I had the great fortune of working with one of my professors one-on-one. Sister Celia Chua is a Catholic nun and a practicing Buddhist who was raised in China and the Philippines where she found peace in both disciplines. (The two are not viewed as contradictory by the Catholic Church so long as the practitioner doesn’t believe in reincarnation or other conflicting doctrines).
Originally I had thought to spend my one-on-one time with my professor studying the far Eastern faiths and what they believed about the Virgin Mary. But on my first day, as we were choosing which disciplines we wanted to study, Sister Chua asked me why I was interested in the Eastern faiths to begin with. I told her that they seemed very peaceful, especially compared to a religion that to me felt so rife with conflict.
My teacher asked me why I did not feel at peace in my religion, and at the time it was easy to answer. That class came just after a class that was very combative. Like many of the classes I took at the International Marian Research Institute during my graduate studies in Mariology (the study of the Virgin Mary), I had asked questions of the priests and nuns who were my teachers, only to be berated for them by my classmates.
For example, in that particular class, the teacher brought up a story about a man who called the church the week prior. He lived in a rural area, and asked if he might be able to evoke the sacrament of confession via phone. The priest wanted to do it, but it is against church laws, and so he told the man that he would have to drive to the church to meet for confession.
One of the students in my class was very disturbed that the priest wanted to do something that the church was against, and that I would be willing to endorse it, but it made sense to me. Why should someone not be able to enjoy the sacrament of confession just because they live far away? The priest felt the same, but the class devolved into a debate, and the students were left feeling offended that something the Church decided could even be questioned.
(In case you’re wondering, theologically speaking, why someone who lives far away can’t enjoy confession via phone, the answer is: because of church discipline. This is not the same thing as church doctrine or dogma, meaning that it has no grounding in scripture, nor was it ever defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The only reason a Catholic can’t enjoy confession via phone is because: “that is the way it’s always been done.” This, by the way, is true of a lot of Catholic teachings.)
This is a small example, but, even in the case of larger, more foundational teachings, where doctrine or dogma is defined, I frequently found myself frustrated by the inability of my classmates to discourse with me on why those doctrine or dogma were defined. And worse, to be made to feel inferior to them for being unwilling to accept something as fact that had very flimsy reasoning behind it.
I mean, this was my faith! The foundation upon which I was building my life! Was I not to understand why a council that took place in 325 AD defined so much of what we believe, and then was never to be questioned again?
All of this is to say that I could not find peace in my religion because, though my personal spirituality has always been very important to me, and Catholicism has always felt very beautiful to me, adhering to the Church itself always felt like trying to put structure against something that was so simple. Or trying to define something that could not be known.
When I explained this all, in a very exasperated fashion to my professor, she discarded my final project and asked if I would spend the week with her, discovering my own Buddhist mantra instead. One that might bring me more peace.
Absolutely, I said.
The past of my faith
The next afternoon, my professor gave me my first assignment: to write a timeline of my faith that included all of the good moments of my faith, and all of the bad moments of my faith. It was a very involved homework assignment and I spent hours writing it all down. From the first mystical experience I had as a seven year old, all the way through to the intense debates that occurred in the class prior to hers that morning.
I came to her office the next day and told her my story. The intimate conversations I had with God as a child. That moment when, as a teenager, I was lying in a hammock looking at the stars and decided to give myself to God and become a Christian. There were the moments I felt something magical occur, and the times I felt God’s presence in a Cathedral, or listened to the whispered words of an ancient prophecy. And those times made me feel good and beautiful.
There were the moments between my faith, when yoga helped me get through my depression, and the Dalai Lama’s words brought me peace. I felt very happy in this time, and very fulfilled, and I remembered that it was actually the Dalai Lama, whose teaching inspired me to become a Catholic. “Choose the religion you grew up in,” he instructed, “for all paths lead the same place, but there is peace in choosing one.”
And then there were the moments that made me not want to be Catholic. The neighbor who prayed for me in a condescending way. Classmates who wrote me emails to tell me that something I wrote was “sinful.” The priest who refused to let me volunteer for a Catholic organization because, based on what he read on my website, “I was lost to my Catholicism” and thus might be at risk for leading his flock astray.
Writing it all down made me realize that I felt most connected and at peace when I was on my own. When I was reading and praying and sitting in silence, but that connecting to people within my chosen faith, or attempting to make public my faith, made me feel restless and ostracized and rebellious and angry.
So you see, my teacher explained, seeing how simply the story of my faith played out: you feel most peaceful when your faith is yours.
The present of my faith
The next afternoon I was given my second assignment: to write my creed. I was to write down what exactly I believed, what I was still unsure about, and what I did not believe. It took me a lot of soul searching to think through what I actually did, very concretely believe, and I wrote that all down here.
My teacher absolutely loved what I had written, and told me that most people don’t take the time to think about what they actually believe, they simply recite the apostles creed in mass and then go about their lives. But after hearing my creed, she exclaimed with glee: “Ah! You are not Catholic after all, you are Buddhist!”
She went on to explain that my beliefs most closely aligned with Zen Buddhism, and even elements of Confucianism. As she explained: Buddhists do not deny the existence of a Divine Existence, they only believe that that Presence does not concern them. Because we are human, and unable to understand the true nature of the Divine, there is no use in attempting to. That would only result in a guess, and a very human one at that.
It is thus a better use of our time, she said, to focus on what is within our understanding: that everyone suffers, and that we can do something to ease that suffering.
As she told me this, I felt an inner “yes!” ring out. I do believe in some Divinity, and I do have some personal inclination toward that Divinity. But I do not believe that a bunch of men voting on that Divinity, defines it. (I am speaking somewhat abstractly of the Council of Nicaea in which it was voted upon that Jesus was God, 300 years after he died).
I later learned that this concept is referred to, in secular terminology as “theistic rationalism.” The idea that God exists and can be prayed to, and even that much of the Bible is true, but that reason can also be used to decide what of it to accept or reject.
This, to me, feels very reasonable.
Sister Chua simplified my beliefs even further: So you believe in God, but you do not need doctrine or dogma to define it. We’re just over-complicating it.
The future of my faith
The next afternoon, my assignment was to make a list of everything that brought me peace and happiness. Then I was to prioritize that list from most to least. This was designed to help me understand what parts of my faith were most important to me.
At first, I acted like a dutiful Catholic, listing things like the book of John, which has always been my favorite, and Psalm 23 which has always made me feel peaceful. I added pictures of Cathedrals, which I have always loved, and the portraits of Mary I created. But then I asked myself honestly, when, truly, have I felt the most peace and happiness?
From there I went off script. I wrote about all of the French women books by Mireille Guiliano, as well as the tidying books by Marie Kondo. The book The Longing For Less has become a cherished addition to my austere collection of only three authors (the rest I get from the library or Kindle).
I wrote about the yoga classes that brought me a lot of peace when I going through depression. Every episode of Friends. A day at the Louvre that was most healing and decadent. A chance encounter with caviar at a champagne bar in San Francisco. A day at the winery with my sisters. An olive oil tasting I took in by myself.
A swim in a warm sea is one of my favorite things in the universe. Actually, anything that happens in summer makes me happy. An afternoon on a balcony in Corsica comes to mind. A swim in the Med. An evening under a canopy of twinkling lights in a far off jungle. As long as I’m warm, savoring the sunshine, sipping something pretty, and have a dozen oysters before me I’m feeling like the world is made.
Having a clean home also really makes me feel at peace. When my home is tidy and my plants are watered, I feel nourished and spacious. When I bathe in warm waters, and touch my skin with blue tansy oils I feel cared for. When I put money in savings I feel abundant. When I buy myself flowers or a bottle of wine from the top shelf, I feel prized. When I write, I am doing what I love.
The more I added to my list, the more I had to put each item in order, and I was shocked to discover that my happiest and most peaceful moments had nothing to do with religion. Spending a day with my sisters is more inspiring to me than reading the bible. I still love cathedrals, but they are outdone by a perfect evening my husband and I spent at a mezcal bar where we sat between wooden shutters that fluttered in a warm breeze as we listened to Spanish guitar and sipped peaty sotols.
Perhaps the Dalai Lama was wrong about the best way to practice my faith, I thought, perhaps it was all so much simpler than that. As my professor summed up: Your faith is best experienced by enjoying beauty.
What is my mantra?
By the end of the week, I felt as though I had whittled my faith down to it’s essence. I had effectively Marie Kondoed my religion, removing everything from it that did not spark joy, and leaving the only thing that did: that I feel most at peace when I recognize that everything is simple, and that I best practice that simplicity by experiencing beauty.
My mantra became two words: Simple. Beautiful.
I felt an instant peace when this mantra first came to me. It felt like the essence of what I believed distilled down to two words. In my mind I pictured a minus symbol, and thought about what that meant for me. Less. Less. Less. But I wanted to give it some space in my life to see how it worked for me in practice.
In the seven months since then I have not attended church, nor have I read the bible. When the winter turned colder and I could feel anxiety and depression reaching for me, I decided not to fall back into my religious habits just to see how it would feel to follow instead the things that trumped it on my list of peace.
I found that working out feels really good to me. Reading by the fire has become one of my favorite pastimes, as have deep stretches and long, warm baths. A pair of wide leg, black velvet pants have become my favorite evening respite, as have lingering glasses of Amaro tinged with cacao bitters, adorned with orange peels, and topped with never-ending doses of sparkling water.
When I kick off my blue, crocodile heels at the end of the day, and they land beside my paradise palm against the black backdrop of my walls, I admire them as I would a still life at the Louvre. And when I watch The Hookup Plan on Netflix-a French sitcom with very Amélie vibes-I feel the same delight that comes over me when I am traveling to far away places.
On the weekends, I go for a Nordic ski with friends and imagine that I am a little French girl skiing through the alps to get groceries. By day, I am a ballerina, I think, and must continue to ski through the mountains with that same grace. And though I haven’t reached the summer of my experiment yet, I know I will feel that same peace when I am lingering on the water and my hand is trailing through its wake.
In short, I feel happiest and most peaceful when life is simple and beautiful.
“We tend to rely on systems in order to help us solve [challenges],” says the author of The Longing For Less. “It could be the Ten Commandments, Tarot cards, focusing on the swirl of tea leaves in a cup, the position of the planets, or communicating with the dead… We look all around ourselves for instructions on how to live only to be confronted with the basic unknowability of the world.”
I relate all too well. For so long I craved those instructions. A manual for life. I wanted a set path laid out before me that would lead me to peace and happiness and contentedness. Instead, I found myself constantly upset with the direction it was taking me and unwilling to follow where it led. When at last I reached the end of my religion, I found that it did not bring me the peace I longed for. Instead, I found that all on my own.
Just as Henry David Thorough did in the woods of Walden or Elizabeth Gilbert did on the beaches of Indonesia, I have found that I don’t need anyone else to define my faith for me, but that I can define it all on my own. In fact, I have found that I am far more happier for doing so.
During my week with Sister Chua, I asked her if she ever felt unrest in her chosen faith. She told me no, that she chose to join an order that did not focus on complexities of religion, but on the simplicity of faith.
That’s what I’m doing too. And I’ve finally found my own order. | https://ellegriffin.medium.com/a-catholic-nun-taught-me-my-buddhist-mantra-3b7eac999813 | ['Elle Griffin'] | 2020-02-16 15:44:20.715000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Religion', 'Minimalism', 'Spirituality', 'Yoga'] |
5 Extremely Useful APIs for Your Next Projects | 5 Extremely Useful APIs for Your Next Projects
Amazing APIs to inspire you for your next projects
Introduction
APIs allow developers to save time by taking advantage of a platform’s implementation to perform some useful tasks. This also helps to reduce the number of code lines developers need to write for their programs. Because APIs give you access to the data that you will need for your application.
In this article, we will discover some amazing and useful APIs that you should know. All the APIs that I will mention are REST APIs that you can run using simple POST and GET methods. Let’s get right into it.
1. Responsive voice TTS API
The responsive voice is super easy to use, it is a text-to-speech API where you can even change the speaker’s accent, language, gender, etc. This is a great API because it allows you to easily transform any text into a speech.
You can check their website if you want to explore more about the API.
Here is a Codepen example to check out:
The responsive voice API.
You can change the text in the input above and click the “Speak” button to test it out.
2. The AcoBot AI chatbot API
Every developer has always dreamed of creating something with AI. A robot or just a chatbot that gives mature replies to your questions for example. But with the AcoBot API, you can easily add a smart AI chatbot to your website.
This amazing API is ranked 9.3/10 in popularity and it’s totally for free. You can check their documentation if you want to explore more about this fun API.
Here is a Codepen example:
The chatBot API.
3. Codex code compiler
CodeX is an online compiler for various languages like Java, C++, Python, etc. You can execute code in various languages on your own website for free with the CodeX API. Of course, there are various APIs on the market to compile and execute code but none of them is completely free, unlike the Codex API.
You can also check the Github repository if you are interested.
In the Codepen below, you can compile, execute, and store your code just by clicking on New Class .
Codex.
4. The CountAPI
This API allows you to create simple numeric counters. IaaS, Integer as a service. It’s a very useful API to track the number of hits a page had or to know the number of users that clicked on the button for example.
You can check all the information about this API on their documentation if you want.
Here is another Codepen example that counts the number of views a page had:
The CountAPI.
5. The MovieDb API
This movie API gives you access to a list of movies, TV shows, actor images, and all the data about movies. This API is a system that is provided for you and your team to programmatically fetch and use data within that API.
You can check their website if you want to explore more about this fun API.
In the example below, we used the moviedb API to build a simple movie app that shows a list of movie titles and images. You can also search for a movie and it will get you the data you requested from the API.
The movie API.
Conclusion
As you can see, it was just a list of some extremely useful APIs that you can use on your next projects. As a developer, using APIs can give you a lot of benefits because you will take advantage of such useful features of an API.
Thank you for reading this article, I hope you found it useful.
More Reading | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/5-extremely-useful-apis-for-your-next-projects-43647920a3e4 | ['Mehdi Aoussiad'] | 2020-12-13 20:20:14.033000+00:00 | ['Javascript Tips', 'JavaScript', 'Coding', 'Web Development', 'Programming'] |
Five Great Adult Swim Shows That Changed My Life | Five Great Adult Swim Shows That Changed My Life
Image from Wikimedia Commons
Originally published on Loud News Net.
Adult Swim has always been there for me.
Whether it was during my middle school years when Aqua Teen Hunger Force permanently warped my developing mind with its excessive violence and crude, but awesome jokes. Or to the present day with the maniacal Eric Andre Show and irreverent Rick and Morty.
The network has always had something for everyone. That’s what makes it great.
I always liked that Adult Swim got progressively weirder as the night went on. At 9 pm you’d be watching Mike Judge’s King of The Hill, a classic that could’ve had some episodes air on the earlier Cartoon Network.
But by 12 am and beyond you were in for weirdness. Robot Chicken, Squidbillies, Frisky Dingo, and the mind-bending fake infomercials that were geared towards anyone baked out of their mind.
Off the Air, brought to you by the psychopaths at AS
In short, every night Adult Swim would bring the heat (and still does).
And don’t get me started on Toonami, Adult Swim’s alter ego that introduced the Western world to contemporary anime like Naruto, One Piece, and Dragon Ball Z.
I’m getting shivers down my spine just thinking of the number of childhoods that Cartoon Network, Toonami, and Adult Swim have sculpted. So here are my five favs:
5. Rick and Morty
He has so many ants in his eyes
I’m always apprehensive when it comes to letting rookies on a list of legends.
Rising NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo or recent Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes, while both incredible, they better stay out of your mouth when it comes to comparing them to the legends (i.e. Tom Brady 🐐).
Conversely, Rick and Morty might be the new kid on the block, but it’s already cemented its legacy. The show has singlehandedly brought Adult Swim into the next decade.
Popularity aside, however, there is something special about Rick and Morty. Its impromptu nature is iconic. Voice actors laughing in the actual takes or watching a Pop-Tart drive a toaster to work. Genius.
All mixed with heavy themes of philosophy that make the show feel like Star Trek meets Tim and Eric.
It does have a toxic, high-brow fanbase, but who the hell cares anymore? Wubba lubba dub dub you sick bastards.
4. Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
Computer load up Celery Man please…
Tim and Eric is one of those Adult Swim shows that influenced pretty much everything we see today. From internet hangouts like Reddit and 4Chan to view hungry Tik Tokers and Rick and Morty.
When it comes to irreverent comedy in 2020, it’s likely that Tim and Eric had an impact on it.
Their sketches are still some of the best in comedy and rival shows like Dave Chappelle’s Show and Monty Python.
It was that good.
3. The Eric Andre Show
My seat feels like it’s alive
You don’t get The Eric Andre Show without Tim and Eric. The comedic duo actually produced the Adult Swim show back in 2012 and played a huge part in its success. That shouldn’t be a surprise as The Eric Andre Show is Tim and Eric on cocaine (which is saying a lot).
The show stars the manic, delusional and impromptu comedy king Eric Andre and his mellow comedic sidekick, Hannibal Buress. And from start to finish these two comedy stars send you a twisted, anti-comedic trip to hell.
Eric starts every show anew by tearing down the studio, beating his band half to death, and usually running around naked while he sets everything on fire (usually breaking a few desks in the process).
After he tires himself out his crew puts the studio back together in a matter of seconds and his co-star Hannibal makes his way out. This is only the first two minutes of The Eric Andre Show. From there you’re in for a deranged experience filled with street skits, celebrity interviews, and dry comedy that words cannot do proper justice.
2. The Boondocks
I remember the first time I showed a group of White friends Aaron Mcgruder’s The Boondocks. The episode: “A Date with the Booty Warrior.”
Throughout the runtime, my friends all sat there somewhat disturbed. not believing a show could address the subject matters it did or use the n-word so liberally.
But in the middle of all the profanity and raw subject matter was a great message.
The Boondocks does what all great satire does, it makes the viewer uncomfortable and then makes them laugh out loud.
It attacks topics like racism and ignorance of White America but in that same episode, it might address the Black community’s self-sabotage through our destructive culture; including but not limited to soul food and posturing in hip-hop.
What we consider to be satire of today is piss poor compared to The Boondocks, Chapelle’s Show, South Park, and Sacha Baron Cohen’s performative stunts.
The Boondocks wasn’t scared of anyone; they went after democrats, liberals, republicans, blacks, whites, hell, they even went after former president Barack Obama. Even though the show was created by a black man, I doubt it could survive the cancel wars of today.
1. Space Ghost Coast to Coast
Standing at the top is one of the shows that started it all, Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Tim and Eric influenced Eric Andre, Rick and Morty, and modern-day sketch comedy; but without Space Ghost, there wouldn’t be a Tim and Eric or any Adult Swim shows for that matter.
Space Ghost embodies the Adult Swim spirit and creativity. The series follows a 1960’s animated character who now hosts a spoof talk show with real celebrity guests and esoteric comedy.
Without this early Adult Swim show, there’d be a butterfly effect of tragic proportions leading up to the comedies of today. But influence aside, everything about this show is fascinating.
The show had no budget, just 8,000+ hours of 1960’s Hanna-Barbera animation and Mike Lazzo, the former mailroom guy, spearheading the project.
In an interview with Syfy, Lazzo says he asked network president Ted Turner for a budget, but that he turned them away.
“We went to Ted and said, ‘Please can we have some money?’ And he said, like any parent would, ‘Use what you’ve got, and then maybe we can talk later about this.”
So Lazzo and team dug into the Hanna-Barbera archives and created Space Ghost Coast to Coast.
The Adult Swim show came out in the middle of the Late Night wars between Leno, Lettermen, Conan, and Arsenio Hall, but had no problem taking off on its own. The show still holds up today (and you can see the Eric Andre influence all over it) and is the best Adult Swim show to date. | https://medium.com/illumination/five-great-adult-swim-shows-that-changed-my-life-1a0fb5caa01a | ['Isaiah Mccall'] | 2020-12-25 14:49:18.457000+00:00 | ['2020', 'Television', 'Entertainment', 'Cartoon', 'Culture'] |
How Economics Affect Equity Markets- Part 1 | This is blogpost is inspired by one of Marcellus Investments’ previous work on Inflation.
The fondest economic obsession for Indians is the GDP figure. Following next very closely is Inflation. Inflation has been the recent talk of the financial town, with inflation readings inching higher and sometimes crossing the upper target band of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) since the latter half of 2020. For the uninitiated, the RBI inflation target band is 4(+/-2)%.
From Jan’12 to Jul’21
Before sketching the effect of inflation (high/moderate/low) on equity markets, we need to understand why inflation is so much being talked about. Ever since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, central banks, across the globe have flushed the system with excess liquidity. They want to support growth and liquidity will act as a lubricant for the wheels of the economy. This excess liquidity is finding its way to the equity markets.
But why only equity markets? The reason is the extremely low interest rate cycle. The excess liquidity in the system is achieved by lowering down interest rates so that more entities go ahead to borrow money from financial institutions and in turn spend on the economy, paving way for growth. Therefore, with elevated inflation levels and no competitive alternative asset class, equities becomes a no-brainer.
Now coming to the inflation effect on equities. Perenially, inflation has been viewed as being negatively correlated with equities. Should inflation go up, stock markets would correct. The basic narrative is that once inflation is high, the central bank will raise interest rates and that would have a negative bearing on the equity market, by the same logic as mentioned earlier. This might not be true, though.
Using the past 9 years and 7 months worth of historical data (115 months) from January’12 to July’21, I conducted a study of Nifty50 returns during this period. The data set is divided into High/Moderate/Low Inflation months. Any reading equal to or above 6% is considered high, between 4–6% is considered moderate, and below 4% is considered low. The bifurcation is attached below.
The Nifty50 Returns represent the median monthly returns
The bottomline of the study was that the Nifty50 index actually outperformed (on a cumulative basis) during the high inflation period as compared to the moderate and low inflation periods. Since the returns are median in nature, it neutralizes some portion of the sample space bias.
What’s the rationale behind this? Essentially what happens is that during high inflation months, companies across the board face input cost acceleration. This trickles down to their margins and in turn the burden is passed on to the end consumer. However, top-quality companies tend to operate otherwise. They typically have a strong distributor network and a healthy inventory churn which enables them to cushion the input cost inflation and hence keep the margins intact. This usually reflects on their stock prices, that is corroborated by the underlying analysis.
Therefore, top notch businesses manage to break the clutter during difficult business conditions and extend their lead significantly. Another thing to bear in mind, is the importance of equity as an asset class. Equities are the best way to beat inflation and generate plausible returns over a long period of time, by undertaking moderate amount of risk. Hence, what seems to be the case is always not the case. | https://medium.com/@shyamag21/how-economics-affect-equity-markets-part-1-8ddcae06e887 | ['Shyam Agarwal'] | 2021-09-17 08:35:19.344000+00:00 | ['Liquidity', 'Inflation', 'Market', 'Equity', 'Economics'] |
Local families host holiday blanket drive for 14th year | What started as a Cub Scout project 14 years ago has become an annual goodwill mission for two families in Haddonfield. With their sons now in college and high school, the Novak family and the Bhaya family still maintain an annual holiday blanket drive for those less fortunate.
“There’s no reason to stop,” co-organizer Tina Novak said.
With both Novak and Gail Bhaya serving as den leaders back in 1999, Bhaya and her son proposed the holiday project at a den meeting with the Cub Scouts and carried out the project as a group effort. However, after their sons moved up to Boy Scouts of America, the new Cub Scouts decided to change the holiday project.
“When our kids graduated, the people who continued the drive did coats instead,” Novak said. “We felt there were still people in Camden who depended on us.”
With Bhaya’s two sons in college and Novak’s one son in college, Novak’s youngest son is currently a high school student and still actively helps in the drive.
Yet, with all sons active in the drive at some point over the years, both Novak and Bhaya agreed that the drive has become a tradition for the two families.
“Since then, over the years, we continued to do it and have collected 1,527 blankets over the years,” Bhaya said.
Beginning in November, the two families start collecting blankets, comforters, sleeping bags and baby blankets for those in need. They use their homes as drop-off locations for donations. The Haddonfield Information Center in Kings Court also serves as a drop-off location for anyone who wishes to donate.
In addition, the two families also volunteer to pick up any donations within town.
“The cool thing is people now save their blankets, knowing they’re going to get used,” Bhaya said.
However, Bhaya added that the families have seen a fluctuation of donations throughout the years.
Novak added that both she and Bhaya take turns driving to the Information Center to pick up any items that have been donated until everything is gathered. From there, all items are packaged and labeled to make it easier for distribution.
After scheduling an appointment with the shelter, the two pack one or more cars before driving to Camden, where the clients of New Visions Homeless Day Shelter help them unload.
In addition, the two also tally the number of donations they receive each year.
While all donations are appreciated by the families, Novak said that over the years they have found that more donations tend to be throw blankets and they are constantly looking for full-sized blankets or comforters to bring to the shelter.
While the two families have given their donations to New Visions Homeless Day Shelter in Camden, Novak added that the families have also delivered to the Center for Family Services’ Mother/Child Residential in Woodbury.
“They are so thankful,” Novak said. “That’s what keeps us going.”
Donations will be collected until Jan. 1 and can be dropped off at the Novak household, located at 120 W. Redman Ave., or the Bhaya household at 415 Euclid Ave. Donations can also be dropped off from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. from Wednesday to Saturday at the Haddonfield Information Center.
To schedule an at-home pickup, residents can call either Novak at 428–0294 or Bhaya at 616–0794. | https://medium.com/the-haddonfield-sun/local-families-host-holiday-blanket-drive-for-14th-year-6ebe1e042d03 | [] | 2017-01-10 15:21:58.328000+00:00 | ['Families', 'Headlines', 'Boy Scouts Of America', 'Camden'] |
Quitting coffee isn’t really about quitting coffee. | More from rstevens Follow
I make cartoons and t-shirts at www.dieselsweeties.com & @rstevens. Send me coffee beans. | https://rstevens.medium.com/quitting-coffee-isnt-really-about-quitting-coffee-5355d9a4c0e7 | [] | 2019-09-02 03:56:08.761000+00:00 | ['Comics', 'Coffee', 'Self Improvement', 'Honestly Why Bother', 'Change Your Life'] |
‘City of Waterfalls’ Home to Stunning Natural Scenery | The natural beauty of Greece rivals its extraordinary history, and the waterfalls of Edessa are a prime example of its natural wonders. Visitors looking to escape the crowds of summer that flock to Greece will find a peaceful, relaxing destination in Edessa, where the sounds of its 70-meter waterfall drift through the town.
Location and history
Edessa, which means “tower in the water,” is located in Macedonia in Northern Greece on a bluff that overlooks the Loudhiás River. The city was built around the Skirtos (now known as the Edhessaíos), a fast-flowing stream responsible for creating the beautiful waterfalls that have made the city famous.
In ancient times, Edessa was located along the Via Egnitia, a road connecting the Aegean and Adriatic Seas. A bridge built by the Romans or Byzantines in the town still stands. Over the centuries, Edessa has been the target of Turks, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Byzantines, but in 1912, it became part of Greece.
Edessa is about 345 kilometers north of Athens, and it can be reached via car, bus, plane, or train. Land travel takes an average of six hours regardless of the mode of transportation, and air passengers must fly from Athens to a nearby city, such as Thessaloniki, and then take ground transportation to Edessa.
The waterfalls
The waterfalls of Edessa have evolved over the centuries. Until the 14th century, the Eddessaios river, which supplies the waterfalls, ran from the foothills of the Pindus Mountains to the west of the town and collected in a small lake. However, due to a unique geological shift, the water switched direction and ran through the city, and the lake dried up. Visitor accounts from the 17th and 18th centuries describe Edessa as a city on a rock where waterfalls cascade. Today, one large waterfall and two smaller ones fall over the cliff.
The city now is traversed by many smaller rivers snaking out from the Eddessaios. As visitors stroll around the city, which includes walks over numerous small bridges, they are treated to the peaceful sounds of running water. The main water is about 70 meters high, and centuries of aquatic sculpting have created interesting geological formations in the rocks around it.
For many years, Edessa’s waterfalls were hidden from view because of the area’s steep hills and thick vegetation — only the most adventurous beat a path through the weeds to view them. In the early 1940s, when Germans occupied the town, residents began sprucing up the city by planting flowerbeds and installing ponds. However, the citywide landscaping fell by the wayside during a civil war, and it wasn’t until the early 1960s that residents began to build paths to the waterfalls, including stairs that that offered several vantage points along the way.
Today, the falls are easily accessible to visitors, and the majestic cascade is surrounded by tall trees and flowers. Visitors also can walk behind the falls, getting a look at the backside of the curtain of water and a cave covered by falling water on the lower level. The nearby smaller Lamda falls cascade into turquoise pools.
