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Achieving successful separation | Separation is an important part of growing
In a world filled with change, it is often not the physical changes we find difficult but rather the emotional and psychological impacts of letting go of the way the world used to be and shifting to a new reality.
Kodak didn’t fail because it couldn’t make digital cameras — Kodak actually invented the digital camera, in 1975. The company failed because it was so emotionally tied to its identity as a chemical photographer that it couldn’t take advantage of its own innovation. It couldn’t let go of its old identity. This left a huge opportunity for others to fill.
The owners of Starbucks saw themselves only as sellers of coffee beans and coffee-making equipment. Before he could change this to create the global chain of coffee shops we know today, Howard Shultz literally had to buy the company from them.
Successful adaptation, both personally and in business, requires us to manage our psychological and emotional transitions.
These come in three stages the first of which is called Separation.
Separation is about getting closure for a part of our lives that is over. It is about letting go of the way the world used to be and turning to embrace the new possibilities.
We can do this by recognising the good things the past has brought us (skills, resources, and lessons learned) and by creating an inspiring vision of how we will rebuild what matters most. Ritual also plays a part.
Before we can take on a new role or identity, we first have to let go of the old one. Only then can new results be delivered.
When did you last experience a major change in role or identity? Did you find you had to accept and let go of your old identity before you could fully step into the new one? Would it have been useful to have known how to do that faster? | https://medium.com/finn-jackson/achieving-successful-separation-3dbda798da77 | ['Finn Jackson'] | 2019-03-22 12:01:00.934000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Leadership Development', 'Conscious Leadership', 'Change', 'Change Management'] |
Deploy and Manage an AWS VPC with Terraform | In this scenario, I am going to show you how to completely configure and deploy an AWS VPC with the aid of the powerful tool Terraform. Being Infrastructure as Code (IaC) this shows you just how easy it could be to replicate resources.
Feel free to follow along, I have uploaded all files to GitHub.
Here us the layout of the VPC we will be creating. It will host two EC2 instances, a webserver in a public subnet, and a Database in a private subnet.
The public subnet is accessable and all traffic is routed directly to the internet gateway we will be configuring.
The private subnet is completely cut off from the internet, all traffic in and out.
Verify your Terraform installation:
$ terraform --version
Terraform v0.14.2
Global Variables
Variables let us set some default values that are easily repeatable. This is setting up our region, even the AMI used for our EC2 instances.
AWS Provider
Now let’s set up our provider. This is rather straightforward, AWS is of course the provider and region refers to the variable previously defined.
VPC
This is where we lay out our entire VPC. We are setting up the public and private subnets. An Internet Gateway allows access to the internet. A route table contains a set of rules, called routes, that are used to determine where network traffic from your subnet or gateway is directed.
Multiple security groups are needed. The security group for our webserver allows our HTTP/HTTPS and SSH connections. Our Database security group enables MySQL port 3306, ping, and SSH from the public subnet.
Resources
We will need to set up some things for our EC2 instances. A key pair is needed to SSH to the instances that we are going to make. Then we define the AMI and configuration for the webserver, it is going to run a shell script which will install Apache Server for us. Lastly, we define our Database instance inside our private subnet.
This is the install script for Apache:
Now, it’s not good practices to keep your AWS keys in your Terraform files. We are going to set them as environment variables. Never store secrets in your Terraform files, especially if you intend to share them.
$ export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="enter key without quotes"
$ export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="enter key without quotes"
Now let’s run our Terraform code
$ terraform init
$ terraform validate
$ terraform plan
$ terraform apply
That’s it, now this can be replicated, built upon, whatever your heart desires. that is the magic of Terraform. We can now in a matter of minutes have this infrastructure completely built out.
$ terraform destroy
Don’t forget to destroy our creations to clean up. I hope you have enjoyed following along. If you want the code for this project, please check out GitHub. Thanks for reading. | https://medium.com/@nick-rondeau/deploy-and-manage-an-aws-vpc-with-terraform-89687413bfe2 | ['Nick Rondeau'] | 2020-12-22 07:28:32.456000+00:00 | ['Cloud Computing', 'DevOps', 'AWS', 'Cloud', 'Terraform'] |
商业世界的设计 | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/shidanqing/%E5%95%86%E4%B8%9A%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C%E7%9A%84%E8%AE%BE%E8%AE%A1-dfe503b5d9a8 | [] | 2017-04-25 12:04:50.588000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Business'] |
Conversation skills Assessment Tool — ChAT | Open access copy of the measure can be found here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343163788_ChAT_measure
Rationale for the development of ChAT:
To provide a measure of a person’s conversation skills ability and gauge whether they have achieved any personal growth.
The authors do not wish to perpetuate an ableist social construct of what is a “good” conversation and they do not suggest that conversation training is necessary specifically for people with communication and/or socialization difficulties.
Rather, they hope that the tool will be adopted more broadly to examine conversation skills of both neurotypical and neurodivergent people and hopefully give them a better understanding of how to communicate more effectively with others, and thus make them more aware and accepting of differing conversational styles.
Potential audience:
The authors envisage that the Tool could be used with children at an early age as an exemplar of the elements of a conversational interaction they would need to pay attention to.
ChAT could also be useful for people who are learning English as a foreign language and for people with conversation/communication difficulties.
ChAT was developed as part of my Marie Curie project with the ASSISTID programme that was co-funded by RESPECT and the European Commission.
Details of that project can be found here: | https://medium.com/@yurgos-politis/conversation-skills-assessment-tool-chat-2e29ae84ec01 | ['Dr Yurgos Politis'] | 2021-04-01 02:17:34.357000+00:00 | ['Conversation Skills', 'Virtual Worlds', 'Soft Skills Training', 'Soft Skills', 'Conversations'] |
Updated Entry Requirements for Belize | Belize is officially open for tourism, and there’s a handful of entry requirements all travelers should know. Firstly, all arriving passengers to Belize must test negative for COVID-19; either by pre-testing or by testing on arrival. Secondly, all travelers must download and complete the Belize Health App within 72 hours of arrival. Thirdly, all tourists must book with an approved Gold Standard certified accommodation. required information. All inbound passengers will be screened on arrival to Belize with contact-less technology. In addition to undergoing non-invasive temperature checks and observations, passengers may be subject to additional testing depending on screening results. As a reminder, face masks are required to be worn at all times throughout the entire airport process; from deplaning to exiting the airport.
1–2–3 Entry Requirements to Belize
1. Pre-Travel Requirements
All travelers must download and complete the Belize Travel Health app within 72 hours of travel to Belize, regardless of nationality. You can download the Belize Health App by clicking here. Once information is completed and you are given your unique QR code, save a copy via screenshot for travel to Belize. It is important that this be done prior to arrival for a significant reduction of wait time at the airport; however, completing more than 72 hours in advance results in your QR code expiring and resetting. | https://medium.com/@caribbeanlifestylebelize/updated-entry-requirements-for-belize-e9d75324385a | ['Caribbean Culture', 'Lifestyle- Belize'] | 2021-01-23 21:42:24.332000+00:00 | ['Covid', 'Reopening', 'Flights'] |
Big Vision, Small Plans: How CrossBoundary is Shaping a New Narrative of Power | Big Vision, Small Plans: How CrossBoundary is Shaping a New Narrative of Power The Room Jun 3·12 min read
Co-founder and Managing Partner of CrossBoundary, Matt Tilleard, is on a mission to unlock sustainable growth for developing and conflict-affected countries across the world. From the “valley of death” to the exciting opportunities of renewable energy in Africa, he shares his journey in scaling big solutions for underserved markets.
When outsiders come with a top-down, really detailed plan about how to turn Afghanistan into Denmark, they fail. They fail because their plan is too distant from reality; it doesn’t respond to the nuances of local context.
We’ve been watching with awe as CrossBoundary continues to grow into a global success. You’re now in 17 cities worldwide! Is this something you expected when you founded the company?
One of our core values or founding principles at CrossBoundary is to have a big vision, but a small plan. Jake [Cusack, co-founder at CrossBoundary] and I met at Harvard for graduate school. Jake was a marine in the US military and served in Iraq. I’d been in the private sector at the Boston Consulting Group, and then went to Afghanistan and worked for the British government there. I think the lesson of those experiences as part of the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan was that when outsiders come with a top-down, really detailed plan about how to turn Afghanistan into Denmark, they fail. They fail because their plan is too distant from reality; it doesn’t respond to the nuances of local context and it doesn’t respond to the thousand small challenges that they’re going to face along the way.
So we started CrossBoundary with the hope that we would have a big impact in the world, and we had been taught in this very visceral way that the way you have a big impact is you have a big vision and a clear purpose, you start out on the journey, and then you respond to circumstances as you go. We were ambitious and idealistic. Am I surprised that we’re here? No, not really. Did I have any idea how we would get here? Also, no, not really.
What excites you about the new regions you’re reaching and how you’re expanding your global footprint?
Our energy businesses remain focused on Africa, but our advisory business has expanded geographically in the last few years. We’ve now opened offices in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America — so it’s really exciting to see that our approach can add value globally in under-served markets.
What’s most interesting about it — and this is one of our beliefs at CrossBoundary — is that you get the best answer to any problem by combining a diverse group of people and providing an environment where all those people can contribute to solving problems. So, as we become more geographically diverse, I think our ability to identify and scale good solutions that work in underserved markets will increase. Colombia is a very different place than Kenya, and Kenya is a very different place than Moldova, but some of the same challenges and therefore solutions can apply. So despite our belief that real change requires contextualized action, we can still share learnings and benefit from our increased diversity of knowledge and capabilities.
Invest in people with purpose, not those prioritizing profits. Often the people chasing purpose end up making the most profits in the end.
What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome to get the company to this level of achievement?
Originally, we focused on bringing investment into fragile and conflict-affected states. Jake and I initially began working in Afghanistan in 2012, and then we opened an office in Juba, South Sudan. which collapsed in a coup in late 2013. After that, most of our early team, including Tom Flahive, our third partner, and Pieter Joubert, who is a leader in our energy work, moved to Kenya. What surprised us was that a lot of the challenges we were grappling with in very fragile and conflict affected contexts also existed in less fragile, but still developing contexts like Kenya, so that really widened the scope of what we were doing. We are still doing a lot of good work on conflict-affected states with a presence in Mali, Iraq and Afghanistan, but our more geographically-diverse business makes for a less fragile business.
Most businesses go through a valley of death — like we experienced when South Sudan became very unstable — but if you have purpose in the work that you’re doing, it makes it so much easier to persevere through that valley. In the early days, when we had a difficult time with the business, we could have wrapped it all up and gone and done something else, but I think our view was that if we closed down CrossBoundary, we would just start CrossBoundary again. Because this kind of work is all we wanted to do, it was better to hang in there and push through to the other side. This is what Jeff Bezos means when he says that you should invest in people with purpose, not those prioritizing profits. Often the people chasing purpose end up making the most profits in the end.
What’s been the highlight for you?
There are a couple of exciting transitions that happened over the last few years. One is we went from being a company that was founder-driven to one that wasn’t. We are now close to 130 people — and this is an extremely talented, hardworking, and purpose-driven group of people — and we’re coming into the second decade of CrossBoundary. In this next chapter, I think the history of our company is going to be written by the team, and I find that really exciting. It makes me extremely proud to have a team that can take that on.
Another thing that excites me is that our narrative has changed. Our founding story was a humble narrative, but it was still an outsider’s narrative. It was a narrative of idealistic people seeking to help others bring about change in their countries. That’s not our narrative anymore; nor is it the narrative of most people who work at CrossBoundary, because most people at CrossBoundary come from the countries and markets we are trying to enact positive change in. So the company is no longer an outsider; we are very much from the places we are seeking to impact, and I think that is really exciting!
One thing that has come out of this is that we changed our mission statement, because it used to refer to making positive change in ‘frontier markets’. That term is obviously fine and it is still the official nomenclature of the MSCI index, but we revisited it and thought, “If we’re from here, is this still a frontier?”. What we might have described as the frontier 10 years ago is now just home, so the term doesn’t make sense for who we’ve become, and I’m proud of that.
There’s a huge reservoir of capital and a vast need and opportunity to have that capital deployed to useful things. What’s missing is the pipe to connect capital and opportunity.
It’s notoriously difficult to attract investment in developing countries, particularly on the African continent. How have you managed to tackle this?
I think in tackling any challenge, half the problem is diagnosis and figuring out what the real problem is. The problem of capital coming into underserved and developing economies is not really that the money is not there. If you go to Davos or sit in boardrooms and government meetings in London or New York, or other hubs of capital, there are huge volumes of capital that have always been seeking returns and are increasingly seeking environmental and social outcomes. So there’s a huge reservoir of capital and a vast need and opportunity to have that capital deployed to useful things. What’s missing is the pipe to connect capital and opportunity. I think that is where CrossBoundary has found some degree of success — acting as a conduit between those boardrooms and the opportunities on the ground. Sometimes that’s by creating those opportunities or by facilitating investments and translating the opportunities on the ground to the capital that is available through our advisory business. That’s the role we’ve played with some success.
As one of the largest distributors of affordable green energy in Africa, what impact has your work had on the over 600m underserved people on the continent?
It’s Peter Thiel who talks about this idea of the secret that you know, that not everyone knows yet, and then building a business around that. The potential of distributed renewable energy is becoming more widely recognized, but 5 years ago, the secret that we knew, that CrossBoundary knew, was that solar was becoming a cheaper source of electricity than coal in almost every market that we work in, and that storage, primarily through lithium ion batteries, was becoming cheaper every day. Those two huge technology transformations are as significant as the motorcar or the discovery of oil in the first place. Energy is one of the largest, if not the largest, industries in the world, and we’re going to completely transform it. In the next 30 years, it will be unrecognizable. It’s well over a trillion dollar opportunity to transform centralized, fossil fuel-based electricity generation into a decentralized, resilient, more affordable, and carbon-free marketplace for energy.
The other really fascinating thing about this is that we’re going to do a lot of this transition first, here in Africa. Because there are fewer legacy systems, and access to affordable, reliable power is the greatest constraint on the growth of businesses, there’s a huge amount of infrastructure left to be built, and that’s a wonderful opportunity. Just like with mobile phones, we can skip to the future without having to dismantle as much old infrastructure. So, it’s an exciting transition that we have the opportunity to be involved with, and I feel lucky to have landed in the right place in my career — to see an immense problem, but also have a good solution.
While solar power is a renowned clean energy source, there are some who claim that it’s not as environmentally-friendly as it’s presented to be. What are your views on this? Why are you convinced that solar is the green solution of the future?
When you look at the numbers, solar produced and deployed responsibly is a net environmental bonanza!
I always like to work from the facts because I’m not sure that some of the narratives around this are entirely formed in good faith. So, let’s consider the critiques.
The first would be carbon. Obviously, in the manufacture of anything, carbon is released. But it’s a pretty circular argument — that we shouldn’t manufacture solar using coal, so we should just keep using coal? I find it hard to take that one seriously. Solar does produce carbon in manufacture, but the evidence is clear; the lifecycle emissions per unit of electricity produced are dramatically lower for solar than they are for fossil fuels. Another critique is around the other forms of environmental harm — the sourcing of the materials and the manufacture of panels. This is a better critique. I do think we need to build a responsible industry. Just because we’re having a positive environmental impact, particularly on greenhouse gas emissions, doesn’t give us a free pass on everything else. And it’s not just environmental harm, it’s also the social consequences of the manufacturing process. Are manufacturing facilities being run to international health and safety standards, for instance? I do believe that’s something we need to take seriously and demand from suppliers. The last point, which I think is a subset of the second point, is around recycling. There isn’t a good recycling supply chain facility yet, but it’s very hard to build a recycling industry until there are a substantial number of things to recycle, and solar hasn’t quite reached that scale yet in terms of panels reaching the end of their 25 year plus lifespan. I’m not too concerned that we won’t be able to build that when the time comes to actually recycle a lot of panels.
Fundamentally, I think we should have humility. A lot of bad things have been done by people with good intentions. In fact most bad things are done by people who believe they have good intentions, so we shouldn’t be blind to the reality. But I don’t think there’s any doubt, when you look at the numbers in good faith, that solar produced and deployed responsibly is a net environmental bonanza.
In the next 30–50 years, we have a really interesting opportunity to restore ecosystems and protect habitats - urbanization.
The theme for World Environment Day this year is “Ecosystem Restoration”. If you were to suggest one action we could take to restore damaged ecosystems and habitats, what would that be?
I think in the next 30–50 years, we have a really interesting opportunity to restore ecosystems and protect habitats. Global population growth is levelling out. It’s quite a well-established trend; as health outcomes improve, people have fewer children. So we’re not in a Malthusian disaster scenario where we’ll eventually just have to build everywhere and cover the earth in concrete, so the opportunity is where those approximately 11 billion people will live. I think it is a bit of a flaw, from both an economic and ecological perspective, that a lot of development thinking is focused around the smallholder farmer. No country that is rich now doesn’t have industrialized agriculture and the majority of the population living in cities, so it’s always confusing to me why the traditional development model seems to be centered around keeping people in the countryside.
The empirically established way of making countries wealthy is for people to urbanize. Cities have more economic opportunity, and the impact of each person on the environment is dramatically less. I think if we stop fighting that, if we embrace urbanization and focus instead on trying to manage the negative consequences of it, we can transition to a world where we live in incredibly diverse, cosmopolitan, dynamic cities that provide people with huge access to opportunity, but where we don’t have the same kind of footprint on the planet that we do now. We’ll be able to return a lot of the world to wild space if we get urbanization right.
This will be perceived by some as ideological, but I’d ask people to engage on the empirical facts around population growth and the relative economic opportunity in cities. I do see the human challenges that people are concerned about. If you live in a megacity like Nairobi, like I do, you are so exposed to the negative consequences of urbanization. But the challenge is not then to keep everybody in the countryside; it’s to better manage our transition into cities in a more just and equitable way.
Do you have a close connection to nature? Where do you feel most connected to the natural world?
Yes, I grew up in a small town of about 14,000 people in a rural community in Australia. My parents were very into the outdoors, so I grew up hiking, skiing, mountain-biking and camping. I feel most connected to nature when I can do it under my own steam, whether that’s by walking, hiking or biking in remote places where there are fewer people. I think it’s that transition of being under my own power that makes me feel like I’ve actually gone away.
Because of that, I find Kenya amazing. There are plenty of incredible outdoor things to do here. I’m in Lamu right now. It’s kind of interesting in that it’s a beautiful beach, but a substantial portion of the appeal is that it’s still a real Swahili village and is part of a really ancient culture. If you come here a lot, you can become part of the community in a very small way and see people having kids and getting married and so on. It’s quite different from getting away in Australia, but it’s still a really special place. We call it the unofficial 18th office of CrossBoundary.
10 or 15 years ago, climate change was a problem that could only be solved by politicians. Today, the ‘owner’ of the answer has shifted to individuals, activists, entrepreneurs and other doers.
With the dismal reality of climate change, do you have hope that we’ll be able to create a greener planet?
I’m certain of it. Obviously from what I’ve said, I’m a techno-optimist and globalist, but that is a point of view that has been proven correct often in the last 60 years. There are still huge challenges, but I’m optimistic. 10 or 15 years ago, climate change was a problem that could only be solved by politicians. And they could have solved it. If we had just put a price on carbon, the global economy would have reshaped around that, and we would be well on track to being carbon-zero by 2050. But politicians have failed, and I think what gives me the most optimism is that the ‘owner’ of the answer has sort of shifted to individuals, activists, entrepreneurs and other doers. If politics catches up and we get past this kind of misinformation and division that seems to be holding back political action, that will make a huge difference. Any rational actor would still want that to happen. But in the meantime, entrepreneurs, scientists, technologists and engineers are getting on with it and there is a path opening up to solving the problem. | https://medium.com/@theroomworldwide/big-vision-small-plans-how-crossboundary-is-shaping-a-new-narrative-of-power-ea623575f022 | ['The Room'] | 2021-06-03 20:37:26.766000+00:00 | ['Energy', 'Renewable Energy', 'Impact Investing', 'Solar Energy', 'Urban Planning'] |
People I meet during travels: A Collection. | When we finally got to the arch, we took a couple of pictures in front of the monument from the garden. She even asked me to make some poses. It was awkward for me. Then we decided to see what was on the other side of the arch, luckily enough, we were able to witness some sort of army inauguration or event of some sort. There were a lot of people attending. I remember how we were moving around to get a good view of the center, she filmed some bits of the show. We stayed for a while watching until the end after which we continued exploring the area and then decided to just take a break near La Tour de Tournai. We both sat on the grass silently. I remained sitting while she first tried to lie on her back to enjoy the blue skies and the peace. None of us spoke during that time. Thinking back to that moment today, that’s all that I can remember, we felt at peace.
We watched as two women came into the park with their dogs. This made Sally get up and walk over to them. I stayed put but I could see that she was talking to the women about their dogs. They spoke in English. Sally was tall with long light-colored hair and she had a very fair complexion. I remember her having round cheeks. I got up and joined them but stayed away from the jumping dogs.
A while later we continued walking around, we didn’t have any particular aim in mind. But I remember that walk. As I’m sitting on my desk in my bedroom in the middle of December, recalling the memory of that day has never been easier. The images appear in my mind so vividly. I can see the bright white light from the April Sun, the greenness of the plants, a lady wearing a multi-color scarf standing at the side of the street waiting for the bus, and how bright blue the sky was. We came across the Marie Louise Square and I can recall the stillness of the neighborhood, even with children playing not far from us. It was very orderly. We sat on a bench not far from the pond and we talked about our respective lives. She even shared a traumatic event that happened recently during her trip through Europe and I can even remember an elderly woman walking past us to whom we saluted with a Bonjour! or how we spoke of the swans and the ducks in the pond…
At first, it all seemed so far away to me but the more I write about this memory, I can picture it in my mind like I’m reliving that moment, even if it’s just for a glimpse. I don’t have any trace of it, no pictures, no videos, no receipts… Yet I am able to appreciate the beauty of that encounter. The randomness of it. The unlikelihood of it. When I try to imagine whatever force brought us two souls from opposite parts of the globe to share an unplanned day walking in the upper-streets of Brussels together, I become overwhelmed.
At some point, we had to part ways but it wasn’t without exchanging our Facebook contact. The separation happened rather abruptly. There was no sad feelings or a good-bye speech, it just happened organically, without force. A few weeks later I contacted her to ask how her travels were going, she was in Germany visiting the Neuschwanstein castle. She seemed to be enjoying her time there a lot. She described the sceneries and spoke of the hills to me. After that, I never heard from her together or thought of her again, until today that is.
Wherever she is, I really hope she is doing well and I hope that she thinks of the day we spent together light-heartedly and that it brings a smile to her face the same way it did me. | https://medium.com/@shapple/people-i-met-during-travels-a-collection-b7b6b3524dac | [] | 2020-12-27 22:40:02.353000+00:00 | ['Memoir', 'Strangers', 'People', 'Travel'] |
The Lithium Sector is Undergoing a Revolution | Sponsored Post:
A carbon-free future might require many millions of batteries, both to drive electric vehicles and to store wind and solar power on the grid. Today’s battery chemistries mostly rely on lithium — a metal that could soon face a global supply crunch. Some experts warn that as EV production advances, lithium producers might not be able to keep up with the need. That could temporarily halt the brakes on the world’s clean energy ambitions, they say. How big the lithium shortage might be and how much turmoil it might cause are far from certain.
Recently, Rystad Energy proposed a “serious lithium supply deficit” in 2027 as mining capacity lags behind the EV plummet. The mismatch could effectively delay the production of around 3.3 million battery-powered passenger cars that year, according to the research sectors. Without new mining proposals, delays could swell to the equivalent of 20 million cars in 2030. Battery-powered buses, trucks, ships, and grid storage systems might also feel the squeeze. A lithium deficit could flip what is currently a surplus. The desire from battery manufacturers is now about 300,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) per year, while there is approximately 520,000 metric tons of existing mining capacity for battery markets. Rystad’s analysis shows that the need from manufacturers could reach around 2.8 million metric tons in 2028. However, mining capacity is only anticipated to reach about 2 million metric tons that year, assuming no new mining proposals are added to the current pipeline. (1) Have you ever wondered why the need for lithium is intimately connected to the popularity of electric vehicles? These new lithium mining and extraction processes are rumored to be on the line. Visit this article about this information!
Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are currently the dominant technology for EVs. Typical automotive LIBs contain lithium (Li), cobalt , and nickel (Ni) in the cathode, graphite in the anode, as well as aluminum and copper in other cell and pack components. Commonly used LIB cathode chemistries are lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide (NCM), lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA), or lithium iron phosphate (LFP), although battery technology is currently evolving fast and new and improved chemistries could be anticipated in the future.
Due to the fast progress of the EV market, concerns over the sustainable supply of battery materials have been voiced. These include supply risks due to high geopolitical concentrations of cobalt and social and environmental impacts associated with mining as well as the availability of cobalt and lithium reserves and the required rapid upscaling of supply chains to meet anticipated needs. (2) Are you ready to discover a new source of lithium? Try looking at these zero emissions, zero trailings, and innovation integrated with existing processes of lithium mining!
Understanding the magnitude of future need for EV battery raw materials is essential to guide strategic decisions in policy and industry and to assess potential supply risks as well as social and environmental impacts. Several studies have quantified the future need for EV battery materials for specific world regions such as Europe, the United States, and China, or specific battery materials only. Weil et al. assess the material need for EV batteries at the global level and find that shortages for key materials, such as Li and Co, could be awaited. However, their model does not investigate the influence of battery chemistry developments (e.g., improved NCM chemistries or novel lithium-sulfur (Li-S) and lithium-air batteries (Li-Air)) as well as alternative fleet and different recycling scenarios. Learn more and discover the fuel that powers electric vehicles that allow them to continually extend their production into the future! Check the disclaimer on my profile and landing page.
Source 1: https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/batteries-storage/evs-to-drive-a-lithium-supply-crunch
Source 2: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43246-020-00095-x | https://medium.com/@cyrillmonedo/the-lithium-sector-is-undergoing-a-revolution-fc56b3ec1cda | [] | 2021-07-02 11:37:14.251000+00:00 | ['Invest', 'Electric Vehicles', 'Stock Market', 'Battery', 'Stocks'] |
Our Virtual Co-Working Space Experiment | I have plenty of problems with the open office floor plan. Constant noise, distractions, co-workers interrupting your flow. Going fully remote was a nice respite from that. However, working from home, thousands of miles away from my teammates, is isolating. When we first started Taskable, there were hours and even whole days where Tom and I didn’t manage to speak to one another. Even though we were working on the same objective, it often felt like we were working all by ourselves. We made a point to spend more time just chatting and having at least one call each day. But we were still looking out for new ways to make it feel like we were working together on Taskable.
Why we decided to try a virtual co-working space
A while back, the team at Pioneer invited everyone to join their virtual co-working space. They set up Zoom where anyone could drop in and work throughout the day. My initial impression was that it is perhaps the least appealing idea I could think of. So I didn’t join. The idea stuck in my head, though — something about the concept intrigued me.
Around the same time, we started bringing on our first teammates at Taskable. It got Tom and me thinking: how do we build a team and a sense of camaraderie when we start out 100% virtual? We also began to think about our users, many freelancers, or founders just starting up on their own. Indeed many of them are struggling with working remotely, without much interaction with a team. It occurred to us that, while a bit crazy, this could potentially be a feature in Taskable way down the line. Ultimately our mission is to help people feel better about how they spend their day. Could a virtual co-working space be part of this mission?
Let’s test it
Tom and I decided to test the idea of virtual co-working. We set up a dedicated channel on Tandem, our internal video & audio chat tool. The idea was, we’d hop in there and just work together when the urge struck us. Tandem is perfect for this. It even has a Spotify integration, so one person can be the room DJ for the entire room. It took us a bit of time to get going, but after a week or two, we were spending nearly the entire day in the channel. We even began to pick up habits we had in the office, like sharing quick jokes and even letting each other know when we were stepping out for a minute.
Why I think virtual co-working works for us
There are a few reasons why I think virtual co-working works well, for us at least. For one thing, it recreates a bit of that vibe you get from a bustling office. I’m personally motivated by an office environment and being surrounded by interesting people working on exciting things. You can’t see people with the virtual co-working space, but you can hear them tapping away at exciting projects. Also, you recreate that sense of community you get from an office. You can share a joke, ask a quick question, brainstorm on something, even hear Tom’s dog Stefan adorably snoring away in the background.
There are several ways virtual co-working is even better than an office. Unlike an open office, you can leave the virtual co-working space any time you want with almost no friction. Want to be heads-down on something? Not feeling social at the moment? You’re just one click away from peace and quiet. For another, in most offices I’ve worked in, everyone has their headphones in. This means to ask a quick question, you have to tap someone on the shoulder or wave your arms around to get their attention. With virtual co-working, you can collaborate quickly without taking off your headphones or leaving your music.
What’s next?
Now that it’s working for Tom and me, we’ll aim to get our new team members to join. It will be interesting to see how it works with more and more people in the room. We also plan to open up our co-working space to Taskable Premium users and continue to experiment with it as a potential feature in the product way down the line. Perhaps there’s even an opportunity for someone to build a WeWork in the cloud. | https://medium.com/navigating-modern-work/our-virtual-co-working-space-experiment-ca01fe9e2a6c | ['Matt Johnson'] | 2021-06-08 21:31:29.289000+00:00 | ['Remote Working', 'Virtual Office', 'Work From Home', 'Video Chat', 'Startup'] |
Newsletter 22/04/2018 | Summary Asian Tour / 11k followers Twitter / Platform development
SEOUL, SHANGHAI, BEIJING, SINGAPORE…
How is it going ethichubers? Our team has been very busy for the last few days, doing networking, meeting and pitching in Seoul, Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore and Hong Kong along with RSK.
We are very excited about the positive feedback and support from very well known and very important people in the space. For sure we will harvest the fruits of this Asian tour very soon.
On the marketing field, We are redesigning the marketing plan towards the end-user / innovator in order to get key metrics that prove the future success of the platform, as for the number of local nodes, borrowers, lenders and so on. By the way, we’ve just reached 11.000 followers on Twitter!
On the other hand, the platform development starts! We are building an MVP to do the first run of crowdlending projects for a handful of communities in México. Front and backend are being developed while we do some adjustments to the smart contracts flow after what we learned from our pilot lending (https://etherscan.io/address/0xf99e42f727b256d01c87a9143412546a9296eee0). More details soon!
In a nutshell, the whole team is very motivated for the upcoming months and the results achieved. | https://medium.com/ethichub/newsletter-22-04-2018-554d1b86bd80 | [] | 2018-04-22 18:50:04.912000+00:00 | ['Newsletter', 'ICO', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'Bitcoin'] |
Connecting the disconnected: the Internet of Everything | I went to a recent Lewis Silkin LLP event, ‘Overcoming the Legal Implications of the Internet of Things’ to explore the commercial rewards — and possible legal pitfalls — of the IoT.
I use a connected thing every day, and in case you were wondering, so do an awful lot of people. I could bore you with stats but I find it fascinating to look at thingful.net — a search engine which locates open connected devices (the tip of the iceberg) on a Google Earth style map. The amount of devices appearing, whether it’s in my neighbourhood or on the hills overlooking Nairobi, is mind-boggling.
The media have also been paying attention; connected homes are now frequently featured in business and consumer press. Most recently, John Lewis announced that they were devoting a space in their flagship London store to connected devices and products. Having seen 81 per cent growth in sales over the previous year, that looks like a sound investment.
Our clients are also getting involved. We’re working with E.ON to connect their smart meters with their website, and we were excited to see Sony announcing their new connected product range Life Space UX at CES recently. IoT 1.0 is well and truly here. The immediate focus seems to be on monitoring and controlling our environment, and reducing the friction in doing just about anything anyone can think of.
Naturally, sceptics abound, but that’s understandable. We’re at the beginning of a long journey, and there’s not much in the current crop of connected products that inspires a great deal of excitement. But frankly the same could have been said of the late nineties: in the days of geocities and Alta Vista it was hard to imagine the speed with which the web would evolve.