The Open-Air Water Museum and aquarium
The area around the waterfalls is filled with tourist-friendly amenities, including restaurants and a hotel. The unique Open-Air Water Museum highlights Edessa’s history as a water-based industry, dating back to the 15th century during Ottoman rule. Visitors can view the water-power mills that once ground wheat and sesame, as well as pre-industrial workshops, centuries-old plaster buildings, and old mills with equipment that was used through the 1960s. Because water is so abundant in Edessa, people have found ways to harness its power for hundreds of years, whether it was powering tanneries or serving as an energy source for powering individual homes.
The nearby aquarium, found at the Giannakis watermill, is home to snakes, turtles, eels, and baby crocodiles.
Edessa’s Folklore Museum
While the waterfalls are a natural testament to Edessa’s history, the area also is home to evidence of more than 3,000 years of humans living in the area. About 450 meters south of the falls, visitors can see ruins of the ancient town, including the agora and an inscribed column that dates to the Roman era.
Visitors also can stop by the Folklore Museum in the area. It features exhibits that showcase the daily lives of Edessa residents from the 19th century through the 1950s, including an exhibit featuring local clothing and another highlighting rural interests such as raising cattle. The museum is closed on Mondays, and admission is 1.5 euros (children younger than 12 are free).
Whether you choose to stay in Edessa or make it a day trip from Thessaloniki, this city of waterfalls will be a one-of-a-kind experience on your Greek vacation. | https://medium.com/@DrGeorgeHatzigiannis/city-of-waterfalls-home-to-stunning-natural-scenery-bb6d6e9d1808 | ['Dr. George Hatzigiannis'] | 2019-10-08 16:16:01.255000+00:00 | ['Edessa', 'Vacation', 'Greece', 'Holiday', 'Travel'] |
The Realisation of My Sexual Fantasy Is on Hold | The Realisation of My Sexual Fantasy Is on Hold
And I did it to myself!
Photo by Ferdinand studio on Unsplash
A while ago, I wrote about how I didn’t have sexual fantasies and how I wasn't happy about it. Since then, I’ve been working on changing that — I felt sexual fantasies would bring fun and sexual excitement to my life. And I was right.
Because my partner, Mr P., goes along with anything I ask (and he gets the same from me), I knew that anything I’d fantasise about, he would make it happen.
Apart from going to a dungeon — the number one on my sexual bucket list — eventually have a threesome (an FMF one) and going to a fetish party, I couldn’t think about anything else to fantasise about. Not until I stopped overthinking it and allow me to go with the flow.
Last month, I found out my first real sexual fantasy. It came up naturally, without forcing it. But most important: it came up because I let down my defences.
Mr P. is in the army. Because of the lockdown, since March he has been out of it (it’s not his primary job). When the restrictions were lifted, he went back to the army work; soon he went out for an “army weekend”.
In our good morning texting, on that Saturday; I asked him to send me a picture of him, I wanted to see him (we couldn’t do a video call).
When I opened the picture, I got horny as hell! He was dressed in his army suit, I’ve never had seen him on it. I texted him back: “I want you to fuck me dressed like that.” He laughed and said, “ok”. What else?
A couple of weeks later, we would celebrate our six-months dating. We agreed we’d have a romantic dinner and a kinky night.
Our date was very romantic. We cooked together, both dressed up. He invited me to go for a meal out, but I was in the mood to stay indoors.
He had lit all the candles in the house (he has candleholders in the walls of the living room, on the dining table and along the stairs). The ambience was perfect; intimate and romantic.
We drank Prosecco, we talked, and we celebrated our marvellous and committed six-months relationship.
After dinner, my dog had to be walked. Usually, Mr P. comes with me, but that night he told me he had something he needed to take care of, for me to walk the dog without him.
I knew immediately it had something to do with sex; he wanted to prepare a scene.
I went out with my dog (with a big smile on my face.) I walked him longer than usual. I wanted to give time for my lover to get ready for whatever he was preparing, and to create an expectation for me to get back.
The same way, I wanted to create an expectation for myself.
While I walked my dog, I imagined what Mr P. was preparing for us. Would it be a wax scene? Was he preparing the handcuffs, whips and floggers? Was he going to ask me to dominate him?
The anticipation of sex is so delicious.
When I got home, I had an incredible vision: Mr P. was dressed in his army suit.
He was so hot in it. But so, so hot! I took my dog’s leash off, told him good night, grabbed Mr P.’s hand and dragged him to his bedroom, upstairs.
We started making out. My clothes flew around the room; his camouflage suit stayed on. The only thing that moved in the suit was the zip of the pants (that one had to be undone.) Ok, I grabbed it hard and pulled my man to me, dragging him through the camouflage suit, but I never undressed a piece from him.
We had an amazing fuck: me naked; he dressed in his camouflage suit. It was so intensely sexy and arousing!
I never thought a costume fantasy would be my thing. I still don’t think it is; I need to explore it more.
Mr P. is in the army, the suit it’s his; I feel it’s the power that comes with it, the ownership that makes me so horny. I’m not sure I’d feel the same if he dresses up in something it’s not him. I guess I’ll have to try.
Having my man dressed in an army suit, pinning me down on the bed and fucking me with desire, threw me to another dimension.
The realisation of the fantasy was spectacular. But it made me want more — a new fantasy was born from it. | https://medium.com/emma-london-writes/the-realisation-of-my-sexual-fantasy-is-on-hold-5574889049d8 | ['Emma London'] | 2020-11-04 22:31:10.374000+00:00 | ['Kink', 'Life', 'Fetish', 'Sexuality', 'Sex'] |
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Release Date:Jan 01, 2021Runtime:85 minutesGenres:Adventure, Animation, Family, RomanceProduction Company:Diedra, Zagreb Film, Zycon MediaProduction Countries:Croatia
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TELEVISION SHOW AND HISTORY
A television show (often simply ) is any content prBookmark this siteoduced for broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, cable, or internet and typically viewed on a tv set, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are usually placed between shows. s ‘re normally scheduled well ahead of The G0G with Grandpa and appear on electronic guides or other TV listings.
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❏ STREAMING MEDIA ❏
Streaming media are multimedia media that are continuously received by an end user and presented to an end user while being provided by a provider. The verb to be streamed identifies the process of providing or receiving media in this way. [Clarification required] Streaming identifies the delivery method of the medium rather than the medium itself. The distinction between the delivery method and the distributed media is particularly true for telecommunications networks, as most delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or not streaming by nature (e.g. books, video cassettes, sound CDs). There are challenges associated with streaming content on the Internet. For example, users whose Internet coStarzection does not have sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, delays, or slow buffering of this content. And users who lack compatible hardG0Ge or softG0Ge systems may have problems streaming certain content.
Live streaming is the delivery of Internet content in real time, similar to how live television broadcasts content over the air with a television signal. Live internet streaming takes the form of source media (e.g. a video camera, sound interface, screen capture softG0Ge), an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and serve that content. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the point of origin, although it is often the case.
Streaming is an option for dBBC Oneloading files. The end user receives the full file for the content before viewing or hearing it. Streaming allows an end user to use their media player to begin playing digital video or audio before the entire file has been transferred. The term “streaming media” can apply to media other than video and audio, such as: B. Live subtitles, ticker tape, and real-time text that are considered “streaming text”.
❏ COPYRIGHT CONTENT ❏
Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its BBC Oneer the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[2][2][000][2][000] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[6][6][2] A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States.
Some jurisdictions require “fixing” copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders.[citation needed][6][20][22][22] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[2000]
Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered “territorial rights”. This means that copyrights granted by the law of a certain state, do not extend beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works “cross” national borders or national rights are inconsistent.[22]
Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 0000 to 22 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[000] to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration.
It is widely believed that copyrights are a must to foster cultural diversity and creativity. However, Parc argues that contrary to prevailing beliefs, imitation and copying do not restrict cultural creativity or diversity but in fact support them further. This argument has been supported by many examples such as Millet and Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Monet, etc.[6]
❏ GOODS OF SERVICES ❏
Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[2] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and extensible to a large group of unrelated people.
The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[2] Credit is extended by a creditor, also knBBC One as a lender, to a debtor, also knBBC One as a borrower.
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Thanks for Watching guys!! Smiling a little better a big laugh.! Have a nice day :)) | https://medium.com/free-watching-animation-cricket-antoinette-movies/cricket-antoinette-2021-animation-cricket-antoinette-fu-l-movies-2021-59a59436fde3 | ['Tong Kepo Atuh'] | 2020-12-27 21:02:11.803000+00:00 | ['Animation'] |
Hongwei Zhang Joins the Blockchain Advisory Board of ContentBox | Hongwei Zhang
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
May 29, 2018
We are excited to announce that Hongwei Zhang, leader of the Networking and Computing research group at Iowa State University, joined ContentBox as an advisor to the board. ContentBox is a blockchain-based infrastructure for the decentralized digital content industry.
Today’s digital media landscape is defined by a flawed monetization structure, which impacts all industry players, from creators to users to distributors. This is where ContentBox, a decentralized digital media content platform, comes in. The ContentBox team aims to create a platform that streamlines the monetization channels for both users and content creators.
Importance of Zhang’s presence and connections
Zhang has a long history of conducting and publishing research that sheds light on both network-based inefficiencies and on distributed protocols/systems. His publications outline relevant new solutions, many of which have had swift proof of concept iterations and near-instant implementation. He also has a successful track record of collaborations with a wide range of teams in many industries; Zhang is an invaluable addition to the ContentBox board.
Zhang has a PhD from Ohio State University in Computer Science and Engineering. In addition to continuing his research with various industry teams such as US Ignite, CPS, NeTS, and GOALI programs, Zhang is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University.
ContentBox’s Future Vision
With Zhang onboard, there are various streamline-focused protocol improvements in the Contentbox distribution that can be coded and more thoroughly implemented.
Zhang stated, “Our research at ISU has laid a foundation for trustworthy wireless networking in mission-critical cyber-physical-human systems. I hope to apply these learnings to ContentBox.”
CEO and founder of ContentBox, Renee Wang stated, “I am thrilled to have a strategist and implementation expert such as Hongwei Zhang advising ContentBox.”
___
Contentbox Website: https://contentbox.one/
Telegram: https://t.me/BoxCommunity
Contentbox Twitter: https://twitter.com/Contentbox_one
Contentbox Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/contentboxone/
Contentbox Medium: https://medium.com/@Contentbox_one
Contentbox White Paper: https://contentbox.one/wp.pdf
Contentbox Bitcoin Talk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3898690.0 | https://medium.com/contentbox/hongwei-zhang-joins-the-blockchain-advisory-board-of-contentbox-94c6aacff4e7 | [] | 2018-06-05 05:02:57.662000+00:00 | ['Entertainment', 'Crypto', 'Media', 'Podcasts', 'Blockchain'] |
BJP leaders scamming people with fake PM-CARES websites. | We have heard about Robin Hood who use to steal from corrupted Rich people and distribute among poor, here is the same case with the only difference is: this Robin Hood belongs to those Rich People and didn’t distribute among poor. Yes, i am talking about the ministers and the volunteers of Bharatiya Janata Party.
I have Already explained about how Prime minister of India Narendra Modi is operating an open scam in the name of PM-caresbefore.
Here, I am going to share details how BJP Ministers are taking advantage of this scam and filling their own bank accounts instead of Modi ji. It all started with a single fake website on 2nd of April while PM Modi announced his PM-Cares website on 31st.
Actually in short we can say BJP IT Cell created a special fake website and instead of real website they distributed the fake one among their ministers and volunteer.
The Official website for the PM-Cares : https://pmcares.gov.in
and the Fake Website : http://pmcaresfund.online (This fake site is being promoted by BJP leaders)
Lets start with the Cabinet Minster Chandrashekhar Bawankule. | https://medium.com/@sajjadspeaks/bjp-leaders-scamming-people-with-fake-pm-cares-websites-c1362c70453e | ['Sajjad Ansari'] | 2020-04-23 13:19:00.051000+00:00 | ['Modi', 'Bjp', 'India', 'Scam', 'Pm Cares Fund'] |
Stop Waiting to Be Picked | “Never have your happiness dependent on a yes or no decision from one person.” ― James Altucher
Today, there are more ways than ever to pick yourself and show your work. Far easier to have someone notice your creative work. And if you’re driven and focused, you may discover that the market loves what you do. That people come back for more of what you have to share or say.
That’s how you build public reputation. A good or even great one. You can become the best in the world at something that people value. But, alas, that doesn’t mean you can monetize it…yet.
Seth Godin explains it better:
“What pick yourself means is that it’s never been easier to decide to be responsible for your own work, for your own agenda, for the change you make in the world. To have a chance to matter. Not to be finished right now, but starting now. Pick yourself means we should stop waiting and whining and stalling. The outcome is still in doubt, but it’s clear that waiting just doesn’t pay.”
It matters that you pick yourself
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Many gifted people are playing it small and not getting their message out there or benefiting from what they are good at. You have unique gift and the world needs to know about it.
You can be as big and successful as you can possibly imagine. You just don’t trust yourself enough yet. No matter who you are or what you dream of becoming, remember this: No one ever came to this planet to take a back seat, play second fiddle or make it small.
You have everything you need to make an impact in the world. You don’t even have to start your own business. What you need is something you can you can emotionally and deeply connect with. Don’t think too far into the future. Use what you have right now at where you are and witness the magic of creative work. If you’re thinking about it too much, chances are you’re killing it.
Everybody is good at something!
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.” — Dr. Seuss
The good news for you is that you know something or better still you are good at something. You know it, your friends and colleagues know that. You have been ignoring that side of you for far too long. You can do something about it and make it your business. It may not necessarily be your passion.
It could be something you have studied for a while and you can easily identify yourself as an expert in that if you work at it. People have lots of questions and you probably know most of the answers already. It doesn’t have to be comprehensive processes or steps. You don’t even have to leave your present job to make a meaninful addition to creative work.
Figure out how to create value
“The more people you help and the more value you create, the more your business will fly — and the quicker you’ll win. “— Robin S. Sharma
You may not be where you want to be right now but if you are at least trying you are better off than everyone else who isn’t trying, moving or making progress. Somewhere inside you is something special. You just need the courage to let it out.
A lot more people can benefit from your ideas, talent or skill. You are probably more smarter than you are being paid for right now. You don’t need a fancy office to put relevant stuff that means a lot to you online. You are good to show your work right now. And you don’t need permission to start showing your work.
What most people don’t realize is that there aren’t a lot of experts in the world. If you choose to focus on the thing you love to do or give it a little more time, you can become an expert at it. If you can become an expert at it, you could do it for a living at some point in your life. And the fulfilment that follows is magical.
It won’t happen right at the beginning. You will probably suck at it in the beginning but you will get better with time. Practice is the key word. It’s easier to transform your passion into your job than finding a job that matches your what you love to do. Your art, creation, product, message or what you choose to share can make a huge difference in many people’s lives across the globe.
What you can consistently do
“Getting an audience is hard. Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.” — Bruce Springsteen
You can host webinars, write weekly posts, join an expert group, start a YouTube channel to teach people what you know or even put your ideas in an ebook. There are way too may options for everyone right now. And the resources you need are mostly free and available online. Whatever you choose to do, there are resources out there that can help you achieve your goals in simple steps. It doesn’t have to be anything hard. You can start small and scale or you can even choose to be small but consistent.
Curiosity makes creatives feel alive. You probably have certain ideas you have been thinking about for a long time now. There is no opportune moment than now to show your work. You won’t be an instant millionaire, but with time you will become an expert people will depend on for educative and consistent information, education or entertainment.
Choose a topic you deeply care about!
“I care deeply about craft: the quality of how something is made and the experience it enables.” — Kevin Systrom
You can quickly become an expert one thing you deeply care about. Choosing your life’s work is akin to choosing a passion in life — sometimes it chooses you more than you choose it.
First, choose to teach others a topic that you already find fascinating and already love to learn about. If you find yourself always buying and reading finance books, then there is a hint: finance may be your topic. What is it that you love to do?Those are great starting points for the process of choosing meaningful work
What can others learn from your struggles? Consider what you have been through in life. Have you had a turning point worth sharing, a triumph worth knowing, or a tragedy that makes you say, “Wow, I struggled through something important, and now I want to teach others so that I can minimize their struggles. These are all signs of what you can do or become an expert at. Scratch your own itch and teach others how to effectively do it too.
Love the process!
“Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it’s not random.” — Ken Robinson
If you are not ready yet, you can learn to get better at anything you want. Learn it, master it, share it, become known for it, and you can possbily become an expert and even be paid for it. If you are going to build a real empire, you need to pick one topic, idea, or a craft you connect with emotionally.
You need to love the process. Everyone wants the outcome, but the process matters even more. The greatest impediment to creativity is impatience, the almost inevitable desire to hurry up the process, express something, and make a splash. Learn to write persuasively, to understand new technologies, to bring out the best in your yourself, to find underused resources and to spot patterns. It gets good with time.
You can still start today and still make an impact. All you need to do is show up to write a post, write a book, share a video, host a webinar or sell a product. And be consistent. Seth Godin has shown up everyday for the past 10 years. He is a global authority on marketing, how ideas spread, post-industrial revolution, and changing everything. Authority comes from consistent generosity. It comes from showing up. It comes from telling your truth and consistently sharing your point of view.
Choose your audience and start serving!
Who do you want to serve? Who do you ultimately want to serve most in your new career. Do you want to help youth, parents, women, men, retirees, businesses, nonprofits, entrepreneurs — who, exactly, is your target audience? Once you have a demographic in mind, you can go ahead and make that impact they expect. Start doing what you choose to serve every day. Awesome things will start to happen. You wouldn’t believe how attractive you become to the world once you start serving.
What information or art do you possess that can be refreshed, repackaged, remodeled, reinvented and rebranded? And when you decide to choose a platform to serve your audience, consider what they read, where they go, who they spend time with, and what they value. That platform could become your greatest asset in the future.
Choose to be your authentic self, let go of who you think you should be to be who you are. Choose to create and share your work everyday. You are the only one who can push yourself a little further to start, create, share or publish.
Welcome to feeling fully alive. Good luck.
If you enjoyed this post, you will love Postanly. It’s my FREE weekly digest of the best life and career improvement posts on the web. It challenges you to be smarter and better every week!
Subscribe to the FREE weekly digest of the best life and self improvement posts on the web. | https://medium.com/the-mission/stop-waiting-to-be-picked-e883af14e0ba | ['Thomas Oppong'] | 2016-08-18 13:17:49.955000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Work', 'Productivity', 'Life', 'Life Lessons'] |
Modelling for Leaf Disease Detection | Modelling for Leaf Disease Detection
What drives progress most is the need to solve a problem. And what more serious quantifiable problem is there than that of poor food supply? Humans and animals heavily rely on good plant crop production. And crop production is highly influenced by plant health. It is thus imperative that crops be monitored for signs of early disease development. However, present techniques require laboratory diagnosis which takes time and resources. To help improve plant disease detection, the PlantDoc dataset was created.
The original dataset contained 2,598 data images with 13 plant species and 17 classes of diseases. Data was provided as images in JPG, and annotations in both the VOC XML format and CSV format.
In a previous blog, we explored how to use the dataset using manual upload and creating a custom parser. In this blog, we will upload the data using the git clone approach, proceed with parsing and continue to modelling.
We will follow this Outline:
A. Set-up
B. Establish directories
C. Parsing
D. Transforms
E. Modelling
E.1. Faster R-CNN
E.2. YOLOv5
E.3. RetinaNet
E.4. EfficientDet
E.5. Final Model
F. Visualize Results
G. Saving the Model
Open your Notebook and let’s see code grow!
A. Set-up
Let the above installations finish before proceeding with the next.
from icevision.all import *
Retrieve the data directly from the Github source:
B. Establish directories
%pwd # output: '/content'
!ls # output: PlantDoc-Object-Detection-Dataset (among others)
B.1. Specify a direct route to the data.
%cd PlantDoc-Object-Detection-Dataset/
!ls
The TRAIN file contains the images and individual annotations.
data_dir = Path('.')
B.2. Specify a route to the annotations.
The annotations are also available as an aggregated information in the train_labels.csv.
import pandas as pd
annot = pd.read_csv('train_labels.csv')
annot.rename(columns={'class':'label'}, inplace=True)
annot.sample(3)
annot.filename.nunique() # output: 2,345
B.3. Specify a route to the labels.
_CLASSES = annot['label'].unique().tolist()
len(_CLASSES) # ouput: 29
class_map = ClassMap(_CLASSES)
C. Parsing
template_record = ObjectDetectionRecord() class PlantDocParser(Parser):
def __init__(self, template_record, data_dir):
super().__init__(template_record=template_record) self.data_dir = data_dir
self.df = annot
self.class_map = class_map def __iter__(self) -> Any:
for o in self.df.itertuples():
yield o def __len__(self) -> int:
return len(self.df) def record_id(self, o) -> Hashable:
return o.filename def parse_fields(self, o, record, is_new):
if is_new:
filepath = self.data_dir / 'TRAIN' / o.filename
record.set_filepath(filepath)
if filepath.exists():
image_size = get_img_size(filepath)
record.set_img_size(image_size) #
record.detection.set_class_map(self.class_map) record.detection.add_bboxes(
[BBox.from_xyxy(o.xmin, o.ymin, o.xmax, o.ymax)])
record.detection.add_labels([o.label])
The custom parsing steps are discussed in Section E here. | https://medium.com/@yrodriguezmd/modelling-for-leaf-disease-detection-e16554a14bee | ['Maria L Rodriguez'] | 2021-09-02 18:34:49.985000+00:00 | ['Computer Vision', 'Parse', 'Plants', 'Yolo', 'Object Detection'] |
Is “Mixed-Race” Even a Race? | Is “Mixed-Race” Even a Race?
Do we actually have anything in common?
Photo by Humphrey Muleba on Unsplash
It’s a rude awakening to realise that you don’t look distinctly like either of your parents.
How is that even possible?
I mean, you definitely exited your mother’s uterus and your father seems overly occupied with keeping you alive, so you are certainly attached to them somehow. Yet when you stand side by side, to the naked eye you look nothing alike.
Gradually — if you look hard enough — you’ll start to see similarities. Maybe it’s the shape of your head. The small, but perfectly round pea head you inherited from your father. Or the nose, with it’s protruding bone jutting forth from your cheeks.
That’s the thing though isn’t it? It’s not obvious to the naked eye because your skin does not exhibit the same amount of pigmentation. You’re a different skin colour altogether and that — that is the struggle.
You don’t really look like either of your parents.
This can lead to people assuming your mother is your nanny or your father is your “sugar daddy”. Ew, I know.
Fortunately, it doesn’t seem to matter throughout your childhood. You don’t really notice colour and heritage. You become versed in different flavours, mingling with extended family, neighbours and school friends on play dates. Top of your agenda are toys, snacks and naps. Life is good.
It never stays that easy, though. Before you know it — bam! Say hello to your teens. As well as the curricular requirements amping up, you are thrust into a new social battleground otherwise named high school.
At this point it becomes downright tribal.
High school
In the early years of adolescence, we want nothing more than to fit in — to find our tribe.
Perhaps we’re quirky and introverted, so gravitate towards those with similar dispositions; or we’re sporty and extroverted, so we climb the invisible hierarchy and surround ourselves with an exclusive fan base.
My experience in high school was largely characterised by racial divide. A harmless one, but a divide nonetheless.
The majority of kids were white, from middle class backgrounds and typically lived on one side of the school’s catchment area populated with the concurrent demographic.
The rest of us lived in other suburbs, which were densely populated by Asian and African communities. So when we, as children of colour, ended up in the same classes, we instinctively banded together over our shared experiences and lack of whiteness in a predominantly white environment.
There was of course mixing and nothing that would resemble segregation. In fact, my class photo is like a stracciatella ice-cream. Yet, I ended up spending most of my time outside of scheduled lessons with the “black” group: a group of black kids from different classes across the cohort, due to my self-identification as black on account of my Nigerian heritage on my father’s side.
There were many conversations in which I heard phrases like “you’re not even black” when speaking in urban slang or “that’s definitely your white side” when scoring high marks on English literature exams.
(Confession: to this day I still blame not being able to dance well on my “white” genes)
My favourite moment of racial divide came towards the latter years of my high school experience when we played football on the field at lunch. The pinnacle of the British high school experience.
The quickest and most straightforward way to decide teams in a game with 20 kids playing was to play “blacks” vs “whites”, where yep, you guessed it — the teams were drawn along racial lines. This was fuelled also by an ongoing debate about which race had the best footballers.
I wasn’t any good at football, so I didn’t care to play on most occasions, but the one time I did get involved, I did think “so what side should I actually be on then?”
“Could we make a mixed-race team?”
I was met with puzzled looks.
Reflecting now, there were a number of mixed-race kids in my year at school, but I never felt much affinity towards them. The two of us that were mixed with black and white heritages did at least bond over the shared abuse we received for being called “half-breeds”.
Kids are cruel, right?
Don’t worry, I spewed back much worse. Either way, I shrugged and went to the library instead to cram in some homework.
Do we have anything in common?
American novelist and essayist Danzy Senna made an assertion in her essay The Mulatto Millennium that really irked me:
“We’ve decided on this one word, “multiracial”, to describe, in effect, a whole nation of diverse people who have absolutely no relation, cultural or otherwise, to one another.”
The struggle of being mixed-race is not to have an existing heritage categorised as a major racial group. Dependent on your specific mix of ethnicities, you will likely be categorised as the dominant one, although that inaccurately represents your identity.
Since the numbers of mixed-race people in countries like the U.S.A. and the UK are aggressively trending upwards, our visibility is growing.
Although our specific heritages might be different, I do believe there are facets of our individual journeys characterised by the same experiences.
For example:
Feeling torn
Why does it always feel like we have to choose a side?
We’re not one race, or another. We’re somewhere in the middle, confused and torn between two sides of an identity.
We’ve felt the feeling that we don’t fully belong to any of the races represented in our genetic makeup. Even if our appearance completely reflects one race, we know somewhere in the back of our minds that we’re neglecting part of our heritage and that chips away at our souls.
It’s made worse when we come into contact with people from that neglected heritage. We try to make conversation around cultural nuances, fearful that we’ll be found out for the frauds that we really are.
Looking different than family
Photo by Olivia Bauso on Unsplash
In my opinion, I look nothing like my parents. (I probably do to some degree, but you’d have a hard time convincing me of it).
If we’re the only people of colour in the family, it can get downright awkward. Extended family can be a huge blessing, but also a burden when it comes to family gatherings since there’s always that racist [delete as appropriate] uncle / aunt / grandparent even.
When it comes to that time that controversial topics come up, they’ll start with “I’m not racist, but…”
Or even better, they’ll start bad mouthing a particular race, somehow forgetting that you are a token member of the race in question. Or that you just don’t stand for racism as a whole. Imagine that.
Thinking of yourself as one race
I’ve read countless stories of mixed-race experiences and there is one trend that I see countless times. Up until a certain age, we don’t realise that we have a different racial background to our peers.
We’ll see ourselves as white (if light skinned), black (if dark skinned) or even Asian, if our heritage reflects that. It’s dependent on the dominant ethnic group of the country we live in. We’ll assume we’re the same as everyone else, until someone points it out to us.
People deciding your race for you
People will look at us and categorise us as one race or another, dependent on how strong specific genes manifest themselves in our appearance.
They will feel entitled to label us accordingly and feel completely validated in arguing that stance.
Why they feel they have the right to do so, I have no idea. But here we are.
In some cases, we may even welcome this approach, since we just want to feel accepted by a dominant racial group. However, with the growth of mixed-race communities online and in person, this is the age of embracing the mixed-race experience.
Discovery
There comes a point when we consciously accept that our genetic makeup is different and it’s liberating. For some of us this happens earlier than for others. It can largely depend on the level of diversity in our local environment, our exposure to other people who are mixed-race and the rhetoric our parents / wider family have used.
We carve out our unique identity, embrace every facet of our heritage and live it with pride. It’s what I would term a racial rebirth.
We no longer need external validation, nor do we seek it. If someone misidentifies our race, we politely educate them. We enjoy mixing between cultures and the rich nuances they bring to our lives. We create our own space and become hella comfortable there.
That’s where the magic happens.
In Conclusion
As mixed-race individuals, the choice to categorise ourselves is our right and our right alone. We may be labelled as a particular dominant group be any individual and at that point we have three options:
Reject Accept Educate
Personally, I choose to educate.
I choose to educate because my story is unique and I refuse to have it minimised, incorrectly categorised or misrepresented. I encourage you to do the same.
As people of mixed race, we have unique stories that capture the struggles of being influenced by two (or sometimes more) racial identities, cultures and customs. These stories are now starting to surface in greater detail and it’s our moment to seize.
Whilst we may not be connected through one common specific, we do share common elements on the journey to self-discovery and acceptance that are unique to the mixed-race experience.
These experiences imbue us with the ability to connect with others who are mixed-race and bond over shared experiences.
We have more in common than we don’t. | https://medium.com/an-injustice/is-mixed-race-even-a-race-4da55ea809bb | ['Aaron Eckelt'] | 2020-11-02 12:24:34.143000+00:00 | ['Race', 'Culture', 'Mixed Race', 'Discrimination'] |
Kubernetes: How Industries are using to solve their challanges | What is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. The name Kubernetes originates from Greek, meaning helmsman or pilot. Google open-sourced the Kubernetes project in 2014.
Why Kubernetes is so useful?
Let’s take a look and understand how applications were deployed and managed earlier.
Traditional Deployment Era: Earlier applications were run on physical servers. There we no way to define resource boundaries for applications in a physical server, this caused the issues of resource allocation. For example, if multiple applications were run on the physical server then there can be an instance when one application may take up most of the resources and other applications would underperform. One solution for this is to launch each application on a different physical server but in this case, resources were underutilized.
Earlier applications were run on physical servers. There we no way to define resource boundaries for applications in a physical server, this caused the issues of resource allocation. For example, if multiple applications were run on the physical server then there can be an instance when one application may take up most of the resources and other applications would underperform. One solution for this is to launch each application on a different physical server but in this case, resources were underutilized. Virtualized Deployment Era: Virtualization allows us to run multiple Virtual Machines(VMs) on a single physical server. Applications can be isolated between VMs and it also provides security as one application cannot be accessed by another application. Also, virtualization allows a better utilization of resources.
Virtualization allows us to run multiple Virtual Machines(VMs) on a single physical server. Applications can be isolated between VMs and it also provides security as one application cannot be accessed by another application. Also, virtualization allows a better utilization of resources. Container Deployment Era: Containers are similar to VMs, Containers has their own filesystem, the share of CPU, memory, process space, and more. But containers are very lightweight. Applications can be bundled in a good way and run inside containers easily.
Why we need Kubernetes and what it can do
Today applications are run inside containers and in a production environment, we need to manage the containers so that there is no downtime. Suppose if a container goes down then another container needs to start so here Kubernetes comes into the picture. Kubernetes takes care of scaling and failover for the application, it also provides deployment patterns and more.
Kubernetes provides the following features:
Service discovery and load balancing: Kubernetes can expose a container using the DNS name or IP address and it also able to do load balancing to distribute the traffic.
Kubernetes can expose a container using the DNS name or IP address and it also able to do load balancing to distribute the traffic. Storage orchestration: Kubernetes automatically allows to mount of the storage system.
Kubernetes automatically allows to mount of the storage system. Automated rollouts and rollbacks: You can describe the desired state for your deployed containers using Kubernetes, and it changes the actual state to the desired state.
You can describe the desired state for your deployed containers using Kubernetes, and it changes the actual state to the desired state. Automatic bin packing: You can provide Kubernetes with a cluster of nodes that it can use to run containers. Also, you can tell about the RAM and CPU each container need and it will fit containers onto the nodes.
You can provide Kubernetes with a cluster of nodes that it can use to run containers. Also, you can tell about the RAM and CPU each container need and it will fit containers onto the nodes. Self-healing: Kubernetes restarts containers that fail, replace, and kill containers that don’t respond.
Kubernetes restarts containers that fail, replace, and kill containers that don’t respond. Secret and configuration management: Kubernetes helps us to store and manage sensitive information such as passwords.
Kubernetes Trends
Over the last couple of years, the amount of attention paid to Kubernetes has increased. Started as a container management system open-sourced by Google has turned into the must-have technology for running machine learning and advanced analytics applications, among other workloads. Today applications are run on clouds in a self-contained unit of infrastructure called containers that can be started, stopped, scaled up, scaled-down, and moved without impacting the underlying application and Google developed Kubernetes to be the orchestration layer for managing large numbers of Docker containers.
According to a recent survey from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) survey, 84% of companies are using containers in production this year, an increase from 23% who reported that in 2016. Nearly 80% of them are using Kubernetes to manage those containers.
Interest in Kubernetes has increased substantially over the years, according to Google Trends
The major cloud providers have developed their own Kubernetes distribution based on Google’s source, including Google Cloud’s Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Amazon Web Service’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and Microsoft Azure’s Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Other distributions include Red Hat’s OpenShift, Rancher from RacherLabs, and Cloud Foundry. In the Hadoop ecosystem, K8s has overtaken YARN as the most-used resource scheduler, at least for cloud deployments.
Kubernetes Case Study
OpenAI
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Its mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.
Challenge: OpenAI needed infrastructure for deep learning that would allow experiments to be run either in the cloud or in its own data center, and to easily scale. Portability, speed, and cost were the main drivers.
Solution: OpenAI started running Kubernetes on top of AWS in 2016, and they migrated to AZURE in early 2017. OpenAI runs key experiments in fields including robotics and gaming both in Azure and in its own data centers, depending on which cluster has free capacity. They use Kubernetes mainly as a batch scheduling system and rely on their own autoscaler to dynamically scale up and scale down their cluster.
Benefits: Kubernetes provides a consistent API, through which they can move their research experiments very easily between clusters and also being able to use their own data centers. It is lowering the cost and also providing access to the hardware that wouldn’t necessarily have access to the cloud. Launching experiments also takes far less time. One of their researchers who is working on a new distributed training system has been able to get his experiment running in two or three days. In a week or two, he scaled it out to hundreds of GPUs. Previously, that would have easily been a couple of months of work.
“Research teams can now take advantage of the frameworks we’ve built on top of Kubernetes, which make it easy to launch experiments, scale them by 10x or 50x, and take little effort to manage.” — CHRISTOPHER BERNER, HEAD OF INFRASTRUCTURE FOR OPENAI
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide influence and readership. Nicknamed “the Gray Lady”, the Times has long been regarded within the industry as a national “newspaper of record”.
Challenge: Initially when The New York Times decided to move to public cloud out of its data centers then their critical applications were manged on virtual machines. “We started building more and more tools, and at some point we realized that we were doing a disservice by treating Amazon as another data center,” says Deep Kapadia, Executive Director, Engineering at The New York Times. Kapadia was given the responsibility to lead a Delivery Engineering Team that would design the infrastructurethat cloud providers offers.
Solution: The Delivery Engineering Team decide to use Google Cloud Platform and its Kubernetes-as-a-service offering, GKE to create the infrastructure for their applications.
Benefits: Speed of delivery increased from 45 minutes on VM-based deployment to just a few seconds to couple of minutes with Kubernetes says Engineering Manager Brian Balser. Adopting Cloud Native Computing Foundation technologies allows for a more unified approach to deployment across the engineering staff, and portability for the company.
“I think once you get over the initial hump, things get a lot easier and actually a lot faster.” — DEEP KAPADIA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ENGINEERING AT THE NEW YORK TIMES
Spotify
Spotify is a Swedish audio streaming and media services provider, launched in October 2008. The audio-streaming platform has grown to over 200 million monthly active users across the world. With Spotify, it’s easy to find the right music or podcast for every moment — on your phone, your computer, your tablet and more.
Challange: Earlier spotify had containerized microservices running across its fleet of VMs with a container orchestration system called Helios. But By late 2017, it became clear that having a small team working on the features was just not as efficient as adopting something that was supported by a much bigger community.
Solution: “We saw the amazing community that had grown up around Kubernetes, and we wanted to be part of that,” says Chakrabarti, Director of Engineering, Infrastructure and Operations. Kubernetes was more feature-rich than Helios. Plus, “we wanted to benefit from added velocity and reduced cost, and also align with the rest of the industry on best practices and tools.” The migration, which would happen in parallel with Helios running, could go smoothly because “Kubernetes fit very nicely as a complement and now as a replacement to Helios,” says Chakrabarti.
Benefits: The biggest service currently running on Kubernetes takes about 10 million requests per second as an aggregate service and benefits greatly from autoscaling, says Site Reliability Engineer James Wen. he adds, “Before, teams would have to wait for an hour to create a new service and get an operational host to run it in production, but with Kubernetes, they can do that on the order of seconds and minutes.” In addition, with Kubernetes’s bin-packing and multi-tenancy capabilities, CPU utilization has improved on average two- to threefold.
“We saw the amazing community that’s grown up around Kubernetes, and we wanted to be part of that. We wanted to benefit from added velocity and reduced cost, and also align with the rest of the industry on best practices and tools.” — JAI CHAKRABARTI, DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING, INFRASTRUCTURE AND OPERATIONS, SPOTIFY
Thank You !! | https://medium.com/@adyraj/kubernetes-how-industries-are-using-to-solve-their-challanges-35eff54fb1bc | ['Aditya Raj'] | 2020-12-26 11:04:34.394000+00:00 | ['OpenAI', 'Orchestration', 'Spotify', 'The New York Times', 'Kubernetes'] |
A Millennial’s Top 10 David Bowie Songs | David Jones is an average name, and David Bowie sounds like it could cut you. Simply imagine being exposed to his greatest hits during your childhood; counting down to “Space Oddity” after tuning in to the radio. Quite frankly, it’s embarrassing that I haven’t created this list sooner. It was inevitable that my British father introduced me to this versatile singer, songwriter, and (possibly) alien who fell to Earth: A compilation of my David Bowie favorite hits had to be written at some point.
10. “Golden Years” from Station to Station (1976)
We play this song in my household and dance to it. The speaker’s devotion to his partner is touching, and the beat is catchy.
9. “Ashes to Ashes” from Scary Monsters (1980)
I appreciate that Major Tom has a story arc, and the clown persona in the video.
8. “Little Wonder” from Earthling (1997)
David Bowie’s artistic range and references to fairy tales will never cease to amaze me. Neither will the surreal video that accompanies this energetic number.
7. “Andy Warhol” from Hunky Dory (1971)
I can’t help but crack a wry smile whenever I hear this song. The intro is uncanny, and the lyrics are simple yet amusing; to me, the applause at the end of this acoustic ditty reeks of sarcasm towards Modernity (and Warhol).
6. “Fame” from Young Americans (1975)
This song seems introspective and deep, all with a catchy beat. The riff is dynamic, and I can’t help but think that the outro is symbolic of the fleeting nature of fame itself.
5. “Five Years” The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
This seems like a difficult one to perform live. I’ve always appreciated the ecological concerns of this song; In my view, it’s also a source of hope during the times of the pandemic.
4. “Life on Mars” from Hunky Dory (1971)
I play this one on my piano, and the cinematic imagery of that girl in the theatre captures my focus; I find it relatable in my experience of daily life. It’s also lovely to have a trendy(?) song in my (limited) repertoire that is not classical music (which I adore. It’s the variety that I value.)
3. “Lazarus” from Blackstar (2016)
When Bowie died, my parents felt the need to give me a hug. The release date for this album is eerie and prophetic. I also think that there’s an element of self-reflection in this song.
2. “The Man Who Sold the World” from The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
I appreciate the album cover as much as I appreciate the raspy vocals.
“Quicksand” from Hunky Dory (1971)
I admit it; Hunky Dory is my favorite album. I used the lyrics for this song as my senior year book quote, and the premise of sinking in my thoughts is quite relatable:
“I’m not a prophet or a stone-age man/ Just a mortal with potential of a superman/ I’m living on”
The shifting identities in that lyric sample and Bowie’s own stage personas remind me that we exist as individuals, regardless of anything that might undermine our search for identity. As much as I enjoy finding meaning in Bowie’s songs, I also understand that a few of them might be counter to that search for significance. Despite the abundance of time, this top ten list of David Bowie songs was definitely overdue. | https://medium.com/@samanthachips/a-millennials-top-10-david-bowie-songs-4797d8f1e6e0 | ['Samantha Chipman'] | 2020-04-23 21:15:08.737000+00:00 | ['First Post', 'Hunky Dory', 'Top 10', 'David Bowie'] |
123 BYTES PERL MARKOV CHAIN | The rest of the post gives some clues on the process of optimization — from a clean and shiny 752-bytes rosetta-code implemetation to the end and beyond.
COMPETITION AND RULES
I already wrote something about the annual competition for automatic novel text generation, National Novel Generation Month (also known as NaNoGenMo). During November, participants have to write some computer program which generates a text with at least 50000 words and publish the source code. No other rules apply.
But this year it had a twist — the narratology enthusiast from MIT, Nick Montfort, decided to run a spin-off competition, Nano-NaNoGenMo (aka NNNGM), with only one additional rule — the program should have 256 bytes at most (with the possibility of using any of Project Gutenberg files as input).
I’ve discovered NNNGM just in 3 days before the end but it was so tempting so I decided to join the competition. Next, I thought what is the simplest way to generate plausible texts is to use Markov chains and in my opinion, Perl is one of the best choices for code obfuscation projects (as I mentioned before) so it was going to be a Perl implementation of the Markov chain text generator, despite the fact I didn’t write a line of Perl code last decade.
INITIAL CODE AND LOGIC
First of all, I took the rosettacode’s Perl implementation of the Markov chain text generator as a starting point. Let’s read it:
use strict;
use warnings;
my $file =
my $n = 3;
my $max = 200;
sub build_dict {
my ($n, @words) = @_;
my %dict;
for my $i (0 .. $#words - $n) {
my @prefix = @words[$i .. $i+$n-1];
push @{$dict{ ' ', @prefix}}, $words[$i+$n];
}
}
sub pick1 { $_[ @_] }
my $text = do {
open my $fh, '<', $file;
<$fh>;
};
my @words =
@words, @words[0..$n-1];
my %dict = build_dict($n, @words);
my @rotor = @words[0..$n-1];
my @chain = @rotor;
for (1 .. $max) {
my $new = pick1(@{$dict{ ' ', @rotor}});
}
print join(' ', @chain) . "
"; strict;warnings;$file = shift || 'alice_oz.txt';$n = shift ||$max = shift ||build_dict$n, @words= @_;%dict;$i.. $#words - $n@prefix = @words$i .. $i+$n-$dict join ' ', @prefix, $words$i+$n return %dict;pick1$_ rand @_$text =$fh, 'local $/;;@words = split ' ', $text; push @words, @words..$n-%dict = build_dict$n, @words@rotor = @words..$n-@chain = @rotor;.. $max$new = pick1$dict join ' ', @rotor shift @rotor; push @rotor, $new; push @chain, $new;' ', @chain. "
";
To keep track of the following changes it’s useful to understand the basic logic steps of this code:
let’s assume we have an input file with the text all in one line (without line breaks),
first, we read all the words from input file into list @words ,
, append the very first $n words to the end of the list (otherwise it can preliminary stop whenever the last $n words occasionally appear as a current key),
words to the end of the list (otherwise it can preliminary stop whenever the last words occasionally appear as a current key), build a hash %dict with each $n words in a row as keys and lists of possible next words as values,
with each words in a row as keys and lists of possible next words as values, starting from the first $n words as a seed, take the next one as a random choice from the list from %dict by last seen $n words as a key, stored in @rotor , accumulate all generated words in @chain and print them at the end.
Note, this version has 752 bytes length.
OPTIMIZATION CHRONICLE
324 bytes:
For simplicity I started with some basic preparation:
got rid of argumets parsing and fixed the input filename to a.txt ,
, replaced constants with inline values (fixed them to $max=200, $n=3 ),
), removed some unnecessary syntax sugar, spaces and tabs,
renamed functions and vars to 1-char names: pick1() -> z(), build_dict() -> b(), @words -> @w, %dict -> %d, @chain -> @c, $new -> $e, @rotor -> @r .
Let’s see what we had now:
sub b{my($n,@w)=@_;%r;
for $i(0..$#w-$n){@p=@w[$i..$i+$n-1];
push @{$r{join' ',@p}},$w[$i+$n];}
return%r;}
sub z{$_[rand@_]}
$t=do{open$h,'<','a.txt';local$/;<$h>;};
@w=split' ',$t;
push@w,@w[0..2];
%d=b(3,@w);
@r=@w[0..2];
@c=@r;
for(1..200){
$e=z(@{$d{join' ',@r}});
shift@r;
push@r,$e;
push@c,$e}
print join(' ',@c)."
";
225 bytes:
Now, I had to make things a bit uglier:
removed unnecessary
symbols,
symbols, put b() (previously known as build_dict() ) inline at the only place where it was called from,
(previously known as ) inline at the only place where it was called from, put a file-reading code inline into the split’s second argument,
pulled the last print inside the chain iteration cycle to remove the long join construction.
sub z{$_[rand@_]}@w=split' ',do{open$h,'<a.txt';<$h>};push@w,@r=@w[0..2];%d=do{for$i(0..$#w-3){@p=@w[$i..$i+2];push@{$s{join' ',@p}},$w[$i+3];}%s};print"@r ";for(1..200){$e=z(@{$d{join' ',@r}});shift@r;push@r,$e;print$e." ";}
As you may notice, here I had 225 bytes so I already met the goal of NNNGM to squeeze it into 256 bytes. But as Hunter Thompson once said — “Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.”
So I decided to continue and asked for help an old friend of mine, s0me0ne (Самуан Ункновн), who is known as a crazy Perl hacker since the previous century. Together we continued exercises.
Since we decided to play with Perl interpreter’s command-line arguments, from this point I’ll give two byte counters as a progress indicator — the size of the Perl code payload as well as the total size of the code including shell command.
199 / 214 bytes:
Here we had three mild changes:
switched to reading from stdin instead of opening the file explicitly,
instead of opening the file explicitly, removed the cycle var $i , since it was unused anyway,
, since it was unused anyway, used print"$e " instead of print$e." "; .
perl -e'sub z{$_[rand@_]}@w=split" ",<>;push@w,@r=@w[0..2];%d=do{for(0..$#w-3){@p=@w[$_..$_+2];push@{$s{join" ",@p}},$w[$_+3];}%s};print"@r ";for(1..200){$e=z(@{$d{join" ",@r}});shift@r;push@r,$e;print"$e "}'<a.txt
181 / 196 bytes:
Now it was time to put push arguments inplace and get rid of @p var at the cycle where we built %d . The second improvement was the usage of a list-in-quotes-to-string resolution instead of joining slices to build a key for %d (in both places).
perl -e'sub z{$_[rand@_]}@w=split" ",<>;push@w,@r=@w[0..2];%d=do{for(0..$#w-3){push@{$s{"@w[$_..$_+2]"}},$w[$_+3];}%s};print"@r ";for(1..200){$e=z(@{$d{"@r"}});shift@r;push@r,$e;print"$e "}'<a.txt
177 / 192 bytes:
Here we stuck for a bit, having no good ideas on how to proceed further. However, we still found the way to get rid of 4 more bytes by removing the $e var (because we don’t need to store the whole chain, so we just keep last 3 words and print them ongoing) and switching the first for into a postfix notation with removing the unnecessary brackets.
perl -e'sub z{$_[rand@_]}@w=split" ",<>;push@w,@r=@w[0..2];%d=do{push@{$s{"@w[$_..$_+2]"}},$w[$_+3]for(0..$#w-3);%s};print"@r ";for(1..200){push@r,z(@{$d{"@r"}});shift@r;print"$r[-1] "}'<a.txt
145 / 160 bytes:
At that moment we noticed we can disassemble the do() clause, which gave us a lot of advantage. Moreover, we could print words we just took out of @r , it allowed us to remove the explicit print for 3 prefix words because they will be printed from the main cycle anyway. Also, we decided to use the predefined input separator $/ instead of split .
perl -e'sub z{$_[rand@_]}$/=" ";@w=<>;push@w,@r=@w[0..2];push@{$s{"@w[$_..$_+2]"}},$w[$_+3]for(0..$#w-3);for(1..200){push@r,z(@{$s{"@r"}});print shift@r}'<a.txt
136 / 151 bytes:
For a while, we tried to liquidate the z() subroutine explicit declaration somehow and now, finally, we managed to put it in place, where it was called from. Then we recalled the system var $/ which is predefined by default to the space symbol, so we used it instead of the implicit “ “ (quoted space) to spare one more byte.
Also, I realized what by the rules of the competition we need to print 50K+ words, not 200. Assuming our input file is long enough, I used its length in words as a target number of words to generate:
perl -e'$/=$";@w=<>;push@w,@r=@w[0..2];push@{$s{"@w[$_..$_+2]"}},$w[$_+3]for(0..$#w-3);for(@w){push@r,$s{"@r"}->[rand@{$s{"@r"}}];print shift@r}'<a.txt
127 / 145 bytes:
Here we decided to set the default separator outside of the Perl code: one can use the interpreter’s argument -0 to set the value of $/ in the octal system (so -040 will be a space).
Plus, we found a couple of microoptimizatons:
it’s possible to omit -> when dereferencing an array in Perl (at least in Perl 5.26+),
when dereferencing an array in Perl (at least in Perl 5.26+), it’s possible to replace $#w-3 with @w-4 having the same behavior.
perl -040e'@w=<>;push@w,@r=@w[0..2];push@{$s{"@w[$_..$_+2]"}},$w[$_+3]for(0..@w-3);for(@w){push@r,$s{"@r"}[rand@{$s{"@r"}}];print shift@r}'<a.txt
Now we reached an important imaginary border — 127 bytes of payload, less than half of the initial goal. Is it possible to make it any better?
123 / 139 bytes:
There is an another useful Perl interpreter’s parameter, -a , which can be used to automatically split the input and assign it to the @F list. So we can use it to replace our whole input reading code, using @F everywhere instead of @w !
perl -ae'push@F,@r=@F[0..2];push@{$s{"@F[$_..$_+2]"}},$F[$_+3]for(0..@F-4);for(@F){push@r,$s{"@r"}[rand@{$s{"@r"}}];print$".shift@r}'<a.txt
Aaand… that’s it for now! :)
If you have any good ideas on how to squeeze it more — please write me some comments:)
Additional remark:
If we assume we can tweak the input file a little, we can copy it’s first three words to the end, like
(cat a.txt; cut -d’ ‘ -f1–3 a.txt; ) > b.txt
so now we don’t need the first push anymore, so we could have 116/132 bytes solution:
perl -ae'@r=@F[0..2];push@{$s{"@F[$_..$_+2]"}},$F[$_+3]for(0..@F-4);for(@F){push@r,$s{"@r"}[rand@{$s{"@r"}}];print$".shift@r}'<b.txt
But I do not think it’s fair, so the final result has 123/139 bytes code. | https://medium.com/altsoph/123-bytes-perl-markov-chain-b80e1212f3b3 | ['Aleksey Tikhonov'] | 2019-12-12 15:39:38.361000+00:00 | ['Obfuscation', 'Text Generation', 'Nanogenmo', 'Programming', 'Perl'] |
O Children of Dawn | O Children of Dawn, awaken to thy high purpose;
Thy hour has come and thy labour long.
Unbolt thy heart’s gates, be free of thy moorings;
Here comes Krishna and the reed of his eternal song.
Swagger in thought, swagger in movement, swagger in act,
Personify God’s gait and march upwards towards His sun.
O Children of Light, never pause or rest until thy task is complete,
And never to despond, never to shrink from battle unwon.
Thy faces radiant of God’s victory, thy feet enamoured of His swiftness;
Become wide-measured and wingless soar into His golden firmament.
O Children of Ecstasy, a rapture-sea of an immeasurable Bliss,
Thou a wave whole and infinite of His ineffable delight.
O children of golden Earth, fear not the darkness emergent,
Fear not the pain of blows hammered by the rowdy Inconscient.
Ride the storm, confront the tempests of death, become a victor,
For God within thee moves thy will, becomes the destined.
O Children of the coming age of a marvellous Light,
Be passionate of thy brood, Thy Paramour resides in it, happy and self-contained. | https://medium.com/inevitable-word/o-children-of-dawn-b37156ce3f4 | ['Murli R'] | 2020-12-27 17:14:59.829000+00:00 | ['Poem', 'Poetry', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Sri Aurobindo', 'Poems On Medium'] |
Sneak peek into the Habit tracker that helped me out of Depression | On my father’s suggestion, I started Tracking my habits — The good ones and the little joy-giving sins that do more harm than good.
I started tracking my habits almost 2 months back, and just this habit of consciously tracking my habit patterns has tremendously helped me break some of my bad habits and replace them with some positive ones.
Here’s a snapshot of my habit tracker from September and October.
October’s habit tracker is a little more organized and an upgraded version of September’s version.
I also embarked upon the #1000DayChallenge starting in October to build a better version of myself. Lately, I had to suffer a big enough loss to push me deep down into depression and make me question everything that I ever believed in.
This challenge was a self-reminder that “I am not my work, and I cannot, and I shouldn’t tie my identity to my work.”
I know my habit tracker looks messy and overwhelming, but don’t worry — “The only habit you need to keep a check on is to ensure that you are filling up the tracker”
The only habit I had to track was the tracking of my habits which involved me picking this journal up before I sleep, hence I keep this journal under my pillow so that I know if I missed out.
Here’s the physical change brought in because of the tiny habit of tracking my habits, and I think I am 10X better mentally.
And now, I am all set for 2021, cuz I can already see, and feel the difference of tracking habits in just these 3 months, and I like who I am becoming.
If a lethargic procrastinator like me is improving with this tiny habit, I am hopeful that you might find this helpful too.
Good luck.
Drop-in an 🍎 if you’re up for the #1000DayChallenge
If you’re curious about this habit tracker, here’s a short video that explains how you could go about creating your very own Habit-tracker. | https://medium.com/@trippyentrepreneur/sneak-peek-into-the-habit-tracker-that-helped-me-out-of-depression-8b7db8ac4694 | ['Trippy Entrepreneur'] | 2020-11-21 19:48:35.855000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Habit Building', 'Motivation', 'Habits', 'Discipline'] |
Could Carbon Save The Planet? | Could Carbon Save The Planet?
A new miracle material could turn the tides on global warming.
The world faces a crisis, one propagated by a single element, carbon. Humanity is pumping out record levels of carbon dioxide, methane, plastics and pollutants, all of which use carbon chemistry at their core. These chemicals are heating the planet, destroying our oceans and wrecking the land. But could a revolutionary new use for carbon help us turn the tides on the environmental catastrophe we have created?
We basically have two problems here, our waste polluting the environment and our means of generating energy. Our modern comfortable lives depend on the use of a vast amount of energy and the cheap supply of mass-produced goods. Both of which pump out carbon-based pollutants. So we need a way of reducing the carbon waste in the environment all-the-while keeping our sources of energy high enough to fuel our modern lives.
Recent innovations like electric cars that are actually useful, vast wind farms, solar power stations, recycling and biodegradable products have taken us closer and closer to climate nirvana. But these have two big flaws, the batteries needed to hold the energy are massively damaging to the environment (though an electric car is still better than a petrol one) and none of this actually reduces the carbon already out there in the wide world.
But a new battery technology could change all of that. Imagine if you could recycle plastic or pull carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into a battery that would outperform anything in use today. This is the future promised by Graphene.
Digram of graphene — Pixabay
Graphene is simply carbon arranged in a flat honeycomb lattice a single atom thick. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? In fact, Graphite is lots of fragmented layers of Graphene on top of each other. So you will have some of this wonder material in your pencil case.
But Graphene has some rather amazing properties that mean it can create a battery revolution. It is a zero-gap semiconductor; this basically means it conducts electricity incredibly well, better than any metal. But it also ‘hangs onto’ the Electrons very well, the Electrons can leave the edge of the sheet and form a circuit, but they find it hard to leave the middle of the sheet.
We can use these properties to enhance our current battery technology (still storing the energy in chemical bonds), but if we could make enough Graphene, we could build supercapacitors out of Graphene (storing energy in pure electromagnetic potential).
A capacitor is just two plates of very electrically conductive material sandwiched either side of a thin insulator. This means you can pass a change between the two plates, one becomes electrically positive, and the other negative as one gets Electron-rich and the other Electron-poor. Once the maximum charge has been built up, you can use it just like a battery.
Normal capacitors are great for dumping small amounts of energy very quickly. The flash on a camera tends to use a capacitor to generate a short bright flash, but it couldn’t power a light for any decent period of time.
Bring in Graphene supercapacitors, just like normal capacitors they can dump all their electrical energy very quickly, but they have a much higher capacity. One of these could power a light for a very long time. Even better they only take a few seconds to charge fully!
So while a Graphene doped Li-ion battery can now be found in the highest performing commercially available batteries, it is these supercapacitors that will bring along a revolution.
Imagine an electric car powered by Graphene supercapacitors. It would be able to charge in a minute or two, power the car for 500 miles or dump all of its energy at once, delivering several thousand horsepower. All while the battery pack weighs less and the batteries don’t degrade over time. How brilliant!
But this quick charging and high power doesn’t just mean insanely good cars. One of the big issues we have with renewable energy is capturing it for later. We have very efficient solar and wind power, but our current range of batteries can’t charge quick enough to make the most of the peak power moments. This means loads of the energy generated actually goes to waste. On the contrast, Graphene supercapacitors would be able to keep up with the charging and power demands that we have become accustomed to.
Using Graphene supercapacitors to store renewable energy means that we can switch to 100% renewables quicker, with less wind farms and solar power plants.
Solar power plant — Pixabay
Oh, and on the subject of solar and wind power. Graphene can be used to make ultra-efficient solar panels and generators. So having wide-spread use will also mean that these power plants can produce even more power!
It is important to remember that Graphene is non-toxic. We could dump thousands of tonnes of it in the ocean and we wouldn’t see many negative effects — certainly not to the scale that our current technology does.