Beyond products: this is changing everything around us
Of course, the IoT is not restricted to consumer products, and it’s interesting to see data specialists like Jim Anning at British Gas getting excited about ‘sexy’ minority report style interventions to fix boilers before they need fixing. And in my own experience, I’ve explored the benefits of introducing IoT to Catalyst housing, where there is potential to deliver huge cost savings and customer experience improvements using sensors and automation. Indeed, these approaches have been used in Industry since the 1970s — search SCADA to find out more.
There are some encouraging concepts emerging elsewhere too, particularly within the connected car space. VISA have been working with Hyundai on a prototype of connected services centred on payments, and a range of organisations are looking at different facets of the opportunity, including car-to-car communications (safety) and monitoring / telematics (insurance).
It’s interesting to see how the connected car opportunity is far less focused on individuals interacting with objects. Instead these innovations place more emphasis on data, location, and interactions with other objects; scenarios involving multiple actors and observers within dynamic environments, where everyone and everything within those environments is a potential participant or contributor. This offers a clearer signal as to the true potential of IoT.
The key to these scenarios is simplicity. Humans will not welcome a connected world that requires constant intervention. Wherever possible machines, products, and services will need to work behind the scenes. Automation and personalisation must deliver experiences that just happen. Given that assertion, the threat to progress in the IoT space becomes abundantly clear.
Technology giants vs Open source
Within the new commercial and technical spaces created by IoT, battles for supremacy and dominance are naturally emerging. Established technology giants are ranged against startups, as well as ambitious hardware manufacturers. A number of alliances have been formed and proprietary platforms are creating unwelcome layers of complexity that will hinder adoption if left unchecked.
Fortunately, there are some interesting and exciting counterweights emerging. Microsoft are championing ‘Open Translators’ as a means of enabling interactions between different proprietary platforms and hardware. Meanwhile, the Blockchain is increasingly touted as a world changing technology. Its ability to establish verifiable truths about digital transactions provides a potential solution to the gnarly authentication challenge.
Commercial opportunities and pitfalls
With connections to homes, vehicles and environments, organisations will be closer to consumers than ever. Contextual personalisation should give rise to business propositions tightly focused on measurable outcomes; dynamic insurance policies for example, tightly tied to consumption, location, and other factors. We’ll also see frictionless purchases, such as Amazon’s DRS, an instant replenishment system for consumables used by printers and coffee machines alike.
We’ll see ‘traditional’ products move into service relationships, and sometimes morph into something else entirely. AT&T’s digital life hub was once a home security product. Over the course of their natural replacement and sales cycle they shipped their boxes with a range of connected technologies including Z-Wave, ZigBee, Bluetooth, and more besides. Suddenly, with a range of product and hardware partners, they were a major player in the smart home market.
Of course, ‘with great power, comes great responsibility’. Nest recently ventured beyond the smart thermostat market, with their purchase of Revolv — a German smart home hub. They’ve bricked that product and absorbed the team within Nest, to the chagrin of customers, who’d purchased those hubs with the promise of long-term support. Companies who enter the IoT space need to factor in the long-term responsibilities inherent in IoT products and their integration with customer’s lives.
The data gathered by connected products and service is a source of great promise. The IoT takes us beyond the realm of big data and into a realm of massive data. Convergence of multiple sources of data will unlock enormous potential for organisations to exploit data for commercial gain. However, Simon Morrissey at Lewis Silkin highlighted that “regulators are already considering the ramifications of what could amount to in-home surveillance. Permissions and consent will be critical and this could limit the opportunities for commercial exploitation”.
So where does this leave us?
With all this data flowing between connected products, services and platforms, it seems likely that organisational mindsets will shift toward partnerships and collaboration. For example, Innit — a new kitchen product ecosystem — have negotiated an interesting tie-in with Good Housekeeping, an established and trusted publisher with a valuable archive of recipes. It’s no great leap to imagine their content served up in the kitchen. Revenue will increasingly rely on the ‘network effect’ of integrating commercial ambitions in complex value chains.
Fridges, mixers, and cookers, seem likely to become vehicles for contextual advice and product promotion but, as Geraint Lloyd Taylor at Lewis Silkin was keen to emphasise, where content is concerned the boundaries between information and marketing will need to be understood. While seeking new opportunities, organisations cannot afford to discount established guidance for advertising and marketing.
In among all these opportunities, hardware manufacturers need to be aware of their changing roles. David Deakin at Lewis Silkin suggested the likelihood that connected kitchen products would inevitably introduce biddable product advertising opportunities. Where there’s a recipe, there are products needed to make it, and with ordering capability wired in brands are sure to try to gain preferential contextual placements.
Welcome to the world of kitchen products as services and media networks! Indeed, you could draw a parallel with the set top boxes introduced into our homes by cable TV providers. Once upon a time these cost a few hundred quid on subscription, but they swiftly became bundled into the subscription. So here’s a thought — will my connected fridge be given freely by my groceries supplier in return for a contract tying me into a relationship?
Put simply, I am convinced that the IoT will usher in a new wave of disruption, potentially on a grander scale than we’ve already experienced. Organisations wishing to embrace the wealth of opportunities presented should have no illusions as to the extent of change required. Changing roles will introduce new roles, skills, and competences. Connected technologies require heavily integrated back-end systems. And an ever-changing commercial landscape will favour agile and flexible businesses. The IoT offers tremendous rewards for the brave and the bold, and little room for prevarication. I say bring it on.
By Simon Nash, Strategy Director at Hugo & Cat
To find out more about brand experiences and marketing technology, drop us a line at [email protected] | https://medium.com/nowtrending/connecting-the-disconnected-the-internet-of-everything-e86123963c21 | ['Hugo'] | 2017-06-07 10:41:49.215000+00:00 | ['Consumer Electronics', 'Connected Technology', 'Internet of Things', 'Data'] |
How To Fix Rendering Issues in Chrome on Ubuntu | I’ve noticed that whenever I put my Ubuntu laptop to sleep (e. g. by closing the lid), when I wake it back up my Google Chrome browser has drawing issues. Sometimes it’s a lot of black rectangles (like in the image above). Sometimes it’s a rainstorm of tiny blue and yellow rectangles. But no matter what, the only way to clear it up is to close and restart Chrome.
Like with anything in life, if you need help, you do an Internet search. And I found this one article that talks about a similar phenomenon, but it’s with Chrome on Mac, and it’s a bunch of blue horizontal lines. The fix it suggests is to disable hardware acceleration. It’s for fixing Chrome on Mac, but I decided to try it on Ubuntu.
Fixing The Redraw Issue on Ubuntu
1 — Open the Chrome menu, and go to Settings:
2 — Expand “Advanced”, and click on “System”:
3 — Disable “Use hardware acceleration when available”, and click “Relaunch”:
Chrome will start back up with “hardware acceleration” disabled.
Now when I put my system to sleep, and bring it back up, Chrome comes back up just fine, with no redrawing issues! So it appears the advice in the aforementioned macReports article works for Ubuntu as well.
What Is Hardware Acceleration? Will There Be Problems If It’s Turned Off? | https://medium.com/@bterczynski/how-to-fix-rendering-issues-in-chrome-on-ubuntu-b7d8c8ef08b1 | ['Brian Terczynski'] | 2020-11-21 19:28:27.233000+00:00 | ['Chrome', 'Hardware Acceleration', 'Gpu', 'Ubuntu'] |
My Mom Let Her Boyfriend Molest Me for 5 Years | Image by Sandra Koschel
I used to think that perhaps that’s how every child lives. I did not know that it was not at all normal. But somehow I knew that I was not supposed to tell this to anyone.
I was ten years old and he was 25. My mother was not divorced or something but she had a way with men that always used to leave a very strange and bitter taste in my mouth. It was 1995 and in Pakistan children, my age did not know anything about adult relationships.
I never saw my father and mother talk to each other. My mother was beautiful and she used to mock him all the time. He was not so close to us children too. He had a bookshop and he used to leave very early in the morning and come back very late. Ever since I remember, my mom used to have relationships with other men without ever trying to hide it from anyone. Most of our neighbors used to have an idea about it.
This man, we used to call him Uncle came into her life when we shifted into a new neighborhood and he was living next door. My mother was very social, so within a week she got to know that one of the bachelors living next door, was her distant relative. She invited him for dinner and they became very close very fast.
Uncle’s family was in another province and he was living there because of his job. My mother started going to his place more and more frequently. He also started spending all day at our home. He would only go home to sleep. He was nice to us children at first. He used to buy us fruits and candies and cakes, so my younger siblings got quite attached to him. Being the eldest, I knew that something was fishy. I started being irritated all the time and I got beaten for that too by my mom.
She used to beat us for anything at all. After a few days, Uncle too started beating us for small mistakes. I became more and more bitter. I did not know what sex was or how it was done or even the word ‘sex’. One day when my mom was going to Uncle’s place, I asked her not to go. She got very angry and slapping me said, “He is not waiting there for me with his pants down”. It was so vulgar to hear that I felt like something very nasty and ugly had suddenly revealed itself to me. After that, I started imagining their meetings.
That’s when Uncle started touching me and my sister. We were extremely afraid of mom because she used to beat us without mercy. And she was so fond of Uncle that we could not imagine telling her about it. We somehow believed that it was our own fault. We used to be so convinced of being wrong all the time that I remember one day I accidentally dropped a heavy scissor and it broke. I was 100% sure that it was my mistake and I will be beaten. So, I went into the bathroom and ate face cream to die. But still, I was right because mom did beat me till my skin was raw and bleeding. That was the justice system. So Uncle kept touching us and we kept silent about it.
My father knew about Uncle but never talked to him ever. So one-day mom decided that we needed to move to another house where we could share it with Uncle. My father never took any interest in such matters. Mom and Uncle found a house and we shifted there. It had just two rooms so we started living in one room and Uncle took the other one.
After shifting together, mom became bolder than ever and started kissing Uncle in front of us kids. I was 10, my sister was 8, the other sister 5 and my youngest brother was only 3 years old. I tried to find escape in books and studies but it was very hard to not see what was going on.
We kids used to go to school before Uncle left for office. And we used to play outdoors till dusk so mom and Uncle had the house to themselves a lot. One day there was a woman on TV who had big boobs and Uncle said to my mother, “I want yours to be this big”. They both really thought that we will not understand it. Uncle had a single bed in his room and he had bought a TV too so we used to watch TV there sitting on chairs or carpet while mom used to be under his blanket with him in his single bed.
That’s the house where Uncle molested us more and more because we were getting flesh on our bones and we were getting bigger too. I was once sitting in the kitchen when Uncle pulled my trousers back to my thighs and caressing my thighs he said oh my god you are so ready. I did not know what I was ready for, but I somehow never forgot it. He used to touch me all the time. Mom would send me to his room to massage his feet and legs. I don’t know why she would do that. I don’t know how could she let her daughters be molested at such a young age. Perhaps she was blind in love. We had no one to share this with. Once my sister threatened mom that she will tell our granny (mom’s mother) about it. My mother called her a whore and beat the crap out of her. After that, we never tried to rebel. Uncle would force us to touch him too. He forced himself on us in more ways than I can tell.
Uncle started beating us a lot those days. He used to even beat my youngest brother who was just a small child. It pains me even now. Uncle used to beat him in front of his office friends. Uncle would ask him to do circus tricks in front of his mates and if my brother failed to perform, then Uncle would beat him. Mom and uncle used to beat us with everything. Plastic pipes, wires, hangers, sticks, slippers, everything.
This nightmare went on for five years. My father left the house and moved with his older brother. It was in 1998 and I have not met him since then. When Uncle’s family heard the rumors of this affair, they started asking questions. That’s when my mother came up with a scheme to keep Uncle near her forever.
She made her sixteen years old sister fall in love with Uncle and then got them married. My aunt had no idea about anything at all. Now we were all living together and finally, Uncle stopped molesting us. I don’t know if his and my mom’s affair stopped too or not.
My father divorced my mother. Uncle is still married to my aunt and they have four daughters and a son. He has become extremely religious now. unfortunately for me, it was not the end of my bad luck. I had so many more pains in store for me in the future. My life kept kicking me in the guts, but I think I will write about that in another article. | https://medium.com/be-unique/my-mom-let-her-boyfriend-molest-me-for-5-years-82969da4b17c | [] | 2021-01-13 13:15:47.265000+00:00 | ['Child Abuse', 'Trauma', 'Children', 'This Happened To Me', 'Mental Health'] |
Ghosts and Other Unasked Questions | Ghosts and Other Unasked Questions
Photo by Kurniawan kami saputra on Unsplash
The dead look
over your shoulder while you slip
your feet into once frozen
water and feel the wind spilling
the dappled sunlight over your neck.
Here, now they are
more powerful, present than when
we once shared time and space
and yet separated into droplets,
generations held apart by continents,
pride, perspective,
tides rising pulling us farther out
Until death brings us back
in rivulets, ripples, splashes.
Ask me
if I believe in ghosts. It is nothing
more remarkable than
the sunlit waters
tossing around your ankles. | https://medium.com/vagabond-voices/ghosts-and-other-unasked-questions-4ef2bf2a6859 | ['Trisha Traughber'] | 2020-11-25 18:58:02.180000+00:00 | ['Vagabond Voices', 'Poetry', 'Free Verse', 'Family', 'Ghosts'] |
Live, for One Night Only | I write, draw, fact-check, and translate. Once I was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. (I did not become a millionaire.)
Follow | https://medium.com/spiralbound/live-for-one-night-only-1bc46b58cc41 | ['Gillian Brassil'] | 2020-01-29 16:28:44.239000+00:00 | ['Live Music', 'Memoir', 'Concerts', 'Comics', 'Illustration'] |
Muhammadiyah: Meneguhkan Gerakan Keagaamaan Hadapi Pandemi dan Masalah Negeri | Lecturer and researcher of Public Health, Universitas Airlangga. His research examines health policy and administration — Views my own. Bio: s.id/ilhamridlo | https://medium.com/@iaridlo/muhammadiyah-meneguhkan-gerakan-keagaamaan-hadapi-pandemi-dan-masalah-negeri-b04c83804aec | ['Ilham A Ridlo'] | 2020-12-23 02:44:20.416000+00:00 | ['Indonesia', 'Muhammadiyah', 'Islam', 'Pandemi'] |
What’s the Difference Between Web Design and Web Development? | Website designer and website developer are both terms you hear endlessly bandied around online. Here are some clear definitions for your peace of mind, if you’ve been finding yourself wondering.
In Essence, the Difference is…
It’s actually pretty clear, depending on how you define words like design and development. Website design centres on aesthetics. Design, layout, fonts, image use, animation and video. All the elements that make websites look great at a surface level.
Website development is all the stuff beneath that surface-level aesthetics. It’s the mechanics and functionality of the site. It’s making sure everything works and links together right, all while prioritising speed, functionality and reliability. Both are vital.
Web Design Focuses on Design, Obviously!
A web designer might use software like Adobe Photoshop. They put together different ideas and develop a design for the end product. This is vital for web developers to work from when it comes to creating the underlying structure.
In a sense, web designers are a weird fusion of architects and interior decorators. Web developers are somewhere between architects and builders. Both are absolutely necessary when it comes to constructing a website, but the roles aren’t exactly separate and a good deal of back and forth and communication is essential to producing a solid end product.
That Means… Web Development Focuses on Development
Obviously, without web developers to actually code the website, all you end up with is a blueprint and some pretty pictures of what things could look like. Web developers do the all-important job of turning ideas and designs into functional, usable websites.
It’s not always the case that initial designs function in the actual construction and usage of the site. This is where things get even more grey and confusing. UX testing websites is a vital part of making sure the product is fit for end purpose and requires both web designers and web developers to get it right.
Both Roles Crossover Plenty
The fact is, both roles crossover a lot, and there’s a lot of communication required to actually build a quality website. Many website designers will be able to code and program to some degree, and many web developers will have some degree of design chops. This is necessary simply when it comes to facilitating extensive communication and development.
At the end of the day, whether you’re trying to figure out what skill you’ll need to get into web design or development, or trying to figure out who you need to get your site off the ground, the answer is generally the same. You need both. There is so much crossover and necessary communication that you won’t run into many successful web designers or developers who don’t have knowledge of the other role. | https://medium.com/@emmagoldsteinvo/whats-the-difference-between-web-design-and-web-development-a1b9999fb21a | ['Emma Goldstein'] | 2019-07-19 16:11:10.308000+00:00 | ['Website Development', 'Design', 'Website Design'] |
Content-Based Recommendation Systems | Photo by Jeff Sheldon on Unsplash
Content-Based Recommendation Systems
Michael J. Pazzani and Daniel Billsus
This paper discusses content-based recommendation systems in general. It explains how to represent items with structured data, and how to generate structured data from non-structured. For example, for natural language text, the tf-idf method it’s discussed. Afterward, it discusses two approaches to keep a user profile, with a model or a history of the user’s interaction. Finally, different popular models are presented as ways to create a content-based recommender system. Decision trees, KNN, Relevance Feedback, Linear Methods, and Naïve Bayes are proposed as classification learners.
The methodology for content-based recommender systems is explained as follows:
… [the models] learn a function that models each user’s interests. Given a new item and the user model, the function predicts whether the user would be interested in the item…
Isn’t that inefficient? To provide recommendations for a user, with this approach the system would pass all items through the model to see if they are a match or not for the user. Some pre-computation seems necessary, as the number of items can be really large.
For all the models presented, there is no scalable way of adding new items for the users, the only way would be to recompute the model all over again from scratch. You would like for example your Decision Tree to adapt to the new items that the user likes.
It’s surprising that the Naive Bayes method does well as the authors claim. That's because, for text, the algorithm assumes that all words are independent of each other, and that is of course not true, as some words are extremely more probable if they are present after another particular word. Maybe some way to address this would be to group all words that tend to appear together (with some clustering method maybe), and use only one as representant of the group. | https://medium.com/recommender-systems-iic-3633/content-based-recommendation-systems-62a1d89c9740 | ['Yoav Navon'] | 2019-08-29 02:51:46.471000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Recommendation System', 'Machine Learning'] |
Выходные с книгой. Читаем | 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/about-books-in-telegram/%D0%B2%D1%8B%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5-%D1%81-%D0%BA%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B9-%D1%87%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B5%D0%BC-de79d0b1da31 | ['Книжное Притяжение'] | 2020-12-20 15:25:43.190000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Telegram', 'Книги', 'Списки', 'Lists'] |
AYS Daily Digest 13/01/20 — Weekend Exodus from Libya as Violence Escalates | Seawatch 3, with 119 People On Board, Denied Port of Safety///Greek Government Lost on Humanitarian Policy///French Strikes Hurting People on the Move
People who were detained in Abu Salim protest the murder of two of their own Credit: Sally Hayden
Feature: Violence in Libya Causes Mass Exodus, Protests Over the Murder of Two Eritreans
About 1,150 people tried to escape from Libya between January 9th and January 12th, according to a press release published on Monday by AlarmPhone. 503 people were able to reach Europe, either independently or with the help of NGOs or the Maltese Coast Guard. Unfortunately, about 700 people were pushed back to Libya by the Libyan coast guard.
This number only includes people who were able to reach AlarmPhone and ask for help. There was at least one case of a privatized pushback that ended in the Libyan Coastguard killing one person who resisted return to Libya. The Mediterranean is vast and dangerous, there could be other cases of people risking it all to reach Europe that we do not know about.
Cases of Libyans, as well as people from other countries who are being detained in Libya, fleeing to Europe will likely increase because violence has escalated even further in the past few days.
Peace talks are currently happening in Moscow, but the prospects for achiveing real peace are slim since the last truce, declared on Sunday, only lasted a few hours. Germany has already announced it will hold another summit on the 19th to continue peace talks. Even if a deal is reached, it is not likely that any of the governments involved will think about the safety of people on the move. The EU still has agreements with the Libyan ‘coast guard’ thereby intently supporting pushbacks to Libya during an active civil war and, even as Western aid workers are evacuated and Tripoli is shelled.
The international community has long ignored the needs of people detained in Libya, which ended in tragedy yet again when two Eritreans were killed over the weekend. In a press release, the UNHCR of course said that it was “deeply saddened” and that circumstances around the killings were “unclear.”
However, people who knew the two men place the blame at the UNHCR’s door. Although it is not confirmed, the two were allegedly searching for food in the city of Tripoli when they were shot by Libyans trying to rob them. The UNHCR explained that the two men were living outside of Gathering & Detention Facilities because they accepted an “urban package of assistance,” or financial incentive to live in the city of Tripoli instead of in a GDF. Their friends deny this narrative and say that the men were forced to live in the city because of the UN’s deliberate starvation policy. Had the men been granted asylum in a timely manner, or given food and shelter in a humanely-run camp, they likely would still be alive today.
Their friends and acquaintances, former Abu Salim detainees as well, organized a vigil to remember their lives and protest the international indifference that killed them. Video of the protest can be found here. | https://medium.com/@areyousyrious/ays-daily-digest-13-01-20-weekend-exodus-from-libya-as-violence-escalates-13084ad4abed | ['Are You Syrious'] | 2020-01-14 13:45:11.210000+00:00 | ['Digest', 'Greece', 'Human Rights', 'Refugees', 'Libya'] |
Kotlin MVVM ToDo List | The source code is on Github. Here is the link.
Thanks for reading and watching! | https://medium.com/@kim-pro/kotlin-mvvm-todo-list-f137ecfc96bb | ['Kim Pro'] | 2020-12-26 13:26:51.182000+00:00 | ['To Do List', 'Andriod', 'Coroutine', 'Kotlin', 'Mvvm'] |
How to thrive in the face of disruption: Tips from Shopify’s Data Team | Shopify’s Data Science & Engineering Foundations
We currently face a global pandemic. People are in pain around the world. Daily life has been disrupted. Many face monumental financial damage or unemployment. Small businesses are struggling to find creative solutions to adapt and stay afloat — and they need to do so quickly.
At Shopify, we have a mission to make commerce better for everyone, but we did not expect 2020 to start out with a global pandemic. Shopify is a mini-economy — with merchants, partners, buyers, carriers, payment providers all interacting — and planning helps us build products that positively impact the entire system. When COVID-19 happened, those plans went out the window. We had to go back to the drawing board and ask: How can we best help our merchants during this crisis?
With over one million merchants in over 175 countries around the globe, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. They are each being impacted in different ways. Layer on the complexity of the mini-economy and it feels like we were faced with an impossible question. Regardless, within a few days of going into lockdown, Shopify’s Data Team had launched a COVID-19 task force to address that seemingly impossible question.
Since then, we’ve played a critical role in helping the company make great decisions in support of our merchants during this unprecedented time. While it pales in comparison to work being done to save lives, I am really impressed by the way the entire team has responded. We’ve provided Shopify with high quality, daily insights as things change rapidly. Here are the factors that enabled us to respond so quickly and effectively in support of Shopify and the merchants who use our platform.
Modelled Data
One of the first things we do when we onboard (at least when I joined) is get a copy of The Data Warehouse Toolkit by Ralph Kimball. If you work in Data at Shopify, it’s required reading! Sadly it’s not about fancy deep neural nets (sarcasm) or technologies and infrastructure. Instead it focuses on data schemas and best practices for dimensional modelling. It answers questions like, “How should you design your tables so they can be easily joined together? Which table makes the most sense to house a given column?” In essence, it explains how to take raw data and put it in a format that is queryable by anyone.
I am not saying that this is the only good way to structure your data. For what it’s worth, it could be the 10th best strategy. That doesn’t matter. What counts is that we agreed, as a Data Team, to use this modelling philosophy to build Shopify’s data warehouse. Because of this agreed upon rule, I can very easily surf through data models produced by another team. I understand when to switch between dimension and fact tables. I know that I can safely join on dimensions because they handle unresolved rows in a standard way — with no sneaky nulls silently destroying rows after joining.
This approach has a number of key benefits for working faster and more collaboratively. These are crucial as we continue to provide insights into the rapidly changing environment brought on by COVID-19.
Key benefits
1. No need to understand raw data’s structure.
2. Data is compatible between teams.
Data consistency and open access
We have a single data modelling platform. It is built on top of Spark in a single GitHub repo that everyone at Shopify can access, and everyone uses it. There’s no hippie in accounting with their own magical stack that only works when 3 planets are aligned. With everyone using the same tools as me, I can gather context quickly and independently: I know how to browse Ian’s code, I can find where Ben has put the latest model, etc… I simply need to pick a table name and I can see 100% of the code that built that model.
What is more, all of our modelled data sits on a Presto Cluster that is available to the whole company, and not just data scientists (except PII information). That’s right! Anyone at the company can query our data. We also have internal tools to discover these data sets that we’ll talk about in an upcoming blog post. That openness and consistency makes things scalable.
Key benefits
1. Data is easily discoverable
2. Everyone can take advantage of existing data
Rigorous ETL
As a company focused on software, the skills we’ve developed as a Data Team were influenced by our developer friends. All (that’s right all) of our data pipeline jobs are unit tested. We test every situation that we can think of: errors, edge cases, and so on. This may slow down development a bit, but it also prevents many pitfalls. It is easy to lose track of a JOIN that occasionally doubles the number of rows under a specific scenario. Unit testing catches this kind of thing more often than you’d expect.
We also ensure that the data pipeline does not let jobs fail in silence. While it may be painful to receive a Slack message at 4 pm on Friday about a five-year-old dataset that just failed, the system ensures you can trust the data you play with to be consistently fresh and accurate.
Key benefits
1. Better data accuracy and quality
2. Trust in data across the company
Vetted dashboards
Like our data pipeline, we have one main visualization engine. All finalized reports are centralized on an internal website. Before blindly jumping into the code like a university student three hours before a huge deadline, we can go see what others have already published. In most cases, a significant portion of the metrics you’re looking for are already accessible to everyone. In other cases, an existing dashboard is pretty close to what we’re looking for. Since the base code for every dashboard is centralized, this is a great starting point.
Key benefits
1. Better discovery speed
2. Reuse of work
Vetted data points
All data points that form the basis for major decisions or that need to be published externally are what we call vetted data points. They’re stored together with the context we need to understand them. This includes the original question, its answer, and the code that generated the results. One of the fundamentals in producing vetted data points is that the result should not change over time. For example, if I ask how many merchants were on the platform in Q1 2019, the answer should be the same today and in 4 years from now. Sounds trivial — but it’s harder than it looks! By having it all in a single GitHub repo, it’s discoverable, reproducible, and easy to update each year
Key benefits
1. Reproducibility of key metrics
Everything is peer reviewed
All of our work is peer reviewed, usually by at least two other data scientists. Even my boss and my boss’s boss go through this. This is another practice we gleaned by working closely with developers. Dashboards, vetted data points, dimensional models, unit tests, data extraction, etc… it’s all reviewed. Knowing several people looked at a query invokes a high level of trust in the data across the company. When we do work that touches more than one team, we make sure to involve reviewers from both teams. When we touch raw data, we add developers as reviewers. These tactics really improve the overall quality of data outputs by ensuring pipeline code and analytics meet a high standard that is upheld across the team.
Key benefits
1. Better data accuracy and quality
2. Higher trust in data
Deep product understanding
Now for my favourite part: All analyses require a deep understanding of the product. At Shopify, we strive to fall in love with the problem, not the tools. Excellence doesn’t come from just looking at the data, but from understanding what it means for our merchants.
One way we do this is to divide the Data Team into smaller sub-teams, each of which is associated with a product (or product area). A clear benefit is that sub-teams become experts about a specific product and its data. We know it inside and out! We truly understand what `enable` means in the column `status` of some table.
Product knowledge allows us to slice and dice quickly at the right angles. During COVID-19, this has allowed us to focus on metrics that are vital for our merchants. Deep product understanding also allows us to guide stakeholders to good questions, identify confounding factors to account for in analyses, and design experiments that will really influence the direction of Shopify’s products.
Of course, there is a downside, which I call the specialist gap: sub-teams have less visibility into other products and data sources. I’ll explain how we address that soon.
Key benefits
1. Better quality analysis
2. Emphasis on substantial problems
Communication
What is the point of insights if you don’t share them? Our philosophy is that discovering an insight is only half the work. The other half is communicating the result to the right people in a way they can understand.
We try to avoid throwing a solitary graph or a statistic at anyone. Instead, we write down the findings along with our opinions and recommendations. Many people are uncomfortable with this, but it’s crucial if you want a result to be interpreted correctly and spur the right actions. We can’t expect non-experts to focus on a survival analysis. This may be the data scientist’s tool to understand the data, but don’t mistake it for the result.
On my team, every time anyone wants to communicate something, the message is peer reviewed — preferably by someone without much background knowledge of the problem. If they cannot understand your message, it’s probably not ready yet. Intuitively, it might seem best to review the work with someone who understands the importance of the message. However, assumptions about the message become clear when you engage someone with limited visibility. We often forget how much context we have on a problem when we’ve just finished working on it, so what we think is obvious might not be so obvious for others.
Key benefits
1. Stakeholder engagement
2. Positive influence on decision making
Collaboration across data teams
For the COVID-19 task force, we created a fully cross-functional team with one champion per data sub-team to close the specialist gap I mentioned. We meet to share findings on a daily basis and collaborate on deep dives that may require or affect multiple products. Over the past weeks, I have worked with many people I’ve never met, and they’ve all been incredible! Because we share the same assumptions about the data and underlying frameworks, we understand each other. Within hours this team was running at full speed. Everyone has been successfully working together towards one goal — making things better for our merchants — without being constrained to their specific product area.
Key benefits
1. Business-wide impact
2. Team spirit
Positive philosophy about data
If you share some game-changing insights with a big decision maker at your company, do they listen? At Shopify, leaders might not action every single recommendation from Data because there are other considerations to weigh, but they definitely listen. They’re keen to consider anything that could help our merchants.
Shopify has announced several features (plus these) to help merchants during lockdowns like gift card features for all merchants and the launch of local deliveries. The Data Team provided many insights that influenced these decisions.
At the end of the day, it is the data scientists job to make sure insights are understood by the key people. That being said, having leaders that listen help a lot. Our company’s attitude towards data transforms our work from interesting to impactful.
Key benefits
1. Impactful data science
Conclusion
Shopify isn’t perfect. However, our emphasis on foundations and building for the long term is paying off during this period of distress when data is more critical than ever.
When the COVID-19 task force started, no one on the Data Team needed to start from scratch. We leveraged years of data work to uncover valuable insights within days. Some we got from existing dashboards and vetted data points. In other cases, modelled data allowed us to calculate new metrics with fewer than 50 lines of SQL. Shopify’s culture of data sharing, collaboration, and informed decision making ensured these insights turned into action. Foundational work pays off in times of turmoil. I am proud that our investment in foundations is positively impacting the Data Team and our merchants. | https://medium.com/data-shopify/how-to-thrive-in-the-face-of-disruption-tips-from-shopifys-data-team-ae78daeafdbf | ['Marc-Olivier Arsenault'] | 2020-07-30 19:33:15.061000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Shopify', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science'] |
As the women & children pass by | At a distance, they seemed draped in joyful gossamer. When they came close, they clopped like anxious carriage horses. The children were afflicted with brittle laughter. Not even Spring’s rolicing dappled sunlight could banish the sorrow. | https://medium.com/drmstream/as-the-women-children-pass-by-ac4e70fa6773 | ['Dan Mccarthy'] | 2016-11-10 02:25:26.073000+00:00 | ['Observing', 'Photography'] |
How far has Comunev come in connecting people? | Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash
Comunev, a social networking company, aims to connect like-minded people so not many but a lot of people has this question with them to ask-
How far have you come in connecting people?
In today’s FAQ series blog let’s quench the thirst and fill the belly of everyone out there pondering over it.
In numbers it’s not easy, at this point of time, to say how far we have come but considering other factors like where we had started, the new normal, our growth, etc we have achieved a milestone that we hadn’t foreseen.
Hmm… So, to keep it short and simple let’s, first, begin with…
How did we start?
It was obvious that there was a need to connect people and help them to make real-life connections instead of doing mindless scrolling. We found that no one is doing it that good. So we decided to connect people based on their interest, not randomly.