All of the current technology that it could replace (like Li-Ion batteries) require toxic, rare Earth metals. These are killing the environment, are hard to come by and the mines used to extract them have questionable human rights records.
Graphene could be made in a way no other rare Earth metal can be, atmospheric extraction. There is currently too much CO² in the atmosphere and too much plastic in the water. We can extract the carbon from these sources, releasing oxygen from CO² and Hydrogen from plastics (which we could also use as fuel). This would mean that the Graphene produced could be massively carbon negative, reducing the amount of carbon in the environment, turning the tides on climate change and pollution!
So, why don’t we have Graphene powered smartphones or cars yet? If this technology is so amazing shouldn’t we be pushing for it?!
Well, Graphene is a little harder to produce than I have lead on. Our technology to make it right now can produce small flakes of Graphene that can be used to enhance metals, fabrics and sensors at a relatively cheap price. However, making large sheets of graphene, as you would need for superconductors, is not currently possible. After all, this is a single atom thick sheet; we are talking about engineering that is on the molecular scale here.
However, there is no reason to say that these advances are impossible. After all, scientists in 2015 discovered a way to make Graphene for 100 times less and just a few days ago NanoTech got $27.5 million in funding to create Graphene batteries. Jumps in technology like this means that your devices may be powered by pure carbon in the not too distant future.
So, can carbon save the planet? Theoretically yes it can! There is a way in which we can use the carbon compounds that we have polluted the world with to produce technology far more powerful than we currently have whilst reducing the global levels of carbon. We just need to figure out the logistics of getting these atoms in the right order. | https://medium.com/predict/could-carbon-save-the-planet-229fe4598c36 | ['Will Lockett'] | 2020-10-14 21:52:33.178000+00:00 | ['Environment', 'Climate Change', 'Science', 'Technology', 'Future'] |
More institutions reveal their digital assets infrastructure business plans | 2 min video reviewing examples of different institutions that are building new exchanges and offering custody services for digital assets
The global daily trading value on the world’s digital exchanges is between US$50 billion to US$100 billion and this is set to grow if we are going to have greater institutional interest in digital assets. In a recent survey carried out by Crypto Research Report and Cointelegraph Consulting, based on 55 asset managers who, alone, have over €719 billion of assets under management, it found that 61% of wealthy Europeans already have, or plan to have, exposure to digital assets. It is not just individuals but corporations which are also investing in digital assets. In the last few weeks we have seen Microstrategy (a NASDFAQ-listed company) announce that it has raised $650 million to invest into Bitcoin. Furthermore, the 169-year old Massachusetts Mutual Life insurance company in the US has confirmed its investment of $100 million into Bitcoin. Given this sort of demand from banks and asset managers clients, it explains why we are seeing a need for the building of more infrastructure to make it easier for other institutions in various global jurisdictions to be able to invest in digital assets. Indeed, JP Morgan claims institutional demand for Bitcoin could grow to be as much as $600 billion, nearly a 80% increase from the current $355 billion of Bitcoin’s current capitalisation.
Based in Singapore, South East Asia’s biggest bank (DBS), has announced the launch of a
Digital Exchange, backed by the bank, offering institutions and HNWs access to be able to trade and provide custody services for digital assets and digital currencies. DBS Bank will also be offering the ability for companies to raise capital via tokenisation (STOs), as well as offering a listing service for these new tokenised digital assets. The Singapore Exchange will own 10% of this new digital exchange, which has been given (in principle) approval by the Monetary Authority of Singapore as an ‘approved exchange’. This type of status is vital if institutions are to engage and start trading assets on DBS’s new digital exchange. The exchange will offer trading in cryptos (such as BTC, ETH, XRP and Bitcoin cash) as well as tokenising unlisted companies, bonds and private equity funds, so providing liquidity and hopefully greater price transparency for these existing asset classes.
DBS Digital Exchange
Earlier this year, Northern Trust used Blockchain technology to issue BondbloX, a bond using the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Sandbox as Singapore is desperately positioning itself to be the digital centre in Asia.
Meanwhile in Europe, a company called Zodia Custody (based in London) has been established as a JV with between Standard Chartered and Northern Trust and will be their new digital asset custody service. It is expected that Zodia will be launched in 2021 and will be focusing initially on offering custody services for those who wish to use a third party to hold their crypto currencies. In Barcelona, a company called Brickken is launching a digital assets platform targeting those start-ups and small businesses looking to raise up to €150,000. Brickken offers a full tokenisation service so is able to help firms wishing to raise capital, done either via a utility token or a security one. Once the tokens have been issued Brickken lists them on its platform, enabling third parties to buy, sell and trade them. Under EU laws, Brickken is required to carry out full KYC and AML checks and will, initially, only be able to list those tokens it has listed. However, this appears to be a new way for smaller firms to raise the often much-needed capital thus enabling them to transition from an idea to a revenue-generating business. According to Statista, there are just over 15,000 companies in Spain which employ 50–249 people, but there are 2.6 million companies employing less than 10 people in Spain, so Brickken has a large market to target.
In Switzerland, the second biggest bank in Spain, BVVA, has announced it is preparing to launch a trading and custody service for digital assets, initially targeted at Bitcoin. The Swiss Stock Exchange, SIX, and the custody firm, Custodigit, are launching a service to help banks and their clients obtain access to cryptos. According to a website called Bitcoin Treasuries there are currently 15 publicly traded companies which hold Bitcoin. Also in Europe, the Bourse Exchange in Stuttgart (Germany’s second largest stock exchange) has confirmed its cryptocurrency trading app had transacted over €1 billion to date in 2020. Without a doubt the number of companies holding digital assets will rise, and we will witness more and more institutions launching platforms to help other organisations invest in this asset class. Furthermore, in a recent survey from Natixis, 80% of asset managers expressed concerns as to how long the current bull market in equities can continue and believe that, “markets have underestimated the long-term impact of the global pandemic”. Reuters has reported that the S&P Dow Jones is going to launch an index to track crypto currencies which gives an indication of the existing interest among asset managers for this asset class. There is a mighty ‘heap’ of cash looking for a home and given the return on several crypto currencies this year some are turning to alternative asset classes such as digital assets. | https://medium.com/cryptocurrency-24-7/more-institutions-reveal-their-digital-assets-infrastructure-business-plans-7f38da5112d9 | ['Jonny Fry'] | 2020-12-20 09:27:48.235000+00:00 | ['Singapore', 'Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Investing'] |
Young Arabs swipe to fintech as saving, investing takes off — Tech Bulletin | DUBAI: Being raised in the Middle East with a lack of savings and investment culture, many young Arabs are turning to online banking services to help track their spending and budget.
The fintech sector across the Middle East is already growing, according to the Milken Institute think tank.
It estimates that 465 companies will raise more than $2 billion by 2022 compared with the 30 fintech firms that raised around $80 million in 2017.
said in a 2019 report that indicators showed Gulf Arab countries appeared the most ready for fintech adoption, with the key driver being demand and a preference by clients for digital banking.
Tough path to wealth
In addition to having some of the world’s youngest populations and highest unemployment rates, many countries in the Middle East and North Africa rank among the lowest for long-term savers and investors.
Only seven percent of adults in the region save for retirement, according to the World Bank’s 2016 “Saving for Old Age” report — the lowest across global economies.
“Arabs, we took the really tough path to wealth,” said Mark Chahwan, the CEO of , a Dubai-based automated financial consultancy firm.
“We think our income is what’s going to make us rich instead of our capital,” he told AFP.
Most oil-rich Gulf Arab states, including top crude exporter Saudi Arabia, have long provided their citizens with government-sponsored pensions.
But Saudi officials have warned the system is unsustainable, according to Bloomberg, as Riyadh tries to diversify its economy away from oil.
Also, such pensions exclude foreigners, many of whom provide cheap labour and make up a large proportion of the population in many Gulf states.
Small-ticket investors
Another issue is the region’s investment landscape, which is mostly limited to so-called high-net-worth individuals, usually defined as people with at least $1 million in liquid assets.
“If someone wanted to invest $1,000 or $10,000, there was not much available,” said Haitham Juma, an investment solutions manager at the UAE-based National Bank of Fujairah.
He said smaller-ticket investors need wealth management options with more transparency, accessibility and liquidity that will help build the region’s investment market.
“We are still at the early stages of it,” said Juma, as local banks and firms seek to create online platforms that educate users and simplify investing.
Making the process easier — or even fun — is key to attracting new investors, as outlined by Lune, a UAE-based finance platform that launched in July. | https://medium.com/@techbulletinonline/young-arabs-swipe-to-fintech-as-saving-investing-takes-off-tech-bulletin-d1c2bae20bc8 | ['Tech Bulletin'] | 2021-12-12 19:01:32.823000+00:00 | ['Arab', 'Tech Bulletin', 'Middle East', 'Dubai'] |
Rails 6: How to search and filter index results | This story covers the following topics:
Filter results of an index list with a query string
Filter results of an index list with additional filter masks (checkboxes and dropdowns)
Setting up our example blog
We start with a simple Rails 6 application that has a list of stories. Each story has these attributes:
Title: The title of the story
Body: The written content of the story
Draft: A boolean flag indicating the state of the story
Category: An enum with the values “coding”, “social” or “politics”
rails _6.0.3.4_ new --database=postgresql --skip-turbolinks --skip-test my_blog && cd my_blog bundle exec bin/setup
bundle exec rails generate scaffold story title body:text draft:boolean category:string
bundle exec rails db:migrate bundle exec rails runner "Story.create!(title: 'Rails 6 new features', body: 'Multi database support...', draft: false, category: 'coding')"
bundle exec rails runner "Story.create!(title: 'Rails 7 new features', body: 'Not yet finished...', draft: true, category: 'coding')"
bundle exec rails runner "Story.create!(title: 'Traveling by train', body: 'Using the rails instead of the road has...', draft: false, category: 'social')"
bundle exec rails runner "Story.create!(title: 'New president', body: 'Another president...', draft: false, category: 'politics')" bundle exec rails server
Navigating to http://localhost:3000/stories should now give you a simple CRUD with the seeded stories.
CRUD index view without a filter
Adding a service model to filter the story records
Our next step is to add a filter logic to the Story model. The interface should allow us to submit a query like Story.filtered(text: 'Rails', draft: false, category: 'coding') .
Therefore we add a scope method to the model app/models/story.rb :
scope :filtered, ->(query_params) { Story::Filter.new.filter(self, query_params) }
It delegates its call to a new class app/models/story/filter.rb with the following content:
class Story::Filter
def filter(scope, query_params)
if query_params[:text].present?
scope = scope.where("title ILIKE :text OR body ILIKE :text", text: "%#{query_params[:text]}%")
end
unless query_params[:draft].nil? || query_params[:draft] == ''
scope = scope.where(draft: query_params[:draft])
end
if query_params[:category].present?
scope = scope.where(category: query_params[:category])
end
scope
end
end
It uses the ILIKE expression from PostgreSQL, which is the case-insensitive variant of LIKE. The percent sign ( % ) matches any sequence of zero or more characters. Let’s look at an example output for this query:
Story.filtered(text: 'Rails', draft: false, category: 'coding').to_sql #=> SELECT "stories".* FROM "stories" WHERE (title ILIKE '%Rails%' OR body ILIKE '%Rails%') AND "stories"."draft" = FALSE AND "stories"."category" = 'coding'
Submitting the query params to the model
Finally we can create a filter mask in the index view app/views/stories/index.html.erb .
<%= form_for :query, url: stories_path, method: :get do |form| %>
<div class="field">
<%= form.text_field :text, placeholder: 'Search...', value: params.dig('query', 'text') %>
</div>
<div class="field">
<%= form.label :draft %>
<%= form.check_box :draft, {checked: ActiveModel::Type::Boolean.new.cast(params.dig('query', 'draft'))} %>
</div>
<div class="field">
<%= form.label :category %>
<%= form.select :category, [['Coding', 'coding'], ['Social', 'social'], ['Politics', 'politics']], include_blank: true, selected: params.dig('query', 'category') %>
</div>
<div class="actions">
<%= form.submit 'Search' %>
</div>
<% end %>
And apply the filter params to the scope in app/controllers/stories_controller.rb .
def index
@stories = Story.filtered(query_params)
end private def query_params
query_params = params[:query]
query_params ? query_params.permit(:text, :draft, :category) : {}
end
That’s it. We now have a simple filter mask!
CRUD index view with filters
Outline
There are many things you can improve in this example. Here are some suggestions for the next steps, which are not part of this story:
Add some Javascript that listens on change events in the query form and refreshes the list without clicking the search button
Allow the user to reset all search filters and store the filters for a user across different requests (cookie or database)
Allow the user to see which filters are active (e.g. the draft flag is not applied when the site is loaded the first time)
Use a form model for the query and remove the logic where we retrieve the previous values from the params hash
For a more advanced search try to use a fulltext / traigram search in PostgreSQL or setup an additional Elasticsearch cluster.
If you like to see a Rails application with a simple search, check out my side project wintermute. | https://medium.com/@woodpecker21/rails-6-how-to-search-and-filter-index-results-2b7d4b348393 | [] | 2020-11-09 16:35:21.256000+00:00 | ['Rails', 'Tutorial', 'Ruby on Rails', 'Search'] |
Lineup and Game Notes for May 6, 2019 | The Timber Rattlers are back home and they are ready to face the Fort Wayne TinCaps tonight. First pitch is 6:35pm. The broadcast starts at 6:15pm with the Papa John’s Pizza Pregame Show on AM1280, WNAM and on the TuneIn Radio App. The broadcast is also streaming live for subscribers on MiLB.tv.
Starting Pitchers:
FW: Ramon Perez
WIS: Scotty Sunitsch
Game Notes:
SUNDAY AFTERNOON: The Great Lakes Loons beat the Timber Rattlers 4–1 at Dow Diamond. The win gave the Loons their ninth straight win. Wisconsin has now lost four in a row. The Loons won the game despite going just 2-for-15 with runners in scoring position and stranding ten runners.
SOLO SHOTS: Wisconsin starting pitcher Max Lazar pitched well, but was victimized by a pair of solo home runs. Niko Hulsizer hit a one-out blast in the first inning. Dan Robinson hit a lead-off homer in the bottom of the fifth. Lazar struck out seven over 4–2/3 innings in the game. He has 35 strikeouts on the season and is fifth in the league in that category.
MISSED OPPORTUNITIES: Wisconsin stranded eleven runners in the game. They left nine runners on base in the first five innings. The Rattlers left runners on second and third in the first and third, a runner at first in the second, a runner at second in the fourth, and the bases loaded in the fifth. Wisconsin did not score in any of those innings and stranded eleven total runners.
RUN WILD: Wisconsin stole three bases on Sunday. Yeison Coca stole two bases in a game for the third time this season. Coca has eleven stolen bases this season and is tied with Reggie Pruitt of Lansing for the Midwest League lead in steals.
TOUGH TRIP: Wisconsin started the road trip to Lansing and Great Lakes with two wins at Lansing, but lost the final four games of the swing through Michigan. The Rattlers were outscored 27–18 on the trip. They were 39-for-191 (.204) in the six games on the road.
HOME SWEET HOME: Wisconsin is at Neuroscience Group Field at Fox Cities Stadium for the next nine games. They will host Fort Wayne, Lake County, and Kane County between now and May 15. The Rattlers are 7–5 at home this season.
EAST MEETS WEST: The West holds a slight edge over the East in through the first six days of interdivisional play with a 24–22 record.
ABOUT THE FORT WAYNE TINCAPS: Fort Wayne joined the Midwest League when the Kenosha Twins moved to Indiana for the 1994 season. The franchise was originally called the Fort Wayne Wizards and they remained an affiliate of the Minnesota Twins through the 1997 season. Fort Wayne has been affiliated with the San Diego Padres since 1998. The franchise changed its name to the TinCaps when they moved to Parkview Field for the 2009 season. Fort Wayne won the Midwest League pennant in 2009 and has lost in the Midwest League Championship Series in 2012 and 2017. Anthony Contreras is in his fourth season as the manager of the TinCaps.
PROSPECTING IN THE SERIES: MLB Pipeline puts four active Rattlers on their list of Top 30 Brewers Prospects: Brice Turang (#3), Aaron Ashby (#9), Je’Von Ward (#23), and Adam Hill (#27). Pablo Abreu (#20) is currently on the Injured List. MLB Pipeline places three active TinCaps on their Top 30 list of Padres prospects: Xavier Edwards (#14), Tucupita Marcano (#21), and Blake Hunt (#30). Ryan Weathers (#10), the son of former MLB pitcher David Weathers, is currently on Fort Wayne’s Injured List.
ALL-TIME SERIES:
Rattlers Record v. Fort Wayne: 80–70–1
Regular Season: 77–69–1
Playoffs: 3–1
Home: 36–36–1
Road: 44–34 | https://rattlerradio.mlblogs.com/lineup-and-game-notes-for-may-6-2019-99325b3a92f5 | ['Christopher J Mehring'] | 2019-05-06 22:38:42.734000+00:00 | ['Baseball', 'Minor League Baseball', 'Brewers Prospects', '2019 Timber Rattlers', 'Game Notes'] |
What Do We Owe Our Parents? | Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash
“I created you, Mi Vida, as God created Adam… Without me, you would never have seen a beautiful sunset or smelled the rain approaching on the wind. You would never have tasted cool water on a hot summer day. Or heard music or known the wonderful pleasure of creating it. I gave you these things, Mi Vida. You … owe … me.”
A curious thing to say to your child, or rather your clone.
In The House of the Scorpion, by Nancy Farmer, the main character Matt, a clone of someone in need of his organs, is presented with this obligatory pressure from his creator. Though we are not clones, we all find ourselves in similar situations, don’t we? As children, what do we owe our parents?
In many Asian cultures, especially Chinese culture, children are expected to take care of their parents in the same way their parents took care of them. Children are expected to give their parents monthly allowances to show “filial piety,” a deeply ingrained cultural value of showing respect for one’s elders. Children are expected to take their parents into their homes once they settle down. Children are guilted into providing for their parents with frequent remarks of, “When I’m retired, remember what I did for you.” and “I can’t wait for you to get your first job and help me get your younger brothers through college.”
These pressures certainly leave many Asian Americans with feelings of suffocation and embarrassment. Admittedly, the need for open communication instead of guilt and manipulation is pressing in Asian families. Giving back to parents should be something that’s done out of appreciation. Certainly, the current practice of filial piety is flawed.
However, many of these values are goodhearted. It is unfortunate to see these Asian American expectations set forth in a country where it is uncommon to do these things for your parents, and as such, don’t earn the respect and authority in America that they do elsewhere. In a world increasingly prideful of “individuality,” fewer people are practicing values that benefit society as a whole. Most of us all secretly dread old age, where we need the aid of a retirement home to get through the day. We dread it because it’s lonely and unexciting. But old-age is only lonely and unexciting because people, in their prime time, have lost the value of filial piety. As middle-aged adults, we give our mothers a call once a week and forget about them otherwise. Meanwhile, your mothers sit alone in your small childhood home in Atlanta.
It is because of this mentality, that many middle-aged adults are practicing right now, that you yourself dread getting older. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you were surrounded by your children and grandchildren day after day.
So, perhaps we as children are indeed obligated to our parents in a greater way than we all acknowledge today. We owe it to our parents to continuously involve them in our lives, regularly invite them to our guest bedrooms every month, or meet with them every Sunday for brunch and an activity. Eager to live our own lives and get away from the parents who nagged you for 18 years straight, we forget the gratitude we owe them and the gratitude we secretly wish our children would show us in our old age.
However, our obligation must certainly live on a spectrum; there is a limit to what we owe our parents. And only you can determine what that is.
Granted, The House of the Scorpion brings to light the shocking notion that a child owes their parent their literal life.
But Farmer’s quoted explanation also leaves room for more thought. Your parents decided to give you the ultimate gift of life — the extraordinary feeling of your legs racing beneath you as you run, the sheer pleasure of chocolate ice cream, the beauty of sunsets. Though you may not owe them your life, you certainly owe them as much as you can give them.
You owe them more than what you are giving them right now. | https://medium.com/the-philosophers-stone/what-do-we-owe-our-parents-dc666c39b592 | ['Sappho Fortis'] | 2020-07-17 22:45:58.654000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Philosophy', 'Personal Development', 'Life', 'Family'] |
Busy Addressing Issues: Is Mental Health on The Priority List? | Quit the Stigma. There is always time to learn.
Oh, it is a tireless cycle: poverty, infrastructure, salary cycles, workplace harassment. So many issues to resolve before mankind becomes a better race. Did you think of mental health? Is it important? Is it worth addressing? If not before, open your eyes now. A pandemic hit the world, but its people are suffering much worse. Isolation, quarantine, losing jobs, losing minds — a vicious cycle that has taken over our lives since the past couple of months.
Mental health is important. The disruption of one’s state of mind can cause harm that may be irreversible. Why are we so ignorant to these situations? “Oh, she’s just anxious, she’ll get over it”, “Oh, he’s just angry, he’ll calm down”, or my personal favorite, “It’s all in your head, love!”; are these just statements to avoid dealing with an actual issue?
I am an anxious person. My heart beats faster and faster at a job interview, or when I am about to upset a family member, or when I see something happen in front of me that crushes me inside. I am an angry person, because I have no control over my words, my actions or the consequences that follow. I am also an erratic person — I have some brilliant days, and there are days I don’t want anyone around me. I suffer from headaches — spasms. Similar to occipital neuralgia, but still to be determined. The stress from work and other social aspects got to my head, and I have uncontrollable and excruciating shots of pain in my head. For the longest time, I told myself that they’re just headaches and I need another coffee. Two years later I decided to treat it. Turns out it’s a very weak nervous system. That the nerves in my head have inflammatory issues. It drove me up the wall. I gave up driving for a while, I was afraid to consume alcohol, or be in loud places, terrible shakiness every-time a spasm would strike. But it is a physical ailment; it can be cured before it gets too late (And yes, I am treating it!).
But when someone tells you they feel sad, and that they are not able to control how much they sleep. They look glum, and see you less and less often. What do you say? It’s just a phase? It’s okay, maybe he or she needs time. But, how often do you check in? To see if they’re doing alright? To see if they need any support?
If you do, I am happy you exist in this world. If you do not, what is keeping you so busy that you can’t send a text message?
Anxiety is more than being too sensitive. Depression is much bigger than just being sad. Bipolar disorders are dangerous; they aren’t just mood swings. And hey, anger can get the best of us, and it may be too late to turn it around. There is so much more to mental health than these. There are disorders that can turn a person’s world upside down; make them think that they are never good enough, that they are wrong, and that they do not matter. Three months into the coronavirus pandemic, we learnt of so many young souls taking their lives — all because there was no one to check up on them. No one to see if they’re doing okay, or to notice that something’s up.
More than a strong economy, we need to figure out how to take care of one another. The art of empathy is the toughest lesson we have to learn. And often times than not, we tend to learn these only after the inevitable has happened. Why wait? Today is as good as any other day. Make it a point to always check on your loved ones. Anyone. Someone that has trouble being by themselves, someone that needs another to talk to. Be the person that someone can depend on. Trauma is hard; no one should have to face it alone. Today, many corporate offices have their own therapists, that their employees can visit at any time of the day. There are psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists that work tirelessly on Zoom calls, where a personal visit is not possible, to ensure that their clients are doing alright, or more than. There are volunteers that make sure animals are fed — why can’t we volunteer to make sure a soul is fed?
The social opinions surrounding therapy, and all that comes with it, are disgusting. No other words describe this better. What shocks me is how little people think of another’s state of mind. There is an increasing demand for services that provide care for people’s mental health, and there are still psychological blocks against the concept — because, what will people say if I send my kids to therapy? What is so bad that I, as a parent, cannot take care of? Hey buddy, if there are issues that you cannot resolve, IT IS OKAY. You are not superhuman, you are a parent. Do the right thing. Don’t let your kid grow up thinking it is shameful to reach out for help. People are really afraid to ask for help, because of the judgement that’s passed. The opinions that are openly given.
You should not be ashamed of mental illness; you should be ashamed of the stigma and bias that are held against it.
Take COVID-19 for example, our new best-friend. When someone is diagnosed as a positive case of coronavirus, what is your first instinct? Stay away from them, or we will get infected! Do you ever think — how will they manage with no grocery deliveries? We should send them food; we should call them and see how they’re doing. We can always just leave stuff at the door; they need the help.
A few people would do this, but the majority, would stick to the former. Flip the situation — would you like it if someone behaved that way if you were infected? The best way to understand mental health is to flip the situation — how would you feel if you walked a day in their shoes? If you rode around the entire day with anxiety, or with anger, or with a sadness that nothing might overcome. It is exhausting, it takes you over. It changes you. But what matters at the end, is the hand that reaches out? That says, hush you tired soul, I am here for you, I will take care of you, and I will love you.
The root emotion for any support you try to offer to a person suffering from mental health disorders, is love. If you show compassion, you have already completed the first 25% of what you are trying to achieve. Love is above and beyond. Love is present in every stage of our lives, in every action we undertake; at the beginning of our lives, and at the end of it. In some or the other way.
So, I urge you, if you are unaware of mental health issues in depth, start reading up, researching, like me. If you are, do your bit. You don’t know how much of this world you save by just reaching out to a mere few. Make mental health a priority, because no world functions with just an economy; you need people with a healthy mindset. You need compassion to survive in a world as bitter as ours.
And for those that suffer from an issue, know this — you are not alone. You always have someone, or something to hold on to. Life is long, stay strong, and be brave. Take your time, and heal your soul.
And always remember, as Glenn Close says, ‘What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candour and more unashamed conversation’. | https://medium.com/n-v-mag/busy-addressing-issues-is-mental-health-on-the-priority-list-bfa619644fd0 | ['Anisha Masand'] | 2020-08-16 17:02:16.620000+00:00 | ['Compassion', 'Deep Dives', 'Anxiety', 'Perspective', 'Mental Health'] |
Go Modules | Preface
What is included in this blog:
A brief introduction of Go modules and Semantic Import Versioning
A discussion about how to convert multiple Go libraries in the same repository to Go modules
A discussion about how to utilize Go Modules in microservices
prerequisites
Go Modules
Go Modules is an experimental opt-in feature in Go 1.11 with the plan of finalizing feature for Go 1.13. The definition of a Go module from this proposal is “a group of packages that share a common prefix, the module path, and are versioned together as a single unit”. It is designed for resolving dependency hell problems in Go, like conflicting dependencies and diamond dependency.
An Example
Here is an example of Go Modules:
path/to/my-repo:
bar:
go.mod
bar-file1.go
bar-file2.go
foo:
foo-file1.go
foo-file2.go
mixi:
go.mod
mixi-file1.go
mixi-file2.go
As shown in the picture, the repository my-repo has two modules bar and mixi . Take the module bar as an example, it contains two packages: the package bar and the package foo . The file go.mod under the directory path/to/my-repo/bar defines the module's path and its dependencies:
module path/to/my-repo/bar
require (
golang.org/x/text v0.3.0
rsc.io/sampler v1.99.99
// Other dependencies
)
The file go.mod bundles the package bar and the package foo together as a unit. For example, the import statement in the following code will import the module path/to/my-repo/bar (which includes the package foo ) rather than the package path/to/my-repo/bar/foo when Go Modules is enabled. Even though the code looks the same, the path in the import statement is recognized as the module path, not the package path, once Go Modules is used
import "path/to/my-repo/bar/foo"
func main () {
foo.DoSomething()
}
How to Enable Go Modules
In order to use Go Modules, you need to upgrade your Go to v1.11 or any later version and set the environment variable export GO111MODULE=on .
When to Use Go Modules
The major purpose of Go Modules is to let one or more packages be versioned, released, and retrieved together as a single unit. Therefore, the public packages, for example, Go libraries and SDKs, are major targets of Go Modules as they need to be published properly for public use. You do not need to convert internal packages or any internal-used-only packages within a microservice repository to Go modules. These packages can directly import and use modules once Go Modules feature is enabled, even if they are not converted to modules.
Semantic Import Versioning
Semantic Import Versioning is a method proposed for adopting Semantic Versioning in Go packages and modules. The idea behind it is embedding the major version (say v2 ) in the package path (for packages) or the module path (for modules) with the following rules:
v1 must be omitted from the module path. This post explains the reason. You may need to follow this rule in your packages if you are thinking of converting your packages to modules one day.
must be omitted from the module path. This post explains the reason. You may need to follow this rule in your packages if you are thinking of converting your packages to modules one day. The Major versions which are higher than v1 must be embedded in the package path or the module path so that Semantic Versioning can be applied to Go packages and modules.
The following picture demonstrates the rules above:
Releasing
With Go Modules and Semantic Import Versioning, you can release your modules by creating git tags. A tag corresponds to a version. For example, the following git command releases the bar module v2.3.3 :
git tag bar/v2.3.3 && git push -q origin master bar/v2.3.3
You can read my last blog for more details about how to releases modules with Semantic Import Versioning.
All in all, Go Modules provides a way to group one or more packages as a single retrievable unit, while Semantic Import Versioning is a method for applying Semantic Versioning in Go packages and modules to make them versioned. These two things are designed for breaking a repository into multiple retrievable units (modules) so that Go can grab dependencies at the module granularity rather than the repository granularity.
Utilizing Go Modules
General Guide of Converting Go Packages to Go Modules
I wrote a dummy package called module for demonstrating how to convert one or more Go packages to a Go module.
Converting
It is very easy to convert one or more Go packages to a Go module. Take the module package as an example, here are the steps of converting it to a Go module:
Cd to the root directory of the module package: cd path/to/module Convert the package to a module: go mod init github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/module Compile the module and its dependencies: go build Commit the changes automatically generated by Go: git add ./go.mod ./go.sum && git commit -q -m "Convert the package to a module" && git push origin master -q (Optional) you can run go mod vendor to reset the module's vendor directory to include all the packages and modules which are required for building and testing all of the module's packages. This is the way to provide dependencies for the older versions of Go that do not fully understand Go modules. Any version of Go >= v1.11 does not need this.
Here are the contents of the go.mod file automatically generated by Go. You can see that it defines the module's path, glues anything under the path/to/example/module directory as a single unit and lists all of its dependencies.
module github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/module
go 1.12
require (
golang.org/x/net v0.0.0-20190328230028-74de082e2cca
rsc.io/quote v1.5.2
)
Go utilizes the following roles to grab the module’s dependencies:
It grabs the latest version for the packages that have been converted to modules. For example, rsc.io/quote v1.5.2 . It grabs the latest commit for the packages that have not been converted to modules with the format v0.0.0-{date}-{first_12_characters_of_commit_id} . For example, golang.org/x/net v0.0.0-20190328230028-74de082e2cca .
Releasing
A module can only be used as a module after it is released. A module is released by creating git tags and each tag corresponds to a version. However, there are two problems we need to solve before releasing a module.
The first problem is how to release v2 or higher Major versions. Go utilizes two methods, Major Branch and Major Subdirectory, which are provided by this proposal to solve this problem. This blog demonstrates these two methods and compares their advantages and disadvantages. In this blog, Major Subdirectory is used for all the examples as it does not require to duplicate any code.
The second problem is we need to figure out whether to consider the conversion from Go package(s) to a Go module a breaking change or not. If so, we need to upgrade the Major version using Semantic Versioning. If not, we need to decide what versions we need to release. I prefer to just release the latest version of the package(s) listed in the CHANGELOG.md file for the following reasons:
The conversion from Go package(s) to a Go module is not a breaking change as the package(s) can still work with older versions of Go even if the package(s) are converted to a module. So it does not make sense to upgrade the Major version for this kind of change. The conversion from Go package(s) to a Go module does not add any new feature or fix any bug. So upgrading the Minor or Patch version, in this case, does not make sense either.
Now let us come back to the module example and release its latest version. Here is what I did:
Appended v2 to the end of the module path (module github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/module/v2 ) as the latest version of the module package is v2.0.1 . Add a note under the v2.0.1 release note in the CHANGELOG.md file to indicate that the package is converted to a module in and after this version. Release v2.0.1 by creating a git tag: git tag golang/go_modules/example/module/v2.0.1 && git push -q origin master golang/go_modules/example/module/v2.0.1
Consuming A Module
You can still use this package, without Go Modules enabled, by using some Go dependency management tool (e.g. dep ) with the following specification. This will grab the whole repository which includes the module module for your build.
[[constraint]]
name = "github.com/azhuox/blogs"
branch = "master"
With Go Modules, what you need to do is import and use the module in your Go program and run go build . It will automatically grab the golang/go_modules/example/module/v2.0.1 module other than the whole repository for your build.
Converting Go Libraries to Go Modules
The section above already demonstrates how to convert one or more Go packages to a Go module. This section majorly talks about how to convert all the Go packages (libraries) within the same repository to Go modules.
I wrote three packages liba libb and libc under the github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/ directory for the demo purpose. Among these three packages, the package libb depends on the package liba while the package libc depends on the package libb and libc .
A principle that we need to follow in this case is to convert the packages that have no dependency on other packages within the same repository, and then convert the packages which dependencies have been converted Go modules. This indicates that we need to convert the package liba first, then the package libb and then the package libc in this case.
Let us see what will happen if we convert libc first:
go mod init github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc
go: creating new go.mod: module github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc
go build:
can't load package: package github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc: unknown import path "github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc": ambiguous import: found github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc in multiple modules:
github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc (/Users/achuo/go/src/github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc)
github.com/azhuox/blogs v0.0.0-20190330175117-09a7dbd4a3ce (/Users/achuo/go/pkg/mod/github.com/azhuox/[email protected]/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc)
The cause of this ambiguous import problem is Go grabs the whole repository github.com/azhuox/blogs v0.0.0-20190330175117-09a7dbd4a3ce to get the liba and libb package for satisfying the dependencies of the libc module. However, github.com/azhuox/blogs v0.0.0-20190330175117-09a7dbd4a3ce also includes a copy of the libc package, which confuses the Go compiler. To fix this, we need to convert the liba and libb package to Go modules and release them, so that they can be retrieved and parsed properly as two individual modules by Go.
Now let us convert these three libs in the correct order.
Convert the package liba to a module:
cd path/to/libs/liba
go mod init github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/liba
go: creating new go.mod: module github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/liba
go build
go: finding golang.org/x/net/context latest
go: finding golang.org/x/net latest
# Commit changes
#
git add ./go.mod ./go.sum
git commit ./go.mod ./go.sum -q -m "Convert liba to a module" && git push origin master -q
# Release the latest version (v1.1.0):
#
git tag golang/go_modules/example/libs/liba/v1.1.0 && git push -q origin master golang/go_modules/example/libs/liba/v1.1.0
convert the package libb to a module:
go mod init github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libb
go: creating new go.mod: module github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libb
go build
go: downloading github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/liba v1.1.0
go: extracting github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/liba v1.1.0
...
git add ./go.mod ./go.sum
git commit ./go.mod ./go.sum -q -m "Convert libb to a module" && git push origin master -q
git tag golang/go_modules/example/libs/libb/v1.0.0 && git push -q origin master golang/go_modules/example/libs/libb/v1.0.0
Convert the package libc to a module:
go mod init github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc
go build
go: downloading github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libb v1.0.0
go: extracting github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libb v1.0.0
...
git add ./go.mod ./go.sum
git commit ./go.mod ./go.sum -q -m "Convert libc to a module" && git push origin master -q
git tag golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc/v1.0.0 && git push -q origin master golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc/v1.0.0
You can see the package libc is converted to a module correctly and it can retrieve the modules liba and libb in its build without any problem.
Go Modules and Microservices
I wrote a dummy micro-service for demonstrating how to utilize Go Modules in a microservice. Here is its project layout:
github.com/azhuox/blogs/tree/master/golang/go_modules/example/micro-service:
- sdks
- go
- internal
- api
- pkga
- pkgb
- server
- main.go
- vendor
- Gopkg.toml
- Gopkg.lock
- Dockerfile
I want to mention that the package internal/pkgb is using the package libc that we just converted to a Go module above. In this case, libc is retrieved together with liba and libb from the github.com/azhuox/blogs repository when Go Modules is not enabled. But it is retrieved individually as a single unit when Go Modules is enabled.
From the project layout, you can also see that the microservice is built as a docker image with the following Dockerfile:
FROM golang:1.12-alpine3.9
RUN apk add --update \
ca-certificates \
git
COPY . $GOPATH/src/github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/micro-service
RUN go build -o /usr/bin/micro-service github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/micro-service/server && rm -rf $GOPATH/*
ENTRYPOINT ["/usr/bin/micro-service"]
As mentioned in the When to Use Go Modules section, only public packages need to be converted to modules. In this case, the package sdks/go is the only package that gets publicly used. Therefore, we only need to convert this package to a module and releases its latest version:
go mod init github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/micro-service/sdks/go
go build
...
git add ./go.mod ./go.sum
git commit ./go.mod ./go.sum -q -m "Convert micro-service/sdks/go to a module" && git push origin master -q
git tag golang/go_modules/example/micro-service/sdks/go/v1.0.2 && git push -q origin master golang/go_modules/example/micro-service/sdks/go/v1.0.2
Go Modules, in this case, refers to the new Go package management tool called vgo which is integrated into go tools like go get and go mod . The following steps demonstrate how to use it to manage the dependencies for the microservice:
Launch a terminal and then enable Go Modules in the terminal: export GO111MODULE=on . Cd the root directory of the microservice. Add a go.mod file to the root directory of the microservice: go mod init github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/micro-service . Run or test the microservice to ensure that everything works fine: go run ./server/main.go . This will generate a file called go.sum if everything goes well. Remove the files for the old dependency management tool, which is Gopkg.toml and Gopkg.lock in this case. Commit the changes.
Now we successfully replace the old dependency management tool with Go Modules. However, there are two cases we need to deal with in the Continuous Integration (CI) process: with a vendor or without a vendor.
CI Without Vendor
Without vendors means utilizing Go Modules to dynamically grab dependencies when building docker images during the CI process. To do this, we need to do the following steps:
Add an environment variable ENV GO111MODULE=on in the Dockerfile to enable Go Modules. Remove the vendor directory since we don't need it anymore. Commit the changes.
CI With Vendor
With vendor means we want to dump all the dependencies into the vendor directory and let the CI build the docker image based on the vendor directory. The following steps demonstrate how to do it:
Dump all the dependencies into the vendor directory: go mod vendor . Commit the changes. If Go Modules is enabled in the CI tool, add the -mod=vendor in the go build step in the Dockerfile: go build -mod=vendor -o /usr/bin/micro-service github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/micro-service/server && rm -rf $GOPATH/* .
Update A Dependency in the vendor Directory
Suppose we want to build docker images with the vendor directory and use the latest version of libc (say v1.5.0) in the microservice. The following steps demonstrate the update process:
Get the version: go get github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/[email protected] . Update the vendor directory: go mod vendor .
This may not work when the microservice is not using any new feature released after the current version of libc (v1.0.0 in this case). To force update it, we need to add a replace statement in the go.mod file and then run go mod vendor :
replace (
github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc v1.0.0 github.com/azhuox/blogs/golang/go_modules/example/libs/libc v1.5.0
)
Summary
Go Modules allows you to group one or more packages to a single unit which is released and retrieved together.
Semantic Import Versioning is a method for applying Semantic Versioning to Go packages and modules to make them versioned.
Only the publicly-used packages, for example, Go libraries and SDKs, need to convert to Go modules (which produces the modules).
It is very easy to replace a legacy Go package management tool (e.g. dep) with Go modules (which consumes the modules).
Reference | https://aaronzhuo.medium.com/go-modules-d51fa19cf715 | ['Aaron Zhuo'] | 2020-12-02 03:28:12.524000+00:00 | ['Mídium', 'Golang', 'Go Modules'] |
How to Grow an Online Community to 16,000+ People | How to Grow an Online Community to 16,000+ People
David Markovich, founder of Online Geniuses
David Markovich, age 29, lives in Midtown Manhattan and launched Online Geniuses in January 2015.
Today, with over 16,000 members, Online Geniuses is by far the biggest, but not the only, online community Markovich manages. He also runs five others, including one for the 1,400-tenant building he lives in, a sizeable mental health community called 18percent, and three meta-communities focused on starting and managing online communities (e.g., Modtalk).
Markovich grew up in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family in New York City. He didn’t go to college. He had five siblings. His father worked at a printing company and his mother was a teacher at a religious school. His parents divorced when he was a child.
How Online Geniuses Started
Once the age of independence dawned, Markovich took off globetrotting. He taught himself marketing, networked around the world, and worked as a digital marketing consultant hustling to solve problems for clients.
This global, personal network formed the early roots of Online Geniuses. “Everyone I met and worked with I added to a Skype group,” he said. “It helped me stay in touch with people better.”
In other words, the largest Slack community of marketers started as simply one individual’s group of friends with whom he wanted to stay in touch.
Markovich mentioned the personality trait that served him most and that he has recognized in most successful online community managers: “They are very caring and want to give and don’t focus on anything else. They take pleasure in connecting people and staying close friends.”
I saw firsthand an illustration of this trait after our interview. While we were still on the call, Markovich shot off three email introductions to friends who could help me with my conversation app company. He didn’t have to do that, but he did. It was generous.
The community grew due to a lot of work — DM’s, Reddit, emails. It took six months to get Online Geniuses up to a few hundred members.
“At 200 members, you outgrow Skype,” the founder said. Later in 2015, when the community had reached the 300–500 range, Markovich announced they were moving to a new messaging platform called Slack.
“It killed the community,” he said. “Nobody was using Slack and nobody knew how it worked. We were too early.”
However, what was a liability soon became an asset. Or:
A month after using Slack, Markovich began reaching out to media publications that were covering Slack.
He helped introduce reporters to underground communities hosted on Slack which resulted in articles like “The Top 10 Slack Communities” published in BuzzFeed. These always mentioned Online Geniuses.
PR kickstarted word of mouth and referrals contagiously. Soon, Online Geniuses was the largest Slack community on the web, second only to a group of iOS developers.
Meanwhile, Markovich needed to make money.
3 Crucial Characteristics of Online Community Managers
Markovich said the reason Online Geniuses took off was three-fold:
Be completely passionate about the topic. Markovich lives, eats, and breathes marketing, community, and mental health. He loves these topics to no end. This transforms the repetitious mundanity of the community manager’s job into enjoyable tasks so that it doesn’t feel like work. Community managers truly care and give selflessly — this is not for everyone. Set up the community so that it can survive without you. “No one’s here to see you,” said Markovich. Founders get caught up in the false notion that the community is there because of them. Instead, Markovich plays the background and facilitates when he needs to, but for the most part, stays out of the way. The value is found in the diverse interactions between the people, not in the founder.
You must be able to survive without the platform you’re on. “I have everyone’s emails if Slack closes down,” said Markovich. Ownership of your space is insurance, even though “renting” is necessary to host your community. This tweet sums up the point with a bow:
The Most Effective Ongoing Practice For Growing an Online Community
Many community managers don’t understand when there needs to be engagement and when there doesn’t.
“Don’t force engagement,” said Markovich. “If the founder is constantly pushing, saying, ‘Did you read this? Did you read this?’ that’s a sign it’s about you, not the community. If that’s your game, use a Facebook Page, not Slack.”
The number one best practice that has helped Online Geniuses grow successfully is great guests. The community hosts AMAs and pulls in some of the biggest names in the world, including Gary Vaynerchuk and head marketers from household companies like Netflix, Red Bull, Visa, Facebook, and so on.
Second to great guests, a successful community has high-value members to interact with, or, as Markovich puts it, the opportunity to “meet cool people.”
The key is curation. “I noticed a certain pattern,” he said, “No sales reps, no recruiters, no interns. If you want to be annoying go on Facebook, if you want to recruit go on LinkedIn.”
When members sign up, they have to apply by filling out a 7-question Typeform. A team of 15 moderators vet each applicant and ensure authenticity.
This team of mods constantly combs the Slackscape for inappropriate or guideline-fracturing content.
The result is a productive, insightful daily discussion between marketers who are serious about achieving results. Nearly two million posts have been sent in the community thus far.
Over 19 local OG meetups (i.e., “Chapters”) transpose the digital community into real life across the globe. These face-to-face events — breakfast in Boston, drinks in Toronto, or coffee in Sweden — inject new energy and genuine connection into the community, feeding back into the bloodstream of the Slack group.
In the end, your goal should be for the community to exist on its own without you. You do this with great guests, cool people, and moderated content.
But bad eggs are inevitable and Markovich said problematic people can slip through sometimes as often as once a month.
A Hack for Handling Trolls
One time, Markovich spun up a huge Google Sheet for documenting members’ information and activity. It was a resource that contained names, websites, guest posts, emails, etc. to help people connect.
“Then jerks scraped it,” said Markovich. The full community access to the spreadsheet backfired and rogue messages started pouring in. So he shut down the spreadsheet.
Over the years, Markovich has learned a thing or two about handling aberrant behavior and has developed a process for weeding out spammers and trolls.
The first step, as mentioned before, is every member is vetted during the application process. But then there’s a two week waiting period to get in.
This two-week waiting period filters the majority of spam.
“Spam is impulsive,” said Markovich. “When people launch a product, they spam. If they’re live on Product Hunt, they’re in full spam mode. OG takes two weeks to get in. Two weeks later they become normal members.”
Not all spam is bad. For this reason, Online Geniuses has a dedicated channel for pure and unabashed self-promotion. It’s called “Shameless plug.”
Any online community with traction suddenly becomes a lot of work to keep up—people are engaged, chatting, and reacting. It’s thrilling, but it never turns off. With time, the question of “Is this really worth it?” eventually creeps in and the barb of money presses in.
Monetization Streams For Online Community Businesses
The difference between an online community and a social network is that online communities tend to be more focused on one topic, whereas social networks are more open.
Online Geniuses is focused on one topic: marketing, connecting marketers, and tertiary marketing activities.
While social networks gravitate more towards advertising to generate revenue, the “niche” quality of an online community makes it more attractive to partners and sponsors who target that niche. For example, SEMRush is OG’s biggest partner because the community effuses SEO practices.
Markovich declined to share specific revenue numbers but briefly described the fee structure: an annual payment in return for a mix of in-person events, webinars, dedicated coverage in the AMA emails, and website and social promotion.
Additionally, “People will pay for specific roundtable events,” said Markovich. He gave an example. “If you get ten people in the ride-sharing space in the same room with Uber and Lyft, there’s a tremendous ROI.”
This is the superpower of the community manager — he or she can pull together a high-octane group of people from the deep corners of their network, coordinate an event, and create an effective wave of change that’s worth a lot of money.
Life as a Community Manager
As a manager of six online communities, Markovich is permanently glued to his phone and computer. It’s a neverending job, which sheds light on perhaps why Markovich cofounded a Slack community dedicated to helping the 18 percent of Americans living with a mental health illness.
Caught in a digital career one loves but can never turn off, one’s digital health can slowly break down. Markovich offloads as much as he can to a team of remote contractors, but amid surviving the tempest of responsibilities of each day, he only has one desire.
“I just want to sleep.” | https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/how-this-gigantic-online-community-grew-to-16-000-people-4bdecef85434 | ['Dave Schools'] | 2019-07-03 17:26:18.340000+00:00 | ['Community', 'Marketing', 'Startup', 'Slack', 'Entrepreneurship'] |
Making peace with your past | Living With Past Hurt
When you reach a point where happiness is the priority, what do you do with your past emotional trauma? My life has reached a high point where I’m living peacefully, and for the most part, I’m pretty comfortable. However, comfort and conflict are in direct opposition to one another. Like bickering family members, they rarely see eye to eye and fight for dominance.
A comfortable life with a conflicted soul is a poor combination. These days, I lack the adversity I knew when I was growing up. My self-awareness of my desires and a better environment has led to a better quality of life as a whole.
Except deep down inside, I yearn for that source of…Injustice.
Even in my writing, in the past few years, my work has become increasingly focused on the different origins of “hurt” that I have experienced.
I have dealt with various personal Injustices in my 27 years of living on this planet.
In a way, experiencing so much personal trauma can take its toll on your psyche. It has a way of hardening your heart and blinding you to the world around you.
Friendly interactions with the people around you could be perceived as threatening due to your past experiences.
Relationships are made increasingly more complex due to past damage and could lead to inadvertently hurting someone you care about.
Micro-interactions with the world around you escalate to something much greater…
…because…deep down inside…
You’ve created your own personal inner demon. Originating from the source of your Injustice, they crave retribution. They desire comeuppance to the racists, bigots, and bullies.
The wrong that was committed to you now gives you vindication. You feel justified to be wary of the world around you. You maintain your guard and look for the opportunity to strike back when the chance presents itself.
You were WRONGED…and the world needs to know it.
That’s your inner demon speaking. Instead of living in the moment and enjoying your happiness, you’re fixated on the negative.
Honestly, it’s so much easier to give in to the pain inside than constantly rising above it.
Comfort and conflict rarely see eye to eye. | https://medium.com/an-injustice/the-importance-of-coexisting-with-your-past-d30749fe62f7 | ['Dayon Cotton'] | 2020-10-23 03:28:03.896000+00:00 | ['This Happened To Me', 'Mental Health', 'Self', 'Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons'] |
Mengalir Seperti Air | A girl who loves to listen and write. Don’t worry, my life is big and full of surprises 🌃 #BersyukurSekarangAja | https://medium.com/@intankholisa/mengalir-seperti-air-c13723cee40 | ['Kholisa Intan Rokhmana'] | 2020-12-22 14:41:48.372000+00:00 | ['Lesson Learned', 'Kindness', 'Family'] |
My Perception Of Self-Doubt Differs from Yours | The words of truth are always paradoxical- Lao Tzu
Believe it or not, I have always viewed self-doubt as something positive as opposed to being a negative issue. Most people would perceive self-doubt as an inability to complete a certain task. A bad trait in its entirety.
On the other hand, it serves as a way for me to access whether I could complete a task successfully. When I was still working in an office, my manager would pass her tasks to me even though it was out of my job scope. I chose to interpret it as a sense of trust from her.
A part of me doubted my own abilities, another part of me felt reluctant to complete the task, lastly another part of myself thinks I should just suck it up.
Depending on the task given, I would make my decision accordingly. Never would I compared myself to a machine, when I should be in control instead.
So how can self-doubt be linked to self-improvement?
Well, if you can’t complete the given task this time, wouldn’t that motivate you to work harder on it the next time round? Speaking from my own experiences, I would declare we are always seeking for self-worth rather than self-validation.
Self-worth is within ourselves and based on another person’s perspectives. We are concerned about how others perceive our working abilities. Needless to say, we want to always be regarded as an asset rather than a useless tool.
How to establish this healthy connection between self-doubt and self-improvement? Firstly, we should ask ourselves this question: Am I able to do this task without much hinderance? If yes, just go ahead and nail it. Otherwise, think of an alternative method.
Either way, we are always improving ourselves. Each day is always different hence it can be another opportunity or a form of redemption. To stop committing the same mistakes over and over again.
Self-improvement is almost like an invincible path. You don’t know how much you are improving until you master all the necessary skills required to proceed further.
Instead of moping over what you can’t do, why not focus on how much improvement you are making each day? After some time, you would realise that you are getting better.
Before that happens , let’s just keep on trying. | https://medium.com/kayarewhys/my-perception-of-self-doubt-differs-from-yours-f59e06abb40a | ['Krystal Lo'] | 2019-06-25 15:49:34.923000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Personal Development', 'Self Improvement', 'Writing', 'Life'] |
Lost in uncertainty | Harmful information gaps
When you feel unwell or are concerned about your health, there is a natural urge to get a doctor’s opinion immediately. The first step to eliminate health problems is to get a correct diagnosis. Next, modern medicine steps in, with a range of treatment options and drugs. Sometimes a single pill can cure a condition; in other cases, advanced medical interventions are required. Regardless, the patient can count on the best possible help from professionals supported by advanced technical and pharmaceutical capabilities, provided the cause of the symptoms is known.
When medical examinations fail, the consequences may prove truly harmful. Misdiagnosis is more common than drug errors, although the scale of the problem remains unknown. A study published in the American Journal of Medicine suggests that up to 15 percent of all medical cases in developed countries are misdiagnosed. That means that one in every seven diagnoses is incorrect. This might only be the tip of the iceberg, as most health systems lack adequate or mandatory reporting. Delayed treatment may have damaging consequences, often lasts longer, and is usually not as effective as early intervention. Thus, the patient’s quality of life is affected. Apart from the harm done to patients, huge additional healthcare costs arise. And most worrying of all, estimates suggest that 1.5 million people worldwide die each year due to misdiagnosis.
Recognizing the hidden
A paradox of today’s medicine is that even though we are able to successfully treat more and more diseases, patients are not cured because the most vital part of healthcare often fails: the correct diagnosis. There are numerous reasons for this. First of all, some medical cases are not easy to recognize. Professionals are often reluctant to ask senior colleagues for a second opinion. They judge the patient’s symptoms too quickly, ignoring nuances. Some are biased towards certain individuals or are simply overworked, because they see too many patients throughout the day. What’s more, patients don’t always give a precise account of their symptoms. Stress and time limitations are not conducive to communication between a patient and doctor. Less often, misdiagnosis is the result of errors in laboratory tests or medical imaging.
The second set of reasons has its roots in education. There are 30,000 known diseases in the world, many of which have nonspecific symptoms. Among them, over 6,000 conditions are defined as rare. A disease is considered “rare” or “orphan” in Europe when it affects fewer than 1 in 2,000 people. In the United States, these terms apply to diseases affecting fewer than 200,000 people. According to the EURORDIS, a non-governmental alliance of rare disease patient organizations, 30 million people are living with a rare disease in Europe and 300 million worldwide (3.5–5.9% worldwide population). Fifty percent of them affect children. Rare diseases are characterized by a broad diversity of symptoms that can vary from patient to patient. Even symptoms common for the flu may hide underlying rare diseases.
“A disease is considered rare or orphan in Europe when it affects fewer than 1 in 2,000 people. In the United States, these terms apply to diseases affecting fewer than 200,000 people.”
Let’s face the facts: Statistically, a doctor deals with around 300 of the most widespread diseases. Nobody is able to remember the specifics of all existing 30,000 conditions. What’s more, doctors have to make a quick decision within an average 10-minute slot for one visit, often without the possibility of consulting with other professionals. Some of the more thorough tests are not provided by local laboratories. Reimbursement policies and procedural guidelines fail to address patients with rare diseases. Over time, as doctors master a narrow field of medicine and encounter patients with similar problems, the general medical knowledge acquired at university has a tendency to shrink.
On the one hand, this is a positive development — professionals can recognize diseases and plan treatment faster. Unfortunately, when a nonspecific medical case occurs, the danger of misdiagnosis rises. Traditional education won’t solve this problem. Each year 2.5 million new scientific papers are published, and the number climbs 8–9% a year. More than a million biomedical-related articles appear each year on PubMed, a search engine for peer-reviewed biomedical and life sciences literature. Yes, we are gaining more knowledge, but only a small percentage can be applied to clinical practice.
Making the best of data
According to the Rare Disease Impact Report, it takes 7.6 years in the USA and 5.6 years in the UK for patients with a rare disease to receive a correct diagnosis.
Every patient wants to get better. When a suggested course of treatment doesn’t work, they don’t give up. Undiagnosed patients look for help by visiting other doctors, often paying thousands for private consultations. They desperately Google symptoms. All of these have an enormous negative impact on a patient’s life. Everything changes when uncertainty rules your life.
To change this, a holistic approach to every patient is necessary. This would require employing communication and information technologies, including artificial intelligence. In the art of diagnosis, doctors’ experience and intuition should be supplemented with the ability of algorithms to analyze large data sets. Although doctors already have unlimited access to current medical knowledge, this access is only theoretical. Analog data processed by human beings leads to information overload. This is the place for AI and symptom monitors to step in. Algorithms can link even syndromes that don’t share any symptoms and find similar cases. | https://medium.com/infermedica/lost-in-uncertainty-44b0c490b0e3 | ['Artur Olesch'] | 2020-01-30 16:49:25.715000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Health', 'Medicine', 'Chatbots', 'Digital Transformation'] |
Important Notice! | Photo by Katrin Hauf on Unsplash
Dear Writers and Readers,
We, The Opinioc, are highly appreciative of all the efforts and trust you have showered on us. It brings us immense pleasure to inform our esteemed readers, that we are pursuing our goal of fulfilling those promises which were made in the preceding newsletters with the modus-operandi of integrity and dedication.
We have been approached by our enthusiastic members from the extended family but we couldn’t revert within the stipulated time period as new dawn is beginning from our side. However, we haven’t closed our leads and are trying our best to get back as soon as possible.
Considering the time, the project would take, we are off for a couple of days from publishing — as our team is whole-heartedly working towards achieving the desired end with the utmost respect for the means.
We will revert to previous inquiries once the mega-project on cards will take-on. We hope to set a new bar of excellence, accountability, and transparency by time-bound completion of our initiative.
Any inconvenience caused is highly regretted.
Warm Regards,
The Opinioc Team | https://medium.com/opinioc/important-notice-ed1b52cce6af | ['The Opinioc Team'] | 2020-10-13 06:15:06.213000+00:00 | ['Publication', 'News', 'Newsletter', 'Holidays', 'Writing'] |
Excuse for not writing #52 Dreaming of moving to San Diego | On a cloudy day, you can either start writing or you can become obsessed with imagining where you could live. I’ve chosen the latter and right now I’m dreaming of a few days in San Diego, California.