Since we wanted to connect people based on the interest that binds them we decided to create interest-based communities. Each community shelters enthusiasts within which everyone can relate to each other.
Our first interest-based community was Speakom, a public speaking community. On seeing how rapidly the crowd was increasing and attending the event we decided to cater to other enthusiasts too.
So, many more communities were opened, based on specific interests like books, startups, fitness, etc.
Note: To know more about the interest-based communities read our Connect with Comunev series of blogs.
Our virtual appearance
Everything was fine. We were expanding not only in terms of our communities but also expanding our reach in other cities. But, we believe that something else was written in our destiny. And, then the WOW factor came. The unwelcome, one and only, Covid-19 struck the whole world.
It affected us too but we didn’t let our guard down. Seeing the new normal we shifted our events virtually and guess what now we can reach out to an even larger audience than before though we’re still trying to get a hold of it.
Most of our problems associated with finding a venue, number of people who can attend, getting advance registration of the hall and so on, was effaced when we decided to go online. But some bottlenecks befell too. Choosing a platform which corresponds with the event, for which community to hold an event and its frequency, feedback, and some other problems emerged.
Current Scenario
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
Everything from selecting an event to organising it has now been virtual. This has given us added advantage as we always wanted to connect the people of the world and we can now see it becoming true but still a long way to go. Every Saturday, now, we conduct Bookom, a book-lovers community event seeing how widely people have accepted books in the lockdown as a source of their knowledge and passing time.
What’s more relishing is that when we started our journey we were only organising our own events. But now things have changed. We have also started conducting partnered events with companies who shared our goal. It has not only helped us in increasing our reach and more consistent events but getting to know too what drives our partners in their pursuit of connecting people. AIkom, an Artificial Intelligence community, and Blockom, a blockchain enthusiast community, has benefited the most through these partnered events.
How are we going to do it?
Simple. Just like how everyone else is doing. By building an app and a website. But then where’s the difference?
The difference lies in how you use our platform, what’s our motivating factor behind it, what’s the value we are giving and how we want to proceed with it. Our vision and goals set us apart.
But in terms features of the platform, we are building app and website to have multiple selling points that makes finding new connections really easy-
Matchmaking algorithm to find new connections based on common interests
Events to attend in your city with your new connections
Interest based communities to connect with a far bigger set of like-minded people
The website is live now and anyone willing to form a connection can sign up in our platform to join the community as per their interest. The app is, now, also available in play stores for android, as of now. Continuous improvement for both is in the pipeline and still, we are constantly exploring what it would take to get us closer to our goal.
This is just a start and we have just cracked the surface of the potential of connecting people and how people in society would like to connect. So far, it was not a journey of creation but discovery. And, that now we have witnessed what the problem is we are setting forth towards the door of creation.
All thanks to our teammates without whom we wouldn’t have been able to come this far. We are still learning, exploring and craving for more connections.
Also, it’s not us, it’s you who gave us the value to our existence. We want to create social media 2.0 where you can connect with people with a mere click and we want you to be a part of it.
So, join us on this journey. If you want to know our future endeavours or past achievements then follow Comunev blogs.
And, since you’ve read the article till now, that means something must have clicked in your mind as you were reading it. So please give us a clap if you liked it and we will keep answering your future questions like this.
Don’t just join us, connect with us. | https://medium.com/comunev/how-far-has-comunev-come-in-connecting-people-921233eff486 | ['Sweta Deb'] | 2020-12-16 14:22:06.914000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneur In Residence', 'Internships', 'Social Media', 'Entrepreurship', 'What The Faqs'] |
Emotional Advertising: Why Human Decisions Are Like Icebergs | Humans are inherently irrational. Our hearts are often stronger motivators than our heads when making day-to-day decisions.
So, you can blame your brain for your choice of Chipotle over Chop’t for lunch. Even Wall Street-ers are not immune to the power of emotions. Research has shown that sunny weather is linked to higher stock market performance. On rainy days, however, everything falls apart.
Source: TrueGif.com
Our emotions and decisions are truly inseparable. A series of studies by Antonio R. Damasio showed that people with damage to their orbitofrontal cortices, the brain’s emotional hub, struggled to make simple choices. While their ability to use reason was intact, they couldn’t store the emotions associated with things they liked and disliked. Therefore, they couldn’t easily determine which item they preferred.
Source: Giphy.com
Those of us with intact orbitofrontal cortices, however, use mental short-cuts to make our lives just a bit easier. These shortcuts are called heuristics and they allow our brains to operate on autopilot when making simple decisions. If you picture an iceberg, these heuristics would live under the water’s surface. This subconscious majority of decision making is called “System 1” (See Figure 1).
Figure 1. Source: The Long and Short of It
This is where long-term brand preferences and emotional brand associations come into play. System 1 is responsible for the automatic, emotional and fast responses that guide our day-to-day choices. For example, if you’re a regular Starbucks drinker and were given the choice between Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, you would choose Starbucks without batting an eye.
On the other hand, “System 2” is responsible for the decisions that require slow and effortful thought. System 2 is activated when System 1 doesn’t have an automatic response, particularly when you are considering buying a product. While System 1 provides powerful emotional priming that can sway you in one direction, System 2 ultimately pulls the trigger on the purchase. In some cases, especially when you encounter a superior product or major discount, System 2 can overpower the preferences established by System 1. For instance, if you found out that Dunkin’ Donuts was offering coffee for $1, you might consider abandoning your Starbucks routine. Campaigns that focus on rational messaging and short-term gains activate System 2. Only customers that are close to the moment of purchase are affected by promotional and direct response tactics. Most other people screen out these messages.
Campaigns that activate System 1, however, affect long-term brand preferences and emotional brand associations. This approach provokes lasting feelings that accumulate over time and can lead to long-term sales growth and reduction in price elasticity.
Here are some great examples of iconic emotion-driven campaigns:
Apple: “Think Different” (1997)
Extra Gum: “The Story of Sarah & Juan” (2015)
Barbie: “Imagine the Possibilities” (2015)
These ads all make you feel something without explicitly selling a product. You may not feel immediately compelled to go and buy a packet of Extra Gum or a Barbie, but there is a little part of your orbitofrontal cortex that just stored a positive emotional association with these brands. And that’s awesome.
For an additional look at the insights behind human emotion and their effect on advertising, check out our piece on ‘The Illogical Logic Behind Rational Advertising’. | https://medium.com/comms-planning/why-human-decisions-are-like-icebergs-520cde8809be | ['Ali Goldsmith'] | 2016-06-27 19:36:07.664000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Branding', 'Psychology', 'Emotions', 'Advertising'] |
12 Advantages of Digital Technology | Today, digital technology has radically transformed modern human life. Innumerable benefits are added, such as impacting how we used to work, communicate, shop, travel, and entertaining ourselves. Digital technology is also used in business, education, media, healthcare, communication, and transportation.
Adapting and adopting digital technology is more than an afterthought in many people. It is crucial to begin and progress the transition into digital technology, to stay competitive and relevant.
What is Digital Technology?
Before proceeding to the list of advantages, let’s find out what digital technology means, where it came from, and how it evolves throughout the year.
In broad terms, the term digital refers to signals or data that are converted into numbers at the most basic machine-level, “zero and one.” Digital comes from the Latin word “digitus” that means finger that refers to a part of the oldest tools used for counting. On the other hand, the term that represents technology relies on the use of microprocessors. Technology helps us to do a job using a device or tools.
Digital technology made the world a small place with the levels of improvement of communication and global access faster and reliably. Digital technology is around us, and it comes in many different shapes and sizes. Digital technology is the culmination of all computer technologies where new media refers to on-demand access to all content at any time on a digital device. Most technologies are described as new media, often manipulated, networkable, and interactive. Some of the examples are the internet, websites, and video games.
12 Advantages of Digital Technology
Geographical Freedom
Many people wish to have more annual leave up to their sleeves so that they have the time to explore the world, visit a loved one, or do something that they are passionate about. They can not just get up and go because of the demand for their jobs. It might feel great to have a job where people can express their passions, but there will always be a time people wish to have time to be outside of their jobs.
As digital technology continuously evolves, you can do anything on your terms. Many platforms allow you to work online without going to specific workplaces and be wherever you want.
If you’re planing to start your online business, we have rounded up a step-by-step guide on how and where to start an online business so that you can have all the information to get your business up and running in no time.
Accessible Banking and Finance
The digitalization of technology has taken banking and finance to the next level. Any transaction is just a click away around the globe, from online banking, buying, and selling, digital marketing to payments. It is easy to validate the authenticity and integrity of a digital document within the comfort of your home.
Time Freedom
Digital technology allows you to choose when to work if you are working online. Flexibility to adapt your schedule aligns with your productive hours.
Choose How You Work
Given the plenty of digital technology advancements and newly invented platforms, people can easily choose how they will work. They can do things their own way by having flexibility around where, when, and how they work daily. Digital technology will make you feel more in control of your career and schedule.
Productivity
Digital technology makes machines smarter, leading to a higher production rate and reducing time at work or any activities. This also means that the expectation of the demand and supply curve is met.
Connectivity
With the world being globalized with inventions of digital technology, it makes people closer together. You can communicate using social platforms that enable the use of words, video, audio, and media exchange.
Flexible Work Amount and Days Off
The automation of most work activities has a great impact on some people. The digitized work setups frequently accelerate the processing time of tasks that require considerable flexibility and endurance. As a result, people can easily pull a day off from work and have a flexible work amount with the digital transformation.
Global Access
The internet makes every portion of knowledge around the world accessible. Courses and lessons can now be delivered online.
Self Development
People strive to become better versions of themselves. With the availability of digital technology today, improving personal development and self-improvement materials are easy to access. Examples of these materials are e-books, podcasts, online journal technology, workout technology, stress management technology, and productivity applications.
Keeps you Updated
Digital mediums like websites, apps, and other platforms will keep you updated. Most of the news and local events are updated regularly across the globe.
Stored Information is Preserved
The quality of information is never reduced because of digital technology. It will not be lost, damaged, or duplicated.
In business, Taking the necessary steps is important in protecting your online business and your user’s data from hackers who could steal vital information and even viruses that might harm your computer systems.
Read the practices and tips that entrepreneurs should keep in mind to ensure their business and the user data is secured.
Exciting Life Awaits
There is no denying the fact that digital technology paved the way for multi-functional devices. Computers are faster and higher-powered than ever before. With all the changes over the years, digital technology has also made our lives easier, faster, better, exciting, and more fun. | https://medium.com/@onlinebusinessfoundations/12-advantages-of-digital-technology-9d8e454795c2 | ['Online Business Foundations'] | 2020-12-17 07:46:03.442000+00:00 | ['Digital Technology', 'Advantages', 'Online Business'] |
[DeNA TechCon 2020 ライブ配信] DeNA データプラットフォームにおける自由と統制のバランス | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/dena-analytics-blog/dena-techcon-2020-%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%96%E9%85%8D%E4%BF%A1-dena-%E3%83%87%E3%83%BC%E3%82%BF%E3%83%97%E3%83%A9%E3%83%83%E3%83%88%E3%83%95%E3%82%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0%E3%81%AB%E3%81%8A%E3%81%91%E3%82%8B%E8%87%AA%E7%94%B1%E3%81%A8%E7%B5%B1%E5%88%B6%E3%81%AE%E3%83%90%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B9-5075ebd9ea03 | [] | 2020-03-26 05:32:13.382000+00:00 | ['Bigquery', 'Analytics', 'Kubernetes', 'Data Engineering', 'Technology'] |
Don’t idolise | When Respect turns into Worship, things get messed up. This is, and always will be the rule of relationships. Not just romantic relationships, or blood relationships, but the ones where we actually thought we could learn from our idols.
You see someone, and you go through various stages. Recognition, Admiration, Love and then Respect. Recognition is when you observe a new entity amongst yourselves and realise that there is something about the person that makes you stand on your feet and strive to be higher than your normal selves. It is a selfless, motivated and ambitious step towards growth. Selfless because you have been inspired by the person’s aura, not your own greed. Then you start admiring them. Their work, their behaviour, their actions, empathy, persona and what not. You’re mesmerised, borderline obsessed. It’s when you look at a mentor/guru and wish to be like them. Act like them, talk like them, want to create an impact them. You look forward to seeing them and just be in their presence. Suddenly, you’re in love. In love with their work and ethics. This is the purest, the most ethereal form of love. You wish to instil in yourself the values that your Mentor/Guru preaches. You want to be their most obedient disciple. You want to be so perfect in your work just so that you can hear words of praise from them. Respect is something you always had for such a person. Because what is love without respect? And this respect is unhampered by outside circumstances. You deafen yourself against what other people say about the person. You start defending them, presenting their side of the story. And you’re actually not wrong in doing that either. After all, you’re in love. Also, the Mentor/Guru might themself may not even care about such opinions, which in turn makes you respect them even more.
But if you take one more step, and reach the idolisation stage, you’re doomed. Not because of something your Mentor/Guru did. But because you became Icarus and flew too close to the Sun. You begin observing things that would humanise them after a while. This would make you feel disappointed.
‘But you were not supposed to be like this Sir, I thought you were different.’
Did he promise such a thing? I believe he didn’t. At the end, he was just a human. Like you and I, made up of mistakes and characteristic intricacies.
The different thing about being Icarus in this scenario is that you get to learn from you mistake properly. Make new wings again for yourself and attempt another flight.
What do we do then? We learn. To never idolise. Recognise, Admire, Love and Respect. But never idolise. Remember what Harvey Dent said, ‘You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain.’
So, we learn to not make someone our hero, because they eventually will not turn out to be what we thought they weren’t. And that’s fine. Heroes don’t exist on Earth, only Humans. | https://medium.com/@whomanshu/dont-idolise-9157ebc4bfad | ['Himanshu Yadav'] | 2020-11-21 17:12:38.313000+00:00 | ['Obsessions', 'Corporate Culture', 'Heroes', 'Guru', 'Solidarity'] |
Adobe XD e Visual Studio Code: creare un design system ready-to-code! — Vol 1 | 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 | https://medium.com/webeetle/adobe-xd-evisual-studio-code-creare-un-design-system-ready-to-code-vol-1-6a5d28805cd5 | ['Anna Grazia Longobardi'] | 2020-12-21 15:23:03.964000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Adobe Xd', 'Development', 'Visual Studio Code', 'Design Systems'] |
Quali strumenti per un’Agenda Digitale? | in Both Sides of the Table | https://medium.com/verbania-laboratorio-civico-digitale/quali-strumenti-per-unagenda-digitale-3e001b40c07b | ['Oscar Badoino'] | 2017-01-12 15:31:38.988000+00:00 | ['Agenda Digitale', 'Verbania', 'Piemonte', 'Innovazione', 'Infographics'] |
An Afternoon in People’s Park | The China we hear about in the news is not the real China.
The people of China work hard to create a good life for their family, but they also enjoy many beautiful parks with family and friends.
These photos are taken in People’s Park in Chengdu, a city of more than 16 million people. The city has amazing architecture and some of the most beautiful parks you can imagine. | https://medium.com/snap-shots/an-afternoon-in-peoples-park-3d60eaeead63 | ['Gary Mcbrine'] | 2020-12-02 13:35:34.369000+00:00 | ['Creative', 'Art', 'Photography', 'Inspiration', 'Travel'] |
The Mosaic | we see each other
through our poems
we write and scatter our pieces.
the mosaic will be never complete
one or two pieces will be always missing. | https://medium.com/storymaker/the-mosaic-22c1c3c02616 | ['Priyanka Srivastava'] | 2020-12-25 17:12:32.783000+00:00 | ['Writing Life', 'Writers On Writing', 'This Happened To Me', 'Writing', 'Poetry'] |
The Gay Wedding That Happened Way Before You Think | Unfortunately, things got messy for them after returning to Dumbría because some neighbors immediately recognized Elisa. Within a few hours, they had the whole village shouting at their front door. Finally, Elisa managed to escape the crowd.
Marcela stayed and went on with her life as usual while communicating with Elisa by letter, planning their next move. I say as usual but the truth is she had to deal with a lot of journalists coming to her doorstep and asking her all sorts of stuff about Elisa’s gender, among other things.
Eventually, they decided to meet in Oporto, Portugal, where Elisa would go by the name of Pepe. They worked there for a while, Elisa as a tailor and Marcela at a restaurant. In the meantime, there was an arrest warrant against them in Spain. Finally, after two months of search, they were caught and imprisoned in Oporto.
This meant that the press and the public opinion were all over them again. The thing now was whether to deport them or judge them in Portugal. At least they got to impose themselves enough to prevent the police from separating them, so they were sharing the same cell.
They had many journalists coming to interview them at their cell. The press, which had been so harmful to them, this time helped the public opinion to be on their side since they started sharing the terrible conditions they were in. But what definitely saved them was that they decided to plead that all they had was a romantic friendship. They claimed to know that they had been irresponsible but they were only trying to protect one another because they loved each other like sisters.
This made Portuguese people empathize with their story and they even received donations, some of them very large quantities of money coming from women that preferred not to identify themselves. After this, none of the involved countries wanted to be the bad guy. Eventually, the Portuguese police had to let them go because they couldn’t hold them without a trial.
So finally they got out and spent some months in Oporto, waiting for things to calm down. During this time a strange thing happened: Marcela gave birth. Making the math it seems that she got pregnant while Elisa was away learning how to behave like a man, pretending she was in Cuba. But there is no information regarding exactly what happened, whether it was part of the plan to legitimate their marriage or it was something else. So, as you can imagine, the press was all over them once again.
Knowing they had to escape before Spain found a way to have them back, they decided to go to Buenos Aires. From now on we know very little about their lives in Argentina, but we do know that Elisa married an old man in 1903. This man was unhappy with their marriage because Elisa wasn’t, well, the kind of wife he expected and because she insisted on bringing her sister and her daughter to live with them. Eventually, Elisa’s husband began to be suspicious about his wife and sister in law, so he investigated and it didn’t take him long to find pictures and headlines from the Spanish and Portuguese press. He reported Elisa but fortunately, the judge set her free without charges.
After this episode, we know nothing about them, but this could arguably be a good sign. We can only hope they had a good life after all. | https://medium.com/the-collector/the-gay-wedding-that-happened-way-before-you-think-ce8e9d13a945 | ['Cecilia Olivera'] | 2020-09-28 21:09:14.297000+00:00 | ['LGBTQ', 'History', 'Gay Rights', 'Culture', 'Diversity'] |
How Programming Languages Change How You Think | While I enjoyed the film and its concepts, it got me thinking about programming and how different programming language s might alter the way we think about application development.
This is a thought that stuck with me and resurfaced as I delved deeper into functional programming.
The Impact of Programming Language on Thought
Let’s take a quick tour of a few different programming languages. We’ll look at some sample code from each one and speculate at the ways of thinking that they might encourage or discourage.
Disclaimer: I am including basic information on several languages I have not extensively programmed in to offer a healthy variety of syntax. I will be relying on some speculation for these as well as my own personal experiences with the languages my knowledge and experience are deeper in.
C#
C# is an imperative programming language built to support object-oriented programming (OOP) with syntax inspired by C++ and Java. Like F# and Visual Basic, C# runs on .NET and can interact with other .NET programming languages.
Let’s look at some sample C# code from a game project of mine from years back:
Here we have a class from a game context that contains an ApplyDamage method. Code flows from top to bottom and may or may not enter if statements for conditional logic before it returns a number indicating the damage dealt.
This type of programming is very typical for object oriented languages despite the simplified example here and encourages the following types of behavior:
Thinking about the system in terms of individual objects
Focusing on if statements which may or may not need to execute
Adding properties, methods, and inheritance to manage complexity as things grow
I should note here that although C# was built as an object-oriented interpreted language, it is shifting to allow the language to support functional programming approaches like F#.
JavaScript
JavaScript is a function-oriented language built originally for the browser. JavaScript has since grown to support full-stack application and server development.
Here’s a snippet of JavaScript code from a different hobbyist game project of mine (seeing a pattern yet?):
This JavaScript code is similar to our C# example above in that it represents an imperative series of commands that the program will run.
There are some notable differences to C#, however.
Most notably, JavaScript is loosely typed. This means its variables don’t have a type defined in advance and can be reused for things of different types. Objects can have new properties dynamically added or even removed as the program runs. Functions can also be called with any number of parameters, including less than or more than the function expects.
As a result, JavaScript programs tend to feel a bit more loose than strongly-typed programming languages. This additional freedom creates some unique problems which additional syntax such as the rest and spread operators (…) among others have helped alleviate.
TypeScript
I hesitate to include TypeScript since TypeScript is just a different way to generate JavaScript, but I think it’s worth discussing briefly using code from — you guessed it — a different game project of mine.
TypeScript is really JavaScript plus some optional type declarations. The TypeScript compiler takes TypeScript code and compiles it down to working JavaScript code which is then understandable by the browser.
Because of this, TypeScript isn’t much different than JavaScript, but it does add type declaration statements.
It turns out that type declarations are actually a pretty big deal to how you think about your code. Instead of wondering what type something is or having to rely on accurate documentation, you can now see the type declaration next to the variable or parameter. This is a nice touch, however it does have drawbacks.
Because TypeScript relies on the programmer to accurately define the types, it pushes you towards types that are easy to represent via standard syntax. This in turn discourages you from passing functions around as parameters.
If you were to declare a parameter that is a function that takes in a Number and returns a Boolean, that syntax is possible but still difficult to remember, write, and read, so you naturally tend to do it less frequently.
Python
Python is another imperative language like C# or JavaScript, but it’s syntax is notably different:
Code example taken from The Algorithms
As someone who has only done bits of Python programming, I can’t speak too much to how Python changes your way of thought, except to point out how elegant the syntax feels compared to other languages.
It’s a very minimal style requiring indentation over brackets to define scopes. This reduces the level of noise in the code and helps you focus on the logic.
In my experience, this style of minimalism causes me to emulate it with very concise functions that call out to other functions, resulting in code that is nearly as compact as F#, but significantly more readable.
I also should point out a comparison to JavaScript and TypeScript with Python: Python allows you to add a type hint if you choose to do so (and is pictured in the code above). However, this feature was added since I last worked with Python and I cannot talk much about it as a result.
Go
Go (also called GoLang) is a more recent development and represents another statically typed imperative programming language.
Let’s look at its syntax because it’s a bit different in a few aspects beyond just where braces and brackets are placed:
Code example taken from The Algorithms
Go has a few syntax niceties I’ve not bumped into in other languages yet.
The for keyword is much more flexible, allowing for infinite loops if needed. Additionally, Go uses := as a shorthand for declare and assign, which keeps noise to a minimum. Finally, we see a quick way of swapping two values with the , and = operators.
I cannot write much how Go might impact how we think about writing applications, but I’d be curious about the experiences of those of you who have worked more with Go.
My initial reaction is that it takes a lot of the elegance from Python and applies it to syntax similar to C#, Java, and JavaScript’s, and I’m curious how far that additional “syntactic sugar” goes in terms of changing how you think about problem solving.
F#
Everything I’ve covered so far has primarily been an imperative programming language. F#, by contrast, is a functional programming language, which relies on entirely different patterns of code:
Code example taken from The Algorithms
F#, like C#, is strongly typed and those types are enforced by the compiler. However, more type information is inferred by the F# compiler and so actual type keywords are only needed sparingly. As a result, F# syntax is able to work more seamlessly with complex types, since the need to represent those types in syntax is significantly reduced.
F# syntax often deals with “piping” things from function to function to bring about an expected result.
We’ll take a more in-depth look at F# in the next section and examine a few cases involving piping before exploring a wider range of ways its different syntax may impact how you think about problem solving in code.
Note: F# is not the only modern functional programming language, but out of my familiarity with the F# language and the fact that this article is technically part of the community F# advent 2020 series, we’ll zero in F# for the remainder of the article.
Other Languages
If you’d like to look more into the syntax related to many of the currently used programming languages, I recommend you check out The Algorithms on GitHub for an open source set of examples including some other functional programming languages.
I’d also love to see your thoughts on how programming languages have shaped how you think about programming, so please leave a comment as well.
How F# Changed How I think about Programming
With this overview of languages aside, let’s dive deeper into the F# language and how its features change the way we approach code.
F# is not C#
When I first tried to learn F#, it was a difficult experience for me. It was my first functional programming language and terms such as monads, partial application of functions, and higher-order functions made my journey a difficult one.
Adding to that burden, as I learned F#, I was focused on “How do I write this C# code in F#?” so my first attempts at F# tried to create strong types with mutable state like you’d do in a C# program.
While F# can do that, it’s not what F# is about. F# isn’t about creating classes with mutable state and traditional members but about writing functions and composing those functions into solutions to larger problems.
In object-oriented languages we focus on encapsulating logic in cohesive objects and calling methods on those objects in a specific sequence. In other words, the classes are the stars of the show and their methods help things work.
F# encourages puts the focus on individual functions and pushes you towards immutable state and chaining functions together. The functions are the main attraction and the types that support them are left as minimal as possible (though F#’s typing system is very powerful and flexible).
Thinking in Terms of Pipes
When I think of F# applications, I picture a series of pipes connected to each other — each one meticulously designed to have exactly the correct output given a specific input and have no other side effects. This type of function is commonly called a pure function.
The individual pipes (or functions) are small and highly specialized, but together they make a very capable application.
F# as a language is very good at chaining things together thanks to its specialized operators such as the |> or “pipe” operator which takes the value on the left and makes it the last parameter to the function on the right.
Just looking at the presence of this one isolated operator in F# a multitude of things become easy in F# that would be harder in a language such as C#. | https://medium.com/@matteland/how-programming-languages-change-how-you-think-c8225d84041c | ['Matt Eland'] | 2020-12-27 06:16:11.942000+00:00 | ['Programming Languages', 'Dotnet', 'Software Engineering', 'Functional Programming'] |
Asian-American man assaulted in New York: “Another incident of hate crimes against Asians”. | Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
A Chinese-American man in New York was recently knocked to the ground and kicked on the head, repeadetly, following a series of hate crimes and assault attacks against Asian-Americans, USA Today reported on Sunday.
The man, who was 61 years old, was in a critical, but stable condition Sunday, in a New York hospital.
Police reports that he was collecting cans in East Harlem on Friday night when he was hit from behind and knocked down and kicked, repeatedly, several times in the head.
This is the latest instance of a series of hate crimes committed against Asian-Americans, with several cases of anti-Asian hate crimes committed this year. Authorities link hate crimes to anger and frustration linked to the Coronavirus pandemic, which originated from Wuhan, P.R. China.
NYC Mayor de Blasio called the latest attack “outrageous” and promised to take action against the assailant, who has not yet been found.
Governor Cuomo, the New York Governor, said Sunday that he would ask the State Hate Crime Task Force to help in the NYPD’s investigation of the incident. | https://medium.com/@thefreestate/asian-american-man-assaulted-in-new-york-another-incident-of-hate-crimes-against-asians-8723cbcf1d5a | ['The Free State'] | 2021-04-26 09:32:18.715000+00:00 | ['Asian American', 'USA', 'Hate Crimes'] |
How a Lone Trader Wiped off Almost $1 Trillion Under 30 Minutes From the US Stock Market | How he made $40m from his bedroom?
Sarao was charged for artificially manipulating the market and making a fortune. He understood the concept of high-frequency trading where computer bots are programmed to modify the trade order milliseconds before it could be executed.
He developed a similar software that placed thousands of orders before quickly canceling or changing them and created an artificial demand for other traders to buy or sell that asset.
This practice is known as “spoofing” which allowed him to genuinely buy or sell orders at a profit in the volatile market later.
What he was convicted of?
“Order flow toxicity” was at historically high levels one hour prior to the flash crash
Source-Wikipedia
Just prior to the flash crash, Sarao placed orders for thousands of E-mini S&P 500 stock index futures contracts in the Chicago Merchantile exchange which he planned on canceling later. These orders cost him $200 million and were replaced or modified 19,000 times before they were finally canceled.
Sarao was naive and unaware of the charges until 2015 when the FBI arrived at his door. He was charged with electronic fraud and spoofing which is illegal in the US. After he spent 5 months in UK prison, he lost a legal battle against his extradition case in 2016. He initially faced 22 charges from the US government which could land him to a maximum of 380 years in jail.
In the US federal court, Sarao agreed to pay $12.8m, the amount he earned from his illegal trading in the span of five years. But prosecutors decided not to give him a jail sentence as he did not spend his money on any luxuries. Moreover, he helped the government with money frauds like these. | https://medium.com/the-collector/how-a-lone-trader-wiped-off-almost-1-trillion-under-30-minutes-from-the-us-stock-market-3c50b3c1df67 | ['Kamna Kirti'] | 2020-12-19 01:27:46.699000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Stocks', 'Stock Market', 'Finance'] |
Announcing Olympus: Lightning-enabled fiat ramps by Zap | Yo. Today I am extremely excited to finally announce the biggest effort Zap has ever been a part of. This blog post might be a little longer than my typical post, but I have a lot of amazing things to say.
Today, we are announcing that Zap will offer a Lightning-enabled fiat on and off-ramp service I like to call Olympus. Olympus allows users to go from fiat to making and receiving Lightning payments in seconds.
We finally had the time to build a real website, which is now hosted at zaphq.io. To sign up for our beta program, you can go to fiattolightning.com.
The story
Zap has existed for over two years now. Back in the spring of 2017, while working at the only day job I’ve ever had, I started writing code for a Lightning wallet in my free time. I developed the opinion that the Lightning Network would begin to introduce a new relationship between bitcoin and its end-users. The ambitions to help translate these complex protocols in a way that would allow Lightning to be used by millions of mainstream consumers without a third party is the how and why of Zap’s inception.
But the most prominent and persistent challenge Lightning faces today is onboarding users.
How a user goes from:
I want to use Lightning
to:
Using Lightning
This user story comes prepackaged with intrinsic friction and has proven to be an extremely complicated and unique problem. To date, there hasn’t been a solution that has the ability to satisfy Zap’s ambition of putting hundreds of thousands or even millions of Lightning nodes on devices all over the world.
Almost two years ago I synced a testnet Lightning node on my iPhone for the first time and posted a video of my first payment from my phone. How would you get millions of people to do this? How does a no-coiner bump into a Lightning QR code, get onboarded, and scan it?
What if general consumers never had to experience the limitations and the inherent expensive nature of the bitcoin blockchain? What if they don’t need to understand the layered complexity of channels? What if they don’t need to trust a custodian to own their keys? Someone who has never experienced bitcoin before should be able to swipe their debit card, get bitcoin delivered to them directly onto the Lightning Network, and make inexpensive instant micropayments within seconds of purchase.
Accomplishing this takes a lot of effort and expertise in a wide range of skill sets. Legal expertise and the ability to educate lawyers and regulators is required. Market and trading expertise that enables near-instant settlement, tight quote streaming to consumers buying small amounts, and smart order routing to ensure fair pricing and best execution, is required. Fast yet pinpoint accurate automated risk management is required. Experience with building on bitcoin and Lightning is required. The ability to cleverly use the protocols to execute the vision is required. And lastly, the product chops to design and implement something new that not only works but works at scale is required.
Well, what do we do? Do we wait for Coinbase and BitPay to come around to Lightning? Leave it up to the closed-source elites that have misrepresented bitcoin for years to take the baton and run to the finish line?
No. Fuck that.
So, a little less than a year ago I set out to get the ball rolling and accomplish this.
The Service
Olympus was intentionally designed as a standalone component. It is not something baked into the Zap wallet itself and having a Zap wallet is not required to use the service.
I use my Zap wallets every day, and I think they’re great. There are also so many great Lightning services out there, with new ones emerging every day. Everyone building on Lightning should be able to leverage the infrastructure work we’ve done to get here. So, Olympus will be available to any external app, product, business, etc. to use.
The first thing to do with such a service is to implement it into our already well-distributed Lightning wallet. All of our wallets are open source, and my intention is that the implementation of the fiat ramps into our own wallets can be used as a reference for others.