Why San Diego? It is one of the cities with the best quality of life, the coolest vibe, and perfect weather. They also have the best tacos in America (it’s twenty minutes from the border so it makes sense). Even though the sun hates me, if I were there I would make the effort to try surfing, hoping that the wetsuit would be a better barrier than my sensitive skin. I believe my surfing experience would have two possible outcomes: either I would become a fan of it and it would be my new religion or I would nearly drown and spend the rest of the week coughing up salt water every two hours…
I know I would live in Little Italy (next to all the fun restaurants and five minutes from the water); that I would be known at the dozens of craft breweries in the city (some describe it as the best city in America for craft beer, but those some are from San Diego so…) and that I would become a fan of the San Diego Padres baseball team (when a team’s mascot looks like the monk on the Franziskaner labels, it’s inevitable to be a fan of their team…).
As I continue to Google Maps, creating a list of all the places I would go (right now the zoo and Pacific Beach are winking at me) and reading articles on “The best things to do in San Diego that only locals know” I gain more knowledge than I need for a plan that will probably never happen. I get the feeling I should be researching for something else — what was I supposed to do? Ah, yes…
A thousand apologies to my book, I’ll start writing to you tomorrow.
#excusesfornotwriting #apologiestomynovel #sandiego #travel #travelling #sandiegolife | https://medium.com/@rafaboladeras/excuse-for-not-writing-52-dreaming-of-moving-to-san-diego-a8438a6a8037 | ['Rafa Boladeras'] | 2021-09-08 14:38:32.248000+00:00 | ['San Diego', 'Writing', 'Writers Life', 'Procrastination', 'Traveling'] |
I went to a Vintage Fashion Show Expo in San Francisco! (Pre-Quarantine) | A beautiful sunny Saturday which fooled me not to take my jacket and freeze to death at the end of the day! I mean it’s September in California! who would’ve thought!
(Pro tip: never forget to take your jacket anywhere you go when you’re in San Francisco!)
You could find items here which wear museum quality and also the ones which just looked vintage but not authentic.
For me who always loved and adored vintage fashion, this was an opportunity to get inspired and to enjoy seeing every piece and also imagining the people wearing these in one of the days of their life which life was absolutely different than now! It’s interesting to think of it this way!
Well, these are some of the highlights:
Love me some vintage lucite style bags with red roses details!
It can’t get any better ♥️
Personally I don’t think there’s a limit on what you want to wear! Which means if you like it, wear it! To be more specific I’d wear this as a street look with a whit or black T and any shades of blue/black/white jeans or with a cute vintage looking or even a skater dress with a little fluff for an afternoon tea, I’d also pair it with a little black dress for an evening classy look!
This next one caught my eyes because let’s face it anything that falls outside the line would catch my eyes!!
Well, this is a vintage hat box! Interesting right?
*Some general information about hats through out the history:
hats became popular since around 1600! And they changed to so many forms and types depending on the family class, hairstyle or the era in general. From very small hats to very detailed ones. Side note: I thought this must be interesting for the Chanel lovers to know that the Chanel icon and founder aka Gabrielle Chanel started her carrier by designing hats!*
Anyhow, hatboxes became popular in the early 1900s. This particular design is from around 1960s!
I’m in love!
Well seeing this lady in the next picture was super fun and no she’s not a mannequin!
Not to forget to mention that this look is inspired from 1920s and she absolutely nailed the look! Head to toe! Starting from her hat and the hairstyle which was the most popular hairstyle at that time! Her make up was exactly what and how women would wear it at that time. Her overcoat was made of silk-velvet which is very rare nowadays and she was wearing these white tights which made her skin even more lighter because people in those time didn’t really like to get tanned! And the shoes and the clutch! She absolutely rocked! I didn’t forget to tell her this 1 thousand times, lol.
Here are some other pictures and highlights of that day which I thought might be interesting for you to check out: | https://medium.com/@idadkoush/i-went-to-a-vintage-fashion-show-expo-in-san-francisco-pre-quarantine-739c6b90a619 | ['Irene Dadkoush'] | 2020-12-23 05:00:00.822000+00:00 | ['Fashion', 'San Francisco', 'Vintage', 'Fashionblogger', 'Vintage Clothing'] |
Children are wisest | This is in continuation of my last article named “ connecting things" https://link.medium.com/AeU8z6qap9 . That article describes the current developmental performance of 2.3 year old child. Here I will tell you how that child has been brought up .https://link.medium.com/AeU8z6qap9
From her infancy, perhaps when she was at her 6 months, I used to read to her some story books. I used to took her in my lap to provide her good support to sit and started reading while holding and hovering her fingers over the letters in the book. This triggered her interest in reading books. This also aids in adding new words in child’s vocabulary. This, in turn, aids in speech development.
We usually tell her stories during bedtime since her infancy. As a result, when she reaches at 2 years of age, she also started narrating stories herself anytime during the day. Obviously she narrates the stories that do not mean anything.
I used to sing rhymes to her from the very beginning. And she uses to listen them carefully. Your jnfant can’t speak but they are grasping everything they are listening; the words that they are hearing are being accumulated in some corner of their mind. I couldn’t tell you the name of the part of the brain where these words are being accumulated and building your child’s vocabulary but this is true.
Also, your elders will always advice you to talk , talk, and talk a lot to your new born. My elders in the family used to tell me the same when I gave birth to my newborn. But they won’t tell you the reason for the same. Reason is here : Children are wisest among the human beings. They grasp things more quickly .
I always talk to my child on wide variety of topics. This can be any household chores, or any object that he is watching . If I am washing clothes and she is looking at me I always describe the same. If she is looking at clock, a fan or a calender I give proper details of all these objects.
Now lullabies. Every mother sing lullabies to get her baby to sleep. There were many lullabies that I sang for her. This also includes the one that I heard from my mother singing for her once. “ka Se kabutor, kh Se khargosh”. This struck my mind. I thought it would be a great idea to sing phonetic songs of alphabets to baby and let her listen and grasp the same at very early age. As a result, by her age of 2, she can mention the objects when asked for letters. If I ask her “ka se?” , she would say “kabootar” .”Kh se?” , she would say “khargosh".
This write -up just mean one thing; do all your activities while talking to your baby. Sing to her, dance to her, read to her ,speak to her loudly. | https://medium.com/@mailtogeetanjali/children-are-wisest-80fe4bda7629 | [] | 2021-01-25 17:07:48.827000+00:00 | ['Child Development', 'Smart Parenting', 'Happyparenting', 'Parenting', 'Baby Care'] |
I Appreciate Tree Langdon | I Appreciate Tree Langdon
Photo by Caleb Simpson on Unsplash
Many of the stories that I write come from comments suggestions and stories by the wonderful editors of Illumination. This story is came from a recent story by Tree Langdon | https://medium.com/illumination/i-appreciate-tree-langdon-97eb64a4d5bd | ['Jim Mcaulay'] | 2020-12-11 10:24:46.171000+00:00 | ['Illumination', 'Jim Mcaulay', 'Humour', 'Humor', 'Gratitude'] |
The Golden Rules for Shopping Successfully at the Sales | To be successful with your in-store or online sales, you need a real battle plan. I will share my tips with you for shopping successfully at the sales before helping you find the ideal little dress or cute blouse at the best price.
How to stay serious and not give in to madness when… the sales arrive! Winter sales or summer sales, it doesn't matter! But contrary to what you might think, having a successful sale doesn't have to happen by chance. This may sound a little over the top, but to make the most of the sales and buy new pieces for your closet at low prices, you need a battle plan.
Shop the sales at different times of the day
Are sales coming? So, from early morning, when the curtain goes up, dozens or even hundreds of people will be jostling in front of a shop entrance to get the best deal. The same goes for e-commerce. Internet users are waiting with frenzy for online sales to click quickly, left, right. Try to avoid this. Indeed, by adopting this behaviour marked by frenzy, it is difficult to stay focused on your goals. It is impossible to make confident choices and buy with foresight. In these cases, the temptation is strong to take everything that comes to hand, to pounce on all the pieces that catch your eye. Sometimes you just want that little top with no real interest just because someone else has it in their hands, right? You'll end your shopping spree with a wide variety of products, but with colours, you'll never wear, sizes that vary, cuts that don't fit. The solution? Do the sales at staggered hours (among other things) to find serenity.
In-store, this means you can find great things on the first day during your lunch break, but also the next day!
Online, find products you like before the sales and put them aside. Create an account, create lists, and come back to see everything when the sales are launched.
Do you know your measurements?
There is nothing worse than falling on a pretty top, with a cut that seduces you and a new colour, but whose size seems improbable to you. To avoid mishaps, you need to know each other from head to toe. You know that your shoe size is 37 but that for some brands you are more comfortable in a 38? Write it down. Do the same for the different pieces (top, blouse, skirt, dress, pants). For your online sales, do not forget to refer to the size guide on the e-commerce site in question. With your measurements, you can quickly make the right choice. Just in case, check out the return conditions!
Identify the pieces that are missing from your wardrobe
You've probably already had the experience of aimless sales ... You go looking for the good deals but, because you have no real objective, you fall for pieces that you could have done without. As a result, back home, you show off your new, very chic fitted jacket, and someone gives you a "don't you already have one like this?" ". Morality, before doing the sales, take the time to ask yourself what is missing from your wardrobe. This will allow you to do some useful shopping. Good for the organisation of the dressing room which will not have 20 little black dresses, and also good for the purse. For that, a little hour of storage/classification will be enough to identify the colour of the blouse that you are missing or the cut of pants that would complement your outfits to go to work.
Make a shopping list
Continuation of the previous point, once the missing pieces of your dressing room have been identified, make a list for your shopping. You're probably not going to stick to it, but a list helps prioritise. A list is a "plan", a document that will help you avoid falling, as we have seen, into this excess stress. If your list is as long as an arm and requires an entire notebook, consider creating it on your smartphone!
Snoop around
Sales are all about the organisation, as this article explains, but it also takes a little bit of luck. So that luck is with you, be curious. Search, search! In the store, don't be afraid to look at this top that has been poorly rested or has fallen to the ground. This may be the last piece in your size available in the shop! On an e-commerce site, prepare the sales by visiting the shop front and back before the big day. When the sales have arrived, go and visit the reserved page (if there is one) but also the usual pages. Discounted products that are less prominent, but just as interesting, maybe hidden there. Use your sense of curiosity.
Avoid the queue (or online ordering steps)
The sales are synonymous with crowds and therefore waiting at the checkout in stores. For internet sales, the phenomenon also exists congestion is noted from the first hours, and it is sometimes impossible to validate your basket. How can you avoid spending more time waiting to pay than on the shelves?
In-store organise with a friend: one of you slips into the queue at the checkout while the other shops around. Then you reverse. In the most crowded stores, you will have plenty of time to take turns and compare your finds.
Online, create an account on e-commerce sites where you plan to make purchases before D-Day. Set aside certain products. So, on the first day of sales or the following ones, you won't have to go through the tedious steps of adding your delivery address or even doing some unnecessary time-wasting searches! | https://medium.com/@karenmariesboutique/the-golden-rules-for-shopping-successfully-at-the-sales-78e01a498d9 | ['Karen Marie'] | 2020-12-23 10:08:40.712000+00:00 | ['Trends', 'Boxing Day Sale', 'Sales', 'Fashion Trends', 'Fashionblogger'] |
The 30% Solution — Eviction Crisis Averted | The 30% Solution — Eviction Crisis Averted
Brendan Ladner
Apr 22 · 8 min read
The 30% Solution — Renter Crisis Averted
DRAFT AS OF May 1, 12:30pm, 2020
The 30% Solution: Renter Crisis Averted
Renters are facing the loss of their homes in the Vancouver rental market — and in rental markets across Canada.
Many renters, having lost all or most of their incomes in recent weeks, are going to be unable to pay their rent in full, in spite of the recent policy measures that have provided them with some temporary financial assistance. Many who do pay their full rent will be starved of funds for other necessities.
Unfortunately, Canada Emergency Response Benefits (CERB) payments designed to help struggling individuals effectively flow straight through to landlords who are entitled to their full rent while tenants go deeper into debt.
We are racing towards an explosion of evictions when the B.C. State of Emergency is over and evictions are allowed again. Thousands of renters, unable to pay their deferred rent and facing unemployment, lost businesses and exhausted savings, will lose their homes. Many landlords, having to meet their own financial needs, will feel compelled to evict tenants in arrears.
Young adults are especially vulnerable, as they comprise the majority of renters.
This looming crisis demands a solution that balances the needs and resources of both tenants and landlords, and recognizes that losses not covered by government grants should be somehow shared.
There needs to be a middle way between righteous calls for a “rent strike” and landlords demanding that tenants chose between full rent payment or evictions.
It starts with these principles and assumptions:
-> The notion of renters and rental housing providers collaborating to advance a mutually beneficial solution would open a lot of eyes to the possibilities.
-> We’re all in this together: both tenants and landlords have to be prepared to share losses driven by forces outside their control.
-> “All or nothing” is not feasible. Rent strikes are both unlikely and could significantly damage both renters and landlords. Forcing mass evictions on those who can’t make up rent shortfalls will equally hurt both renters and landlords.
-> The current evictions ban, which lasts until the B.C. State of Emergency is lifted, does nothing to avoid the crushing debt load of deferred rents facing struggling tenants when it is lifted.
-> Any renters evicted for not being able to pay their rent will crowd the market for cheaper rentals, squeezing out those with lower incomes who are already struggling to keep their homes. Increased homelessness would seem inevitable.
-> To be “affordable”, housing costs should not exceed 30% of a household’s gross income.
-> Government guidance and regulation is necessary: requiring individual negotiations between every tenant and their landlord is fraught with difficulties, costs, complications, excruciating uncertainties and unfairness — there are 131,00 rental households in Vancouver
-> Governments cannot be expected to pay all tenants enough to cover all their rent in full.
->Landlords are typically better resourced than tenants.
->Some landlords will need assistance to survive on significantly reduced rental incomes. Some of these will be recent arrivals in the housing market, typically younger adults and their families with little or no equity in recently-purchased homes dependent on rental suite income.
The current situation (April 23, 2020):
The majority of B.C. renters are eligible for a B.C. Rent Subsidy of $300-$500/month. This excludes households with 2019 incomes over $74,150, and households with dependants who earned over $113,040 — many young adults and young families.
A third of all tenants are currently unable to pay rent in full. That’s approximately 48,000 in the City of Vancouver alone. This data is based on a LandlordBC survey of Apr 2020. It shows that 64% of rents were collected in full on Apr 1. A City of Vancouver survey shows 37% of renter households will be unable to pay their full rent in May, which is 48,470 households.
The number of renters falling behind in rent can be expected to increase as savings disappear and lines of credit reach their limits.
The most vulnerable renters are those who qualify for CERB, but do not qualify for the BC Rent Subsidy, and whose rents are over $600/month for individuals, or over $1,200/month for couples and families. (The average rent for a single bedroom suite in the City of Vancouver is $2,006/month.)
Across B.C., there could be upwards of 142,000 rental units facing a rent deficit on May 1, nearly 50,000 in the City of Vancouver alone. (a rent deficit is the difference between rent owed and rent paid, or the shortfall in rent) This is a huge number of individuals and families vulnerable to unprecedented housing insecurity. And it’s going to grow.
The 30% Solution:
Renters pay 30% of current income in rent. Landlords cover the shortfall — with help.
Renters pay 30% of current income in rent, plus rental subsidy, landlords cover the shortfall. Tenants will pay more than 30% of their income if they can access the BC Rent Subsidy. This subsidy would be added to the total rent paid. (Unfortunately this subsidy is currently tied to pre-COVID earnings and many renters will not qualify.)
Payment is means tested, and verified by the BC government and CRA, as per qualifications for CERB and the BC Rent Subsidy. Landlords will not be given direct access to tenants finances. If it is determined that a tenant has paid less than 30% of income, the difference shall be owing.
This means that individual renters with no other income will have $900 of their monthly rent paid by government grants and subsidies. This goes up to $1,700/month for family households with children under 18. In roommate situations, all adult income shall be totaled to determine household income.
A possible option for Metro Vancouver, where rents are often already more than 50% of income, is for renters to pay 50% of their income. In this case, most individual renters will have $1,300 of their rent paid by government grants and subsidies. This would go up to $2,500 for family households with children under 18.
At the 30% rate, an individual renter who was making $50,000 in 2019, with no dependants, would pay their landlord $900 per month in rent. At 50% that would be $1,300. The renter would then have between $1,000 and $1,400 in monthly disposable income.
Tenants argue that anything more that 25% of income it too much, given how much incomes are decreasing.
A higher percentage could be justified by renters spending less on daycare, transportation, food, clothing, personal care, entertainment and vacations while the pandemic is in effect.
Rent Relief Bank to support marginal landlords who are unable to secure financing by any other means. Any funding from this “bank” would be coordinated with grants and programs for tax relief and mortgage deferrals available to homeowners. The administration of this Rent Deficit Bank could be by The B.C. Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing or a landlord group such as LandlordBC — to establish funding and distribute funds.
The estimated funding required for the Rent Relief Bank, to cover the rent deficits of all non-corporate landlords in the City of Vancouver, is $5.8 million/month. This is based on 30% of income as rent payment. It is not expected that corporate landlords will require access to a Rent Relief Bank to secure financing.
Next Steps
1- Landlord and tenant organizations need to agree that this is a fair way through the current impasse.
2- These conditions need to be legislated as amendments to the B.C. Residential Tenancy Act.
3. The B.C. Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing needs to set up a Rent Relief Bank
4- CRA data needs to be made accessible to ensure tenants are transparent about CERB and other relief payments they are receiving.
5- The B.C Ministry of Municipal Affairs has to determine how long the 30% solution will be in effect.
Conclusion:
These are unprecedented times. Next to food, housing security is vital for peoples’ sense safety and security — and our eventual return to a sustainable economy.
The 30% solution provides a template for stabilizing the rental market during this financial crisis in B.C. — and anywhere else that currently has an evictions ban.
These measures will ease the transition from today’s trauma to tomorrow’s healing, fairly allocating the unavoidable losses that now face us all.
A vigorous debate about this policy option is urgently needed.
Contact: Brendan Ladner, 778–788–2278, [email protected]
Coming soon: www.30percentsolution.com | https://medium.com/@brendanladner/the-30-solution-eviction-crisis-averted-246c60b87347 | ['Brendan Ladner'] | 2020-05-01 19:25:39.824000+00:00 | ['Housing', 'Covid 19', 'Solutions', 'Rental Property', 'Landlord Tenant'] |
The Ultimate Christmas Wish List | ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS
The Ultimate Christmas Wish List
Image screenshot from FunkyChristmasJumpers on Instagram
What do you dream of for this Christmas? What would be on your ultimate Christmas wish list? Have no fear, I’ve ripped off Twitter and compiled this ultimate list of 71 wishes for Christmas.
I admit, I thought a Christmas list from Twitter would be less altruistic, but I admire any man’s commitment to tacos! | https://medium.com/@reubensalsa/the-ultimate-christmas-wish-list-9ec0710b78f2 | ['Reuben Salsa'] | 2020-12-18 04:22:51.528000+00:00 | ['Salsa', 'Christmas', 'The Bad Influence', 'Trump', 'Covid 19'] |
Everything I’ve Ever Learned About Giving Design Critiques I Learned from Tim Gunn | I went through two years of studio critiques while getting my Master’s degree in design, and have been through dozens of them in the five years since then*, but I can honestly say I’ve learned more about how to appropriately give design criticism from Tim Gunn, one of the hosts of the US television show Project Runway.
For anyone not aware of the show, it basically puts 16 clothing designers together and gives them challenge after challenge, with judges voting one designer off a week. The challenges can be anything from designing evening wear for pregnant women to make swimsuits out of trashbags. It’s pretty harrowing on the designers, but luckily for them, Tim Gunn comes into the middle of their design process to offer a critique. This will give you a taste. (Many more are on YouTube.)
Now, I’m sure he doesn’t really have these, but Tim Gunn’s principles for critique seem to be:
The purpose of a critique is to make the design better. It’s not to make the designer feel bad, or to make the teacher feel superior. It’s to provide guidance using an outside, experienced eye.
It’s not to make the designer feel bad, or to make the teacher feel superior. It’s to provide guidance using an outside, experienced eye. Be supportive. Even if you don’t like a designer (and Tim hides this pretty well), you can objectively look at the work and try to make them a better designer through gentle steering in the right direction. Never say you hate a design unless you can also (gently) say why and offer suggestions for improvement.
Even if you don’t like a designer (and Tim hides this pretty well), you can objectively look at the work and try to make them a better designer through gentle steering in the right direction. Never say you hate a design unless you can also (gently) say why and offer suggestions for improvement. First, figure out what the designer was trying to accomplish. Tim tries to get a sense of what the objective was. If there’s a problem here, if the designer doesn’t know, then the overall design is going to be a mess. If Tim can’t figure it out, the judges won’t be able to either.
Tim tries to get a sense of what the objective was. If there’s a problem here, if the designer doesn’t know, then the overall design is going to be a mess. If Tim can’t figure it out, the judges won’t be able to either. Offer direction, not prescription. Tim doesn’t often tell the designer how to fix the design (although he will say what specifically isn’t working for him.) But it is up to the designer to come up with a solution (“Make it work!”).
Tim doesn’t often tell the designer how to fix the design (although he will say what specifically isn’t working for him.) But it is up to the designer to come up with a solution (“Make it work!”). Humor and metaphor work better than criticism alone. Tim often chooses references from pop culture to make a point. “This looks like The Golden Girls,” for example. Which is devastating, funny, incisive, and instructional all at once. The designer understands where the design has to go (or where to move away from) next.
Tim often chooses references from pop culture to make a point. “This looks like The Golden Girls,” for example. Which is devastating, funny, incisive, and instructional all at once. The designer understands where the design has to go (or where to move away from) next. Accept multiple styles. Tim’s personal style is, in all likelihood, very far away from the aesthetic of most of the designers. But he doesn’t try to impose his style on them, just sharpen their own while still applying some universal principles of good taste and design.
Tim’s personal style is, in all likelihood, very far away from the aesthetic of most of the designers. But he doesn’t try to impose his style on them, just sharpen their own while still applying some universal principles of good taste and design. Know the domain. If you know what’s been done and what’s being done, you’re better able to offer suggestions (and to alert designers as to what seems dated or out of style).
If you know what’s been done and what’s being done, you’re better able to offer suggestions (and to alert designers as to what seems dated or out of style). If you don’t understand it, be cautious in critiquing it. If Tim doesn’t understand where a design is going, he openly admits it (“I’m puzzled”) or (if he likes it) says things like “I’m intrigued…” Know your limitations as a critiquer.
If Tim doesn’t understand where a design is going, he openly admits it (“I’m puzzled”) or (if he likes it) says things like “I’m intrigued…” Know your limitations as a critiquer. Don’t take it personally. Tim rarely gets upset or angry, even when designers refuse his advice. It’s not his design, after all.
Seasons of watching Tim Gunn work have been extremely instructive in forming my own teaching style. Everyone who reviews the work of designers could learn a thing or two from him.
*This article was originally published in 2010 | https://medium.com/@odannyboy/everything-ive-ever-learned-about-giving-design-critiques-i-learned-from-tim-gunn-c1b7381e493a | ['Dan Saffer'] | 2020-02-20 20:16:13.183000+00:00 | ['Critical Thinking', 'Critique', 'Design', 'Design Process'] |
Modern Tabs Powered By Vue.JS | I am developing this custom transaction component for a client that will manage multiple different transaction types. We went into it with no question about the need for different tabs holding the different types. Initially I thought it was going to require some stupid grouping of the element IDs in a way that I could query and manipulate them. However, most of my experience and research had been before Vue and I remembered that Vue has some sneaky tools to simplify this. Now I could have each element respond of its own accord, individually updating a basic state variable and changing their styling with a binding connected to that variable.
The specific feature that I am advocating for today is Vue’s HTML class binding. And this is especially powerful when you are working on a group of dependently reactive elements like these tabs. First let’s talk about how I may have originally done this with basic JavaScript. (Disclaimer: I am not a “JavaScript Wizard”) There are likely better ways to do this that I am not aware of, but in basic JS I would have likely made my click function (attached to each tab) take the event target and modify its styling to fit the clicked tab, then have a list of all the tabs by ID that would be cycled to update the styling on the other tabs. It may look something like this (in Vue method format):
Possible Function for Relative Styling of Tabs
This may look fairly simple but remember that this extra code is cluttering up your click action (which should only manage events and state changes). Plus, don’t forget that you will have to keep a list of the different tab ids and make sure that you are keeping up with the styling that is sitting outside your CSS. I personally find this to be more like a hammer and less like a wrench.
Now, what can you do with Vue? If you aren’t familiar with Vue, or reactive frameworks in general, you may consider reading the Vue guide intro: https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/index.html . Otherwise, I suggest you look at the “Class & Style Bindings” portion: https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/class-and-style.html to get familiar with these specific concepts. I will specifically use class bindings to make my tabs simple & reactive. In short, these bindings allow CSS classes to be applied based on a component variable or computed property. In this example, we would write the elements something like this:
Vue HTML class binding for reactive styling
The key piece is the ~v-bind:class=“{**style** : **logic**}” ~ part. Inside of this declaration we are able to manipulate classes that can be added to our element. Allowing the style manipulation to be scoped to the element itself.
Basic CSS for unselected tabs
Our base tab class can have its normal styling as such, and we don’t have to directly manipulate element specific styling from outside. Then we just need to add a “tab-selected” class that the binding manipulates based on the state of the application. This selected class will only hold the style manipulation specific to the selected tab. Add this to the binding in front of the colon (single quotes if it is kebab-case): ~v-bind:class=“{‘tab-selected’:**logic**}”~.
Style changes for the selected tab
With the styling all settled out the last piece is adding in the basic logic necessary to manage state for the tabs. For this we will go back to the click event first. Because Vue is state based, we want to have a variable that holds the ID of the current selected tab. I have called this state variable “currentTab”. When the tab is clicked, we just need the click event to update that variable to reflect the state change. It should look something like this:
Just like in the generic JS, we are able to use events to retrieve the id of the tab that was clicked, but now we are saving it in the state. Once that state is updated on the click event, the Vue reactivity updates all of the bindings that include the “currentTab” variable. Because we now know what the current tab’s ID is, we can have each element binding check if it owns that ID. Making our binding look like above ~v-bind:class=“{‘tab-selected’:currentTab==’credCard’}”~, where Vue sees the state change and adds/removes the class based on the binding logic. The nice part is that Vue sets the bound class after the static class, allowing for an intuitive override in situations like this.
So by using Vue.JS as our web framework and taking advantage of the class binding feature, we are able to make a more complex UI element quite simple and well organized, where it may have been less so in the past. Am I an advocate for Vue? For sure, and I will hopefully be posting much more about my experiences with Vue as I use it for most of my development. However, given my lack of knowledge in other frameworks, I am not going to say it’s the best or that this can’t be done by others. What I will say is that if you haven’t considered moving to a modern web framework, I highly suggest you consider doing so. It has made development seem much simpler and fun and I have found Vue specifically to be quite easy to pick up quickly.
If you found the concepts confusing starting out, that’s ok. I felt the same way, especially with some of the more complex state based logic that Vue offers. However, it really is an elegant way to manage reactive pages and provides a lightning fast experience for users. Hopefully you will find it to be as good of an experience as I have after some time developing in Vue. Forgive me if I could have presented the concepts better, I am new to documenting my learning and experiences. Please feel free to say something and Hopefully I can continue to improve as I move forward.
Thanks for taking the time to read this; -Marcus | https://javascript.plainenglish.io/modern-tabs-powered-by-vue-js-127e1fef8412 | ['Marcus Smith'] | 2019-11-16 23:24:25.201000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Web Framework', 'Web Development', 'Vue'] |
Importance of Using Parameters (Multiple) in Oracle BI Publisher | In this article, I try to explain How to use Parameter for reports and some tricks (Multiple Parameter Value) about the all searching values.
Yeap ! Our series keep going too fast. We started complicated issue but it’s necessary. Because I don’t want to lose this kind information and my willingness to serve you.
We will use parameter like ‘ :ParameterName ‘ in SQL code. Parameter name must start colon. It defines to use as parameter in SQL Code.
So firstly, we will write basic a SQL Code for Purchase Orders. Example SQL;
Select * From PO_HEADERS_ALL tbl_Orders
With this sql you can list all Purchase Order headers information like status, number etc. But We want to list according to Business Unit or Number or Creation Date. For searching of Business unit, we need change sql code like this;
Select tbl_Orders.*, tbl_org.Name From PO_HEADERS_ALL tbl_Orders
Inner Join HR_ORGANIZATION_UNITS tbl_org
ON tbl_org.Organization_Id = tbl_Orders.BILLTO_BU_ID
We used HR_ORGANIZATION_UNITS table to get name of business units and add inside our sql codes.
Select tbl_Orders.*, tbl_org.Name From PO_HEADERS_ALL tbl_Orders
Inner Join HR_ORGANIZATION_UNITS tbl_org
ON tbl_org.Organization_Id = tbl_Orders.BILLTO_BU_ID
Where tbl_org.Name = :BusinessUnit
We created SQL code and we are ready to create Data Model with this code.
Order Data Set
After you click OK. New window open about creating parameters. Then, you click checkbox and click OK again. So, we created an parameter inside our Data Model.
Creating Parameter
You can change name, type, data type, parameter type etc. We wrote display name and size when we added.
Parameter Screen
When we go to Data section. Parameter is ready to search. But we know exact name of Business Unit to works for searching. I suppose that it’s too difficult to know all business units in your company. For example, you work for a group company maybe company have 20 companies. You cannot get all business unit information.
If you put prefix or suffix into the business unit name, I can prefer one more way. Using wildcard character ‘%’. For example; We have three company. USA01 XYZ Company, USA02 ERN Company, TR01 DARK Company. We want to search business unit starting ‘USA’ prefix. You have to change SQL code Like this;
Select tbl_Orders.*, tbl_org.Name From PO_HEADERS_ALL tbl_Orders
Inner Join HR_ORGANIZATION_UNITS tbl_org
ON tbl_org.Organization_Id = tbl_Orders.BILLTO_BU_ID
Where tbl_org.Name like ‘%’ || :BusinessUnit || ‘%’
This code is searching ‘USA’ inside of business unit name. If you remove first ‘%’ character. You can search starting with ‘USD’. So, if you remove second ‘%’ character. You can search finishing with ‘USD’. But this way is not effective for us in the end. Users must select Business Unit Name in a list. We need to create List of Values. (You can use the first version of the SQL code without ‘%’ character.)
List Of Values
Of course, you should write SQL code for this too. You can get all Business Unit from HR_ORGANIZATION_UNITS table using Name value but it’s not necessary. We want to get list of Business Units have Purchase Order. So, I need to write similar code with Orders Data Set but it has two different things inside code. One of them Distinct, the other one is we are using one value for getting just names of Business Unit. (By the way we will remove Where section in code)
Select Distinct tbl_org.Name From PO_HEADERS_ALL tbl_Orders
Inner Join HR_ORGANIZATION_UNITS tbl_org
ON tbl_org.Organization_Id = tbl_Orders.BILLTO_BU_ID
Order By tbl_org.Name
List Of Values with SQL Query
We have to change business unit Parameter settings for using BusinessUnit List of Values.
You can choose only one Business Unit
I can select one by one but users want to select more than one business unit. You can select Multiple Selection inside Parameters Options. But you need to change SQL Code inside Orders Data Set according to multiple selection. You have to use ‘IN’ clause in Where section. Like this;
Select tbl_Orders.*, tbl_org.Name From PO_HEADERS_ALL tbl_Orders
Inner Join HR_ORGANIZATION_UNITS tbl_org
ON tbl_org.Organization_Id = tbl_Orders.BILLTO_BU_ID
Where tbl_org.Name IN (:BusinessUnit)
Multiple Selection Option
Multiple Selection Result
You can check Can Select All by the way. When you click it, two option appear. Null Values Passed, All Values Passed. Null values passed means when you choose All selection, parameter takes null value. The other option means when you choose All, parameter takes all values.
Null Value Passed Option
Null Value Passed Result
All Values Passed Option
All Values Passed Result
‘IN’ clause can have 1000 values. If your list has more than 1000 values, you faced an error like in the below.
Error
Actually, this example is not about business unit. Obviously, business unit list has few than 1000 values. We can think for supplier list. One business unit can have more than 1000 supplier values. So, this is a huge problem but we have trick again for this kind of searching. Firstly, Parameter ‘Can Select All’ option must be Null Value Passed then, change where clause like this;
Select tbl_Orders.*, tbl_org.Name From PO_HEADERS_ALL tbl_Orders
Inner Join HR_ORGANIZATION_UNITS tbl_org
ON tbl_org.Organization_Id = tbl_Orders.BILLTO_BU_ID
Where tbl_org.Name IN (:BusinessUnit) OR ‘All’ IN (:BusinessUnit || ‘All’))
I showed you this trick on Business Unit but You can use on supplier for exceeding 1000 values or any value
After saving, all process done by you. You created Data Model perfectly.
I will tell third option of parameter (Refresh other parameters on change) in another article.
Source 1: https://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_wildcards.asp Source 2 : https://www.apps2fusion.com/oracle-fusion-online-training/fusion-applications/fusion-payroll/2382-passing-multiple-values-from-report-parameter
We will meet again… Thanks a lot. | https://medium.com/@goktepeeren/importance-of-using-parameters-multiple-in-oracle-bi-publisher-4c756f308ac6 | ['Eren Göktepe'] | 2020-10-13 21:33:07.486000+00:00 | ['Oracle Cloud', 'Oracle', 'Oracle Bi Publisher', 'Oracle Fusion', 'Multiple Parameters'] |
Tv Streaming Full HD Online The Caged Flower (2013) Download and Wacth Free | Tv HD Online The Caged Flower
Title : The Caged Flower
Genre : Drama, History
Stars : Misaki Morino, Uta Kohaku, Shingo Ota, Yumi Fukuda
Release : 2013–11–23
Runtime : 94 min.
Production : Shimamura Hirofumi
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Movie Synopsis:
Yoriko Jun turned Miyuki Fukashi’s sensual novel with the same name into a movie. An ordinary office lady and a boy meet on the Internet, they get into a master-slave relationship and are drowned in a world of pleasure.
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Human Stupidity Knows No End Said Einstein | So what happens when there is an ELE — an Extinction Level Event?
Own artwork
What is stupidity? It is doing something that obviously won’t work out or doing something even when the evidence suggests that the outcome will be disastrous. It is doing or saying something when it can clearly be deduced that it is erroneous, but sticking to one’s guns even though one cannot explain why one is right.
This is why it’s so difficult to reason with some people. They can’t really give a reason for what they are saying or believing, so they attack one and try to belittle one.
The resistance to lockdown beggars belief. The idea that one’s personal freedom to do exactly what one likes even when the aliens are landing is crazy.
The Mail on Sunday understands that the Prime Minister intends to extend opening hours until 11pm when the second national lockdown ends on December 2. While last orders will still be called at 10pm, people will get an extra hour to finish drinks and meals. The 10pm curfew was widely criticised after its introduction in September and No 10 is determined to show it can both listen to its backbenchers and learn lessons when measures are unsuccessful. The proposal has widespread support. One Minister said: ‘10pm last orders and being allowed to stay longer sounds eminently sensible.’ Source.
At a simultaneous rally in San Clemente, Calif., demonstrators were seen gathered around a fire, with members of the crowd tossing protective face coverings into the flames. “Burn that mask! Burn that mask!” crowd members were heard shouting. The protests came as California — like other states across the U.S. — grappled with a rise in confirmed cases of the coronavirus, as well as rises in hospitalizations and deaths. Source
The stupidity of wanting to socialize when it is socializing with others that is spreading the virus isn’t just stupid — it’s dangerous. And it can topple any country that won’t attend to the number of deaths and the ensuing long term health issues that will arrive as a consequence.
Extinction Level Events
This pandemic is the first of many to come. These pandemics will become faster and faster. Some will be less dangerous than others, and others will be more dangerous than the current one. The release of these viruses are the consequence of mankind not having immunity against viruses and bacteria that we have not previously come into contact with. As we invade Mother Nature, and as the climate changes, many that have been dormant (in the permafrost and elsewhere) will be released.
We also face many consequences of climate change — more methane being released into the air so that we can’t breathe, more and more powerful hurricanes and flooding, increased earthquakes, raging fires, drought, fresh water shortages, and more. There are some things that we won’t even be anticipating. We are moving into an entire new situation, and it’s not conducive to mankind’s survival.
Yet a great number of people see this information as conspiracies meant to remove their freedom from them.
Einstein was right, I guess. | https://medium.com/world-issues-politics-economics-and-more/human-stupidity-knows-no-end-said-einstein-9f9ba9fe6b6b | ['Tessa Schlesinger'] | 2020-11-22 14:55:20.521000+00:00 | ['Climate Change', 'Politics', 'Covid 19', 'Coronavirus', 'Civil Rights'] |
Things to Know About Hotel Lock Solutions and the Security Features behind it! | The lock and key system are undergoing a rare but exemplary shift from manual or mechanical to electronic. For hotel buildings, robust security is always a key concern. Several new technologies have made it possible to strengthen safety systems in the hotel.
Modern gadgets like locking systems are convenient, comfortable and guarantee a good guest experience for all. The multifarious hotel lock solutions are abundant in the market, and you should choose the right kind as per your requirement.
New security, scalability, and manageability standards have enabled installing brand-new lock systems at hotels. There are the touch-free ones, electronic access control systems, wireless locks, keyless locks and much more. You can also find them in various designs, finishes, and colors.
For the hotel owners, upgrading the lock system is a one in time investment. This is why selecting the right fit is of paramount importance. You have to sort out the options as we put together an overview of the various lock technologies suitable for hotels and guestrooms.
Hotel Door Lock Technology
Anything that goes beyond the mechanism of the traditional locks can incorporate the inclusion of modern technology. This technology authenticates the key, causes the hotel locks to open or close, has set methods to ensure key encoding and communication with the entire locking system.
Each option has its benefits and shortcomings. You can glance through this list of options and decide which is the best and why.
1. Magnetic Stripe Cards
The magic technology of Magnetic key cards shows a giant leap in progress. It is like a thin, plastic card, like a credit card with a magnetic stripe. The key card is encoded with the particular lock system.
When you swipe the card inside the lock, in the magnetic stripe reader on the particular guestroom door, you unlock it for a set period. This can be for a few minutes or several seconds. Like any other electronic hotel lock, this magnetic stripe reader comes with battery power supplies. The battery lasts somewhere between 12–18 months before you have to replace them.
It is single-use at their pain point, and it has been the common hotel industry locking system for many decades. The problem of demagnetization occurs frequently. Suppose you place this key card next to something with an electromagnetic field.
In that case, it may destroy the encoding instantly, and the key may get malfunction. Apart from this, you can affect the lock function with dirt, debris, or dust. You cannot reuse it. Having said that, the expenses have also become a recurring thing.
2. Mobile keys
There is a transition in the locking system, from being isolated to getting interconnected. Several chains of hotels are experimenting with mobile keys with direct access from smartphones.
The smartphone unlocking system is gaining popularity, given the solid security it offers. The hotels have their key service provider solution by making it less complex for all. This method is cost-effective, as you can download it with a free app.
3. Radio Frequency Identification
RFID is suitable for hotels since it guarantees robust security for all. You need to hold these cards near the lock, close to about a few inches. The lock is integrated with an RFID module that broadcasts signals over the modulated radio waves.
It prompts the range key cards to communicate encoded guest access information that is unique. The module then authenticates this encoded information of the key to unlock the door.
The design is created seamlessly to avoid common pain points of the magnetic stripe locking system. The hotel management can reuse the RFID keywords when needed, and the cards can be more costly. In the case of a power failure, there is no facility to open the RFID locks.
4. Biometric Fingerprint
A biometric face or fingerprint door lock for hotels is the ultimate option for security enhancement. It offers better security as only those personnel with access to it can use it.
It eliminates the need for keys, is user-friendly, and provides other long-term benefits. There is no risk of misplacing the keys, and the option is highly cost-effective. The fingerprint lock and key also add charm and beauty to the hotel doors. If some third-party intruder tries to access it, it sends an immediate warning signal to the authorities.
Expert Designers of Advanced Hotel Locking Systems
Logic Fusion has carved a niche reputation in the market as one of the reputable manufacturers of the latest locking systems. They design biometric & access controls like fingerprint devices, face biometric devices, cloud-based and multi-door access, stand-alone access controls, and much more.
The professionals devise new solutions that fit every business requirement. They implement solutions across various market segments and are quite upfront with their technological inventions. | https://medium.com/@logicfusion/things-to-know-about-hotel-lock-solutions-and-the-security-features-behind-it-fb86111e575b | ['Logic Fusion'] | 2021-11-26 10:33:23.279000+00:00 | ['Hotel', 'Security', 'Features', 'Solutions', 'Locks'] |
Final Week of Season IV | Can you believe we’re in the last week of Season IV?
It seems that we opened it just yesterday, and now it’s almost over.
It’s is our last overview before the season’s final and we’ll take a look at all the progress you guys made during the event.
Race to the final prize
The final prize of the season hides on the 300 LVL of the season’s path.
And two of the Cutieneers are super close to the goal:
Capronicus — 7 levels away and Dragon Food — 24 levels away
We keep our fingers crossed that both will get their hands on the final Cutie.
Meanwhile, the season’s top looks like this:
Capronicus Dragon Food SoulSoup PhadeOut Spigfun Simonstown DemrightNow Tarantino Bongman Sayembara
There are usually surprises right at the end of the season, so we can’t wait to see what the final score will look like.
Heroes of Season IV
In the last couple of weeks, three more orks joined the game.
Three lucky owners are:
Congratulations on getting a war boss on your side!
Now we have five greenskins in total.
A new warlord has joined the game since the start of December.
It belongs to the player who is extremely lucky with the warlord raid boss. It’s the fourth boss token he got from this raid, and we are shocked.
Congratulations to PhadeOut!
In total, there are now seven warlords in the game.
Things are even more excited among bandits. Ten new ones joined the game in December.
There are already fifty of them in the game.
Surprisingly, ten more raiders joined the armies of Cutieland. That’s a lot in just two weeks.
Now there are thirty of them in the game.
Brigand knights remain very rare. Only two new ones have joined the game in December.
It’s exciting to see how more and more heroes join the game as the season comes to a close.
We hope you will get your hand on them all!
Good luck, Cutieneers. | https://medium.com/blockchain-cuties/final-week-of-season-iv-ce92fd21cbc4 | ['Blockchain Cuties'] | 2020-12-18 15:09:26.717000+00:00 | ['Games', 'Blockchain Game', 'Dapps', 'Blockchain Gaming', 'Gaming'] |
XEND FINANCE’S SMART CONTRACT AUDIT HAS BEEN SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED BY CERTIK | CertiK is a leading blockchain based security platform which analyzes and monitors blockchain protocols and DeFi projects for bugs and weaknesses. CertiK combines its patented Formal Verification technology with best-in-class cybersecurity experts to deliver end-to-end security services.
Backed by Binance Labs and founded by professors from Yale and Columbia Universities, CertiK has rapidly become the leading blockchain security service provider, delivering state-of-the-art cybersecurity solutions to some of the largest blockchain projects across all major protocols.
The growth of the DeFi economy seems to have attracted an unwanted entity — hackers. Over the past few months, there have been several attacks on DeFi platforms, draining millions of dollars of user funds. Such attacks are not only detrimental for the platform under attack, but to the entire DeFi industry at large.
At Xend Finance, we are extremely careful about safeguarding the funds that users deposit on our platform through smart contracts. That is why we chose CertiK, the best in the business, to rigorously test our smart contracts and provide the best possible security to our users.
On successful completion of the audit, CertiK found Xend Finance’s smart contracts to be technically sound, and devoid of any issues or bugs which hackers might utilize to steal away users’ funds. Credit unions and cooperatives worldwide can now channel capital into savings and earn higher interest in stable currencies through Xend Finance’s DeFi platform, without worrying about the safety of their funds.
Xend Finance’s Founder/CEO Aronu Ugochukwu said, “We are determined to grow into a reliable and trustworthy name in the DeFi industry. Guaranteeing fool-proof security to user funds is essential to fulfilling our vision. We’re glad that CertiK has given our smart contracts the green flag when it comes to platform security.”
Read the full audit report here: https://files.xend.finance/Audit-Report-By-Certik | https://medium.com/xendfinance/xend-finances-smart-contract-audit-has-been-successfully-completed-by-certik-20eb6e159569 | ['Abafor Chima'] | 2021-02-26 18:31:23.430000+00:00 | ['Audit', 'Certik', 'Defi', 'Xend Finance', 'Smart Contract'] |
A 37-Year-Old With A Black Belt Goes Speed Dating | Photo via Unsplash
HER: Hi! My name is Tina, I’m 34, and I’m a nurse. What do you do?
HIM: I do Karate.
HER: Anything else?
HIM: Do you really need to hear anything else? | https://medium.com/slackjaw/a-37-year-old-with-a-black-belt-goes-speed-dating-798ddf3cb455 | ['Chris Aileo'] | 2020-06-08 12:06:00.974000+00:00 | ['Karate', 'Dating', 'Satire', 'Martial Arts', 'Humor'] |
On the Automation of Time Series Forecasting Models: Technical and Organizational Considerations. | In this post I will go over the technical aspects of automatic forecast generation, as well as some of the organizational considerations that will arise when deciding to go with an automatic forecast generating system.
Automated times series forecasting as an exercise in model selection:
As I said earlier, in many fields, including my field of retail demand forecasting, most commercial forecasting packages do perform automatic forecast generation. Several open source packages do so as well, most notably Rob Hyndman’s auto.arima() (ARIMA) and ETS() (exponential smoothing) functions from the open source Forecast package in R. There’s also a Python implementation of auto.arima called Pyramid, and several other python packages are in the works.
Both the commercial products and the open source packages that I mentioned work based on the idea of using information criteria to choose the best forecasting model: You fit a bunch of models, and then select the model with the lowest AIC, BIC, AICc, etc….(typically this is done in lieu of out of sample validation — see this presentation for details).
An example of the AIC and BIC selecting the “true” model of our data: We generate a data set using a 6th order polynomial with Gaussian noise, we then notice that both the AIC and BIC are at there lowest for the polynomial regression that is of order 6, i.e. they allowed to select the true model, even if polynomials of order 8 and 9 gives us lower RMSE.
There is however a major caveat: all of these methods work within a single family of models. They choose the best possible model amongst a set of ARIMA models, or the best possible model amongst a set of exponential smoothing models, etc…
It is much more challenging to do so if you want to choose from different families of models, for example if you want to choose the best model from ARIMA, Exponential smoothing and the Theta method. In theory, you can do so in the same way that you do within a single family of models, i.e. by using information criteria. However in practice, you need to calculate the AIC or BIC in exactly the same way for all models considered, and that is a significant challenge. It might be better to use time series cross-validation, or out of sample validation, instead of information criteria, but that will be much more computationally intensive (and tedious to code), not to mention the question of which suitable forecast horizon to cross-validate against.
The “One model to rule them all” approach:
Facebook’s Prophet package also makes it possible to automate forecast generation based on General Additive Models (See here for details). However Prophet fits only one single model, albeit a very flexible model with many parameters. Prophet’s implicit assumption is that a GAM is the “One model to rule them all”, which might not be theoretically justified but is very pragmatic and useful for real world scenarios. More specifically, the basic assumption underlying the prophet model is that most useful real world time series do not contain any structure beyond trend, seasonality, and causal/holiday effects, and we don’t gain much by trying to mine them for complex auto-correlations the way a non-trivial ARIMA model does. Besides making it easy to strike a balance between automation and flexibility, the trend + seasonality + causal effects approach to Prophet makes it very convenient for communicating results to non-technical or scientific people (If you are a student or a beginner in the field, brace yourself: Haggling with business over the validity of your forecasts will consume a significant portion of your day. Go get your soft skills brushed up while you are at it).
The Facebook Prophet API makes it very easy to communicate the results of a forecast to business stake holders, compared to say, explaining what and ARIMA(2,1,2) model does.
One might ask: But isn’t that what Triple Exponential Smoothing (Holt-Winters) does? Fit a trend component and a seasonal component and leave it at that? Are we just trying to use a Facebook API for hype purposes? Not quite. Prophet is somewhat more sophisticated than Holt-Winters in that regard: It can model break points in the trend, and multiple seasonalities (e.g. for example daily and monthly peaks in a cusotmer time series). It can also handle causal events very well, which HW can’t (You would have to add the causal effects as some sort or post-processing step). Part of Prophets felxibility comes from the fact that it is not “just” a GAM model. Under the hood, there is a lot of Bayesian heavy lifting going on, including in the causal modeling part.
The No Free Lunch Theorem, the time series forecasting edition (sort of):
Presumably, one of the main reasons you want to do automated time series forecasting, is because you want to forecast multiple time series, too many to analyze manually (The tool my team uses generates millions of forecasts daily — one for each of our product/location combinations). Therefore your automated forecasting procedure must be able to fit to different types of time series with different business scenarios. In the general ML case, there is a theoretical result called the No Free Lunch Theorem: There is no such thing as a “supervised ML model to rule them all”, one that can generate the best out of sample predictions without having to make any assumptions about the structure of the data set. So if you’re going to throw a generic ML model, say a feed forward neural network, at your problem space, and hope that it will work for every possible data configuration that can occur, you will also have to accept that sometimes there will be a model that performs better than the one you ended up with. It is the price you pay for having one generic model for everything, hence “no free lunch”.
Something similar happens with time series models: You need to keep in mind that an automated forecasting approach is never going to find the absolute best model for each and every single time series — it is going to give a reasonably good model on average over all the time series, but it is still possible that some of those time series could have better models than the ones selected by the automated method.
See this post for an example of this. To put it simply, if you are going to go with automated forecasting — you will have to occasionally tolerate “good enough” forecasts instead of the best possible forecasts for each time series. That is the price you pay for flexibility and robustness.
In this case, manually selecting higher order ARIMA parameters — i.e with higher AIC and BIC — gives better out of sample forecasts than the one automatically by auto.arima(), but the one selected using the lowest AIC and BIC is still pretty close to the ground truth, compared to, say, a non-seasonal model (seasonality and trend were not passed in any way to auto.arima(), it figured that out on its own).
ML Based forecasting - things get a lot more complicated, yet paradoxically simplified:
As long as you stick to statistical methods for time series, automatic forecasting remains, if not an easy problem, at least an approachable one.The problem amounts to a statistical model selection question (Or a curve fitting exercise in the case of FB Prophet), which has some solid theoretical foundations and is discussed and explored in several graduate level text books.
If you are planning on using ML based forecasting models, then the issue becomes a case of the more general problem of auto-ML (automated machine learning). Both the academic literature and the technology are not as mature when it comes to the question of hyper-parameter tuning and auto-ML as it applies to time series forecasting (as always, NLP and Computer vision get all the spotlight and attention first…). There are some interesting auto-ML and Bayesian Optimization tools which can be used for the task, as well as a couple of commercial products (e.g. Google Vizier), but there are still many open questions regarding Bayesian Optimization and Transfer Learning in the time series case. | https://towardsdatascience.com/on-the-automation-of-time-series-forecasting-models-technical-and-organizational-considerations-286db3120c8e | ['Skander Hannachi'] | 2019-12-19 22:41:11.507000+00:00 | ['Demand Forecasting', 'Data Science', 'Deep Learning', 'Machine Learning', 'Time Series Forecasting'] |
My Year 2020 in Business — Leaving a 9 to 5 and Starting an Academy | 1. Timing
An idea can be amazing in and of itself, but when launched at the wrong time, it may seem wrong. After facing the initial stumbling block starting my academy in January, I first thought that the entire idea of an online academy could just not work. But some months down the line, the difference in what worked and what did not was my undivided availability (and the fact that most people had accepted the possibility of online learning due to COVID).
In January 2020, this academy would not have worked. This has taught me that sometimes, failed ventures are not necessarily bad ideas. A simple tweak in timing, place and several other variables could make that idea work.
2. The Gift of Trying Out
At the time the idea of this Canva course started taking root in my mind, I didn’t have a model to look at and get inspired by. So, I couldn’t tell if it was going to work or make sense. The best I had seen anywhere online were one-day or two-day classes teaching people about Canva. None of them even got up to a week. I had never seen anyone take training people on how to design with Canva as seriously as I wanted to. But there I was, planning a 21-day training and coaching program on how to design with Canva. I also knew that there were hardly any Canva courses being hosted via Zoom or Google Meet. So, I was looking at intensive-intensive.
The result? People instantly bought into the idea. And although, the first set of students we trained and graduated got in for free, it gave me an insight into realizing that this was something people needed. Many people had paid money to others before but had gotten no improvement. What they needed wasn’t just learning how to use Canva; it was being guided to actually getting results they wanted to get with it.
3. Structure
I am a sucker for structure. I almost cannot function effectively without it. So, when I was starting Canva Growth Program 2.0, the first thing on my mind was to set up a structure. Who does what? When? How? What guidelines do we work or live by?
I have been lucky with people wanting to volunteer with me for different brands I build (and I do not take this for granted one bit). A couple of people reached out to me and volunteered to work with the academy. I decided on the most important things I needed help with (Customer Service and Social Media Management) and got two people onboard.
Faith Akwaugo Anyaoha had volunteered right from the first batch to help me with correcting designs. Favour Emmanuel came in the second batch and volunteered as the work increased. Deborah Olugbade joined in the third batch. All of them stayed up to the fourth batch.
This is not all there is we have to do with structure, however. But having a mind of structure has proven to be helpful because even when I feel like giving up, there is always a structure that keeps us going.
4. Business & Customer Service
When people started paying for the Canva Growth Program, I told myself that I wasn’t going to treat my academy as an ordinary online class or a hobby I was involved in pending the time I got a new job. I was going to treat it like an actual business.
I saw everyone who paid for the course as a client/customer, rather than as a student (I still have a problem calling them students). Seeing them as clients made me keen on ensuring that we gave them the best experience they could get. Whenever someone registers to join the academy, it is no longer business as usual for me. I am huge on customer service because I know how it makes me feel so I had to make sure that I extended the same hand of exceptional service that I expected to people who were buying from me.
My customer service officer, Tolulope Oyejinmi, bought into the vision instantly and knows how to pick the slack perfectly. Everyone who has been through the academy knows Tolulope and can attest to her exceptional customer service ability. Hiring Tolulope was actually one of the best decisions I made for my business.
5. New People, New Challenges
A rather intriguing thing I have learnt building the academy is that because we just started, there would be some unplanned challenges we would have to face. Even though we were big on giving people the best customer experience, it always broke me when a very few people brought up issues we hadn’t properly anticipated.
For instance, one participant got her phone damaged a few days into the program and couldn’t get back until some days to the end (after their second project had been submitted). According to the rules of the program, you are evicted from the program when you miss up to seven days and also miss two projects. This is because it tells on the cumulative score of the participant and we normally do not want to graduate people whose skill and consistency we will not be able to vouch for. By the time she got back, it was a challenge deciding what to do, especially as she had informed us when her phone got damaged.
I had, prior to that time, not expected such a problem to exist so it wasn’t in the plan. The customer sent in a message expressing how bad she felt that she was unable to graduate. And even though it wasn’t our fault, we decided to give her a 100% scholarship to join the next batch. Facing this, though, equipped me to solve the problem when it did come up again (and it did in the next batch).
That is one out of a number. But I have taken feedback from customers and used them to further build on our structure and make the process better for future customers. I am fast learning that running a business is about solving problems beyond the general problem your business is set up to solve. I believe this has also helped me to be more patient with other business owners because customers often have problems they expect to be solved, even if it is not your fault.
I like to think we are doing well (strictly based on data we’ve gotten from graduands) but I will not dispute that we can still do much better.
6. Focus
In our second or third month, my initial idea of wanting the academy to be a place of different courses and instructors came up again. I put a word out on all my social media platforms and got a number of instructor applications. But on a more introspective level, I had to sincerely come to terms with the fact that we could not afford to grow bigger than we were at the time.
I want us to grow really big because I am a natural big dreamer but I am also a realistic person. I have learnt to be realistic about what we can afford to handle; from initiatives to the number of students. I paused on expanding to other numerous courses because I knew that we were, at the time, not well built for that. It helped to focus.
In January, we are launching another course — the Content Creation & Marketing Course — and relaunching the Canva Growth Program. Having gained some form of stability with the latter, it is easier for us to bring in another course. We have more courses in consideration but I want us to grow as we take root and build capacity.
7. Personal Brand & Corporate Impact
I have been an advocate of building your personal brand but it was only this year I experienced firsthand how much effect having a strong and somewhat popular personal brand could have on your business. We moved through our first six months organically. And this was a whole lot pushing through.
My best part of doing what I do is getting testimonials from people who have enrolled without forcing them to, and also getting them to come back as repeating customers. It feels really amazing to be a part of people’s business, personal brand and career progress. We’ve had people release their ebooks after a long time of pushing it because they couldn’t do it themselves before. We have people who have started making money because of this skill they have now gotten. Someone recently shared about how she got a job because she knew how to design using Canva. The testimonials are a whole lot and make me feel like we are really solving a need and helping people achieve their goals.
8. Financials & Numbers
A challenge you face as you grow and make more money is keeping your expenses low. There are a number of things we have to pay for now that we weren’t paying for when we didn’t get so much. This includes tools, manpower, data and airtime, workspace (because it is more effective for me to do some work outside of my comfort zone), etc. When you do not have proper bookkeeping, you might be deceived into thinking you’re making so much money. But you may be making money but not the right kind of profit. Bad record-keeping is a trap.
Beyond financials, I am learning to take numbers and statistics more seriously. I am naturally not a numbers person. Numbers overwhelm me and give me a headache. You probably know this if you have read the memoir I released in January 2020; 25 for 25 — A Memoir. But this isn’t about what I like. It is about what is important.