So, without further ado, here I am replicating the same video I recorded two years ago on Testnet. The difference is, this is mainnet. I have no bitcoin. I have no channels. All I have is a freshly downloaded Zap wallet and a Bitrefill Lightning QR code staring me right in the face.
Here is what it looked like on my iPhone.
Olympus will be available inside of all Zap wallets: iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux. Here I have a fresh Zap Desktop instance. I have no coins. I have no channels. I top up the wallet by buying bitcoin. The bitcoin is delivered instantly and in seconds I blow through a $0.02 paywall to finish an article.
Previously, the user story read like this: take fiat, buy bitcoin, wait until you’re allowed to withdraw, withdraw and wait for confirmations, deposit bitcoin onto the Lightning Network, open channels, wait for more confirmations, scan QR code. Not anymore. Download, buy, scan. What new economy does this unlock? I don’t know. We can’t know, because the world as we know it has never seen anything like this.
Regulatory
Ok, time to get down and dirty into how it all ties together.
KYC/AML is not required to use Zap and it never will be. Yes, users that want to use this feature will have to comply with KYC/AML. I fought hard for minimal KYC/AML, as purchases will likely be small, but it’s KYC/AML nonetheless. As much as I love you all, I am too young and too pretty to go to jail right now. However, let me make a few points clear.
Users that use Zap today do so on an anonymous basis, and that will always be an option. If you would like to buy bitcoin directly over Lightning you will be able to, but this feature is not required. We’ve architected the code in a way where we can even release versions of Zap that don’t have the buy bitcoin feature embedded. Olympus is designed to give non-custodial Lightning a chance at mainstream adoption and onboard the masses, but it’s not for everyone. With Zap, it will always be your choice, and you can audit our open source code at any point.
How It Works
Olympus is an external service that clients make requests to. The service is responsible for the hard parts: onboarding users, processing payments, managing market risk, streaming quotes, and delivering bitcoins.
Olympus can deliver BTC in whichever way it sees the best fit: Lightning payment, submarine swap, on-chain, etc.
How does Zap allow you to go from no channels to a Lightning payment in seconds? Who is paying for fees? Let’s walk through it.
Today, many Lightning services have tried to solve this onboarding problem by opening channels to the user when the user creates a wallet. As convenient as it may seem, I see this as only a stop-gap solution that can’t scale in the long term. Speaking bluntly, marketing onboarding users this way is a bit misleading.
For simplicity sake, let’s assume a $100 channel per user, ignoring the fees. For Zap’s latest major desktop release alone, with 20,000+ downloads, that is a $2,000,000 capital requirement without accounting for blockchain fees, which will inevitably rise in cost. For a Lightning wallet to reach the scale of 1M-10M users, that is a capital requirement of $100,000,000-$1,000,000,000. Without accounting for fees, and highlighting the shortcomings of only allowing a user receive capacity of $100, this is simply infeasible.
How do we solve this? Turbo channels. Explained here and originally made popular by Bitrefill. The added feature to the protocol allows pushed amounts when a channel is opened to be spent immediately. Within the protocol, pushing bitcoin to the other side of a new channel is silly, as you’re more or less giving money away. That is unless the user already paid for the bitcoin. Then, it becomes a way for users to spend bitcoin immediately as soon as the channel handshake is finished. Users aren’t forced to use this option, as they can always wait as long as they’d like for their desired number of confirmations.
It’s also important to note that this becomes resistant to DoS attacks. If Zap were to open a channel on download, there is nothing stopping someone from abusing this service and requiring Zap to constantly close and open channels for them. Given that users have to pay for this service, it can’t be abused. So, because of this, Zap will begin by giving users receive capacity when they buy bitcoin. I would encourage users to abuse this because when they do, it’s because of them that I will be enjoying my pamplemousse martini in the ocean on my new yacht, sitting on a fat stack of sats :)
The Future
I have big plans, and believe it or not, I still have more announcements to come over the coming months. Partnerships, more features, and more products.
As excited as I am to get all of this out to you all, we are going to start with a beta program. I would like to remind everyone: Lightning itself is still early. It is not recommended to put more money on Lightning than you are willing to lose. With bugs being reported in the major protocol implementations, neutrino not officially supported on mainnet, and our own software in beta as well, it feels early to invite an onslaught of capital to the network immediately. I have zero desire to do this fast and I have every intention to do this right.
This will take a community effort. A lot of testing, reporting of bugs, feedback on features, and collaboration. If you’d like to join the beta, buy bitcoin over Lightning, and help us test, you can do so on our website or on fiattolightning.com.
The plan is to begin to roll this out publicly over the coming months. Oh, and Zap doesn’t plan on just servicing the US, we are mission-driven to bring this to the entire world.
Thanks
Alright, everyone, I’m gonna end it here. I can’t begin to express how excited I am. Thinking back to when I first started this project, I have a really hard time believing where it is today. Thank you so much.
To the Lightning Network protocol developers, thank you. I am in awe at the pace of Lightning development. To Lightning Labs, thank you. Zap uses LND for everything Lightning related, it is an amazing piece of software.
To CMT Digital, thank you. The layered legal, market, trading, and engineering complexity baked into pulling this off is hard to fathom. Colleen and everyone over at CMT are angels, not only for Zap but for bitcoin. They’ve been pushing market maturity by supporting things like Bakkt and are now committed to helping Lightning grow and succeed as well.
Lastly, to my parents. Everything you see here has been funded by the Mallers family. It hasn’t been easy but offers to fund Zap have come with bogus demands, borderline malicious agreements, and hidden agendas. We haven’t bent the knee for anyone. This is our effort as a family to give back to bitcoin, which we are forever in debt to. My parents are top donors to bitcoin charities, have funded Bitcoin Core development, and now have funded Lightning development. I know if I don’t say anything they never will, it’s just who they are. Modern-day heroes if you ask me. Stack sats and give back. I’ve never been prouder to be a Mallers, and more specifically, the son of my parents. Thanks, guys. I hope I’m not embarrassing you, but I’m so proud of everything, I can’t help it.
You can contact me @JackMallers on twitter or [email protected] via email. Feel free to join our slack if you’d like to be more interactive with the Zap community.
You can learn more about Zap at our new website and sign up for our fiat-to-lightning beta at fiattolightning.com.
As I said above, I’ve got more coming. I’ll talk to you soon.
Much love fam, much love 👊 🍻 | https://medium.com/@jimmymow/announcing-olympus-lightning-enabled-fiat-ramps-by-zap-1f5349a96ee9 | ['Jack Mallers'] | 2019-09-25 14:10:30.157000+00:00 | ['Lightning Network', 'Wallet', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain'] |
Underwater Review: A solid subaquatic monster mash | SWITCH. | By Jake Watt
This article originally appeared on www.maketheswitch.com.au.
William Eubanks (‘Love’, ‘The Signal’) is a director whose science fiction films could all be summed up thusly: “surprisingly good given its budget”. ‘Underwater’ is his first big-budget effort and has languished on the shelf due to the Fox/Disney merger — it’s actually the final film to be released under the 20th Century Fox name before Walt Disney Studios changed its name to 20th Century Studios.
As someone who unabashedly loves movies about weird stuff happening underwater — ‘Sphere,’ ‘Deep Star Six,’ and ‘Leviathan’ — Eubanks’ latest movie was seemingly tailor-made for me.
Tian Industries intends to drill seven miles to the bottom of the Mariana Trench for resources. A large earthquake hits, and a section of the Kepler 822 Station starts to suffer a catastrophic breach from the pressure.
A mechanical engineer named Norah (Kristen Stewart) and a station crewman named Rodrigo (Mamoudou Athie) scramble through the grimy, mucky wreckage. They find more survivors: Paul (T.J. Miller), a tattooed oddball who carries around a stuffed bunny for good luck; Emily (Jessica Henwick), a biology intern; engineer and Emily’s partner Smith (John Gallagher Jr); and the station’s dutiful captain, Lucien (Vincent Cassel).
With no escape pods left, Lucien recommends that they put on pressurised suits and walk one mile across the ocean floor to the abandoned Roebuck Station 641 — the film does a strong job of showcasing both the nearly suffocating claustrophobia of tight spaces and the vast emptiness of the environment.
Unfortunately, awakened by the incessant drilling, a race of spiny, gooey deep-sea Lovecraftian lifeforms with stretchy jaws have come out of the far depths.
The characters are simple archetypes — the captain with a tragic past, the comic relief, the useless IT guy, the scared rookie, and the cannon fodder. Kristen Stewart, her hair buzzed short and dyed blond, makes a credible Ripley-esque action hero, complete with high-top sneakers and tight-fitting attire.
Eubanks keeps the narrative brief and to the point, pitting his rowdy, tech lingo-spouting characters against a series of obstacles: a crawl through a corpse-littered tunnel, a walk along the ocean floor, defective oxygen converters, and the constant threat of decompression.
While the faster scenes are too chaotic to understand what is happening, what makes ‘Underwater’ so unique — and why subaquatic films usually struggle — is the literal sluggishness of its other action sequences. Characters descend elevators or ride brutally slow trams. The crew buzzes around in small robotic pods, their pace slowed by the water. That might not sound particularly fun, but Eubanks effectively captures every bump and turn; it’s a realistically awkward depiction of deep-sea travel.
Could ‘Underwater’ have benefited from being a one-woman show, K-Stew versus monsters versus her own haunted past? Maybe.
‘Underwater’ homages a number of films and owes its biggest debts to stuff like ‘Alien: Resurrection’, a film which plays like a collection of intriguing, half-formed ideas joined to the incongruous imagination of French fabulist Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Like James Cameron’s ‘The Abyss’, Eubanks snakes his camera through the behemoth of a cavernous underwater drilling platform and features a strong female character.
Underwater also owes something to video games, mostly ‘Bioshock’, using costume (armoured, steampunk-inspired atmospheric diving suits), environment (devastated, littered with clues) and sound design — like the prerecorded announcements that loop through station corridors — for both exposition and irony.
Still, a handful of things took me out of the film, a melodramatic voiceover bookends being chief among them, as well as the aforementioned incoherently fast action scenes. It also feels less like a William Eubanks film (often single character and heavy on flashbacks and the interior of the mind), and more of a collage of his interests. Could ‘Underwater’ have benefited from being a one-woman show, K-Stew versus monsters versus her own haunted past? Maybe.
Tense and fun, with cool creatures and jump scares that aren’t too obnoxious, ‘Underwater’ is disposable in the long run. But it’s also an entertaining and unpretentious true Hollywood B-movie that is worth a visit to the cinema. | https://medium.com/@maketheswitchAU/underwater-review-a-solid-subaquatic-monster-mash-switch-b59e39f41049 | [] | 2020-05-22 13:40:30.941000+00:00 | ['Sci Fi Movies', 'Movies', 'Thriller', 'Kristen Stewart', 'Horror'] |
BEST QUOTES I READ TODAY : | BEST QUOTES I READ TODAY :
"The best among you is the one who doesn't harm others with his tongue and hands". -PROPHET MUHAMMAD (SAW)-
"He who has in his heart the weight of a mustard seed of pride shall not enter paradise". -PROPHET MUHAMMAD (SAW)-
“The best of people are those that bring most benefit to the rest of mankind.”
"You will die the way you lived". -PROPHET MUHAMMAD (SAW)-
"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." -RUMI-
"The merit in action lies in finishing it to end". -GENGHIS KHAN-
……………………………………
Affiliate marketing :
Affiliate link : https://www.marketingtectics.com?joinDaood12= | https://medium.com/@daoudkhalid2003/best-quotes-i-read-today-2ef1c7c7af5d | [] | 2020-12-20 16:14:36.899000+00:00 | ['Spiritual Growth', 'Quotes', 'Wisdom', 'Thoughts', 'Best Of'] |
Developing A Growth Mindset Through Amal Totkay | Brain: Oh ya!! I am growing :p
“Unless you are willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go, success won’t happen.”-Phillip Adams
What is a Growth Mindset?
How can we shift towards a Growth Mindset?
What are Amal Totkay? How do they help us in developing a Growth Mindset? What do I think of them?
Intriguing, you want to shift your mindset, right? So lets just dive in & get ourselves enlightened with this valuable information.
So, Growth Mindset is basically a mindset which strives for lifelong learning, continuous improvement, refinement and which doesn’t settle or get stuck at a point. For example if you have a Growth Mindset you are never going to say that you are perfect, you don’t need any improvement instead, you will continue finding ways to learn, enhance your knowledge & understanding.
Trust me you can easily shift your mindset from fixed to growth but for that you need to allow, open and put yourself out there and sign up for lifelong learning and experience. I know this sounds vague but don’t worry because Amal Academy has made it very easy for us by Introducing Amal Totkay.
So, what are Amal Totkay? They are basically five tips that help you to shift your mindset & develop a growth one and these tips are very easy and helpful, you just need commitment and if you give your all, you surely will be able to develop a Growth Mindset in no time. Following are the five Amal totkay
1. SELF-TALK
Number one Amal Totka is focused upon self-talk and that to a positive one because everybody self-talks and that talk plays a huge role in shaping our thoughts and perception. If you are doing a negative self-talk (I can’t do this, I am not good enough),you are basically limiting yourself and making yourself underconfident. But having a positive self-talk (I can do this, I have got this), results in so many great things. You are making yourself more confident, efficient and empowered. You are creating your own reality which is more positive and ready to grow. This might seem less important but it is not, you will know the power of self-talk when you do it by yourself. Just by saying that you are capable of doing something you will definitely do it. I personally truly believe that it works, stand in front of the mirror and say that you are good, you have potential and then you will come to a realization that you are good and you have got this.
2. GET OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE
This one is my favorite & also one of the most important tip that can help your mind to grow. When you are siting in your comfort zone, you are chilling and are being laid back. You don’t find the need to take risks and challenge yourself, you are basically stuck and fixated with the idea of comfort. But you have no idea that the comfort that you think you are in isn’t actually a healthy comfort, its toxic and it is preventing you from enjoying and excelling in your life. And we all don’t want that so, why stay in an imaginary comfort zone which will never let us grow, learn & be better. Let me give an example, so in my last week’s session (Amal Career-prep fellowship) we had to perform a role play & voluntarily characters were selected by fellows, I initially thought of playing a female character with whom I could relate but then I was like Khadija this is your chance, challenge yourself by doing something opposite of what predictably in a situation like this you would do, so I played a male character with whom I couldn’t relate at all, and honestly It seems like a very small thing but you have no idea how much I enjoyed. You can also experience such enjoyment and growth but for that you have to pop your bubble and step out of it.
3. CREATE NEW HABITS
Habits, especially productive ones help you in shaping your lifestyle and routine. In order to change your mindset habits play a vital role, they basically keep a check on your growth and progress. They keep you at the tip of your toe. Make planning and scheduling your day your habit, it will help you to be as productive as you can. Also, journal because its a great way to self-reflect and collect your thoughts. Putting your thoughts on a piece of paper helps you in reflecting on them, you read them from a far and by that you might look and understand them from a different perspective. Such habits no doubt lead you to a journey of lifelong learning. Start from little things like as I mentioned in my previous blog make your bed daily, make it a habit because that gets you started for the day ahead. You don’t need to adopt fancy habits, you just have to start, make a routine and then things will fall in place eventually.
4. ASK PEOPLE 4 HELP
Asking for help is indeed a sign of strength that shows that you are ready to learn, improve & grow. It is because you want to grow that you are asking for help, you want people to tell you about your progress and give you a sincere reality check. But for that you need to find people around you who you think will help you to grow and learn new things. For example in my third semester, I got paired up with this senior of mine named Hamna & we did a project together and till the time she graduated we had become very good friends who spent time together talking about life, future and opportunities. The thing that I noticed when I was working with her was that she was one of those people who would help you sincerely & want to see you grow & I couldn’t let that opportunity go of being friends with a person who would always inspire me and push me to grow and be better. So, what I am trying to say is surround yourself with friends (like my best friend who gives me the priceless advice & who is always there to support me) & people who would help you and give you the best advice possible.
5. FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT
The tip from its face value is very self-explanatory. This totka basically suggests that if you pretend to be someone that you are not, you are very likely to eventually become that. For example if you lack empathy but you keep pretending that you are very empathetic, chances are that you will become empathetic. Similarly, if you are trying to adopt a growth mindset & you are practicing the beliefs of a person with a growth mindset, you will end up shifting your mind to the growth one. This aphorism is very common & effective & even research backs it up by saying that if you act as if you are competent & confident you will end up being a person with these traits. So, guys FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT!!!!
“If you are presenting yourself with confidence, you can pull off pretty much anything”-Katy Perry
Amal Totkay are very effective & doable, we just need to show commitment and dedication. We all have the capability to bring change, improve and be better everyday but we just need to start and take the first step. I know taking the first step is scary and overwhelming but trust me if you take one you will want to take the other and the other and eventually you will find yourself standing at the very last step as an improved version of yourself. I found the Amal Totkay very interesting and very helpful & I hope you did too. I have started my journey (I am consciously trying to follow these & keeping a check on myself) but I want you to start your journey too, so get up & hit the road.
FIGHTING!!!
Thank you so much for reading my blog. PEACE OUT. | https://medium.com/@khadija-bushra168/developing-a-growth-mindset-through-amal-totkay-ea1997b13262 | ['Khadija Bushra'] | 2020-12-29 21:31:23.976000+00:00 | ['Growth Mindset', 'Amal Academy', 'Amal Totkay'] |
What If | 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/illumination/what-if-3285b8d161e | ['Jim Mcaulay'] | 2020-12-01 04:01:27.799000+00:00 | ['Illumination', 'Jim Mcaulay', 'Humour', 'Poetry', 'Humor'] |
The Garlic Freak | (9–17)
Charles James Worthington never tasted garlic until he was sixteen years old. It was on one of his first clumsy dates. It was on a double date, actually. It was the standard movie then pizza date. It was the first time Charles had ever eaten a pizza not made by his mother. He finally learned what real pizza was like and he also discovered garlic. (And girls.)
From that moment on Charles became wildly passionate about garlic. He did research on it. He went on a quest to try every ethnic cuisine that included garlic. He began going to grocery stores after school just to have a double handful of garlic in which to stick his nose.
How on earth could he have gone sixteen years of his life without any experience with garlic whatsoever?
It was because of his mother. The family never ate out in those sixteen years. Charles’ mother was an extreme penny pincher. She knew how to feed a family of seven on less than a buck-fifty. The only food Chucky (he was called Chucky back then) ever tasted was his mother’s cooking. Even the seemingly thousands of sack lunches that Chucky had eaten at school were made by her.
And she hated garlic. She hated it so much that she vehemently refused to even allow it in her home. Chucky learned this when his mother found a few stray cloves of garlic in Chucky’s sock drawer.
“Don’t you ever bring garlic into this house again! You understand me?”
“No. I don’t understand your weirdness about garlic. What’s the deal? I’ve tasted it and it’s delicious.”
She put her hand to her mouth, slowly dropping it to speak, “So you’ve tried it?”
“Duh.”
“I tried to shield you from it as long as I could but I guess deep down I knew that eventually you would succumb. I can’t protect you from garlic your whole life. You’ll be a man soon and you’ll need to make your own decisions. Just hear me now, Chucky; garlic is evil! It will inflame your loins and your stomach and it will turn your brain into mush. It’s what is used to control people. Promise me that you will stay away from garlic!”
“What? No. I love garlic.”
Once again, she covered her mouth.
“And one more thing….”
She didn’t move.
“From now on, my name is not Chucky. It’s Charles!”
Her hand still on her face, his mother let out a faint whimper then turned and left the room. | https://medium.com/recycled/the-garlic-freak-f9fd479541fa | ['White Feather'] | 2019-05-21 18:24:49.004000+00:00 | ['Short Story', 'Fiction', 'Humor', 'Food', 'Psychology'] |
Honesty: the artistic one | Fifth-grader Honesty holds up her favorite shirt as she discussed her favorite basketball player, Kobe Bryant. | Photo by Lily Yegge
A fifth-grade girl finds her passion for dancing and drawing.
By Vanna Contreras and Lily Yegge | Reporters
Honesty’s nerves were about to get the best of her. Inside, she felt the pressure of things going wrong because she realized she didn‘o’t have enough room to do her performance in her normal setting. Moving to be outside, the change of scenery seemed daunting to the 10-year-old girl. She took a deep breath as she took the stage, where her dance would come to life.
“Why am I nervous? I shouldn’t be nervous because I like to dance.”–Honesty, fifth-grader and dancer.
The Maxfield fifth-graders were participating in a school talent show Dec. 4. Each scholar got to perform their favorite talent for their classmates. Honesty’s love for dance brought her out of her shell, allowing her to openly express one of her many passions. Still, sharing this skill was nerve-wracking and intimidating. She did not want to mess up.
“When I went outside, [Ms. Gottschalk] told me I was the first person to perform,” fifth-grader Honesty said. “Why am I nervous? I shouldn’t be nervous because I like to dance.”
Graphic by Lily Yegge
Honesty not only adores dancing, but she also finds comfort in drawing. When she’s stressed about homework, she often finds herself taking a break to draw. While she creates, she escapes from the pressures of her world, like taking care of her younger siblings, especially during their online school days.
As one of seven siblings, she has strong family values. While visiting her cousin, Honesty enjoys being creative with her. They often visit a kind artist, Nikkie, who converts Honesty and her cousin’s drawings into beautiful paintings to sell.
“Nikkie likes to paint over it to add color to it, and we made a PowerPuff Girl,” Honesty said. | https://medium.com/maxfield-times/honesty-the-artistic-one-57f663814dbc | ['Lily Yegge'] | 2020-12-13 17:36:39.924000+00:00 | ['Drawing', 'Maxfield Elementary', 'Dancing', 'Powerpuff Girls', 'Minnesota'] |
5G and Multiplatform Devices Interdependence | The next-generation mobile network sometimes referred to as 5G, is rolling out faster than previous wireless generations and is expected to be a revolutionary technology in major industries.
5G will be faster than current LTE networks, meaning, that the increase in speed will allow IoT devices to communicate and share data faster than ever.
Business Insider report presents the ways of how 5G will strengthen IoT:
Higher data speeds. 5G can reach speeds up to 10 times faster than its predecessor 4G in some cases.
Lower latency. 5G will eventually cut latency in communications to as low as 1 millisecond, down from about 50ms on 4G.
Greater bandwidth. 5G networks possess a tenfold advantage over 4G in terms of the number of connected devices a network can support.
Industries that are affected
These changes will affect major industries, such as telecommunications, enterprises, consumerism. The rise of 5G will bring up the need and desire for users to have more devices and reach different content-types through them.
Source: unsplash.com
Companies, who have products such as streaming platforms, games, should think of ways to optimize their application delivery time and do that in the shortest way possible.
Fasten up end-to-end project delivery
That’s why ReactSeals is all about solutions, which helps to adapt to a changing environment with the latest technology and innovative solutions.
Our platform fastens up the end-to-end delivery of any complex application and eases the work that it takes to make adjustments on every platform. If you want to know more about the technology we work with — send us an email at [email protected]! | https://medium.com/reactseals/5g-and-multiplatform-devices-interdependence-4ced992aa922 | ['Gabrielė Činikaitė'] | 2021-03-03 13:54:12.146000+00:00 | ['Multiplatform', '5g', 'Network', 'Streaming', 'Reactseals'] |
How to fix local debugging of Azure Functions in Visual Studio for Mac | Visual Studio 8.8.4 fixes BigSur CLR error
UPDATED — 14th January 2021
The bug has now been closed as fixed by Visual Studio — please ensure you have the latest version installed.
UPDATED — installed Big Sur? First ensure that you have updated Visual Studio to version 8.8 release 4 (Wednesday 16th December 2020).
This will resolve an issue where the terminal doesn’t display the Azure function output, instead you would have been greeted with a CLR error.
The rest of this blog covers how I could get Visual Studio working by rolling back the version of Xcode (this worked before I upgraded to BigSur).
Today I tried to run my Visual Studio Azure Function on a Mac, but instead of the terminal showing the Azure function output it displayed nothing.
A very unexciting terminal screenshot
The root cause appears to be related to this bug https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/42900
Oddly Xcode 12 and .NET 5 don’t play well together. The following issue was raised https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/42311 and this comment from c-lamon solved the terminal issue for me.
The solution that worked for me!
I don’t quite understand how Visual Studio for Mac, .NET 5 and Xcode are dependent on each other, but the action of reverting to Xcode 11 does work 🥳
In summary download XCode 11.7 from Apple, rename it (so you can keep Xcode 12.x running too) and move the renamed file to your Applications folder and then tell the operating system which version of XCode should be used.
sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode_11.app ← To fix Visual Studio on Mac
or
sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app ← Use the latest XCode
Xcode-select controls the location of the developer directory used by xcrun, xcodebuild, cc and other Xcode and BSD development tools.
xcode-select man page extract
And voila — Azure functions are now successfully running locally on the Mac through the Visual Studio debugger.
My only disappointment was that the terminal didn’t render the Microsoft Azure Functions ASCII art 😏
Azure Functions Logo — not included
Follow me on Twitter - https://twitter.com/codingrob | https://medium.com/@codingrob/how-to-fix-local-debugging-of-azure-functions-in-visual-studio-for-mac-85bd16b8b527 | ['Rob Wilson'] | 2021-01-14 09:25:06.800000+00:00 | ['Azure Functions', 'Dotnet', 'Azure', 'Dotnet Core'] |
Money saving hacks to try in your lunch break | Lifetise | Want to know how to save more? If you constantly find yourself stretched thin when it comes to money, or living paycheck to paycheck, now might be a good time to reflect on some of your spending and saving habits. But…it’s nearing the end of a difficult year, and we’re guessing that the last thing you want to do is take a long, hard look at your money management.
To make things simple, we’ve put together 4 quick money saving hacks that you can start implementing right this second. They could leave with you a lot more in your account at the end of each month. Have a read through some of our ideas and you might thank us later!
#1 Cancel those pesky outdated subscriptions
Tracing back through your bank statement and having a closer look at your monthly outgoings can be a huge money-saver. You might be subscribed to a magazine that you’re no longer excited to read. Or maybe you’re still signed up with Deliveroo Plus from your free trial three months ago.
Cutting out tiny outgoings might not seem like a big deal, but in the long run you could be saving yourself between £40 — £60 per year. If you’re not signed up to any pesky outdated services, why not consider going halves on some of your current subscriptions? Whether that’s splitting the cost of your Netflix account with your best friend. Or sharing your Spotify subscription with your partner — why not have your cake and eat it too (at half the price)?
#2 Commit to a savings challenge
One of the quickest hacks is to set yourself a small regular savings target.
Here’s our Lifetise members’ favourite challenge:
Monday to Sunday challenge
Save £1 on Monday, £2 on Tuesday and continue until you reach £7 on Sunday.
You’ll save £28 a week (that’s about £120 a month) and a whopping £1,456 if you keep it up for a whole year.
Small challenges like these are fantastic for highlighting areas which we can cut down our spending in. If you’re ready to really level-up your saving skills, a tried and tested trick to manage your money is the 50/30/20 method, which we hugely recommend.
#3 Switch to a 0% credit card
Do you have credit cards with high interest rates? Paying 18% or 20% interest on purchases you buy can really get costly if you don’t pay it off quickly. Plus, if you’ve racked up a bit of debt on your credit card, you’re probably finding that all your money goes on paying the interest. The actual debt bit never seems to go down!
See if you can switch to a 0% balance transfer card. We don’t recommend applying for a new card until you have checked you’re likely to get it. Because this can affect your credit score. The good news is a lot of credit card companies allow you to check that you are eligible before you apply.
Why is a 0% card so good? Well, you can transfer your existing credit card balance to this new card. All of a sudden, you won’t be paying 18% or 20% interest on that debt. So whatever repayments you make will actually pay off the balance, not just the interest.
Plus, if you need to make any more purchases on your credit card, you won’t pay interest on those either for a fixed time period (often up to 18 months into the future). So you can make a plan to pay off the total amount over a period of time without any interest.
Let’s say you owe £1,000 already on your credit card. You also need to buy a new laptop and it will cost you around £750. So you’ll have a total of £1,750 to pay back.
If you get a 0% credit card that gives you zero interest for 12 months. You can split that £1,750 into 12 monthly repayments. Which means you’ll pay £145 a month. Much more manageable.
#4 Create a fun and inventive weekly meal plan
This might be an unexpected one, but making a weekly meal plan can be an incredible way to cut down on spending. Do you frequently find yourself heading into Sainsbury’s to do a small shop and leaving with multiple impulse buys that you grabbed off the shelf? If this sounds like you, planning out your meals in advance and writing a list of the ingredients needed, can help you to do a focused food shop and avoid impulse spending.
Committing yourself to trying out new recipes will also help you to become more creative in the kitchen, and will stop you from ordering that late night KFC from JustEat or Deliveroo.
Here’s some inspo for delicious, wallet-friendly meals.
Chicken satay skewers drenched in sticky, peanutty goodness from Mob Kitchen
Comforting and filling vegan rainbow dansak from Bootstrap Cook
This 🤤 drool-worthy French onion soup from Budget Bytes.
Let us know which of these money saving hacks you’re going to try and share how you get on. We love a good success story, and want to know whether our tips and tricks work well for you. Like what you’ve read? If you want to learn more about how to level-up your money management skills, have a browse through some of our thought-provoking articles on saving here. | https://medium.com/@cazhughes/money-saving-hacks-to-try-in-your-lunch-break-lifetise-729d69b5375c | ['Caroline Hughes'] | 2020-12-15 11:26:26.581000+00:00 | ['Budgeting', 'Money', 'Saving', 'Money Management', 'Finance'] |
Charting Bitcoin’s First Decade | Mapping out Bitcoin’s Infrastructure | ‘Nothing Is Decentralized’ | Union Square Ventures most recent post on blockchain infrastructure incited a flurry of debates on Twitter regarding whether or not infrastructure is being built on Bitcoin. So our team at The Block decided to take a look and attempt to map out Bitcoin’s infrastructure. | https://medium.com/cryptodaily/charting-bitcoins-first-decade-mapping-out-bitcoin-s-infrastructure-nothing-is-decentralized-64006d275f6f | ['Crypto Daily Writer'] | 2018-10-05 08:31:01.059000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Newsletter', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain'] |
Day5 — Data Preprocessing Implementation for Machine Learning | For today, we had to implement Data Preprocessing using Python in Jupyter Notebook.
Definition
Data Pre-processing is the process of making the data fit to be used to train a Machine Learning model. The data set often contain anomalies and if used to train ML model often gives erroneous outcomes. Thus this discrepancy should be removed and to do that Data Preprocessing is used.
Three types of data anomalies:
Real world data are generally:
Incomplete: Missing attribute values, missing certain attributes of importance, or having only aggregate data Noisy: Containing errors or outliers Inconsistent: Containing discrepancies in codes or names
Implementation
This is the data preprocessing implementation that is done for the current task at hand.
Data: The data taken for this is the Bank Markintenance Data (click here to get the data). Have a look at the definition of the data set there.
Let’s dive right in to the implementation.
First import the required libraries. And then read the “bank.csv” data file.
#Import the libraries import pandas as pd import numpy as np #Read the data df = pd.read_csv(“bankmarketing.csv”, sep=”;”)
Then just display the head and tail of the data frame. | https://medium.com/@shridharhegde/day5-data-preprocessing-implementation-for-machine-learning-555254d82ba5 | ['Shridhar Hegde'] | 2019-06-20 14:15:55.918000+00:00 | ['Jupyter Notebook', 'Numpy', 'Data Science', 'Python', 'Machine Learning'] |
The End of the Story | Photo by Reuben Juarez on Unsplash
do stories have an end?
I’ve never seen one
just on and on and on
one person to another
grazing the surface
of someone else’s deep
history to history
time to time
until time has no meaning
unless defined by the end
but where is it?
I hope to never find it | https://medium.com/literally-literary/the-end-of-the-story-1a72302b5e33 | ['Abigail Siegel'] | 2020-04-13 12:16:01.195000+00:00 | ['Philosophy', 'Stories', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Poem', 'Poetry'] |
The trap of A/B testing for too long. | A/B testing is an extremely common test that companies run to compare different versions of their products to see which is performing better. A lot of the literature on A/B testing often recommends that the test should be run over a long period so that it can be made certain without doubt about the statistical significance of the result achieved.
While getting more data points and results over a longer duration is often a good thing, there could be some issues that arise in terms of underlying discrepancies in the way the data was collected, how the results were analyzed, and finally how inferences were made regarding the collected results.
I have created one such simulation of an A/B test to show how running an A/B test over a long duration is not always a good thing and how looking at the results of the data across the whole duration might lead to skewed inferences.
Understanding The Data
This data is a simulation of data collected by a company wanting to test how changing a particular aspect of the website leads to a customer buying a product which is termed as a conversion.
Group A is our control group — In this case, it is the people exposed to the currently existing website.
Group B is our treatment group — In this case, it the people who are exposed to the modified website.
Users were split into these two groups with a 0.5 probability.
The data spans across 3 days. ie. 1st of January, 2020–3rd of January 2020.
Sample of the simulated data used.
Here in the Conversion Status column 0 implies ‘Not Converted’ and 1(not seen in the image) implies ‘Converted’.
Now that we have understood the data let’s statistically analyze the results of the A/B test in 3 different scenarios. We will be using hypothesis testing for our analysis.
Experiment 1: Test across all days and the complete population.
This experiment is what usually would happen in the case of an A/B test. The company would run the A/B test across multiple days and then statistically compare the results generated.
Pivoting across the Groups we see the result generated from our data as follows:
Experiment 1 Results.
We now have two different conversion rates for our two groups. Now, how do statistically infer that these two are different?
We perform a hypothesis test!
Hypothesis Test 1:
Null Hypothesis: There is no difference between the two conversion rates.
p1 = p2
Alternative Hypothesis: The two conversion rates are statistically different.
p1!=p2
Significance Level: 0.01
With the given information we need to now calculate our Z-Statistic using the below formula:
The Z-Test is a statistical test used to compare the means/proportions from two different populations when the variances are known and the sample size is large(usually above 30 to be considered a normal distribution). The Z-Score we get from this test a number representing how many standard deviations above or below the mean the number derived from the comparison of the proportions is. If the Z-Score lies within the cut off(significance level’s Z Score) then we fail to reject our null hypothesis, else we can reject it.
In our case:
p1 = 0.05002 | p2 = 0.056302 | n1 = 4938 | n2 = 5062
p = 0.0532 (This is the conversion rate calculated across the whole population including both A and B groups together)
Putting these values into the formula we get a Z Score of -1.399. On converting this score to a p-value we get 0.1617.
0.1617 > 0.01
Therefore, we fail to reject our Null Hypothesis.
Inference: The two proportions are not significantly different and hence the treatment is not effective.
This basically means that introducing the new features to the website did not do the company any good and it is just as good as the old one.
Fair enough. However, let’s look at the next experiment.
Experiment 2: Test across all days and only the morning population.
Let’s say the company ran this test only in the mornings. Here, mornings are defined as between 8 AM and 4 PM. We then perform the same steps as above.
Pivoting across the Groups we see the result generated from our data as follows:
Experiment 2 results.
Hypothesis Test 2:
Null Hypothesis: There is no difference between the two conversion rates.
p1 = p2
Alternative Hypothesis: The two conversion rates are statistically different.
p1!=p2
Significance Level: 0.01(This is an assumption which can be varied according to the use case)
In our case:
p1 = 0.053896 | p2 = 0.023621 | n1 = 1707 | n2 = 1735
p = 0.038640 (This is the conversion rate calculated across the whole population including both A and B groups together)
Putting these values into the formula we get a Z Score of 4.60609. On converting this score to a p-value we get 0.000004.
0.000004 < 0.01
Therefore, we reject our Null Hypothesis.
Inference: The two proportions are significantly different and hence the treatment is significantly different, in our case if we were to perform a left tailed test, we would see that the conversion rate of our treatment group is significantly less than that of our control group.
That’s weird. This is not in accordance with our results from the first test.
Let’s carry on and perform one last experiment.
Experiment 3: Test across all days and only the evening population.
Let’s say the company ran this test only in the evenings. Here, evenings are defined as between 4 PM and 11:59:59 PM. We then perform the same steps as above.
Pivoting across the Groups we see the result generated from our data as follows:
Experiment 3 data summary.
Hypothesis Test 3:
Null Hypothesis: There is no difference between the two conversion rates.
p1 = p2
Alternative Hypothesis: The two conversion rates are statistically different.
p1!=p2
Significance Level: 0.01
In our case:
p1 = 0.05153 | p2 = 0.101725 | n1 = 1635 | n2 = 1681
p = 0.07629 (This is the conversion rate calculated across the whole population including both A and B groups together)
Putting these values into the formula we get a Z Score of -5.59283. On converting this score to a p-value we get 0.0000000223.
0.0000000223 < 0.01
Therefore, we reject our Null Hypothesis.
Inference: The two proportions are significantly different and hence the treatment is significantly different, in our case if we were to perform a right-tailed test, we would see that the conversion rate of our treatment group is significantly greater than that of our control group.
Now how do we explain this?
When we performed the test across the whole population we found that the two conversion rates were not significantly different from each other. However, with the second two experiments, we see that the treatment group’s conversion rate is in fact different, and based on the time of day it could be different in either direction.
Now, how does a company deal with these confusing results?
If the company decides to just stick the old website, then they are losing out on the amazing results that those new features were providing them on the bunch of people that signed on in the evening.
However, if they move to the new website they lose out more customers than usual in the people who sign on in the mornings.
The best way to handle this would be to deploy different versions of the website according to the time and get the best possible results.
However, the take away from these experiments is the fact that if the company had only stuck to the first experiment where they tested the whole population across all 3 days then they would be losing out on those extra conversions generated in the evening by switching to the second website.
So how does one know how many splits to make and how long is too long when it comes to A/B testing? One solution is by the implementation of Causal Inference while making inferences on the results generated.
What is “causal inference”?
Causal inference is the process of drawing a conclusion about a causal connection based on the conditions of the occurrence of an effect.
In this case, the time of day acts as a causal connection towards drawing customers to buying a product on the website with new features. It is important to understand why that is the case. It could be that the demographic of the people who sign-in in the mornings are different from those who sign-in in the evenings. It could be the difference in the demographic which is the true cause for the new website to be performing better in the evenings.
Whatever the reason, as a company who is releasing an A/B test it is important to delve deeper into the results and make conclusions based on a deep causal understanding of why a particular result is taking place.
PS: This experiment is a pretty good example of the Simpson’s Paradox which might be an interesting read.
Find the Jupyter notebook with the data generation and the analysis here.
Thank you for reading!
You can follow my work and other posts here! | https://medium.com/swlh/the-trap-of-a-b-testing-for-too-long-a4706066a692 | ['Abhijit Menon'] | 2020-06-30 18:26:46.761000+00:00 | ['Data Analytics', 'Data Science', 'Marketing Strategies', 'A B Testing', 'Statistics'] |
White People, We Need to Talk About Your Neighborhoods | When William Levitt decided to ban Black people from living in the housing developments he created, he cited business concerns, as recorded in the New York Times, stated, “‘If we sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 or 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community. This is their attitude, not ours.” In short, Levitt’s decision created a housing barrier to Black Americans, but it also highlights the truth about White Americans: they didn’t want to live next to Black people.
At all.
White neighborhoods were sanctuaries. They had the best schools, parks, community swimming pools, and grocery stores. These neighborhoods were built with a purpose: to be exclusive to the White race as a defense against interactions with people of color. This idea was so ingrained into housing practices that, according to Richard Rothstein in an NPR interview, “The most important role of the Federal Housing Administration was it subsidized mass-production builders of entire subdivisions, entire suburbs. And it did so with a requirement that no homes be sold to African-Americans…” Aside from creating White only spaces, this also created a racial wealth gap.
White Picket Fence from Pixabay by PublicDomainArchive
Houses are an investment. If you are lucky, with time, the value of your house grows from the price you initially paid. Houses were how White Americans gained an economic foothold. According to CNBC, “In 1940, the median home value in the U.S. was just $2,938. In 1980, it was $47,200, and by 2000, it had risen to $119,600. Even adjusted for inflation, the median home price in 1940 would only have been $30,600 in 2000 dollars, according to data from the U.S. Census.” This created generational wealth within White families. Houses were inherited, passed down like jewelry and fine china. All of it a direct benefit from the ability to purchase a home in a nice, affluent neighborhood.
A White neighborhood.
White people, these neighborhoods were kept White by your families. After all, as Levitt acknowledged, they bought these houses for a reason. And they did everything they could to keep those spaces, White. Attempts to integrate neighborhoods were met with violence.
In 1957, the Myers family moved to a Levittown in Pennsylvania. What followed was a campaign of terror aimed at making life so miserable for the Black family that they would leave. According to the University of Richmond, “At dusk each evening, crowds of people gathered outside the Myer’s home, angrily shouting and jeering, singing the National Anthem, and throwing stones toward the Myer’s home.” As noted by Chris English of the Buck County Courier Times, “The Myers family endured cross burnings, racial slurs and death threats during their time in Levittown.” In a space where the Myers should have felt welcomed and safe, as it was their neighborhood, they were consistently harassed and terrorized.
In another case, referenced in the show Lovecraft Country, the Chicago Housing Authority kept a housing project called Trumbull Park Homes a White paradise. However, everything changed when a Black family, the Howards, moved into the neighborhood. As noted by D. Bradford Hunt, Ph.D. in an entry on Chicagohistory.org, “Beginning on August 5 and continuing nightly for weeks thereafter, crowds of whites directed fireworks, rocks, and racial epithets toward Betty and Donald Howard’s apartment. Police responded with a show of force but few arrests.” Like the Myers, the Howards were abused by their neighbors for the crime of desegregating a White space.
The Myers and Howards experiences were not isolated incidents. They were published incidents. There were reasons Black people did not simply move into White neighborhoods and it has very little to do with the silly notion that Black people don’t want to live near you. White neighborhoods had the best resources. They had the best schools, grocery stores, and were safe. To believe that Black parents did not want these things for their children is an attempt at dehumanizing Black people. It creates this false idea that Black people are unwilling to move for better economic opportunities. Black families did have the economic ability to buy homes, as is proven by the fact that there were Black neighborhoods, businesses, and communities. The reality is that Black parents wanted their children to have the same opportunities as White children, but the risks were often too big.
American City Image from Pixabay by Herrfilm
The system was set up against Black Americans from the beginning. Lenders would not give money to Black applicants to buy homes in the White neighborhoods, creating a barrier of entry. However, suppose a Black family did find a way to own a home in the White neighborhood. Then, that is when the community did everything in its power to run them out.
These campaigns of violence were not individual, they were communal. White communities blocked and terrorized Black ones. If your families were members of White communities that stayed White, you need to ask yourself why that was the case.
It is tempting to claim that this happened a long time ago. To believe that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 changed everything. This would be a hope, but not reality. As writer Michelle Adams wrote in The New Yorker, “The final bill included significant compromises that limited the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s [HUD] enforcement capabilities. It also put the burden of enforcement on the victims, requiring them to either file a formal complaint with HUD or sue in federal court to vindicate their rights.” Housing, a guaranteed right for White Americans has never been equally extended to Black Americans. The fight for equal housing is still happening and many of us are just trying to catch up. | https://medium.com/an-injustice/white-people-we-need-to-talk-about-your-neighborhoods-80580b13df2 | ['Nikki Brueggeman'] | 2020-09-10 20:54:11.839000+00:00 | ['Society', 'History', 'Equality', 'Housing', 'Race'] |
I am hereby pushing the deadline for my 2020 goals to 2050. | Photo by Jordan Benton from Pexels
Some people dread deadlines. Me? I thrive on them. Call it a hefty dose of anxiety and a morbid fascination with the inexorable march of time, but nothing gets me jazzed like a fast-approaching deadline.
And believe me when I tell you, I’ve got a big one coming up!
A little over a decade ago, I sat myself down and wrote out exactly where I wanted to be in ten years’ time. It was a tough exercise, but as I sternly reminded myself at the time, “Goals are dreams with deadlines.”
Now, here we are — 2020 is drawing to a close. Nine years, 11 months, and some change have gone by, and the tension between what I wrote down and what I’ve actually done is getting more invigorating by the day.
Though not the type of invigorating that pushes you to actually accomplish your goals. It’s more like when you’re lost in the woods and the sun is setting and you know you’ve been walking in circles, but the panic sets in and you start sprinting, but that just takes you deeper into the woods and now the sun’s last rays have disappeared behind the tops of the pines and wow it gets dark in here fast. That kind of invigorating.
So, as hard as it is to admit, I’m starting to feel like my eyes were bigger than my plate on this one.
Look, back in January of 2011, it was easy to imagine that by 2020 I would be INTERPOL’s most wanted time burglar, regularly traversing the space-time continuum to steal sackfuls of jewelry and famous works of art, all while simultaneously dealing with the crushing blows to my personal life each leap into the past would inevitably cause. There are only so many times you can accidentally stop your future spouse from being born before you start to wonder if the Kandinsky in your guest bedroom was really worth it.
Or so I mused, back in 2017, when being an actual time burglar was looking less likely, but publishing a series of detective novels based on the concept seemed eminently doable.
But now, in the dying light of 2020, it’s time to face the music. I need to push this deadline.
And honestly, I can’t think of a better year than 2050. I mean, look at it. Impressive. Stately. Decades from now. It’s the type of year people choose when they say things like, “We’re going to be carbon neutral,” or “I’m going to pay off my student loans.” Also, 5 is basically a backward 2, so it’s kind of like I never missed my deadline at all!
Now, a lot of you are probably thinking, “Matt, it sounds like you’re making excuses in order to push this deadline decades into the future instead of taking a healthy look at why you haven’t achieved the life you imagined.”
Okay, number one: Ouch.
Number two: It’s still 2020. Sure, it’s 4:39 p.m. and the light is fading faster than my chance of dashing off some sort of Time Burglar screenplay by the end of December. But pressure makes diamonds, bitch. Well, pressure, heat and a couple billion years. And, if you’ll recall, once someone invents time travel, I’ll be pouring out sackfuls of those bad boys onto my coffee table every other week.
So, yeah, 2050 it is. | https://medium.com/@matthewmcfarlane4/i-am-hereby-pushing-the-deadline-for-my-2020-goals-to-2050-dc478b2ebbfc | ['Matthew Mcfarlane'] | 2020-12-21 16:36:38.163000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Humor', 'Satire', 'Goals', 'Resolutions'] |
March 2020 Election Violence Risk Briefing | Tajikistan and Mali are both at high risk of electoral violence this month, while the surprise discovery of oil shook Guyana’s politics, resulting in violence
Swallows by Edouard Manet
The Electoral Violence Intelligence System (ELVIS) is a machine learning driven forecasting system that estimates the risk of election-related violence for every national election every month. These posts will provide updates on the outputs of our forecasting model, give an in-depth view of what to expect in the coming month and note any technical changes/updates.
Feel free to reach out to either myself ([email protected]) or Clayton Besaw ([email protected]) for any questions regarding our ELVIS platform or analyses contained in the updates.
March 2020 ELVIS Report
Data and algorithm updates
SPI updated with January 2020 NOAA PREC/L numbers.
Risk forecast for March 2020
Note that Guinea’s election does not have a definitive date set, the final day of the month was listed by default
March is a relatively slow month for national elections. There are three fewer elections this month than in February, two of which have an estimated risk of electoral violence greater than 50%.
Taken together, however, the collective estimated risk is 99.5%
Notably, Tajikistan was the only non-democracy to hold elections this month, and had by far the highest risk of election violence. The election surprised nobody in delivering a victory for the longest-serving leader of a post-Soviet state, while the arrest of journalists and torture of opposition activists qualified the election as violent (more on that below).
Guyana, on the other hand, proved to be quite surprising.
Despite an extremely low estimated risk of election violence, the country saw fighting between opposition and incumbent party officials over disputed election results and subsequent clashes between protesters and police. Although it does not appear there were any fatalities or serious injuries, this was a surprising development in a country that has had peaceful elections since 2001.
Mali and Guinea are the two remaining countries with pending elections. Guinea, however, postponed their combined constitutional referendum and legislative elections, originally slated for March 1, at the last minute and has yet to set a definitive date.
The referendum would extend presidential terms from five to six years, while it is also widely speculated president Alpha Conde would use it to extend his mandate by seeking re-election later this fall (he has already reached his limit of two five-year terms).
For a broader discussion on threats to democracy in West Africa and ECOWAS’ efforts in this area see this piece. | https://medium.com/the-die-is-forecast/march-2020-election-violence-risk-briefing-c038e09c8ee3 | ['Matt Scott Frank'] | 2020-03-11 16:46:28.260000+00:00 | ['Elections', 'Data Science', 'Politics', 'Forecasting', 'Political Violence'] |
Pimple On My Lip | I have a pimple on my lip, a painful
pulsating, and inflamed abscess. This
is not just about the infection on my lip
it’s about the corruption of my soul.
The pain is like a swelling river flushing
neuronal stimuli to my brain reminding me
of the ever-expanding papule that absorbs
my attention the whole day long reminding
me about the fact that I am not special.
No, I’m not the famous or inspiring idol I
dream to be, nor am I the kind and humble
monk sitting the whole day in meditation I
am just a normal guy with a pimple on my lip.
It sucks to think about the meaninglessness of
my existence in the greater scheme of things I
mean yeah for the people around me my existence
seems to create a connection that keeps it together.
But when I see myself in the great universe I am
no more than a tiny speck, a piece of matter
a being receiving notifications about trial versions
of my life, which are reminding me my 7 days are over.
Pay now or die trying (to beat the system)
you will never get rid of your own existence
it’s like a deal with the devil, only that the
devil doesn’t exist, yet he still seems to be real.
Pave the way down to hell and show me
where the lights fade out, there I see a
new code for my extended life trial version
Give it to me or I will die, no wait that’s a lie.
I’m dead already, I just see the movie again.
When I was born the decaying of my flesh
began in an endless cycle of eating and
producing new material that you may call I.
I’m tired of thinking what might be, because
the whole idea of thinking is so flawed and
a one-way street. You see there is only the
thinker but no one to listen (except me).
Snap, the swelling explodes, tears are rolling
out of my right eye, I can’t hold it together,
the pain reminds me of my scattered self-esteem
me, the one who sees but is still blind.
Why does it have to be like this? Why me?
I don’t want a pimple on my lip I just
want to be cool and be loved and be
happy for god’s sake. Where did I turn wrong? | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/pimple-on-my-lip-3649dcf5ecfc | ['Sebastian Wieser'] | 2020-11-09 11:12:41.492000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Self-awareness', 'Pain', 'A Cornered Gurl', 'Poetry'] |
The Securosys token offering | In the following post, we want to provide you with an overview of our token, and how it works for you as a contributor. At Securosys, we strive to set a landmark for a new era of growth financing. Crowd financing and the token economy have created a new set of possibilities for companies to gather money on the market. With the addition of security token offerings, a new class of assets was created and there are still differences in how they are structured and back-fitted to existing law. We are at the forefront of this innovation and proud to have created an asset that is both attractive to crowd investors, as well as traditional investors.
In the current landscape of growth financing, there is one major trade-off that must be addressed by anyone that is asking the market for money. Liquidity versus security. Tokens emitted in an ITO are of high liquidity, but there is still a gap between innovation and the law protecting the investors. With our partner Froirep, we found a viable solution to cater to both demands. The SET token can be held as a “security token” and offers certain rights to the holder, including a share in the business gains by Securosys. If the investor prefers to hold classic equity, he can convert his tokens to shares (non-voting and voting shares are both available) immediately.
The tokens offer high liquidity, besides the dividend share that is distributed through them. On the other hand, the shares offer shareholder rights (depending on the shares the tokens are converted to), but they are not as liquid as the tokens. We are firm believers that this opens up an interesting dynamic.
With the increase in functionalities of the token economy, there is an increase in the complexity of the token structure and associated rights. Therefore, we ask the reader to always fall back to the official whitepaper for any details about the token mechanics and deal structure.
The Securosys SET token
Securosys will issue the Securosys Token (SET) as a security token. The following gives an overview, including token distribution, profit sharing, and conversion mechanism.
Name: Securosys Token
Ticker: SET
Price per token: CHF 5.00 (or equivalent)
Token type: ERC20 compliant token
Token purpose: SET tokens can be converted into shares. The conversion rate is 100 tokens to one Securosys share of CHF 1.00 nominal value. The tokens entitle to an annual dividend-linked participation per token when the company issues a dividend.The dividend-linked participation is a cash payment by Securosys in CHF, tokens, or Ether. The amount of participation per token equals 1% of the amount dividend paid per Securosys share.
Hard cap: 3’049’345 SET Token
Pre-money valuation: CHF 49’259’350 (accounting for discounts)
Participation options: Bitcoin, Ether, and Fiat (CHF, €, $) via bank wire.
ITO timeframe: 6.11.2018–7.12.2018 (target dates. For more details see “ITO tickets” below.)
The SET tokens are considered securities under Swiss law. That’s why we use both terms ITO/initial token offering and STO/security token offering to be more specific about the nature of our token sale.
Although the tokens represent shares in the company, they do not confer any voting rights.
Profit sharing
Every year after receiving the audit report and checking the general financial health of the company, the Securosys board makes a decision on paying out dividends. The general assembly has to approve the proposal, then approved dividends are paid out to share and token holders. Note that Securosys just entered the second year of profitability, but has not paid out dividends in the four years of existence.
25% of the dividends paid to shareholders are distributed to the token holders. The 25% corresponds to the 25% of shares represented by the SET tokens. The dividends are paid out via smart contract in ETH or SET tokens with the rate CHF/ETH calculated at the date of payout. If dividends are paid out in SET tokens, they come from the company reserve or market buybacks by the company.
If a subsidiary of Securosys is sold, the same procedure applies for the exit proceeds.
Requirements for dividend payouts
To be eligible for the dividend distribution, the holder needs to be in possession of at least 1000 SET tokens, and they have to be registered and verified with Securosys. This is due to the Swiss tax withholding requirements.
Participant limitations
Within the EEA, Securosys will rely on prospectus exemptions, offered to less than 150 investors per member state, offered in batches of over €100,000 per investor, or offered to qualified investors only. The full terms of the SET sale will be included in the Token and Token Sale Terms, to be published separately on the Securosys Token Sales website, reachable through ico.securosys.ch.
For other jurisdictions, Securosys will rely on a general representation from the investor that no security laws, or other laws, are violated by the purchase of token shares by the respective investor.
ITO tickets and schedule
According to each investment size and method, various lockup periods apply. All tokens in the Securosys company reserve are locked up 24 months after the ITO. Some tokens that are not sold in the ITO phase are kept separate for private investor sales that will be ongoing due to time-intense processes on the investor side. Please have a look at the table below for all ticket sizes and corresponding lockup periods.
Target dates for public sale November 6 to December 7, 2018
Token distribution and use of proceeds | https://medium.com/securosys/the-securosys-token-offering-3688d1584349 | [] | 2018-10-25 14:19:02.549000+00:00 | ['Security Token Offering', 'Blockchain', 'ICO', 'Hsm', 'Ito'] |
The main barriers to employee training and development (and how to overcome them) | The main barriers to employee training and development (and how to overcome them) apprendo.io Jul 6·3 min read
What are the factors affecting your training and employee development strategies? Identify the barriers in the human talent management of your company
The main barriers to employee training and development (and how to overcome them). — Kai Pilger, Unsplash.
In between the different challenges companies are facing in the context of the global crisis originated by the pandemic, human talent management stands out not only because of the necessity to guarantee their activities and hiring, but also because of the much needed training and development.
But this was already a significant struggle for organizations, due to factors related to organizational culture, as well as others such as adequate tools for business scalability.
What are these obstacles and how to overcome them in order to grow?
Barriers of human talent management and training
Despite this depending on each individual company’s challenges, Apprendo has identified some constants in different types of organizations that tend to become barriers to learning in teams and for employee development.
“Leadership” in counter-flow
All companies have an identity, a culture that defines them. More than something that can just be decreed, it is built through the exchanges of teams and the leadership that conducts them. This permeates in the whole organization, without leaving development and training aside.
This is how a leader that resists change, shows little interest in growth and training for his or her collaborators, and that doesn’t give the opportunity for teams to obtain tools, space and time needed for their learning is the first and main barrier for team growth, but also for the business development itself.
Financial factor (or the investment dilemma)
Costs tend to be a huge hindrance when it comes to allocating budget for training efforts. Nonetheless, not investing in preparing their talent, actually, implies even more costs.
It’s been proven that training and to retain employees already in your payroll is less expensive than hiring new personnel, considering the resources and time needed from your dedicated team to recruit and onboard new people into the company.
From theory to practice: the tech factor
Learning effectiveness is directly related to the tools used to transmit it.
In other words, if you do not have the right platform to take theory into practice and adapt to a fully digital or hybrid way of work, results won’t be optimal.
Technology sets new standards and emphasizes that ideal training needs more than just the right content, but also a suitable experience.
This becomes yet more relevant considering that, in an increasingly competitive environment, industries have greater needs for certifications and technical abilities development (which are in itself in constant change) that urge to incorporate better solutions.
How to improve your employee training and development?
How to improve your employee training and development? — Alejandro Escamilla, Unsplash.
According to analysis by experts in Learning inside organizations, a better access to information and tools for Human Resources development (HRD) is crucial to overcome barriers in skill development and learning inside teams.
In that sense, creating the conditions for your training initiatives to be carried out is the first step to fully deploy the potential of the talent that makes up your company.
Implement a more effective strategy for human talent management with the right tools
APPRENDO: the all-in-one Learning platform
Apprendo offers a solution to implement training programs in a simple effective way. Start now | https://medium.com/@apprendo/the-main-barriers-to-employee-training-and-development-and-how-to-overcome-them-9585b824b09b | [] | 2021-07-06 04:30:13.974000+00:00 | ['Skills Development', 'Training', 'Talent Management', 'Skills', 'Training And Development'] |
Mi opinión sobre programación de Videos juegos ¿Ya no es redituable? | Unity - Unity
Unity is the ultimate game development platform. Use Unity to build high-quality 3D and 2D games, deploy them across… | https://medium.com/@flaviogabriel3/mi-opini%C3%B3n-sobre-programaci%C3%B3n-de-videos-juegos-ya-no-es-redituable-ed76f74663f1 | [] | 2020-12-20 14:03:54.001000+00:00 | ['Unity', 'Programmin', 'Programación', 'Desarrollo Web'] |
How Running is Helping Me Quit Smoking | Photo by Jenny Hill on Unsplash
Running and smoking cigarettes — I’d be hard-pressed to find two more diametrically opposed habits if I tried.
And yet, for several years, I’ve done both.
I’ve been an on-and-off smoker for over a decade, and an on-and-off runner for the past few years. Normally these habits haven’t overlapped, but occasionally they have, even for months at a time.
I’ve found myself coming home from a long run, my heart pounding, only to immediately light a cigarette. I’ve stood on the porch sucking down smoke and nicotine as the sweat from my run was still dripping to the ground.
I don’t have the words to describe how foolish I felt. (At least I never smoked during a run.)
These habits both represent what I want to change the most about myself, but in opposite directions. I’ve struggled for a long time to give up cigarettes, while at the same time working hard to run consistently.
I’m proud to say that lately, I’ve been experiencing success in both directions — it’s been nearly two months since I stopped smoking, and I’ve been running fairly regularly for about a year now. (Although, I did have to take a month and a half of that off for an injured leg.) | https://benyaclark.medium.com/how-running-is-helping-me-quit-smoking-c8d6e07340bc | ['Benya Clark'] | 2019-04-02 19:52:14.326000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Smoking', 'Running', 'Fitness', 'Self Improvement'] |
What It’s Like for CMOs to Adopt a Little “A”* Agile Mindset? | image via Ken Garduno
If you’re a CMO, or within a box or two of her on the org chart, chances are you’re looking for a few new ways to achieve more outcomes in a shorter number of hours across a smaller group of talent. If that’s the case, I have an idea for you.
While working with a handful of CMOs concerned with the mounting pressures of modern marketing (omni-channel awareness and a deep buyer-based, engagement style of digital marketing) I’ve noticed some consistent patterns. I’ve noticed that some CMOs have people on their teams who are recommending a patchwork of semi-agile processes along with: a host of other current (read: trendy) marketing approaches and strategies such as: lean marketing, move more to the cloud, harness the power of data, measure more meaningful outcomes, automate!
While every single one of these elements can be prioritized as important, none of them really embody the holistic mission of modern CMOs — on their own.
Not surprisingly, as stated above, the most consistent pattern at the top of a CMO’s list is their need to accomplish more incrementally positive outcomes in less time with fewer dollars. Sounds simple enough, and it also sounds a little like agile in some respects. But not the Big “A” agile you’re probably thinking of. Let’s break this down.
accomplish more + do it in less time + use fewer resources = success
My experience is that to the CMO:
Accomplish more = Creating and activating more strategic marketing assets (content, campaigns) through social traction, listening programs, channel penetration and experience consistency, etc. that is moving some needle in a positive direction.
Do it in less time = Creating, activating, and seeing more positive outcomes within smarter and more compressed cycles all in shorter time frames.
Using fewer resources = Creating smaller, more autonomously effective teams who manage to get more work done through design thinking and rapid prototyping squads operating in more of a “learn fast / fail fast” laboratory setting.
Together, this is what you could call “Little A” agile.
“Little A” agile, as opposed to “Big A” agile, simply means faster, more responsive, smarter and more nimble all at the same time — not the “Big A” agile that is the canonized, process-oriented development religion. The Little “A” agile is more expansive and embodies more.
“Little A” agile addresses the need to accomplish more in less time with fewer resources by adopting intelligent speed and accountability for more meaningful outcomes.
I believe the success of “Little A” agile for modern CMOs depends on intelligent speed and accountability. A CMO’s version of auto racing’s “zero to sixty” is “information to outcome.” How fast can we move from information (data/numbers, research, customer usage analytics, etc.) to outcome — and win?
Intelligent Speed — moving (individually or as a team) deliberately faster to increase the pace at which incremental learning outcomes can positively influence ultimate outcomes.
Example: setting up a marketing automation system via Marketo and testing several micro campaigns all in a few days to see how it works and how you need to tweak it.
Accountability — the belief that the individual roles and their interconnection to adjacent peer roles can be more effective if people in those roles embody more (individual and collective) ownership of ultimate outcomes as opposed to incremental parts of a process.
Example: while Jeff’s job is to be an SEO specialist, he is jumping in to help Heather, the information architect make some changes that will allow Terry’s content team to produce more conversions on their e-commerce website that Mike, over in IT, is responsible for.
What makes these people different is that there is a sense of sharing or blending of responsibilities despite the rigor of their job description in service of a bigger picture.
Through a CMO’s eyes, Little “A” agile means powerful, quick marketing reflexes in the form of strategic content and messages in the shortest amount of time from people and teams capable of seeing and acting on the bigger picture.
CMOs have to do this both in a carefully planned content arc across significant paid and owned media channels AND in a near chaotic, unplanned, totally reactionary social environment and make it seem like it’s all a carefully orchestrated marketing system — all at the same time. It means maintaining dual paths of rapid content to keep the bases covered and get more meaningful work done.
Path A. This is the more planned, editorial process of following a content strategy, creating premium content, distributing it through planned channels with strategic cadence and having a little more manageability and predictability in the outcomes. GE’s long-running Ecomagination campaign is a terrific example of this.
Path B. This is all about being strategically reflexive and in the moment. Reacting in a way that reflects the brand’s virtues, values and expression in mostly unplanned circumstances. Think Oreo’s fantastically-timed super bowl tweet, after the lights went out: “You can still dunk in the dark.” It was a well-planned media play because they were ready to pounce regardless of what happened. That’s Little “A” agile.
Now think, for a second, about the risks CMOs must manage.
Imagine for a second being responsible for your brand’s expression thrown into today’s attention-bankrupt hurricane of choices and sentiments.