9. Follow-Up
I hate following up on people but running my academy has taught me that it is something I cannot do without. About 80% of the people I have followed up with have ended up enrolling with us. I read that a person has to see your advert up to 7 times before deciding to buy. So, I try to follow up up to 7 times before deciding to let someone go. It is not something I enjoy doing but you may permanently lose a customer if you fail to follow up that third or fourth time.
10. Support Systems
Yes, you need support systems. I have a ton of people who regularly send me comments that keep me going. I also have very few friends who call me and ask me questions and give me ideas on how to do things better. There are also people who refer me to their friends and families and that means a whole lot. Sometimes, it gets mentally overwhelming. In early December, for instance, I was struggling to keep up with business-personal life. I had thought leaving my 9 to 5 might mean more time for me. I was wrong. I am still as occupied as ever.
My boyfriend, Bukayo, has been a thorough support system. On many days, I still feel like this might fail. On many days, I feel like nobody will pay because they do not know me. Someone recently made me feel like I was beautifully set up for failure.
But having Bukayo makes the journey a lot easier. He is literally always there; from helping me look through design flyers to giving advice about an unclear decision I want to take to helping me recently set up my Facebook business account to letting me know I will do fine. I honestly could not have asked for anything better.
Recently we were together and he must have noticed a strain of paranoia in my mind. Looking into my eyes, he mildly said, “Baby, you know we will make a lot of mistakes, right? We will make a lot of mistakes but we will learn from them”.
And I have held on to that ever since. Perhaps it’s too early to say we’ve been doing a great job, but I do know that I am looking forward to growing and learning every step of the way. | https://medium.com/@orifunkelawal/my-year-2020-in-business-leaving-a-9-to-5-and-starting-an-online-academy-3766a5ff6544 | ['Orifunke Lawal'] | 2020-12-28 10:08:06.954000+00:00 | ['Yearly Review', 'Business Growth', 'Business Development', 'Business Lessons', 'Academy'] |
Obligatory Anti-Communism Promise | I pledge
an earnest agreement
allegiance
devotion and loyalty
to the flag
the fabric, the history, or the symbolism?
of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One Nation, under God
who’s God and which one?
indivisible
ignoring the Civil War?
with liberty
freedom from undue restrictions
and justice
fairness in the way people are treated
for all.
every person.
Additional thoughts I am pondering… “The ugly history of the Pledge of Alliance and why it matters.” | https://medium.com/@teresaenglish/obligatory-anti-communism-promise-934a916a8883 | ['Teresa English'] | 2020-12-07 03:30:10.870000+00:00 | ['America', 'Patriotism', 'Politics', 'Flags', 'American History'] |
React state batch updating - reduce re-renders | React State Batch Update
Changing the state and how it affects the component renders
Photo by Christina Branco on Unsplash
In both hooks and class components, we have several ways to construct and alter the component’s state. We change the state by calling setState or using useState . These changes cause parts of the component to re-render, and possibly to its children.
An interesting mechanism of React, which is not mentioned much, is the state batch updating. Instead of one by one, React does batch updates, reducing the number of component renders.
In this article, we will examine how and when this happens, using examples.
Class components state
Using class components we have the component’s single state object, which we usually update using a single this.setState command. Take this for example.
Hooks state
However, when using hooks, the situation is more complex.
Using useState we have several options to construct the state of the component.
Use a single state object, and work with it just like the previous class component example.
Split the state into singular properties.
Or divide the state into several state variables related to each other.
Basically the three options
When refactoring class component into hooks…
Since the release of hooks with React 16.8, there has been a heated debate in the React community regarding their use vs the old-school class components.
When refactoring a class-based component into hook functional component, there are all sorts of things to consider, one of them is how to construct the state.
“We recommend to split state into multiple state variables based on which values tend to change together”, according to React regarding to Hooks.
Recently a co-worker asked me, how to properly migrate such class component into a hooks function component, and how to divide its new state.
My first answer, as recommended by React, was similar to the above. But actually, I did not feel comfortable with this answer.
How can we know in advance which variables tend to change together? And besides that, a future feature may force us to change them apart, and consequently build the state differently.
Finally, I suggested him, divide the state into separate individual variables.
His next and obvious question was, “When we have a state with discrete variables, we will have to change them separately and thus cause unnecessary re-renders. Wouldn’t it impair the performance of the application?”.
React batch updating
“React may batch multiple setState() calls into a single update for performance”, according to React’s documentation.
Batch updating is a React’s interesting feature, that combines state updates.
The main idea is that no matter how many setState calls you make inside a React event handler or synchronous lifecycle method, it will be batched into a single update. That is only one single re-render will eventually happen.
This functionality is relevant for both hooks and regular class components, and its purpose is to prevent unnecessary rendering.
“Currently (React 16 and earlier), only updates inside React event handlers are batched by default” , according to Dan Abramov.
Batch update example
Take a look at the next example.
A function component, which at the click of its button, changes the three individual states of the component one after the other.
On contrary to what one might think, on click, the component renders only once, although the three states change separately.
This is possible thanks to batch updating. | https://medium.com/swlh/react-state-batch-update-b1b61bd28cd2 | ['Nitai Aharoni'] | 2020-08-12 09:57:20.430000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Front End Development', 'Performance', 'React', 'React Native'] |
Clube iFood — Um clube para os amantes de food delivery | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/ifood-tech/clube-ifood-um-clube-para-os-amantes-de-delivery-food-a23a96b352ca | ['Nathalia Dourado'] | 2020-12-17 18:34:21.791000+00:00 | ['Craft', 'Research', 'Visual Design', 'Graphic Design', 'Digital Design'] |
A BOAT Journey | An effective and cheerful life can’t be envisioned without making any excursion during holidays. Therefore, with the end goal of making life effective and productive one should make any travel during one’s days off. An Excursion intends to move between various places alone or with a gathering. An excursion by boat intends to move between various places by boat. Bangladesh is a place that is known for waterways, trenches, haors, and bells. So, it is extremely simple, modest, and agreeable to make an excursion by boat in our nation. It is entirely charming.
Photo by Ian Badenhorst on Unsplash
Time and event: It was the month ‘Ashar’. Our assessment was over. Our school was closed. The stormy season had recently set in. My dad requested that I go to my uncle’s home which is around 40 km. away from our home. The house is on the opposite side of the Padma. In this way, I got an opportunity to make an excursion by boat. Three companions went along with me.
Depiction: We recruited a little excellent boat. It had two physically fit boatmen who were carefree leaning and happy. We began from our waterway ghat in the first part of the day at 7 am on December 20, 2019. The sky was clear and the climate was fine. The waterway was quiet. From the outset, the boatmen began paddling. Next, they set sail. The boatmen started to sing “Bhatiali” songs. The melodies enchanted me.
Photo by Huseyin OZBEKAR on Unsplash
Scene: I delighted in the view on either bank of the river. Our boat was hitting the dance floor with little waves. We saw many boats employing here and there in the stream. We saw numerous young men and young ladies washing and swimming in the stream. we saw numerous anglers fishing in the profound stream and the ranchers reaping in the paddy fields. We additionally discovered numerous boats, liners and dispatches handling across the waterway.
Objective: We arrived at my uncle’s home at 2 p.m. Uncle, auntie and cousins happily got us. We had a rich lunch there.
Night scene: In the wake of taking a rest, we began for our home again at 4 p.m. at the point when we came to approach our stream ghat, the sun was setting. The water of the waterway likewise turned red. The view was very charming. It was dull when we arrived home.
Conclusion: A venture by boat is quite enjoyable. It eliminates the dreariness of works and studies. I accomplished/picked up new insight and new knowledge. I will always remember this glad excursion in my life. So, every understudy or each individual should make an excursion by boat once per year on siestas.
An Excursion BY BOAT Arrangement 2 :
The structure on An Excursion By Boat: There are various kinds of excursions in our nation. I like most an excursion by boat. No other excursion can be more charming than an excursion by boat. Whoever searches for rest and enjoyment should make an excursion by boat.
Time and event: During the last Pre-winter get-away my dad requested that I go to my sister’s home at Daudkandi, 20 miles from our home. So,I got an opportunity to make an excursion by boat. Two different companions went along with me.
Depiction of the excursion: We employed a fine boat. We began our excursion from Homna ghat at 10 a.m. There were two boatmen. The sky was clear. The stream was quiet and full to the edge. From the start, the boatmen handled the boat with paddles. At the point when the breeze was favourable, they headed out. Before long the boat started to move quickly. There were little waves in the waterway. The boat started to hit the dance floor with the waves. The boatmen were singing. It was a ‘Bhatiali’ tune. It filled us with happiness.
View delighted in: We appreciated the landscape of the stream. We saw numerous boats of all shapes and sizes employing all over. We saw a few liners and engine snacks utilizing through the stream. Anglers were getting fish in the waterway. Young men and young ladies were swimming. Ladies were returning home with containers loaded up with water. There were fields on the two sides of the waterway. Steers were touching there.
Photo by Gláuber Sampaio on Unsplash
Energizing minutes: Unpleasant climate makes an excursion by boat hazardous. Solid breezes and tempests regularly demonstrate hazardously. I saw a horrible sight of the waterway. at the point when I was crossing by boat. Inside a brief timeframe, a tempest arose and the waterway turned savage. There were gigantic waves and a solid breeze. The boat was going to invert. I got apprehensive. Be that as it may, the accomplished boatmen halted and attached the boat with solid ropes to a post. Be that as it may, the
storm was throughout inside a brief timeframe and we began once more. Still, I can’t yet thank the aptitude of the boatmen.
Objective: At around 4 p.m.we arrived at the ghat of my sister’s home. My sister was extremely happy to see us. She got us genially. In this manner, our excursion concluded.
End: It is one of the most critical excursions in my life. There was a great deal of joy just as a horrendous encounter of a tempest in the excursion. Both the positive and negative parts of the excursion got dazzled at the forefront of my thoughts until the end of time | https://medium.com/@jahidulislamhemal21/a-boat-journey-4b19fe8c86d0 | ['Jahidul Islam Hemal'] | 2020-12-22 20:40:05.695000+00:00 | ['Journalism', 'Journey', 'Boats', 'Storytelling', 'Medium Brasil'] |
My Grandma’s Story (할머니의 이야기) | 정자동 4번 출구. Jeongja Station Exit 4.
The subway started slowing down. I got up, took out my headphones, and made my way towards the sliding doors. My grandma had told me to meet her at Jeongja Station-she would be waiting there when I came out from the 4th exit. As I rode up the escalator, the cool underground air was replaced by a hot July breeze that warmed me up. I was rocking my bright red Ovechkin jersey shirt and the black shorts I wear with everything. Out in the sun, I walked into a circular plaza that had a metallic statue in the center and glass office buildings in the backdrop. Around the plaza were trees and benches for a passerby to rest and chat. My grandma was sitting on a nearby wooden bench under the shade of a couple of trees in full summer green. She looked up and caught my eye, smiling.
I spent the summer of 2019 in Korea, part of it on my own. I experienced a lot of firsts that season, but the most special first was spending time with my grandma one-on-one. I hadn’t seen her in seven years: I had just finished my freshman year in college and hadn’t seen her since middle school. I was also now old enough to appreciate the candid, deeper conversations you can have with someone when it’s just the two of you. I’m glad I saw her then. My grandma passed away last April in 2020. Due to COVID, I didn’t get to see her before she passed and only my dad made it to her funeral. Luckily, that summer I got to hear her tell me stories that she must have wanted to tell me all of my life. She was a fighter and an amazing woman who loved the Lord with all of her heart and strength. I think her story speaks for itself.
I.
My grandma was born and raised in Andong, South Korea, a rural part of Korea with a distinct dialect and cultural history. She learned to face obstacles from her childhood. She grew up with a single mom after her dad passed away early. When she was a teenager, she was determined to go to high school. Girls in the 1950s were discouraged from going to school, but my grandma knew the importance of an education. She talked with whoever needed convincing and she got her education. After that, I don’t remember much more of what she told me about her youth except that not much got in the way of doing what mattered to her.
Luckily, that summer I got to hear her tell me stories that she must have wanted to tell me all of my life.
Later, she married my grandpa and had three children: my aunt, dad, and uncle. My grandma was a devout Christian, but my grandpa wasn’t Christian at all-they had married on the condition that he would become Christian. This tension caused fights on Sunday mornings about whether my grandpa and the kids would go to church, fights my dad doesn’t remember too fondly. Nevertheless, my grandma faithfully worshipped God and parented. Well, I guess that depends on your definition of “faithfully parented.”
My grandma was very active and sometimes unpredictable. One time, my dad came home from school and called for my grandma. She didn’t respond, so he looked all around the apartment for her. He eventually found a small slip of paper on the kitchen table that read, “I went on a hiking trip with my friends. I prepared a few side dishes and soups in the fridge and I’ll be back in a few days. Spend the weekend well!” As I said, my grandma was consistently active and healthy: she used to play tennis, always enjoyed a scenic hike, and was the fastest walker I ever knew. Hiking trips were normal, but not surprise ones. This trip became the first of a few spontaneous get-aways. It was her way of getting relief from the stress of home life. She thought she needed it, so she took time off. Not much could stop my grandma from what she wanted. My dad told me this was no amusement then, but he tells the story with a chuckle.
II.
My grandma eventually moved the family to Seoul for her children’s education. They got an apartment in Gangnam and began attending 소망교회 (Somang Presbyterian Church). On a Sunday during that summer, I met my grandma there and listened to her tell me how she set up my dad and mom at this church.
At the time, my grandma had a close friend at the church who was my mom’s aunt. They were in the pews and chatting away after service one day. It turned out my grandma had a single son and her friend had a single niece. What a perfect match!
My dad didn’t think so when my grandma came home with a random girl’s number. At first he refused, but her persistence eventually wore him down. “I caught him around Christmas season,” my grandma told me with a chuckle. My dad wasn’t sure after the first date, but my grandma pushed him to take my mom on a couple more dates out of courtesy. The rest was history.
The first time my grandma met my mom and dad together was at a Korean-Chinese restaurant. If you know the Korean Chinese cuisine, you know there are lots of good stuff: 짜장면 (ja-jang-myeon), 짬뽕 (jjam-ppong), 탕수육 (tang-su-yuk), 유산슬 (yu-san-seul), 군만두 (goon-man-du)-the whole fix. My grandma said she ordered it all and my mom ate it all (okay, maybe not everything, but enough to impress). “Your mom had to have had a stomach ache that night,” my grandma told me, almost giggling, “but when I asked your dad, he said she was fine!” My grandma had her own little fun that night and got to test that her would-be daughter-in-law was vibrantly healthy.
III.
My dad decided to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota a few years after my parents got married. No one in either of their families had lived in the U.S. before. My grandma dutifully sent off her eldest son, daughter-in-law, and only grandchild at the time (my older sister Yoojin was eighteen months old). When I was born, my grandma visited to help out and see her first grandson.
Even if you know nothing else about Minnesota, you probably know that it’s cold (and I was born in December, so it was COLD). My grandma remembered pushing my sister on the swings in the middle of winter. My grandma also remembered thinking she was going to die from the cold while my sister was just chillin’ and falling asleep (my sister loved the swings). In her short three-week visit, my grandma also found a church group to meet with and a library to frequent regularly because, why not?
My grandma told me she was still so grateful for this student-he’s one of those people in life you’re so thankful for but you’ll never get to see again to express your gratitude.
One time, my mom was busy and my dad was at school, so my grandma was tasked with the mission of picking up my sister from preschool. She was a Korean woman in her 60s making her way through walls of shoveled snow without a cellphone or much English. She got lost. She panicked and wondered how long my sister would be waiting in the cold. Luckily, she saw a student who was walking by in a hurry, and she called him down and asked, “Could you help me find this preschool?” Even though he seemed late, he took the time to help her through her broken English. My grandma told me she was still so grateful for this student-he’s one of those people in life you’re so thankful for but you’ll never get to see again to express your gratitude. She finally found the preschool, “And guess where I saw your sister when I got there?” my grandma asked me. “Riding on the swings! Hahaha,” she said as she broke out laughing.
IV.
My grandma visited us two more times in Virginia, and I saw her in Korea a total of six times. That’s only nine times we ever met. When my grandpa passed away from cancer during my senior year in high school, I realized how much we had missed from each other’s lives, especially our spiritual lives.
My grandma believed her own cancer was a blessing in disguise. She told me she used to pride herself on her health, which she worked hard to maintain. To her, everyone else who had health problems was just not taking care of themselves. Even my grandpa had had bad habits with drinking and smoking (and coffee) that, in part, must have led to his cancer. However, her point of view changed after she battled cancer herself.
One night after a round of chemo, she was on the hospital bed, tortured by the pain. She hated chemo because it sucked the life from her, hurt her, made her arms tingle, and destroyed her appetite. On this particular night, she was crying out to the Lord, pleading in anger, confusion, sorrow, and distress. “Why did you allow me to get this cancer? What did I do to deserve this?” Eventually, she felt God speak this message- Why didn’t you have compassion for those who were less healthy than you? Your health was my gift — my grace — and so is this. It wasn’t that she did anything to deserve her cancer, but it was that she hadn’t done anything to deserve her good health. This realization changed her, and she became thankful that God had allowed this cancer. Otherwise, she would have lived her entire life without a chance to fully understand God’s provision of health and his love for the sick and weak. God gave her the opportunity to care for her fellow hospital bedmates, and she took it with gratitude. God also strengthened her through her family and friends to continue praying and asking for healing too.
It wasn’t that she did anything to deserve her cancer, but it was that she hadn’t done anything to deserve her good health.
The last time I met with my grandma that summer ended up being the last time I would ever see her. We had dinner together and said our bye’s and 사랑해요’s (I love you’s). “I love you” is something my family says to each other at the end of phone calls, but I think that was the first time I had exchanged “I love you” with someone in my extended family. I then gave her a card I had prepared for her. She had had the same idea and handed me a letter she had written for me. I haven’t cried more times reading a letter than when I read (and re-read) this one. My tears were partly out of regret that I had just gotten to get closer with my grandma. The other part was knowing that she had enjoyed our times together as much as I did. She left me two Bible verses in the letter; the second one from Isaiah 41:10 was meant to be read “when I have hard and difficult times”:
So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
My grandma truly believed in God’s promises. And with everything she experienced in her life, she still had lots more love to share with me and my family. She was an absolutely amazing woman, and I can’t wait to see her again on the other side. | https://medium.com/@andrewjlee/my-grandmas-story-6572d869cd0a | ['Andrew Lee'] | 2020-12-27 06:00:01.874000+00:00 | ['Korea', 'Memoir', 'Cancer', 'Family', 'God'] |
iTalk Part-3: The Startup people | If you don’t know how to start a startup yet, check out this article to get an idea. If you want to know our story, you can always go through Part-1 of this blog series.
Coming back to the topic that we will cover this time, it’s about the people who are as responsible as you for the success in your startup. It is your “team”.
As Gary Vaynerchuk said, an idol for so many budding Entrepreneurs like us,
“Hiring is not the most important part; Firing is”.
It is easy to include people in your team, but it is difficult to tell them to leave when people stop working as efficiently as they used to do.
Here are a few key takeaways:
If two out of three people are working, convince the third person to work, otherwise, get rid of the third person. Because investors invest in a TEAM, not just in an idea or a plan (they are important too though). EXECUTION is the most important thing in a startup and Execution depends on the Team. Keep people who you REALLY TRUST. You need a team because you cannot do everything alone. Be very CLEAR ABOUT EQUITIES and be sure of who is working. Don’t underestimate the Power of LinkedIn. Leverage it to find your ideal team.
You improve only when you work, learn and adapt. No one learns without mistakes. :)
All the Best for your next Venture! Feel free to reach out to us anytime on any social platform.
Don’t forget to Follow us on Medium. | https://medium.com/zenithec-techware/italk-part-3-the-startup-people-928487ea462 | ['Amrita Mishra'] | 2020-12-11 23:03:52.744000+00:00 | ['Team Building', 'Startup Lessons', 'People Management', 'Startup Tips', 'Hiring For Startup'] |
Deux musées nous confient leur bilan 2020 et leurs perspectives 2021 | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/inside-smartapps/deux-mus%C3%A9es-fran%C3%A7ais-nous-t%C3%A9moignent-bilan-2020-perspectives-2021-75c4958ca5c1 | [] | 2020-12-18 16:11:06.893000+00:00 | ['France', 'Culture', 'Musées', 'Smartapps', 'Coronavirus'] |
Wordless | Wordless
Micropoetry about staying quiet
Photo by Javardh on Unsplash
the sun looks dark today, the sky is gray
my thoughts I let them be shapeless.
I don’t chisel them in the shape of moon and stars,
today when the noise is different I prefer to be wordless. | https://medium.com/scribe/wordless-87b596a58e1e | ['Priyanka Srivastava'] | 2020-11-22 20:47:26.157000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Peace', 'Solitude', 'Writing', 'Sadness'] |
Staff augmentation — selecting a partner and working well together | Are you looking for extra resources to bring your project to life? Need development support while you’re backfilling roles in your team? Looking for an expert in a particular language or development field? Here’s where staff augmentation can be highly effective, but it’s important to ensure that you’re going about it the right way.
Selecting the right software agency
There are a number of things to take into account when selecting the right staff augmentation partner for your company.
Assessing your needs
It seems obvious, but at the beginning, the main question to ask yourself is — ‘what does your company actually need?’ Digital projects come in a whole range of varieties, and when planning, it’s important to be as specific as possible, while bearing in mind that priorities and scope can change. Consider addressing as many of the following as possible in your original brief:
Outline of project
Platforms — iOS, Android, Cross-platform?
Initial planned budget
Target audience
Stage of creation — i.e. an MVP, a new element or an iteration of an existing project, something else?
Languages — are you already working in a given development language? Do you have a specific language in mind that you would like to use?
What are your company’s current resources? In light of the above, what existing resources are you looking to allocate to your project? What outstanding resources do you think you are still likely to need?
Finally, do you need to feel you need to set up a temporary software division for this project, or might you actually need more permanent staff?
2. Selecting your partner — experience
Once you’ve made a shortlist of potential partners (- we would recommend having five that you will thoroughly check), it is worth beginning by evaluating their portfolio. It’s important to pay close attention to both the types of projects undertaken, and the types of clients, looking for some similarities with your own work. Read LinkedIn articles, Clutch and Behance reviews, Glassdoor feedback and any other platforms that are relevant to the project that you’re undertaking.
You’re looking for a partner that you can rely on, so it’s important to do as much research as possible. If you have the contact details of a prospective agency’s past clients, do reach out to them directly if you think it could be useful.
3. Selecting your partner — technical expertise
Equally important as past experience, is technical expertise. Look back on the brief that you created above, and check whether the agencies on your shortlist have the exact technical expertise that you’re looking for. If a particular development language is important to you, now is the time to check that your prospective partners are proficient in using it. It’s worth also asking questions about the other tools and communication platforms that each of the prospective agencies uses.
4. Selecting your partner — cultural fit
Ensuring that your prospective partner is the right cultural fit, is also a very important element of the selection process. Get to know each of your prospective partners in as much detail as possible. Here are some important things to take into consideration:
Is there a language barrier?
How will any potential difference in time zones affect your work?
What sort of communication tools and platforms do they use?
Do they provide regular updates?
4. Getting your project off to a good start — The on-boarding process
Once you have selected your staff augmentation partner, and they have agreed to work with you on your project, it is paramount that they are brought up to speed with work in an efficient manner. They need to have a full understanding of product, processes, tools and communication. It may be useful to appoint a Facilitator, who can be either somebody in your company, or in the partner agency — they can organize the onboarding process and ensure that everyone is on the same page. The process usually involves:
a kick-off meeting,
a scoping session,
knowledge transfer,
tools and process configuration,
setting cooperation standards in the project ,
implementing relevant elements of Scrum framework,
preparing documentation,
creating the definition of ‘done’ and confirming quality constrictions.
How we manage staff augmentation at 10Clouds
At 10Clouds, when we provide a full, dedicated team as part of staff augmentation, we assume to be using Scrum to manage development work.
Scrum gives us principles and practices that allow optimal performance and cooperation between all parties involved in any project. These include:
Delivering working, potentially releasable pieces of software often, and performing frequent inspections
and performing frequent inspections Adapting to changing requirements , to develop user or business needs, as well as improving the way we work, every sprint
, to develop user or business needs, as well as improving the way we work, every sprint Transparency in terms of collaboration , communication, understanding of the scope and mission behind the project
, communication, understanding of the scope and mission behind the project Focus on quality, in terms of continuously improving the development process within Scrum teams, as well as adopting company-wide best practises such as standard code reviews, unit tests, integration tests, Continuous Deployment/Continuous Delivery practices etc.
To manage work on a cross-team level we may adopt one of below approaches depending on your needs and the nature of your organization:
We tailor the communication approach, reporting and backlog management to standards We build a clear team structure with a small integration part which consists of Tech Lead, Scrum Master, QA specialist and Proxy Product Owner (if needed) to provide consistency. In case of component teams within the same project or feature teams within the same programme, we make sure that teams share a Tech Lead, Scrum Master, Proxy Product Owner or QA specialist. This ensures better communication and enables us to easily track dependencies between teams.
But what are the differences between the Staff Augmentation and a Managed Project?
If you would like to see in a nutshell how these processes vary, we have described them below, based on our experience of working in both:
Staff Augmentation
Scope and backlog management solely on client side
Team and agile process management solely on the client side. The client is responsible for utilising the developers’ time effectively;
10Clouds provides limited technical assistance for the team which includes setting up channels/tools and organising meeting rooms
Budget and timeline management is solely on the client side
Managed Project
Scope and backlog management are joint responsibilities for 10C Agile and 10C.
Prioritized Scope project types, with our 10Clouds Scrum Master providing support for the Product Owner on the client side.
For a fixed project type this responsibility is solely on 10Clouds’ side. In this case scope and backlog management is limited by constraints of the contract.
Project process is managed on 10Clouds’ side, with the client cooperating to ensure efficient work progress.
In general the project team is managed by 10Clouds with the client ensuring required collaboration with any resources on their side required for achieving project goals.
For 10C Agile and 10C Prioritized Scope project types, the budget and timeline management are a joint responsibility while 10Clouds constantly monitors those project parameters.
For fixed projects, the budget and timeline is managed by 10Clouds to ensure fulfilment of the contract.
A staff augmentation project in action
Example client: Emergent Tech (USA)
About the client: Emergent is a fintech company working on creating a gold-backed stable coin and a verified supply chain for trusted gold. The company sees an opportunity to elevate global commerce in emerging markets and is using cutting edge technology to solve these problems. Emergent has partnered with Trust Stamp for identity solutions and introduced the Responsible Gold™ Standard. In 2019, it cleared a number of regulatory approvals and introduced the G-Coin™ for both enterprise and retail.
Overview of the project: 10Clouds helped Emergent with extending it’s blockchain and mobile teams and worked on core elements of it’s wallet application.
Augmented team setup: 10Clouds provided a team of 6–9 people consisting of Python, ReactNative, ReactJS developers as well as QA and DevOps. Our team augmented existing development teams and collaborated closely with Product Owners and UX/UI designers on the client side. Apart from development work we were tasked with the organization of remote work and inter-team communication to ensure a seamless delivery of results.
Our challenge: The teams were distributed across the globe, with developers working in San Francisco, Warsaw and Hong Kong which provided a slight initial communication challenge. Moreover, complexity of the required solution architecture greatly limited the option for development teams in different timezones to work independently.
How we took it on: We used a range of tools and processes to obtain as seamless a collaboration and workflow as possible despite dependencies between work of teams in different timezones. Meanwhile we continuously worked on reducing the number of such dependencies. We dedicated as much time as possible during the overlap work hours of different time zones to investigate and solve encountered problems and share knowledge about recent changes and plans.
We used asynchronous daily status updates on Slack for all team members as well as a number of notifications for changes that might affect other team members (i.e. environment variables) to keep everyone in the loop. We held weekly backlog grooming and defect triaging meetings to make sure that a backlog of work was sufficiently refined and prioritized. We also held short team huddle meetings a few times a week to sync on current priorities and challenges.
Conclusion
Staff augmentation can save you money, give you more control and enable your business to scale faster. But the key is devoting some initial time and effort into ensuring that you select the right partner. Then, make sure that you have your onboarding process all sorted out so that your augmented team can get up to speed quickly.
We hope you find the above guidance on staff augmentation useful. Please feel free to get in touch with us if you would like to find out more.
Looking to work on a new digital a project? We can help. Just contact our friendly team on [email protected] and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. | https://medium.com/beautiful-code-smart-design-by-10clouds/staff-augmentation-selecting-a-partner-and-working-well-together-9eb0ed551e81 | [] | 2020-09-08 14:20:50.849000+00:00 | ['Staff Augmentation', 'Mobile App Development', 'Web Development', 'Design'] |
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