These marketing executives, their teams and their agencies have to stimulate audiences proactively, and remain perpetually at the ready to react via social channels. They have to make their audiences think, discuss, react and hopefully share in an environment that is as unpredictable as it has ever been. They have to remain adaptively compelling in exchange for likes, retweets, links, shares, images, comments — all in addition to their day job which is to prove that the money they need to meet this new demand is making money attributable to their actions. For a growing number of CMOs, this IS becoming more of their day job. One false move and it could have a negative multi-million dollar impact with one “bashtag” on Twitter. Ask JP Morgan, Quantas, McDonalds and Home Depot.
Not so easy. They’re under pressure to be everything, everywhere a potential customer might be and then some. And somehow hope they can engage a relatively unknown audience without offending anyone.
A little more about “Little A” agile content and how it can help manage these risks:
The Internet and it’s restless users have forced a shift in the way companies engage with people (consumers) before, during and after the sale. We all know that. But what we stop thinking about is how this pressure is persistently applied. As CMOs, we cannot avoid reacting to this. It affects the way we have to think about content and its ability to engage. It affects the way we have to measure success, process content, streamline processes, think more modularly, manage distribution and, ultimately, drive growth through content.
Engagement is now the sum of how well brands can hand people value, quickly and creatively packaged into experiences that make people feel good about that engagement.
How they do it is by using intelligent content that’s relevant now to those who matter most.
CMOs are now thinking about how quickly they can plan, create and distribute the right content in a fraction of the time they’d like.
They have to maximize the opportunities to put something of value (entertaining, funny, useful or nostalgic) in front of people who will “pollinate” on behalf of the brand, for free — and in a way that makes them feel good about engaging. And they have to prove that the sum of these actions is strategic for the brand and contributing to the bottom line.
They’re also thinking about how to organize to increase their ability to respond in modern market time. How can they perpetually reduce their “information to outcome” time and gain enough consistent positives to chart meaningful wins.
To increase their odds of becoming more adaptive, more agile, more successful and more deliberate, many brands are becoming their own media companies and in-house publishers.
This helps them persistently mine their corporate knowledge shafts for better stories, smarter applications of their products and services, interesting and entertaining tangents that reflect positively on their brands. And most importantly, many would argue that they have to do this faster and better than their competition to maintain the ever-critical first mover advantage. But is that even possible for them? In which case, they have to find another battleground upon which to compete. Maybe the best battleground for some is instead more relevant and timely.
Agile content means building journalistic/publishing and broadcasting abilities so CMOs can figure out what content to share, stories to tell and better and faster (or more relevant and timely) ways to generate the greatest possible response.
When you talk to executives in depth about Little “A” agile applied specifically to content, the first thing that comes to mind is quality production of content, more quickly. For savvy CMOs, agile content becomes so much more than quality production. It’s more about making sure you’re applying a fundamental understanding of people and their considerations to your process: and allowing that to influence not just how we create content, but how we make it play in the most engaging way within its best environment before the opportunity is lost or taken away.
That’s what it’s like for CMOs to adopt a Little “A” agile mindset.
*Little “A” agile is a term coined by Centerline.net’s John Lane, as far as I can tell. | https://medium.com/b2b-social-media/what-it-s-like-for-cmos-to-adopt-a-little-a-agile-mindset-202626721722 | ['Steven Keith'] | 2016-04-19 03:01:37.884000+00:00 | ['CMO', 'Content Marketing', 'Digital Marketing'] |
KZ AS10 Review | INTRODUCTION/DISCLAIMER:
The KZ AS10 is an in-ear monitor with five balanced armature drivers per side. KZ is the brand that started my Chi-Fi journey years ago with the ATE. Since then I have owned the KZ ED9, which I liked, and the ES4, which I disliked enough to return. I also own the C10 from KZ’s sister company, CCA, which is my go-to recommendation for a sub-$50 hybrid IEM.
The AS10 is the most expensive KZ model I have evaluated so far, retailing for $59.99 on Amazon at the time of this review. The AS10 was provided to me by Linsoul Audio in exchange for a fair and objective review.
SOURCES
I have used the KZ AS10 with the following sources:
Windows 10 PC > JDS Labs The Element > KZ AS10
Pixel 3 > Fiio BTR1K (Bluetooth Apt-X) > KZ AS10
Windows 10 PC > Fiio BTR1K (USB DAC) > KZ AS10
Pixel 3 > Apple USB-C to 3.5mm dongle > KZ AS10
I have tested these headphones with local FLAC and Spotify Premium.
PACKAGING AND ACCESSORIES
The KZ AS10 comes in a black rectangular cardboard box marked with the KZ logo on the front panel. Stickers on the bottom panel indicate the mic and color options as well as the contact information for the manufacturer.
The box has a flip cover which opens to the left, revealing a foam inlay containing the earpieces and a metal plaque. Behind this inlay are two translucent white plastic bags containing the AS10’s removable cable, 3 sets of KZ Starline eartips (S, M, L), a user manual, a QC pass chit, and a warranty card. The AS10 does not come with a carry bag or case.
BUILD QUALITY / DESIGN
The AS10 earpieces have piano black plastic housings with transparent faceplates. The housings are on the larger side with deep nozzles. The AS10’s KZ-branded circuit boards are visible behind the transparent faceplates. Although I love this look, there are many who do not. The model name, “Left/Right,” and “10 Balanced Armature” are printed in silver on the top face of the black plastic housing. “L/R” are also identified on the transparent faceplate above the cable connection.
Each earpiece has a tiny circular vent near the top of the inner face of the housing. The AS10 is an all-BA design, so driver flex is not a concern.
The nozzle does not have a traditional lip for securing eartips, and instead has 3 small protrusions along the edge of the nozzle. This worked just as well as a lip in my experience.
The AS10 has a copper-colored braided 2-pin cable with an L-shaped 3.5mm jack. The KZ logo is printed on the jack housing. The cable has pre-formed plastic ear-guides and “L/R” markings on the 2-pin housings. There is no chin-adjustment choker, and the Y-split is around halfway-down the cable length, roughly 2 feet from the bottom of the 2-pin connections. The cable is not as tangle-prone as the cable included with the CCA-C10, but is still problematic in this regard. Microphonics are minimal.
COMFORT / FIT / ISOLATION
The KZ AS10 is intended to be worn cable-up only. The wide housings and relatively deep insertion depth make the AS10 tolerable at best from a comfort perspective.
Noise isolation is above average relative to dynamic driver or hybrid designs, but not as good as the Tenhz T5, a sealed all-BA design.
The AS10 accepts a wide variety of eartips. The relatively deep insertion depth makes getting a good seal easy. I used the small silicone eartips from the Fiio F1 for my listening.
SOUND
The KZ AS10 has a warm, mildly-V shaped tuning.
The AS10 emphasizes mid-bass slam rather than sub-bass rumble. Sub-bass is present and well-extended but not visceral. Bass articulation is quick and precise. Bass texture is dry and clinical. The mid-bass hump bleeds into the lower mids, thickening deep and growled male vocals and causing distorted electric rhythm guitars to come off as boomy.
The lower mids are slightly recessed and a tad warm. Both male and female vocals are clear and full-bodied. The upper midrange could use a touch more presence. Both male and female vocals, while natural-sounding, come across a bit flat.
The treble, while smooth and inoffensive, has a plastic-sounding timbre. Resolution is adequate for the price, but the AS10 is lacking in sparkle.
Imaging and instrument separation are very good. Soundstage is slightly larger than average for the price point and compares well with more expensive IEMs.
MEASUREMENTS
My measurements were conducted with a Dayton iMM-6 microphone using a vinyl tubing coupler and a calibrated USB sound interface with a resonance point at 8k. The measurements are presented with 1/24th smoothing and without compensation. Measurements above 10k are not reliable.
AMPLIFICATION REQUIREMENTS AND SOURCE PAIRING
With a sensitivity of 105dB and an impedance of 14ohms, the AS10 can be easily driven to adequate listening volumes by a smartphone. I did not notice hiss with any of my sources.
COMPARISONS
KZ AS10 [$62] vs Simgot MT3 [$66]
The Simgot MT3 has slightly more prominent and extended sub-bass. The MT3 has slightly more textured bass. The AS10’s bass is better articulated, with more precise attack and decay. The MT3’s mid-bass hump rolls off earlier and does not bloat the lower midrange as much.
Male vocals are more prominent on the AS10. The MT3’s lower midrange does not exhibit the boominess that can be heard on the AS10. The MT3 has a livelier but more aggressive upper midrange, which makes vocals sound more exciting at the cost of sibilance. The timbre of the MT3 is thinner than the AS10’s. Distorted electric guitars can be too bright on the MT3.
The MT3’s lower treble rolls off earlier than the AS10’s, but is harsher, splashier, and grainier. The MT3 has more air and sparkle. The AS10 has more realistic transients.
The AS10 has better instrument separation, a larger soundstage, and more precise imaging. The MT3 is slightly harder to drive. The MT3 is more comfortable thanks to its smaller housing. The MT3 comes with a wider variety of eartips, a nicer cable, and a mesh carry bag.
CLOSING WORDS
The AS10 errs on the side of caution, presenting a safe tuning that is unlikely to offend. Build quality and technicalities are very good for the price point. | https://medium.com/bedrock-reviews/kz-as10-review-765c2777d683 | [] | 2019-06-01 14:05:29.876000+00:00 | ['Review', 'Music', 'Headphones', 'Technology', 'Audio'] |
What Binaural Beats Technology Has To Do With Meditation? | As a rule, in our everyday life, we mainly use one of them.
In a nutshell, the left one is responsible for logical and rational thinking. In the left hemisphere, for example, all mathematicians, engineers, and lawyers “operate”. It allows us to soberly assess the situation, make decisions, and solve common problems.
The right hemisphere is the home of emotion, creativity, imagination, and “non-linear” thinking. Mainly painters, musicians, dancers, but also writers and inventors work here. It is also the hemisphere of people who display a high level of empathy and intuition.
So what was the significance of the discoveries related to “whole brain functioning”, especially for the field of personal development?
Let me quote here another scientist, deceased neurochemist, Candace Pert of the National Institute of Mental Health:
“There’s revolution going on. There used to be two systems of knowledge: hard science — chemistry, physics, biophysics — on one hand, and, on the other, a system of knowledge that included ethology, psychology and psychiatry. And now it’s as if lightning bolt had connected the two. It’s all one system neuroscience … The present era in neuroscience is comparable to the time when Luis Pasteur first found out that germs cause disease.”
These discoveries brought the worlds of science and spirituality closer together. Scientists have studied the work of the brain of “mystics” who, as a result of many years of spiritual practice, achieve states of deep meditation. The results of these studies are extremely interesting.
Please see below a summary of the waves that our brain generates — depending on what state we are in:
Beta waves — (14–30 Hz) are typical for the state of concentration, problem-solving, and cognitive processes.
Alpha waves — (8–13.9 Hz) are typical for states of relaxation, rest, but also the so-called accelerated learning and increased serotonin secretion.
Theta waves — (4–7.9 Hz) characterize the phase of sleep, accompanied by dreams, but also the state of intense work of our subconscious.
Delta waves — (0.1–3.9 Hz) is a state of sleep without dreams, but also experiences related to the lack of “corporeality”.
The lower we go down with frequency, the more noticeable is the synchronization of both cerebral hemispheres. This phenomenon was observed during research conducted on a group of people experiencing states of deep meditation.
During the meditation process, a successive decline in the dominant role of one of the hemispheres and the entry into a state of absolute harmony of the whole brain was observed.
It has also been shown that the Alpha wave category corresponds to the state of deep relaxation and definitely increased learning capacity. It is also a state of increased production of serotonin, the “happiness hormone”.
One of the first researchers to observe the phenomenon later referred to as “super learning” was the Bulgarian psychiatrist Georgi Lozanov. He researched a group of students who were put into a state of deep relaxation as a result of brain wave stimulation at the Alpha level. Lazanov showed that this group of students was able to absorb five times more material than the rest (!).
Other studies confirm that there is a clear relationship in the brain between a specific category of waves and the production of chemicals such as beta-endorphins, acetylcholine, vasopressin, and serotonin. Acetylcholine deficiency causes, for example, problems with memory and a decrease in results in intelligence tests.
Another researcher, Dr. Vincent Giampapa, who sat, inter alia, in the chair of the American Board of Anti-Aging Medicine, showed that being in Alpha and Theta states has a significant impact on the production of such hormones as cortisol (decrease) and DHEA and melatonin (increase).
We all know the ads about DHEA. We also know that melatonin improves sleep. Cortisol, on the other hand, is one of the hormones that accelerate the aging of the body. It gives off instantly in any situation in which we are exposed to high stress.
In addition to all of the above-mentioned effects, there is one more — extremely interesting.
Bringing brain waves down to the Alpha, Theta, and Delta levels change the structure of the neurons in our brain and “forces it” to reorganize itself to a higher level. This effect was described in the theory of open systems by Ilya Prigogine, winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Prigogine’s work applies to any type of open system. Simply put, an open system is one that exchanges energy with the environment. It can be, for example, a dividing cell, a highway network, a corporation, or a person experiencing emotional changes. More details on this can be found, for example, in Bill Harris’s book Thresholds of the Mind.
Our brain is also an open system that constantly exchanges energy with the environment. But when there is too much information on the “input”, it reorganizes itself and moves to the next level. One could use a simple metaphor for physical exercise. As a result of regular exercise, our muscles also get more “power”.
In any case, stimulating the brain with waves from Alpha, Theta, and Delta levels creates new nerve connections and new pathways between the hemispheres. Thanks to this, the brain reorganizes itself and can provide us with opportunities that we had not had a clue about so far. | https://medium.com/technology-hits/empowerment-coaching-what-binaural-beats-technology-has-to-do-with-meditation-9c0b6af6dcbc | ['Ryszard Skarbek'] | 2020-12-31 11:14:20.206000+00:00 | ['Binaural Beats', 'Holistic', 'Brain', 'Meditation', 'Spirituality'] |
Frogmen do it for the Keks | Caveats: I’m not Alt Right, Kekistani, Proud Boy, or Three Percenter. I’m a dirty Centrist Libertarian.
Buckle up, it’s internet crash course time.
Let’s be bad guys:
The internet is a weird place where symbolism, chaos, vitriol, humor, and hatred all blend and vie for attention. Explaining Right Wing internet culture is the purpose of this piece, so let’s not dally.
White guys are bad, we got it!
In modern culture, white guys are the bad guys. If there’s a movie with terrorism in it, they are right wing nut jobs. In video games, if you’re fighting people of color, oops, turns out the whole conflict was the conspiracy of a middle aged white man. Every activist-warrior and woke celebrity is obsessed with dismantling “whiteness,” and progressive college professors and journalists are joking about the extinction of the white race. In the face of such hostility, some Right Wingers, especially the younger ones, said, “Okay,
“
And Right Wing internet culture was born. The history of Right Wing internet culture is hard to nail down, and difficult to verify, so I will just give you the popularized skinny as I understand it.
Memes:
Memes, defined and popularized by the atheist intellectual Richard Dawkins, are the most simplified version of ideas that can pass through society. It is best conceptualized as a thought virus. Good memes are boiled down to the simplest truth or political perspective, turned into a picture with a few words on it, and then transmitted onward.
Richard Dawkins, the father of the meme
This creates a cascading landscape in which new pictures and ideas are created, replicated, varied, and then die. Most memes come and go in a matter of days, if not weeks. The more powerful the meme, the longer it lasts.
Great memes of times past
There is no God but Kek, and Pepe is his messenger:
An original Pepe the Frog
Pepe and Kek, at present, are the longest lasting memes in internet culture. Pepe is a frog cartoon character, whose depressed gaze was turned into all of the characters of the world. There are Jihadi Pepes, Feminist Pepes, Libertarian Pepes, Fascist Pepes, Nazi Pepes, and Crusader Pepes. Just like the rule that if something exists, there is pornography of it, if something exists, there is a Pepe of it.
An Assortment of Pepes
Because dedicated forums like Reddit and 4chan are populated by young males, a lot of them are tech savvy, and a lot of them are brutal, Pepe took on a Right Wing tinge.
This is where synchronicity steps in. It was pointed out by internet Right Wingers that Kek was the Egyptian god of chaos, frequently symbolized as a frog. Since Right Wing internet trolls often saw themselves as mischievous agents of chaos, Kek became the patron God of the Right Wing internet.
Kek, the Egyptian Frog God of Chaos
Kekistan:
As cries in popular culture came out for Black only safe spaces, Latinx only safe spaces, LGBTQ only safe spaces, the internet Right Wing appropriated the same arguments for the nation of Kekistan. As an imaginary land for right wing trolls, it provides safe haven from a world in which white, heterosexual, cis-gendered males are evil, masculinity is toxic, gender is fluid, family is stupid, mass immigration has no negative consequences, and socialism is the only just economic system.
What’s funny about these safe spaces is there is ideological and racial diversity. Traditional conservatives (Tradcons), Anarcho-Capitalists (Ancaps), Libertarians, Alt Light (Enlightenment based right wing), Proud Boys (Western Chauvinists), Alt Right (ethnonationalists/supremacists), Pinochetian Fascists, and anti-semitic Nazis all pass through the same spaces, fighting, arguing and clawing about who has the right formula to run a successful society.
Different forums feature different factions, with smatterings of the others. There’s disaffected Liberals and Anarchist Libertarians. There’s young Zionists and anti-semites. There’s military veterans and 9/11 truthers. There’s Enlightenment based civic nationalists and ethno-Fascists. The Grand Old Party concept of the Right Wing has never been truer than on the internet, where the only thing uniting the Right, is hatred of the authoritarian Left. These Right wing internet forums, as Kekistani provinces, serve as bases of operations from which to launch counterattacks.
The Republic of Kekistan
Tangling with giants:
One of the funniest, and most validating things to the Right Wing internet was Hillary Clinton’s acknowledgment of it. To HRC, she was acknowledging the amorphous, chaotic, troll mob that had harried her campaign and its followers. She highlighted the disgusting, abhorrent, and beyond the pale comments and articles fueling this internet mob. She likely thought it would rally her base, but all it did was rally the internet Right Wing.
One of HRC’s many mistakes
In Hillary Clinton’s speech, and in the mainstream media’s acknowledgment of the internet right, they created a Quixotic monster comprised of Neo-Nazis. To pretend this isn’t a contingent of the Right is a lie, but to pretend that the vast majority of the internet Right Wing isn’t just a bunch of guys who grew up cussing each other out playing Call of Duty is ridiculous.
The collapse of the Old Guard
When established media sources like The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC spend an iota of effort attempting to criticize, lambaste, and disparage the Right Wing as a whole, and internet trolls in particular, it’s like an adult admonishing kids, while just not getting the joke. The fact that you’re mad is the point of the joke. The fact that you’re paying attention to it at all, makes you a joke.
All social media censorship sees is a bunch of stooges who can’t think for themselves
Similarly, when Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, and other social media sites go out of their way to shut down Right Wing groups, and then make no distinction between White Supremacists and Libertarians, this also fuels the mischievous game. Soldiers in the culture war make cartoon avatars, fake profiles, and satirical Leftist accounts, to pull the tail of the Silicon Tiger.
The Left is crying out that they are the victims of a mob of oppressors, despite being led by Silicon Valley, the mainstream media, every vocal celebrity, and the leadership of a major party. Losing the culture war to a bunch of basement dwelling deplorables using cartoons for political organization is farcical.
The Left lost the Culture War to this guy
Kek:
To show you how stupid, shallow, and silly the internet Right Wing is, let us look at another synchronicity. Most young people are gamers. Gaming is a part of youth culture. The real time strategy game Starcraft does not support the Korean language. Korean players, as an onomatopoeia of their textual laughter, would type in “kek.” So in summary, “kek” is the Korean “lol.” Adopted by the Right Wing internet as just another synchronicity, kek became the in group “lol.”
The truth is, this article is late. Just by virtue of its creation, it signals that the internet Right Wing has moved onto something else. In my time on the internet, I have seen the rise and fall of dozens of memes, and while Pepe and the Cult of Kek will loom large in meme history, it has already lost much of its prominence.
So the next time you you feel the urge to tweet an anti-white hate thread, don’t be surprised when the Frog men show up with some mocking memes, followed by a chorus of “keks.” | https://medium.com/the-sword-and-shield/frogmen-do-it-for-the-keks-29e4bd29b84 | [] | 2018-10-29 13:04:08.506000+00:00 | ['Memes', 'Alt Right', 'Hillary Clinton', 'Pepe', 'Politics'] |
Looking Your Best With Healthy Nutrition | Everybody desires to look their best, it is important for our self-esteem and self-image. The way you look and sense is dramatically affected by what you eat. It makes sense that what goes into your body affects the outward aspect of your body. To put in more bluntly, if you are feeding litter, you are continuing to look and feel litter.
If you desire to look slimmer and younger and have larger energy levels, you are required to preserve a healthy diet. A healthy diet has been revealed to give you more energy, to help with balancing hormones and enhancing your mood, decrease PMS, support fertility and pregnancy symptoms, keep a steady weight, reduce premature aging, and support the management of menopause symptoms.
Unfortunately, there is no miracle food or magic key to losing weight and looking great. Diets that focus on one food group or food item and declare to be the solution to healthy eating are a lie. Healthy eating demands selection from all the food groups, it is not a fast solution but a long term life decision with myriad benefits, and isn’t your body deserving that effort?
It is important for women to get sure they get enough calcium. Women are much more likely to increase osteoporosis than men are. Many people think dairy products are the biggest source of calcium but animal fat can really give to bone deterioration. Women should take care to safeguard against osteoporosis from an early age as it is tougher to consume calcium as you get older. Alternative sources of calcium are beans, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and kale. Women also require to avoid feeding too many animal-based proteins. Protein is extremely necessary for a healthy diet but animal protein can drive to a loss in bone density.
Everyone should consume more plant-based foods. We are not speaking about corn chips or potato crisps here, plant based foods should be leafy green vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, or legumes. These foods should be the focus of your diet but numerous women ignore this segment of the food pyramid. Try to consume fruit and vegetable at every meal and snack.
Women lose a lot of iron during menstruation. It is a primary mineral and it is necessary to make sure you are getting enough, particularly if you are a vegetarian. Iron sources are red meat, lentils, spinach, almonds, and legumes.
Fats are an important part of a women’s diet. Not all fats drive weight gain and some are vital factors in looking our best. The fats discovered in foods like avocados, peanuts, almonds, fish, olive oil, and olives help us to stay healthy. These fats are necessary for soft healthy skin, glossy hair, and strong nails. Good fats are also necessary during pregnancy. Healthy fats support the growth of a baby’s brain and nervous system.
Read More: 10 Best Healthy Foods We Are Not Eating | https://medium.com/@welleating/looking-your-best-with-healthy-nutrition-e0120bdceda0 | ['Ankit Smith'] | 2020-12-23 07:27:10.783000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Food', 'Healthy Living', 'Nutrition', 'Health Foods'] |
Implementation Journal : Let Machine Read Candlestick Charts Like Human Beings | This article is about the developing progress of my master thesis, Let Machine Read Candlestick Chart Like Human Beings, and used to remember those amazing and crazy days during studying for my master’s degree.
There are 2 different version of my master thesis, which are based on different deep learning techniques and prediction targets separately. However, there exist more unwritten methods came up during I found best solution for the problem no matter by me or by progress while discussing with my advisors. Most of those methods were derelict because of defective of architecture or performance problem. Record details of progress about how those methods came up and why did they eliminated is the main purpose of this article.
What’s the problem I want to solve?
As title of my thesis, ‘Let Machine Read Candlestick Charts Like Human Beings’, what I did was to make computer ‘read’ candlestick charts to forecast price movement. Instead of directly using numerical formed price data for forecasting, human traders can perform better through read chart formed data such as price charts. Candlestick chart is one of popular choice for traders for very long time. My work is to reproduce such procedure through machine learning techniques.
The problem can be formulated as follows: given a k-days candlestick chart, I want computer can analyze it and forecast trend of price of (k+1)-th trading day. In addition, I simply classify the ‘trend’ into 2 classes, up or down. If close price of (k+1)-th trading day is greater than the close price of k-th trading day, the trend is regarded as ‘up’, on the contrary, the trend is down. Definition of trend is shown in Formula 1 where ‘C’ indicates close price.
Formula1. Definition of trend
What is candlestick chart?
As Figure 1 shows, a candlestick chart consists of different ‘sticks’. Each stick represents price movement (up or down) of specific interval such as 5 second, 5 minutes, 1 days, 20 days, and so on. As Figure 2 shows, a stick consists of shadows (lines) and body (blocks with different color) which lengths are decided by 4 different price within the interval, open, high, low, and close price. If close price higher than open price, direction of price of interval is up, on the contrary, direction is down. A candlestick chart consists of different number of sticks and human traders will read it to help them forecast trend of price in the future.
Figure 1. Example of candlestick chart
Figure 2. Scheme of candlestick chart
Sounds make sense…does the approach really perform better than directly using numerical data?
Actually, experiment results show that forecasting through such procedure perform better than directly using numerical data. However, it took me lots of time to construct different machine learning models and adjusted hyper-parameters of them. On the contrary, approaches use numerical data are easier to construct, debug, consuming fewer computational resources and having lower training time. In addition, though forecasting through charts can perform better, the improvement of accuracy is just 2–3% better.
If anyone asked me which approach would I chose if I wanted to construct auto-trading system, I would still choose the approach which directly using numerical data. One of my advisor also told me, “If I’m working in industry, I would not use such time consuming and complex approach. I don’t want to waste my life!”. But he also said, “But Hallblazzaer, you’re doing research now.”(with foxy smile).
Data
Data I used among all experiments and baselines was historical price data of 6 future merchandises which were sold by Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX). The reasons why I chose them could be checked in my thesis [1]. Details of data are listed in Table 1. Note that among all experiments and baselines, prediction target were set to be TX, because it has highest trading volume, which meant the auto-trading system based on TX didn’t have to care about being useless in real world. However, on the aspect of doing research, generalization of algorithm is one of important part. So actually my experiments didn’t cover all aspects, which should be improved in my future works.
Table 1. Basic information of 6 future merchandises
Baseline: IEM
As each fairy tail has bad guys need to be beat or difficulty to overcome, each paper has a baseline to defeat, no matter reasonable or not. In my case, my opponent was the prediction model based on forecasting through numerical price data. I implemented model of [2], called index based model (IEM), which used traditional indices for forecasting. There exist great number of indices to help people making trading decisions such as simple moving average (SMA) [3], commodity channel index [4]. Each index are calculated from numerical formulas which are based on anthropic knowledge and experience. My approach is base on human behavior but knowledge and experience need to be learned by computer itself, so IEM is good baseline for it.
Figure 3 demonstrate architecture of IEM, where price histories are converted to 10 different index value based on 10 traditional indices, respectively. Based on definition of each index, each index value can directly represents trend of price. In [2], Trend Deterministic Layer is presented, which convert each index value to trend (only up/down, binary classified) directly before further analyzing. Then these 10 trend are combined by classifier for forecasting the price movement. In [2], 4 different classifier are implemented and used to compare performances, including Neural Network, SVM, Naive Bayes and Random Forest. In my thesis, I implemented all of them for comparison, and the one had best performance (highest accuracy) was Naive Bayes, which accuracy could reached 77.52%.
Figure 3. Architecture of IEM
However, is IEM the best baseline for me? I’m still wondering whether my direction is right or not because I think the approaches which using anthropic knowledge and experience to analyze candlestick charts seems are better choice for my thesis. But guess what? Actually IEM is one of my side work before I decided to do research of using artificial intelligence approaches to analyze candlestick charts. Maybe used different approach to be baseline could allow me work more easily, but my advisors liked to break difficulties. So…you know… .
Just kill me…
VGG16-CAE(Convolutional Auto-Encoder)-Based Model
This is first model I constructed, a simple, intuitively to understand deep learning model. At same time, it had miserably performance which strongly slumped my confidence on doing research and made me bombarded by my advisors with great number of doubts such as “How could you do that?”, “Why did you expect it would work?”.
The architecture of model was as Figure 4 shows. It consisted of 2 parts, a pre-trained VGG16 network for feature selection, and fully-connected layers(FC) for classification. How I trained the model is as Figure 5 shows which was inspired by [5]. The main idea of [5] is to train VGG16-CAE based model to convert candlestick charts to deep features, using deep features for clustering and analyzing clustering results. I thought if the model of [1] was good enough for clustering, why not used it for classification?
Figure 4. Architecture of VGG16-CAE-based model
Figure 5. Training progress of VGG16-CAE-based model
The result was not as I expected. Auto-Encoder in step 1 performed very well. Given arbitrary candlestick chart, Auto-Encoder could reconstruct candlestick chart which was very similar to original input from deep features. However, in step 2, no matter gave any candlestick charts to model, it would predict them to same labels.
I tried changing number of FC layers, unfreezing more layers on Encoder and using different hyper-parameters combinations such as loss function, learning rate, and so on, but none of approaches above could further improve the performance, anything I did could just made my advisors’ face looked more awful.
Pattern Effect Combining Predictor(PECP)
So, what happened to VGG16-CAE-Based model? My advisors and I thought the problem might be the input, i.e., candlestick chart itself. Input for model were 20-days candlestick charts as Figure 2 shows but were in grayscale. However, human traders won’t directly forecast trend of price from such long interval charts. Instead, they will consider smaller regions. It means the model didn’t act as real human beings.
As Figure 6 shows, different short interval candlestick charts imply different effects to the final trend, which are also called ‘patterns’. Human traders will combine effects of each pattern and decide final trend of price. Note that in Figure 6, only 3-sticks patterns are considered. However, in general, people will consider more different patterns such as 1-stick, 2-sticks, 5-sticks, and so on, and take effects of them in consideration. In my experiments, no matter Pattern Effect Combining Predictor or its successors, I fixed the interval of long interval charts to 20 (20 days charts) and interval of shorter interval charts to 3 (3 days charts).
Figure 6. Progress of judging trend of price from combining effects of short interval patterns
Based on theory, I designed Pattern Effect Combining Predictor (PECP). Architecture of PECP is as Figure 7 shows, which contains 18 ResNet-18 to generate temporary effect and FC Layers to decide final effects. My original idea was as follows: each 3-days pattern should have effect to 21th day’s trend, if I could predict them and combine them by order of time, I could decide 21th day’s trend precisely. How I trained the model is as Figure 8 shows, where training progress can be split to 2 stages. First stage was training 18 ResNet-18, and each ResNet-18 was used to judge effect to trend of 21-th day from each 3-days pattern(there were 18 3-days candlestick charts within 20 trading days). Second stage was training FC Layers to combine results by order of time to decide final trend.
Figure 7. Architecture of PECP
Figure 8. Training progress of PECP
However, results stunned me as VGG16-CAE-Based Model did because I got abysmal failure on Step 1. The results of Step 1 was as results of VGG16-CAE-Based Model, no matter gave any 3 days candlestick charts to ResNet-18 models, each model would predict them to same label, not spoke of using these results to train FC Layers in step 2. PECP was also failed.
I thought there were 2 main issues while I designed PECP. One was I used too deep network (ResNet-18) for analyzing candlestick charts, which were only 48x48 pixels. It made me being unable to quickly debug and adjust hyper-parameters of model carefully and often because training the models would take large amount time. Another one was, in my original idea, PECP should be stacking and ensemble method. Based on my advisors’ explanation, my design was wrong because in fact 18 ResNet-18 could be reduced to single ResNet-18 as Figure 9 shows. Beneficial of ensemble model was gone. As a result, I re-designed PECP.
Figure 9. Reduced PECP
Pattern Effect Combining Predictor V2 (PECP-V2)
Re-designed PECP (PECP-V2) was as Figure 10 shows, which contained 18 shallow 2D CNN (3–5 layers) for analyzing candlestick charts and 1D CNN for predicting trend from concatenated deep features which generated from 2-D CNN. PECP-V2 was a end-to-end model, which meant 2D CNN and 1D CNN didn’t need to be trained separately. It reduce complexity of training progress. Note that in PECP-V2, ensemble issue didn’t considered because I just wanted to verify whether the idea of “combine shorter interval patterns for forecasting” was probable or not.
Figure 10. Architecture of PECP-V2
Each input 3-days candlestick chart was converted to 1D vector, which was called ‘deep represented candlestick chart’. These deep representations were concatenated to larger 1-D vector for further analyzing for 1D CNN. Use of 1D CNN was based on [6][7][8], which used CNN to process time series forecasting problem. Under such scenario, what 1D CNN do is not analyze spacial but temporal relations of input, which allow 1D CNN to handle time series forecasting problem. My post[9] also simply introduce how it worked. But my Implementation was wrong that no until I finished and trained model with different hyper-parameters did I found it.
According to [6][7][8], input should be the time series as Figure 11 shows, which deep represented 18 3-days candlestick charts were concatenated along with vector by order of time. However, in my Implementation, deep representations were concatenated as Figure 12 shows, which as concatenated along with channel by order of time. Though it still concatenated by order of time, whether such approach was validated couldn’t been ensured. I also fix this in latter versions.
Figure 11. Input for 1D CNN based on theory
Figure 12. Input for 1D CNN of PECP-V2
Though results was still worse — accuracy was as worse as VGG16-CAE-Based Model and PECP, PECP-V2 didn’t predict all input candlestick charts to same trend. It seemed the model could read patterns based on some reasons, but design of model limited that. As a result, I further improved PECP-V2.
1D CNN Based Model (Deep Candlestick Predictor, DCP)
Next version of PECP-V2 was 1D CNN Based Model. Based on my advisors’ suggestion, in my thesis, it was named Deep Candlestick Predictor, DCP, which architecture is represented in Figure 13. DCP consisted of 3 components, Chart Decomposer for splitting original long interval charts (20 days) to short interval ones (3 days), Autoencoder for converting input charts to deep representations, and 1D CNN to for analyzing and forecasting.
Figure 13. Architecture of DCP
In fact, what Chart Decomposer and 1D CNN did were as PECP-V2 did on pre-processing and analyzing for forecasting, respectively. The difference was Autoencoder and concatenated deep features. As I planed to do after constructed PECP, I replaced dimension-reducing function of multiple 2D CNN(and ResNet-18) by single 2D CNN. But the problem was how to generate lower-dimensional deep features that were ‘good enough’ to represents original charts. As I knew, Autoencoder was one of approach to reach the goal.
Figure 14. Training progress of Autoencoder
As Figure 14 shows, training Autoencoder could be split to 2 stages. Goal of first stage was to find an Autoencoder can encode original input to deep features, and decode them back to original input, where the more the output of decoder be similar to input was better. One important property of Autoencoder is the performance of Encoder (deep features are good enough to stand for original input) is based on similarity between input and output of encoder. However, the truth might be Encoder is worse, but decoder is good enough to reconstruct it back. The only way to check it is to directly use deep features for training. In my case, it was to use 1D CNN to analyze deep features for prediction, which was the second stage.
Results showed that after concatenating deep features as form of Figure 11 shows and using 1D CNN for forecasting, the accuracy could reach 69.11%, which was still worse than performance of baseline (77.52%). As a result, I tried transfer-learning to further improve performance of DCP.
DCP x Transfer Learning
Transfer learning is widely used approach for training deep learning models. Under most situations, necessary number of data for training cannot be collected, which will cause model couldn’t reach its original performance. Transfer learning is to train model on (small) target dataset based on weights which are trained on large and highly related dataset. In my previous experiments, transfer learning technique was also applied on training VGG16 and ResNet-18 based models, which were based on pre-trained weights released by authors of models.
Except training IEM, while training each deep learning models, I directly used all historical price data of 6 future merchandises. But as I described before, my prediction target was TX. Using all data for training was just to temporarily prevent me from problem of insufficient data while searching available models. I still had to make model focus on TX merchandise. As a result, when I found 1D CNN had high potential to be the best model, I transferred weights trained on all merchandises to train TX. Results corresponded to my expect — 80.96%. Based on the success, my advisors and I published paper in IDAA 2018 [1], we even flied to Yokohama to present on conference. However, things were as not easy as I thought. There were some critical problem in my experiments which caused me completely rewrote all codes and my thesis. I’m going to discuss them in next installment.
Reference
[1] [Guo. et al. (2018), Deep Candlestick Predictor : A Framework Toward Forecasting the Price Movement from Candlestick Charts]
[2] Jigar Patel et al. (2015), Predicting stock and stock price index movement using Trend Deterministic Data Preparation and machine learning techniques
[3]Simple Moving Average
[4]Commodity Channel Index, CCI
[5] Guosheng Hu et al. (2017), Deep Stock Representation Learning: From Candlestick Charts to Investment Decisions
[6] Denny Britz (2015), Understanding Convolutional Neural Networks for NLP
[7] Patty Ryan (2017), Stock Market Predictions with Nature Language Deep Learning
[8] Tal Perry (2017), Convolutional Methods for Text
[9] Hallblazzaer (2018), 學習手記：CNN based NLP Application | https://medium.com/hallblazzar-%E9%96%8B%E7%99%BC%E8%80%85%E6%97%A5%E8%AA%8C/implementation-journal-let-machine-read-candlestick-charts-like-human-beings-680821c6d830 | [] | 2019-04-29 16:44:10.244000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Quantitative Finance', 'Data Science', 'Convolutional Network', 'Deep Learning'] |
4 Pieces of Advice to Take With You on Your Journey to Success | 4. Ignore the noise.
“Ignore the noise; for the love of God, do not let it distract you.”
This sentence got my attention more than any other in the book. And to be honest, probably more than any other in any of the hundreds of books I’ve read. This statement can be applied to anything. When I am studying, I remind myself of it. When I am on the rink in the middle of a tied game, I say it to myself over and over. When my roommates are being noisy while I’m trying to study, I remember it.
Noise is everywhere. Literal noise and metaphorical noise. Noise comes in the social media streams that fill up our free time. Noise is in the negative and horrific stories that we see on the news every day. Noise is your self-doubt, your self-limiting thoughts. We must eliminate this noise. Don’t let it distract you, no matter what you are trying to achieve. Focus.
Noise can also come in the form of losing ourselves, or forgetting why we started or what is most important. Just a few weeks ago, I was feeling stressed. I wanted to do all these things — start my business, start a new job, buy a house, finish my degree, get lean and strong. I was overwhelmed. And I lost sight of what was really important. But Ryan reminded me to remember what is most important. Right away, I wrote on my bookmark: ‘What is most important’. And I proceeded to jot things down — family, education, nutrition, movement. The values that were emphasized when I was growing up. These are what are most important to me, and therefore these are what I need to focus on. Nothing else matters. Ignore the noise.
“We start out knowing what is important to us, but once we’ve achieved it, we lose sight of our priorities…. Without the right values, success is brief. If we wish to do more than flash, if we wish to last, then it is time to understand how to battle this new form of ego and what values and principles are required in order to beat it. Success is intoxicating, yet to sustain it requires sobriety. We can’t keep learning if we think we already know everything. We cannot buy into myths we make ourselves, or the noise and chatter of the outside world. We must understand that we are a small part of an interconnected universe. On top of all this, we have to build an organization and a system around what we do — one that is about the work and not about us.”
When we lose sight of what’s most important, our success will be limited. When we worry about money rather than about doing important work, we are giving into the noise. We are being distracted. Ryan explains,
“Critical energy is diverted from a person’s calling and toward filling a bank account.”
Money is a distraction. While we need to earn a living, money should not be the sole motivation behind the work that you are doing. You should be doing this work because it is important. Because it will help people. Because it will make the world a better place. Not because you want a bigger house, or a higher number in your bank account, or to be able to say you make 6 figures.
“Who am I? What am I doing? What is my role in this world? Nothing draws us away from those questions like material success — when we are always busy, stressed, put upon, distracted, reported to, relied on, apart from.”
And when you have lost sight of the path, remember this:
“Why do you do what you do? That’s the question you need to answer. Stare at it until you can. Only then will you understand what matters and what doesn’t.”
When things get hard, remember why you’re doing it. Why do you wake up every day? What is your purpose? Where are you going? Remember your values and love them. Remember what is important. Never lose sight of the path, and never give in to the noise. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/4-pieces-of-advice-to-take-with-you-on-your-journey-to-success-a4195f2ec237 | ['Ashley Richmond'] | 2020-11-06 17:03:19.703000+00:00 | ['Success', 'Self Improvement', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Lifestyle', 'Advice'] |
YOU’RE GOING TO LIKE US. | YOU’RE GOING TO LIKE US.
TWA Hotel, October 2020.
Last month, I took myself on a vacation, to the TWA Hotel at JFK airport in Queens, which is the same borough of New York City in which I live.
It was a plan B. I had intended to rent a car and visit my boyfriend, a career chef and lifelong New Yorker, who left the city after COVID forced the closure of the restaurant he’d just opened. The restaurant was luxurious, vast and expensive, the kind of place in which people with ample disposable income were meant to celebrate birthdays and real estate deals and successful brow lifts and getting their children into good schools and out of bad marriages. It was open for six weeks, then closed for six months. My boyfriend was immediately furloughed, and then laid off, health insurance cancelled, a shot that echoed hundreds of thousands of times around the city as restaurant workers saw their livelihoods disappear in lockdown, while the owner class retreated to their second homes in the country, making weak jokes about The Decameron on the Long Island Expressway and the north-bound Taconic.
Anyway, my boyfriend moved to the Western Catskills, where he found work feeding people who’d fled the city — some recently, some years ago — and every few weeks, I go and visit him. Only sometimes, it’s too hectic for him, and not worth it for me; sometimes there’s hardly an overlapping hour when we are both awake in the same place. When you live and work in a Northeastern vacationland, even one that’s been muted by COVID, you make hay while the sun shines, which is to say, you make pheasant pot pies and breakfast sandwiches and take-away quarts of Bolognese sauce before winter plunges its cold icy dick into everything, freezing the cash flow, depleting the serotonin.
So, instead of driving to the mountains, I took the rental car and gas money and used it to book a night at the TWA Hotel, built into and around the 1962 Eero Saarinen-designed former TWA Flight Center. Then I took some more money, and made it a two-night reservation.
##
Traveling to JFK from my home in Jackson Heights provided some of the adventure and problem-solving of more far-flung travel. I could have taken a $50 car service, but without the burden of a suitcase or a flight to catch, it seemed an unconscionable waste of money, especially when there’s an E train in my neighborhood which takes you to the AirTrain, a turgid little three-car monorail, which then takes you to JFK.
Cool fact about now: the E train doesn’t currently go all the way to the AirTrain, which I learned only after boarding. I got out in Kew Gardens and onto a Q10 bus, which takes passengers to JFK. Cool fact about now: some Q10 buses don’t go all the way to JFK. Some, like the one I was riding, terminate on a windy, trash-strewn corner outside a chain hotel, across the street from an abandoned lot.
While I stood waiting for the next Q10, a guy got out of his parked car across the street, whipped out his dick and pissed an impressive arc onto an adjacent car. The late afternoon sun lit it up like honey on a cereal box photo. I stood very still and used an app to summon a car service. Dazzled, perhaps, by that golden piss arc, I failed to specify to the app that I was going to the hotel at JFK, so the driver dropped me at the nearly-empty departures area of terminal 5. I could see the hotel, but getting to the entrance on foot was a dumb, frustrating and slightly dangerous process, albeit one I eventually conquered.
##
What to say about the hotel? The iconic central building is obviously an important architectural relic, well-preserved and wildly photogenic from nearly every angle. It is also, already, so heavily-Instagrammed that I was barely motivated to document it at all. In this current COVID purgatory, when we’re not locked down, but also not traveling freely in numbers, there are enough people milling about the public spaces to keep it from seeming haunted, but not nearly as many as it was designed for, and as a result, I felt incredibly conspicuous every time I crossed the lobby.
I love higher-end hotels like the TWA for their luxurious and sturdy beds, thirsty white towels, gleaming white tile with spotless grouting. I love the lack of untidy magazine piles and semi-important mail, the absence of hand weights and cat toys and the unsightly cords that connect the router and the PS4 to the TV. Nearly every object in a hotel doesn’t belong to me, and is not my responsibility. Whether by design or due to COVID restrictions, the TWA hotel rooms take this minimalism to an extreme; there’s nary a branded coaster or pen, no room service menu (because, no room service), nothing in the mini fridge, no terrible little coffee maker, no shower caps, no Q-tips.
Unfortunately (for me, a known killjoy), in the hotel’s public areas, there’s a maximalist Times Square-style bluntness of intention, and a surprising shoddiness of execution, in the details of the early 60s / ring-a-ding-ding theme that threatens to topple the good taste of the whole enterprise. I expect, and can live with, the kitchsy Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darrin tunes in the elevator, but the salvaged cars parked here and there, the rusted white metal Pepsi fridge and museum-style “typical early 1960s American family living room” installation are all somehow both too much, too on the nose, and not enough. There’s no critical mass, and all the objects look like they came from the same overpriced East Village vintage store.
On the day I visited the living room installation, someone had left underneath the wooden credenza a plastic bag, lined with a paper bag, full of discarded food and take-out containers, its feathery handles tied in a loose knot. The credenza itself was accessorized with a fake martini in a glass, surrounded, oddly, by bottles of ouzo, fruit liqueur, and Tia Maria. I’m no bartender, but: ew.
I do understand why the hotel designers have leaned so hard on the most obvious signifiers of a time that some people insist was so fun, so great, so much better than now, when men wore hats and ladies wore gloves, a time when some boomers were getting their first driver licenses and handjobs, and others were being denied the right to open a bank account or vote. But, please, listen to me: you’re not and never will be Don Draper, and I’m not Joan Holloway, and can’t we all just appreciate fine form and function without all this grotesque and clunky pantomime?
##
There’s a fancy Italian-esque coffee kiosk in the hotel’s lobby, but it’s not currently operating, and the coffee on sale in the underpopulated row of food vendors was watery and ineffectual. A strong, good cup of coffee is important to me, so I boarded the AirTrain to JFK Terminal 8, which has a pre-security Juan Valdez Café kiosk. It was about 10 am on a Friday morning, typically a busy time at any airport anywhere. There were two other people on the Air Train, and when I got to Terminal 8, home of American Airlines, I was one of maybe two non-employee humans in the entire space. There were none of the usual row of cars dropping people and their luggage, no harried families in sweat suits pushing carts stacked with suitcases, and, apparently, no flights departing from this terminal for the next few hours. The way the few security guards and airport personnel eyed me with curiosity and suspicion, I felt as if I’d accidentally entered someone’s private home. I hate crowds, but the sparsely populated terminal was somehow worse, for what it said about our current moment, and the next several months, or years. We live in a service economy, and right now service is dangerous, potentially fatal. Also, the Juan Valdez Café was closed.
I took the AirTrain back to Terminal 5, bought some of that shitty coffee, and went back to bed.
This essay originally appeared in the Substack newsletter SQUIRREL TOMATOES, www.squirrels.substack.com. | https://medium.com/@lauriewoolever-97877/youre-going-to-like-us-d8102fbabd6a | ['Laurie Woolever'] | 2020-12-04 20:28:36.494000+00:00 | ['New York City', 'Jfk Airport', 'Hotels', 'Travel', 'Twa'] |
The Top 8 OEE Calculation Mistakes in Manufacturing — Evocon | The benefits of monitoring Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) have been known since Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) became a manufacturing buzz word in the 1980's. For those of us that are counting, that’s 30 years ago. In that time, organisations have found that OEE can significantly improve productivity by opening the door to valuable improvement opportunities. On the other hand, making OEE calculation mistakes is, unfortunately, easy. Moreover, these mistakes are too common, considering the extent to which they diminish expected returns.
Discover the Main OEE Calculation Mistakes and what to do Instead
To base your decisions on accurate data, conduct meaningful analysis and harness the full potential of OEE within your manufacturing environment, this article aims to help you discover the top 8 mistakes organisations tend to make when calculating OEE and provide recommendations of what to do instead.
1. Not paying enough attention to all production stops
When it comes to mistakes in OEE calculation, not paying enough attention to all production stops is one widespread error organisations tend to make. In manufacturing, reasons for stops are defined either as “planned” or “unplanned”.
Planned stops, or “positive stops”, consist of changeovers, setup time, cleaning and scheduled breaks such as lunchtime, among others.
When evaluating the stops in the production process, companies consider many of them to be “planned”, and by doing so, they miss the opportunity to improve. As it is often said, the first step to solving any problem is admitting that you have one. In this case, acknowledging that production stops are unplanned can sometimes be challenging depending on the company culture.
Indeed, many managers may willingly choose to see the time spent on unplanned stops as necessary. This might be because experience has conditioned them to do so, but, as is also unfortunately common, there are cultures where data is used as a stick to discipline. So, to avoid the stick and gain a carrot, managers or operators may classify stops improperly.
Ultimately, realistic reporting and a desire to truly understand root causes are necessary. This will allow a company to optimize their production processes by minimizing both planned and unplanned production stops.
To fully realize the opportunity for growth and improvement, you must examine your culture. To this end, you must work to ensure that your culture allows for accurate reporting of production stops. Furthermore, our recommendation is to perform a close analysis of all machine breakdown causes.
What to do: Optimize production stops
As an essential part of the production process, planned reasons for stops can present opportunities to improve productivity when included in the OEE calculation. Therefore, organisations must analyse each reason for positive stops. The goal is to see the bottleneck behind it, rather than merely counting them as planned stops.
Production downtime, of the positive planned variety or otherwise, can hide technical and operational problems within the manufacturing process. Maybe a small machine issue is causing unnecessary losses in time and money. Much like a leaky faucet dripping in your home, this small drip is a big problem if left untreated. Or perhaps your Master Planner Scheduler needs to review the sequence of changeover times in order to truly optimize your production process. In any case, taking all the reasons for production stops into consideration is a best practice. This helps you see how and why they affect your productivity and design solutions to maximize process efficiency
2. Excluding operators from the OEE implementation process
Operators are the front-line of manufacturing and play a key role in driving daily efficient production. In all likelihood, no one will have a more holistic understanding of what goes on with your machines than the individuals who work directly with them each day. Therefore, failure to gain their buy-in on OEE and its implementation will have significant adverse impacts on the results.
When you exclude operators from the implementation process, reductions in participation and commitment to driving OEE improvement is common. Not to mention that once a problem is identified by monitoring OEE, the valuable knowledge these individuals can (and in our experience, certainly do) contribute to understanding and then improving that process or problem can be lost.
Reduced communication, insufficient data, or merely a superficial understanding of the data itself is often the result. These types of problems are common mistakes in OEE calculation. When present they reduce the potential improvement opportunities available to your organisation.
What to do #1: Include operators in the process
First, it is crucial to understand the degree to which your company culture determines the success of OEE implementation. Your culture influences operator engagement in the whole process.
We find that higher levels of operator engagement correlate to successful deployments. So, once you decide to implement OEE tracking, be sure to make everyone in your team part of the process.
You can begin by emphasizing the importance of the role they play in OEE results. Additionally, we recommend connecting OEE to a future where the company is healthy and competitive. You do not necessarily need another tool to get most of the OEE software. Awareness and education by your shift and team leaders will usually suffice.
Simply put, a competitive business doesn’t necessarily equal job security. Though ignoring the fact that an noncompetitive business will not usually last would certainly be foolish. When making this point, it’s best to avoid coming across as trying to exchange job security for operator buy-in. We have offered this point to stimulate thinking not to gain compliance by threatening job security.
A best practice is to find a way to demonstrate how operator commitment to OEE will benefit them directly. There is no one size fits all answer to this question. You will need to work to understand the specifics of your situation to answer the question authentically. That said, a method we have seen work well is to discover operators pain point.
What to do #2: Generate goodwill and buy-in by reducing operator pain points
Just about everyone can identify one thing about their daily work environment that bothers them. To discover this pain point, talk with your operators about their day-to-day work and ask them directly. You may come across a problem that is widely and universally disliked, but that is easy to remedy. Perhaps if you’re fortunate, it will relate to OEE. Even if unrelated, solving the problem may be able to create goodwill and buy-in.
With more complex problems that require expensive solutions, we approach the situation differently. In this case, consider rewarding the obtainment of OEE performance targets with the implementation of the solution.
Regardless of how you go about generating buy-in from machine operators, your most important objective is to communicate the importance of using OEE software. By emphasizing your team’s role in keeping the company competitive, they become more likely to use the system.
When motivated, operators tend to share more about the production process, inserting more information into the system. More information means more accurate data, which eventually leads you to the desired OEE value and a smart action plan to improve step by step.
The plant can increase productivity as a result. Further, operators’ experience increased feelings of commitment, responsibility, and inclusion in the workplace.
3. Using standard speed instead of design speed (Nameplate Capacity, Ideal Cycle Time)
Some organizations make OEE calculation mistakes by using the standard speed instead of design speed. Standard speed in this context refers to historical data on average run rates or throughput. The term, design speed, refers to the production speed as designated by the manufacturer. This is the highest achievable speed that design engineers specify under ideal conditions.
The issue with using standard speed instead of design speed is that it places a false upper limit on improvement. Companies that use standard speed are comparing OEE scores with average values, and this is misleading. They believe they have reached the maximum available throughput, when in fact there is more room from improvement.
What to do: Structurally shorten cycle times
Your goal should be to shorten the cycle times, thus increasing productivity structurally. For example, process restrictions might justify using standard/nominal speed to avoid the drop in availability. But concentrating on shortening the cycle times and finding ways to solve issues that may arise is an excellent opportunity to increase productivity and make necessary changes.
By reducing cycle times, a client in the wood processing industry achieved higher speeds than those designated by the machine manufacturers.
So, in some industries, you should not take what machine producers give at face value and always pursue the goal of shortening cycle times.
4. Insufficient data collection
To calculate OEE correctly, it is essential to have enough data for availability, performance, and quality scores. Using erroneous values or omitting one of these metrics can significantly alter the results in unpredictable ways. For this reason, insufficient data collection is among the top OEE calculation mistakes that we see.
This mistake can occur for a variety of reasons. As noted previously, sometimes operators will not engage in the process to that extent that they should. Or perhaps, OEE calculation uses standard speed instead of ideal cycle time. Both situations can result in poor quality data, making your data collection efforts insufficient to calculate OEE correctly. This means you cannot fully rely on the score to improve your productivity.
While operator engagement and machine speed ratings are essential, the most common reason for insufficient data is paper-based production monitoring. Companies that manually collect process data to monitor OEE face several challenges in obtaining accurate and timely data. For example, using highly trained machine operators for data collection can be viewed as underutilized talent. This is because data collection is a low value add activity.
In addition to reducing value by under utilizing talent, manual collection is prone to error. This is because of increased variability in the collection process means that there are many more opportunities for mistakes. Incomplete and/or inaccurate data can also result when completing paperwork from memory at the end of a long shift. Companies that use manual data often make mistakes in OEE calculation.
What to do: Automate data collection
It has quickly become a best practice to automate data collection activities. This will dramatically improve accuracy by reducing variability. Further, it allows operators to focus on what they do best, and this is often higher-value activities. Therefore, a first step to collecting sufficient data is to automate its collection.
Another best practice is the implementation of a cloud-based OEE solution. This allows companies to benefit from the reliability and easy accessibility of the cloud.
To avoid mistakes in OEE calculation, you need to consider the correct values and set realistic targets. Once you receive the data, you need to evaluate it and identify the problems. Remember, accurate data can only make a difference when you analyse and act upon it. This is one method world-class operations use to create value with OEE.
By monitoring, observing, and learning from data collected on your production process, you can more easily set and adjust targets. Moreover, your goals will be more realistic.
As a rule, greater digitization and automation of production processes leads to improved visibility. The more clarity you have into your production process, the more opportunities you can identify to improve it.
5.Focusing only on the OEE score
When calculating OEE, many companies tend to make the mistake of focusing solely on the OEE score itself. While an important metric, companies should not ignore the values which make up the OEE score: availability, performance, and quality. These are the factors to analyse in order to unlock opportunities for improvement on the shop floor.
What to do: Focus on the underlying losses
Having the OEE score presents you with the “big picture” and your overall production performance. However, knowing the availability, performance, and quality values show you where the production losses are occurring. This is where we recommend that you focus: the underlying losses.
Knowledge of where losses occur allows you to perform root cause analysis in a more focused and meaningful manner. When you understand the root cause you avoid the common problem of implementing solutions which address a symptom. To state the obvious, you will want to avoid creating solutions to symptoms. Not only will it not solve the problem, it usually creates new challenges as well.
Therefore, we recommend that instead of focusing on the OEE score, you take each of the elements in the production process into consideration.
Are you losing too much time during changeovers? What is the reason behind the defects? How is the overall performance of your machines?
The data will give you the answers to these and many other questions.
Looking at what is OEE as a whole, you can make improvements in availability and see how this affects performance and quality. If there is a need to increase performance, then you need to observe this in relation to the two other factors. Regardless of the size and industry of your organisation, every decision you make defines the output of your production process.
6. Comparing the OEE scores of different plants and machines
Another widespread OEE calculation mistake is for organisations to compare the OEE scores of different plants, production lines, or machines. In some cases, companies tend to average over the whole plant or across a group of plants in a division. This can arguably have a place in a board meeting, but this is beyond the scope of this article.
For our purposes here, we are focused on the plant operating level. At this level, comparing or averaging unlike plants, production lines or machine OEE is never a good idea. Comparisons like this will hide the actionable details -such as the reasons for stops. As such, this is among the top mistake ‘s companies make in OEE calculation.
When comparing OEE scores of different plants or machines, you need to take their features into consideration. A machine producing small batches and another one creating bigger ones cannot be evaluated in the same context. Similarly, the same machines with different maintenance histories and different quality levels of input material can produce different outcomes as well.
What to do: Compare similar machines, processes and materials
Regardless of size though, all companies will benefit from having comparable results accessed through a single source. Each line or machine should be analysed according to its OEE targets and environment. Most importantly, remember only to compare OEE scores when machines, processes and materials are similar.
To compare other metrics, data collection should be standardized as much as possible. Reasons for stops are one of the most important metrics that you need to take into consideration.
To that end, we recommend bench-marking stops if configuration settings can be standardized. This will be much better than only focusing on the OEE number.
7. Not standardizing OEE calculation
When you implement OEE in different plants and factories, standardization will be required, or mistakes in OEE calculation can occur. Standardization will allow effective communication within your organisation and ensures the calculation is correct.
Some companies fail to centralize their data collection from different plants and machines in one OEE software. This often results in various methods to calculate OEE and communication problems. Fragmented data is challenging to maintain, manage, and access across an organisation. As a result, factories do not know about each other’s improvements. Additionally, managers may make less than optimal decisions when they have OEE scores that are based on non-standardized sources.
Ultimately, un-linked, plant by plant OEE tracking results in poor OEE implementation.
What to do: Standardize data collection and OEE calculation
OEE implementation gives the best results when the calculation is standardized. This is particularly relevant to large multinational businesses with many different plants. Regardless of size, though, all companies will benefit from having comparable results accessed through a single source. This avoids the problems of having non-standardized results existing in various fragmented sources.
Once you standardize your OEE monitoring, it becomes easier to monitor, track, and compare scores. Furthermore, scores are meaningful and insightful and maintaining historical values as a benchmark becomes possible.
The ability to standardize OEE calculation in this way significantly benefits your organisation in return. You not only gather a shared database of logged information but also enhance communication across plants, factories, and departments. Improved communication and access to information leads to increased value-creation by reducing barriers to sharing best practices.
To learn more about this, please take a look at our article on standardized OEE systems.
8. Not taking action on data
You use OEE software, receive live OEE data, and analyse it. Perhaps you have some ideas about what is working and what is not working on your shop floor. This is a significant first step, but it is only half the battle. If you stop there, you can completely miss the opportunity to create value.
Your next step is to come up with solutions to the challenges you identify and take appropriate action. This is how you will improve your production processes. Without this step, your plant will forego the opportunity to unlock the full value which OEE monitoring presents. OEE will only improve when you act upon the data.
What to do #1: Take action on data
As a first step, you can analyse the data for easy-to-solve problems, which will have a high impact. This creates a feeling of success from the get-go. It also creates momentum to continue the effort which you can then build upon.
Next, you should conduct short daily performance reviews. This will allow you to start to discover the bottlenecks in the process and come up with solutions. The goal here is to make the process slightly smoother with each passing day. The daily review will improve your ability to track the process effectively and to predict problems. In contrast, working with accumulated results in a monthly report does not improve tracking and prediction.
What to do #2: Rank and address problems with a Prioritization Matrix
Many times, the “low-hanging fruit” will be obvious. These are the problems to address quickly. When problems become more complex, it may be challenging to determine the best order to tackle them in. In these situations, we recommend using a prioritization matrix (PM) to discover the optimal order to attend to problems.
A PM is a living document that lists all identified production problems and what must be done to improve. The improvement actions are then numerically scored in several prioritized categories, such as the impact of improvement or ease to implement. This quantifies the problem/solution by calculating a numerical value that allows for priority ranking. It also creates a record of improvement activities that can be beneficial in a variety of ways as well. For those new to this technique, you can download an easy-to-use template for the Prioritization Matrix.
In summary, production monitoring is a process. Start with small steps, include the whole team, and create significant change on your shop floor by setting well-defined goals and utilizing the data to meet those goals.
Avoiding these OEE calculation mistakes can enable you to receive accurate data regarding production, work on ‘real’ numbers, and come up with the solutions to get the results you want.
Once you start collecting the right numbers and identifying the real problems on your shop floor, taking action becomes much easier for you and your team. | https://medium.com/@carl-waddill/the-top-8-oee-calculation-mistakes-in-manufacturing-evocon-4c9bd2351a98 | ['Carl Waddill'] | 2020-02-12 12:39:01.031000+00:00 | ['Automation Software', 'Manufacturing', 'Oee', 'IoT', 'Production Monitoring'] |
Wolves of Crypto Pool AMA Overtime | On December 16, 2021 Josh from ProjectX was joined by Alessandro De Vita and Johanna Armstrong to answer some of the questions submitted by the community. As this went into overtime, we have followed up their answers to the full list of questions and collated them below. You can also read the full live AMA here in Telegram.
How’s it working in the crypto and NFT scene, different/better/worse than doing it with physical projects?
Alessandro:
In the designs in which I have worked so far there are several steps:
- From idea to sketch.
- From sketch to representation.
- From representation to physical.
The first time I saw the transition to physical was for a project for “Base Milano” (a cultural centre in the design district).
They were stairs, when I went up if I felt them support me I cried.
Digital has one less step, but on the other hand, it has an added factor: the speed.
I saw those steps 6 months after I designed them, and
instead, these digital projects are fast and stimulating.
The response from the public in real time is something that cannot be fulfilled.
Josh:
That makes sense. I am sure you can understand faster how much people love or critique your work in NFTs. (I love what you guys and girls have done for the pool btw!)
Johanna:
Working in the crypto/NFT scene is great because I have been drawing digitally for several years now. So much of my professional work exists in a digital format and it is second-nature for me. I regularly draw on my iPad and just because it is digital doesn’t mean it is any faster, haha! I have been increasingly interested in creating detailed, more painterly artwork and I can spend hours finessing all the details.
Beyond drawing digital illustrations, I am very interested in exploring ways to animate my drawings and adding music so it feels more like a living piece of artwork. I think the NFT space is perfect for this kind of moving, multi-media artwork. I have done some initial animations on some future NFT ideas and I am very excited about it!
2. What is the purpose of the token?
Josh:
Our token has two main utilities:
1. Access to the NFTs, you can burn your tokens to get our playable NFTs from the Wolf of Crypto Collection.
2. Exposure to these NFTs. That means if you don’t want to get actual NFTs, but want to get an upside from the potential NFT’s value appreciation, then you can just buy the token and get an upside from the NFTs price growth.
3. What made you decide to join the crypto market? What do you think crypto can upgrade in the fashion business?
Alessandro:
2 years ago a friend of mine owed me 20 euros for weed, he made me download an app and I received my first cryptocurrency.
When there was the Travis Scott concert on Fortnite, I proposed to my Prada manager to do the Prada looks for e- games … I was bounced.
Between various online and meta games, I think commercial and entertainment horizons are opening up in ways that we can’t imagine yet.
Johanna:
For me, the crypto market/NFTs is the most interesting and exciting thing for the art market right now. Digital artwork is becoming more legitimate as so many of us spend much of our lives in the digital world these days.
The NFT movement is very interesting for creators because it is a new medium to explore while also allowing us to connect with people all over the world. Perhaps it is the truly democratic way to bring art to everyone.
I’m very excited to get started with making NFTs and I think the fashion industry is already quite keen to see how they can get involved. I read a lot about what different brands have been experimenting with. For example, Burberry launched an NFT earlier this year, Sharky B, and it sold out almost immediately.
4. What are your ultimate goals and milestones?
Alessandro:
I recently started studying: cinema scenography and special effects.
In general I like to stay updated on new trends.
I don’t have a milestone, but environments and topic…
I believe Fashion, 3D and video will be 3 words that will accompany me for a long time.
Johanna:
My goal is to continue to learn and explore new mediums of creative expression. As I mentioned earlier, I am very interested in animation so that means I need to properly learn how to use After Effects — and that’s been a big challenge for me!
I would love to see how far I could push my creativity to explore NTFS and what they could be. Anything is possible right now and that is very exciting!
As far as milestones, I feel very fortunate to have worked with so many luxury brands and be able to live in big cities like New York City and London. I make sure I don’t take it for granted, considering I grew up in a small town outside of Pittsburgh. It isn’t so easy for everyone to escape to a life in the big city, in another country and in fashion!
5a. What inspired you to get into NFTs?
Alessandro:
I had been receiving unclear or not serious NFT project proposals for some time.
Then one day ProjectX and WhoKnocks contacted me.
They seemed to me the most reliable and with a valid project.
Johanna:
I was very curious about NFTs this past year but I wasn’t sure how to get started with that. Then, one day I got on a video call with a group of Italians (WhoKnocks) and our journey began!
I think our concept to have a group of fashion creatives dropping NFTS will be brilliant and I’m looking forward to what we will do next year.
5b. Do you think NFTs could be used for validating limited edition fashion pieces. Like suppose you have 1 of 500 minted, could you use NFTs to validate authenticity?
Technically absolutely yes.
Alessandro:
I have friends and colleagues who are inserting complex and specific molecules into texture’s material to make them authenticate as unique pieces.
Fashion has always been attentive to counterfeiting problems, there is a lot of research and I think it can be a valid idea.
More generally I think that fashion’s maison in the next few years will move more towards creating content than products.
Johanna:
Absolutely. Limited edition pieces are ultimately about authenticity, quality and most importantly — rarity! We are speaking of value and ownership as well, so I think this is a natural next step for the future of NFTs.
6. Where do you see the partnership between yourselves and Project X heading in the next 12 months?
Alessandro:
There are calls in the program, which I don’t think I can talk about, 3D themed.
In theory as soon as the situation calms down we will draft some ideas.
Johanna:
We have some exciting ideas in the pipeline, that’s for sure! We will have our Global Fashion Design pool to make drops there and several special collaborations as well.
7. Do you think NFTs are the future of art and collectibles, and why?
Alessandro:
In my opinion NFTs are the present.
Johanna:
Yes, definitely! The art market is evolving and for it to move into the digital world only makes sense. I think about collectibles a lot lately and it seems like humans just really like to collect things, don’t they? Haha! People collect everything and anything — stamps, coffee cups, knick knacks, shoes, everything! It is in our nature to collect the things we like. Not everyone can afford to make a collection of historic, famous art. That is why I think people are so interested in collecting art NFTs. Everyone has access to it. NFTs will make art more democratic than ever.
8. The crypto space can be a daunting place for artists with little experience of NFTs, do you think ProjectX takes the stress away from artists like yourselves so you can just concentrate on your love of art and design?
Alessandro:
I immediately said I did not have strong crypto skills and the tranquility with which ProjectX told me to worry only about the graphic processing was fundamental for the realization of these NFTs.
So absolutely yes, ProjectX takes all the responsibility for the tech and business aspects. So artists can focus only on creating NTFs which is what the vast majority of artists want.
For example in our case, the ProjectX team provided all the tech, made a partnership with the Legends of Crypto so our NFTs are playable now, sale also was organized / conducted by Xillion. So the experience was quite smooth.
Johanna:
The crypto space is definitely daunting for me! I have a lot to learn to fully understand it and I plan to get some lessons from my fellow experts here.
I greatly appreciate this partnership with ProjectX and WhoKnocks because they take away all the slightly terrifying technical crypto aspects. I think a lot of artists will have trouble figuring out how to navigate creating NFTS and I am so grateful to have help with that! I’m free to focus on the creative process 100%.
9. Is this a global project or a local project? Which market are you currently focusing on, or are you focusing on building and growing to get customers, users and partners?
Alessandro:
The project is global. technology allows us to communicate in real time with the USA and Hong Kong, both for our organization and for the public.
In Italy for the moment, we are talking about NFTs, but there are still no large investors or structured projects.
In general my closest goal is to understand more about it.
Johanna:
I see this as a global project because anyone has the option to purchase NFTs no matter where they are. This is the main reason why I find the NFT space so interesting. Otherwise, if you wanted to purchase art in the traditional sense — you would have to live in a particular city with a particular art gallery to have the opportunity to buy a painting from a particular artist. NFTs open up a whole new world of art accessibility that at the same time exists in the digital space.
10. NFT is considered the current HOT trend of the cryptocurrency industry after DeFi. Can you share your opinion about NFT? Where do you see future growth of NFT features and capabilities over the next few years?
Alessandro:
After years in which creatives have suffered from the right to authenticity, this can be the solution to many problems.
In the digital age, art reflects society.
It is important to get out of the classic hierarchical dynamics of art to move to a fresh market that is open to everyone.
About my works… I would like them to have functionality:
personalized clothing to play or cool environments that can add something more to the online experience.
Johanna:
NFTs are certainly a hot trend right now and I think that’s because it is a new concept with huge potential. It is especially thrilling that an NFT could be just about anything. I’m excited to see how they develop over time and to be a part of the process of exploring what they could be.
One thing I think would be interesting to see is how people would be able to take their NFT collections and show them off. Would there be a private, virtual art gallery that you could host video parties with your friends? Could there be a way to incorporate your NFTs exclusively in your social profiles, reels, etc? I predict that as NFTs become more popular there will increasingly be tools and functionalities that will allow people to customize their digital presence with their collections.
About Us
Xillion.one by ProjectX is a launchpad for NFT issuers, Celebrities, KOLs, and other key figures who would like to set up pools of NFTs and raise funds for it via a public sale (IDO style). Project X works to provide the most secure and simplified way to gain exposure to the NFT market with the use of pools and Indexes. The aim is to create different themed pools of NFTs which include Music, Digital Art, Sports Cards, and KOL issued NFTs to name a few. They have also signed partnerships with Polygon, Terra Virtua, LOCG, Glimpse and more than 10 other blockchain companies.
Website | Twitter | Discord | Telegram | https://medium.com/@projectxnft/wolves-of-crypto-pool-ama-overtime-d2dd931fa51e | [] | 2021-12-30 20:58:02.043000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Nft Collectibles', 'Launchpad', 'Bsc', 'Nft'] |
In my experience…entrepreneurship is an exercise in risk management | We all know entrepreneurs…and some of us are entrepreneurs. I hear many words used to describe them.
…Visionary
…Innovator
…Creator
…Expert
All true, accurate and could be applicable to non-entrepreneurs as well. The descriptor (it’s actually two words) that intrigues me most about entrepreneurs though is ‘risk manager’. This doesn’t mean non-entrepreneurs aren’t risk managers, rather that it’s a core characteristic (required?) of most entrepreneurs. It also doesn’t mean that all entrepreneurs are good risk managers all the time.
In my experience, entrepreneurs are not completely risk-averse, and their tolerance is generally calculated and informed given the various kinds of risk they encounter. These risks include, in no particular order and somewhat intertwined, Compensation Risk, Lifestyle Risk, Team Risk, Time Risk, Product / Service Risk and Funding Risk.
Compensation Risk
Simply put, what is the minimum amount of money you need to live on to survive…and how soon will your venture be able to provide that to you? Said differently, how much money can you afford not to make (i.e. the opportunity cost of a ‘regular job’) to pursue this passion? When I talk to entrepreneurs about this topic, I ask them if their minimum will be met if revenue is half and expenses are double what they estimate.
Lifestyle Risk
Are you willing to live and breathe your new venture to the exclusion of other things in your life…not forever, hopefully, but likely for some period of time? Some ventures are called lifestyle businesses because they inherently allow the entrepreneur to ‘have a life’. Many ventures are not lifestyle businesses and require more effort than seems humanly possible. Think about your willingness to make this sacrifice and how you’ll do it.
Team Risk
If you have a team…who’s on the team, why, and do they have the same level of risk expectations and tolerance as you do, or at least as much as is needed to fulfill their responsibilities? Teams change, sometimes drastically, and because of that it’s important the team on the ground at any given time is always able to move forward and manage toward successful outcomes. Think about how you’ll enable continuity when resource changes occur.
Time Risk
Time can be a friend or an enemy to an entrepreneur, and there is never enough of it. This includes time spent on the venture (see the Lifestyle Risk section) but also development-time, time-to-funding and time-to-market. Even if the product or service is amazing the timing could be wrong…market isn’t ready for it, market is already saturated with competitors, it’s a race to market. There is also risk when examining the trade-off between ‘time’ and ‘quality’ in product / service development.
Product / Service Risk
Are you building a better mousetrap or a brand-new trap for something that’s never been trapped before? Chances are you aren’t the first person to have your idea. However, if you are the first one or if you have a better mouse trap, are you ready to run the gauntlet of constant changes and tweaks? Iterative product / service development is important, but it can also lead to a lack of forward progress if “good enough” isn’t defined and enforced.
Funding Risk
How much funding is needed to launch and sustain your venture? Where will that funding come from? When and how often? How much will the funding ‘cost’? There is a lot of guessing (and hoping) that happens around funding, which is why it’s a risk. Obtaining funding doesn’t guarantee success, but lack of funding is one of the quickest ways a venture can die. Also, make sure your investors are prepared for multiple investment rounds…you’ll need more money, sooner than you think.
Each one of these risks could be an article in and of itself. Taken together they make entrepreneurship seem daunting and fraught with peril (i.e. risk), which is the point. It’s unlikely a person can ever be fully prepared for the experience of being an entrepreneur and my observation is that while you can’t avoid risk in entrepreneurship, there are ways to mitigate it.
These are just a few of the risks entrepreneurs face. Have you faced others?
Special thanks to Darcy Howe, whose passion for entrepreneurship is contagious and inspirational, and to Jeff Glasco, because I want to be a part of anything this guy does. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/in-my-experience-entrepreneurship-is-an-exercise-in-risk-management-16817904ac1e | ['Brett Simpson'] | 2020-11-20 03:27:12.840000+00:00 | ['Risk', 'Risk Management', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneur'] |
Stop Saying Your Kid is “Too Smart” For School | Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash
When I asked my friend how school was going for her son who is in 4th grade, she gave me the answer that has always made my skin crawl: “He’s just too smart, so he gets in trouble because he is bored.”
Her son was within earshot and he jumped in with how bad his teacher is, how babyish the math is, and how often he has visited the principal’s office for causing trouble in the classroom.
One thing was clear: this was not the first time that mother and son had described the school year this way.
As a teacher, I believe that all of my students are smart in their own way. I don’t believe that any of them are too smart for school and I never accept that poor classroom behavior is excused by too much intelligence.
The consequences of saying your kid is ‘too smart’
If you’re a parent who has felt like the mom above, consider some of the things that can happen when kids hear their parents say that they are ‘too smart’ for school:
They stop working hard. When kids believe that what they are doing in school is too easy for them, they will dial back their effort. This reduced effort becomes a habit and as the school year progresses and the material gets harder, suddenly this reduced effort isn’t enough to keep up. Then the student really will fall behind, and may act out to cover up the fact that they no longer understand the material.
When kids believe that what they are doing in school is too easy for them, they will dial back their effort. This reduced effort becomes a habit and as the school year progresses and the material gets harder, suddenly this reduced effort isn’t enough to keep up. Then the student really will fall behind, and may act out to cover up the fact that they no longer understand the material. They feel like they have permission to act out. When a student hears their mom or dad excusing their bad behavior, especially for a positive reason, then their is no incentive to behave better. This can lead to a ‘wag-the-dog’ situation, where the student even feels like they have to act out to prove that they are smart. If they stop acting out, then people will think it’s because they are no longer ‘too smart.’
When a student hears their mom or dad excusing their bad behavior, especially for a positive reason, then their is no incentive to behave better. This can lead to a ‘wag-the-dog’ situation, where the student even feels like they have to act out to prove that they are smart. If they stop acting out, then people will think it’s because they are no longer ‘too smart.’ They resist the opportunity to learn new, more challenging material. When students believe that school is easy for them because they are smart, it makes them hesitate to take on more challenging material. Even the smartest kid doesn’t intuitively know stoichiometry or Pythagoras. The only way they can learn things like this is by leaning in and tackling hard topics. If your kid hears you say that they are bored because they are so smart, then once the material becomes harder, they will feel that they aren’t smart, so they will resist learning new, tougher topics — maybe by acting out.
When students believe that school is easy for them because they are smart, it makes them hesitate to take on more challenging material. Even the smartest kid doesn’t intuitively know stoichiometry or Pythagoras. The only way they can learn things like this is by leaning in and tackling hard topics. If your kid hears you say that they are bored because they are so smart, then once the material becomes harder, they will feel that they aren’t smart, so they will resist learning new, tougher topics — maybe by acting out. They don’t become well-rounded citizens of their school and community. If you read about education at all, you’ve seen the trend towards Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). Schools are focusing on softer skills like empathy, curiosity and perseverance instead of just teaching math and writing. If a student believes that because they already understand two digit addition, there’s nothing left for them to learn at school, they miss out on SEL opportunities like working together, or helping a struggling friend understand a new topic.
Strategies for when your kid is ‘too smart’
You’ll notice I’m not critical of my friend for thinking her son is smart. I hope all parents think highly of their kids and find times to publicly praise them for the things they do well.
What bothered my was how she framed her son’s intelligence in a negative light by saying that it was the reason why he’s been getting in trouble a lot lately.
In the moment, I just excused myself to refresh the guacamole. In hindsight, I wish I had found the wisdom and courage to offer her some alternate strategies to help her, her son and his teacher and classmates have a better school year.
Here are some of the tips I would have given her:
Praise the effort, not the outcome. When kids are praised for doing things that come easily to them, they will learn to take the path of least resistance. But when you celebrate times that they took on bigger challenges and really dug in to do hard work, they will be more likely to lean in to tough problems both in and out of school.
When kids are praised for doing things that come easily to them, they will learn to take the path of least resistance. But when you celebrate times that they took on bigger challenges and really dug in to do hard work, they will be more likely to lean in to tough problems both in and out of school. Provide more challenges outside of the school day. Kids don’t spend as much time in school as you might think — about 12% of a kid’s year (180 days x 6 hours/day) is spent at school. That means that you’re responsible for the rest. Play chess with them, sign them up for an online class or get them involved in a running club. Exhaust them physically and mentally so that they’re relaxed and ready for an easy math lesson.
Kids don’t spend as much time in school as you might think — about 12% of a kid’s year (180 days x 6 hours/day) is spent at school. That means that you’re responsible for the rest. Play chess with them, sign them up for an online class or get them involved in a running club. Exhaust them physically and mentally so that they’re relaxed and ready for an easy math lesson. Support publicly, vent privately. After a decade spent working in public schools, I know that not all teachers are great. But nobody wins when a student hears their parents openly criticizing teachers, administrators or schools. Kids are expert manipulators and will use your words to excuse many varieties of bad behavior. If you have a small problem with your kid’s teacher, complain about it to a friend over a glass of wine. If you have a big problem, privately contact the teacher or school.
After a decade spent working in public schools, I know that not all teachers are great. But nobody wins when a student hears their parents openly criticizing teachers, administrators or schools. Kids are expert manipulators and will use your words to excuse many varieties of bad behavior. If you have a small problem with your kid’s teacher, complain about it to a friend over a glass of wine. If you have a big problem, privately contact the teacher or school. Incentivize good behavior, not bad behavior. I had an experience in my first year of teaching that I will never forget. One of my students had been particularly difficult in class, so there was a meeting with the principal, his parents and a few of his teachers. We strategized ways to help him better manage his behavior. The next day he came into school announcing that he had gotten a new video game. His parents felt bad for him that he was in trouble, so they bought it for him. Parenting is hard, but doing the hard work sooner will make it easier later. If your child had a bad day at school, give them an outlet to blow off some steam, but don’t reward it out of sympathy. Right now I have a student whose mom made a checklist and every Thursday, I spend about 30 seconds filling it out. She takes it home and if she has enough checks, she gets cash money. The girl rolls her eyes, but she’s having a great year so far, so good on her parents.
School is hard enough as it is. Don’t make it harder than it has to be for your kids by telling them they are ‘too smart.’ They won’t know enough to thank you for this until they’re well into adulthood. But you can thank yourself when their behavior improves and you can stop stressing about calls and emails from the teacher!
Thanks for reading!
For other strategies on how to help your kids at school, check out these articles: | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/stop-saying-your-kid-is-too-smart-for-school-4bc6b5467079 | ['Emily Kingsley'] | 2019-11-03 19:03:10.294000+00:00 | ['Teaching', 'School', 'Self-awareness', 'Education', 'Parenting'] |
Science Fiction Theatre episode review — 1.3 — Out of Nowhere | Original air date: April 23, 1955
Director: Herbert L. Strock
Writer: Donn Mullally
Rating: 5/10
Is it bad that I’m kind of enjoying the Truman Bradley little intro segments more than the actual stories? I like when he pops up just to give us a highly abbreviated science lesson. It adds some character, somehow.
At any rate, this story involves bats crashing into a skyscraper, which alerts some scientists, since bats shouldn’t crash into anything with their little anatomical radar things.
They investigate, and find that there might be some kind of signal or wavelength coming from somewhere else.
After discovering that it’s not from the American military, people speculate that it could be Soviet, or perhaps from outer space. And honestly, the story doesn’t go anywhere satisfying with that. It’s only a half-hour show, and I feel like this story just needed more to it.
I’m not feeling great about this show so far, as much as I did like the first episode. A few episodes coming up are directed by Jack Arnold, the man behind such sci-fi classics as It Came from Outer Space, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and The Incredible Shrinking Man. Actually, he directed the second episode, the only one I’ve really liked so far. | https://medium.com/as-vast-as-space-and-as-timeless-as-infinity/science-fiction-theatre-episode-review-1-3-out-of-nowhere-6b713c75611f | ['Patrick J Mullen'] | 2021-03-21 18:32:40.466000+00:00 | ['Science Fiction Theatre', 'Science Fiction', 'SciFi', 'Television', 'TV'] |
Did Biden Fail an ‘Initial Cognitive Intelligence Test’ for Presidency? | WASHINGTON — Dr. Jill Biden has devoted her life to the field of education, and that won’t change when she becomes first lady next month. According to a source close to her, Biden will advocate for debt-free community college.
Dr. Martha Kanter, who served as under secretary of education in the Obama administration and who has known Biden for more than a decade, said she has worked hard to make debt-free community college a reality.
“That is what she would like to see. We have often talked about community colleges as the unsung heroes,” Kanter said in a conversation with Yahoo News, adding that Biden has strived “to really help people understand the value proposition and the return on investment and why it’s important.”
Along with promoting debt-free community college, Biden plans to champion other aspects of the education platform her husband, President-elect Joe Biden, put forth during his campaign for the White House.
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The focus on education is a natural extension of the work she did after her husband was elected vice president in 2008, when, as second lady, she became an outspoken advocate for community colleges. Biden has also spent much of her career teaching at the community college level, and has been an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College since 2009. Prior to taking that position, Biden spent about 15 years at Delaware Technical Community College.
“Teaching has always been more than just a job to her — it’s who she is,” said Biden’s spokesperson, Michael LaRosa.
Biden, who holds graduate degrees from West Chester University, Villanova University and the University of Delaware, where she earned her doctorate, has long championed community college. It took her 15 years to finish her own education, including time spent studying at night while raising a family with her husband, who served as a U.S. senator for 36 years.
Biden has often spoken about how her experience in the classroom — and her personal history — shaped her views on education. Her students have included single parents, veterans and refugees. In a 2015 speech before the Community College National Legislative Summit, Biden traced her passion for education to her grandmother, who “taught at an old-fashioned, one-room schoolhouse.” Biden recalled how she kept her grandmother’s school bell as a treasured heirloom and described the impact she felt from working with students to improve their reading skills.
“Teaching is my life’s work,” Biden said in that address. “I teach because I love seeing the difference that I hope to make in my students’ lives. My goal is to always give them confidence in their own abilities, because I know confidence will carry them well beyond my classroom in whatever they do. As I work hard every day to inspire my students, it is ultimately they who inspire me.”
President-elect Biden himself has emphasized the fact that his academic credentials are far different from the Ivy League diplomas that typically pepper the corridors of power in Washington D.C. He earned an undergraduate degree from a state school, the University of Delaware, and went to law school at Syracuse University. He and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, were the first presidential ticket since 1984 without an Ivy League degree.
During a CNN town hall in his hometown of Scranton, Pa., in September, the former vice president noted that, throughout his life he had encountered people who believed people “must be stupid” if they didn’t have a college degree or Ivy League bona fides.
“What the hell makes you think I need an Ivy League degree to be president?” Biden asked. “Guys like me, the first in my family to go to college … we are as good as anybody else.”
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According to Kanter, the former undersecretary of education, Jill Biden’sfamiliarity with research showing community college has a unique return on investment would make her a “critical voice.” Kanter also cited Biden’s classroom experience.
“She’s … knowledgeable about the challenges,” Kanter explained. “Why do students leave? Why do they drop out? What are the barriers that we better work much harder and to get out of the way? And I think that’s what she’s going to say.”
Biden’s background in education was quickly put to use during her time as second lady when the country was recovering from the financial crisis.
When President Obama convened experts to identify ways to strengthen the workforce, a source familiar with Obama’s efforts said the experts “realized one of the most effective tools to jumpstart the economy was community colleges,” and “someone said, ‘Wait… isn’t the second lady actually working at one right now?’”
Biden subsequently convened the first-ever White House Summit on Community Colleges on Oct. 5, 2010, which highlighted community colleges’ role in workforce development and focused on Obama’s goal of raising the numbers of college graduates. Several years later, she crisscrossed the country to promote a community college-to-job-market pipeline program.During her time as second lady, Biden also worked with former first lady Michelle Obama to launch Joining Forces, an initiative that urged Americans to “to rally around service members, veterans, and their families and support them through wellness, education, and employment opportunities.” As first lady, Biden plans to relaunch Joining Forces.
In her new role, Biden is expected to take up other aspects of her husband’s education platform, along with her efforts to advocate for debt-free community college and military families. And in addition to her promise to ensure students — including nontraditional, older learners — can attend community colleges for up to two years without having to dive into their own pockets, Biden has proposed a plan to make all public college and universities tuition-free for students whose families earn less than $125,000, in addition to a suite of education grants with a focus on historically black colleges and universities and institutions dedicated to the Native American community.
Obama had also pushed a plan to make two years of community college free, but it failed to overcome Republican opposition in Congress. President-elect Biden’s proposals will almost certainly face similar hurdles, particularly if Democrats fail to secure a Senate majority in the Georgia runoff elections next month.
As first lady, Biden is unlikely to have an official position in the policy drafting process. A former Biden staffer who worked closely with Biden and requested anonymity to discuss the transition nevertheless said she has an informal but crucial role advising the president-elect.
“She’s been a pretty great sounding board throughout his career. She will have a very ambitious portfolio and I’m sure she’s particularly influential on the education front. She’s got decades of experience there,” said the former staffer, before adding in a shot at the current first lady. “And you’ll never hear her complain about decorating the White House for Christmas.” | https://medium.com/@wbgdfhgdg/did-biden-fail-an-initial-cognitive-intelligence-test-for-presidency-e79d97a436f6 | [] | 2020-12-05 19:23:00.711000+00:00 | ['News', 'Joe Biden', 'Test', 'Social Media', 'President'] |
‘Three Chords And The Truth’: Van Morrison Speaks His Mind | Tim Peacock
Van Morrison never burned out or faded away, and it’s unlikely he’ll succumb to either option for the foreseeable future. At 74, he’s eschewed the lucrative nostalgia circuit and the lure of retirement and he’s on an almighty creative roll. Released on 25 October 2019, with an expanded edition following on 29 November, Three Chords And The Truth is his sixth new album in barely four years.
Listen to Three Chords And The Truth on Apple Music and Spotify.
Crucially, while the Northern Irish legend has thrown out new titles at a furious pace, the quality has never been challenged by the quantity. Indeed, Morrison’s previous trio of releases, Roll With The Punches, Versatile and The Prophet Speaks, all received reams of positive press, and it’s difficult to dispute American Songwriter’s assertion that “there are at least a handful of tracks” on Three Chords And The Truth “that should be in the next Morrison greatest hits package”.
Fantastic vocal form
Morrison maintained a uniform approach across Roll With The Punches, Versatile and The Prophet Speaks, mixing and matching reimagined versions of blues, jazz and R&B standards with newly-penned tracks of a similar stripe. Long-term fans, however, will be thrilled to discover that Three Chords And The Truth boasts 14 freshly-minted songs, all of which are Van Morrison compositions, save for ‘If We Wait For Mountains’, which includes a lyric from the singer’s longtime acolyte Don Black.
It’s a significant bonus that Morrison can call upon the cream of studio sessioneers to realise his restless muse. He has talented players such as bassist David Hayes and Hammond organ virtuoso Paul Moran on speed dial, while, this time around, he’s also reunited with versatile US guitarist Jay Berliner, a veteran of the sessions for his widely-hailed 1967 album, Astral Weeks.
Regardless of their skill and subtlety, however, any team requires inspiration from their leader, so it also helps that Morrison is in such fantastic vocal form. His voice has a deeper, richer timbre these days and it’s the ideal vehicle for the album’s more reflective fare, such as ‘Read Between The Lines’, the wistful, shuffle-y ‘March Winds In February’ and the delightful, Tupelo Honey-esque ‘Up On Broadway’, on which Morrison gets nostalgic for times past spent in San Francisco’s North Beach and his favourite City Lights bookstore.
The iconic singer also reconnects with his formative influences on a further trio of stand-out cuts. He paints a vivid picture of the daily grind of touring (“Got to get off this merry-go-round”) on the lilting, country-flavoured ‘Bags Under My Eyes’ and encourages his band to add a “shot of rhythm’n’blues” akin to Them on the potent titular song. He delves even deeper into his past for the Sun Studios-style rockabilly of the self-explanatory ‘Early Days’, enthusing, “I have to go back to the beginning,” over energetic, Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano pounding and Berliner’s classy, James Burton-esque guitar.
Listen up and learn
Elsewhere, however, Morrison returns to his irascible best on ‘Nobody In Charge’. Though superficially an infectious, blues-based workout, its rousing musical backdrop couches a spleen-venting lyric laying into “politicians who waffle endlessly” and the ongoing indecision surrounding Brexit. He’s in similarly anti-establishment form on the terse, tetchy ‘You Don’t Understand’ (“Does freedom of speech exist?/What kind of free state is this?”), but he’s equally dismissive of Hollywood’s glitz and glamour on ‘Fame Will Eat The Soul’: a slow-burning set-piece lifted by a rousing vocal contribution from The Righteous Brothers’ Bill Medley.
Three Chords And The Truth is a rich, diverse and confident record that looks set to join the pantheon of mandatory Van Morrison titles. Its title derives from a phrase coined by Harlan Howard to describe a great country song, but it feels right in this context, too. After all, whenever this singular Belfast troubadour has words of wisdom to impart, the sensible option is simply to listen up and learn.
Three Chords And The Truth can be bought here.
Join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter: @uDiscoverMusic | https://medium.com/udiscover-music/three-chords-and-the-truth-van-morrison-speaks-his-mind-4be4226f599c | ['Udiscover Music'] | 2019-12-02 18:02:33.989000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Features', 'Rock', 'Pop Culture', 'Music'] |
Daily Journal: A normal life is underrated. | As much introverted as I might be, I have to admit that I miss going out and meeting people. It’s been a long year of “travelling” from one room to another and rubbing elbows instead of giving tight hugs — it’s wearing me down. I haven’t even been able to take my fiancé back to Vietnam to meet my mother in person. It’d be so much fun though, especially now that we can afford nice hotels and experiences (compared to my broke days as a student.) Well, I miss normal things like that.
When I was younger, I used to fantasise about living an extraordinary life — whatever that means. But now, all I want is a normal life: doing mundane things with my partner, spending time with our friends and families, travelling, eating delicious food, writing, creating content, laughing a lot, connecting with our community, and so on.
I know I’m lucky and privileged. But I write what I know in this space.
Today’s gratitude
I’m grateful for the time off with my partner. He’s so caring and attentive. I feel so loved every day. | https://medium.com/one-minute-journal/daily-journal-a-normal-life-is-underrated-cef8b9e4cf6a | ['Ellen Nguyen'] | 2020-12-25 12:52:30.427000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Self', 'Journal', 'Reflections', 'Gratitude'] |
Meteorological Data Analysis | In this we used a meteorological dataset to analyze the data of 10 years and made a conclusion on it. Dataset which is used in this, obtain from Kaggle (https://www.kaggle.com/muthuj7/weather-dataset). Here we have used the NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib and Seaborn to load the dataset and to plot the graph.
In this we have recorded and plotted the graph between Apparent Temperature and Humidity of different months.
At first we have loaded my python libraries, which will be going to use further.
Importing the libraries of Python
Here, our dataset looks like this after loading with help of Pandas.
First five data from dataset.
Now we will check the shape of the dataset and information’s about the datasets.
It gives the shape structure and basic info about data.
Then we will check the any null value is present or not, if it is present and it is relevant to our analysis then I have to manage and enter some value on it.
Checking presence of null value.
After checking the null value, I will remove the unwanted data to make our analysis more easy. Here ‘axis=1’ means removing of column listed under drop function.
In dataset, a date column was given. So firstly we will make a proper format so that python can treat those date to a proper functional date.
Conversion of date into a proper format.
Now we will plot our first graph.
As we can see there are no such any changes in temperature in 10 years, and this graph tell that in 2012 the minimum temperature was -8 degree Celsius.
Graph between year and temperature
Now we will plot the graph in month of February 2012, we have seen that temperature declined sharply up to -10 degree Celsius.
Graph between temperature and year in month of February.
In below graph, we can see that there is there is not much changes occur in last 10 years in the month of August. Temperature minimum rise and fall can be seen here.
Graph of August
Conclusion: While looking all these data and graph we conclude that there are not major changes has been seen in between 2006 and 2016 due to global warming. Humidity remain constant throughout the years with minute amount of rise and fall. | https://medium.com/@kvaibhav97/meteorological-data-analysis-fe22b311e47e | ['Kumar Vaibhav'] | 2020-10-12 02:16:36.670000+00:00 | ['Kaggle', 'Data Science', 'Meteorology', 'Data Analysis', 'Data Visualization'] |
You Are Not The Roles You Play | Identity vs. Role Confusion
Erik Erikson (1902–1994) was a psychoanalyst and developmental psychologist who is best known for his stages of psychosocial human development. According to Erikson, there are eight stages we move through, throughout our lives from birth to death which include:
Trust vs. Mistrust
Autonomy vs. Shame
Initiative vs. Guilt
Industry vs. Inferiority
Identity vs. Role Confusion
Intimacy vs. Isolation
Generality vs. Stagnation
Ego Integrity vs. Ego Despair
His fifth stage of development, Identity vs. Role Confusion, occurs roughly between the ages of 13- 19. Here is where integrating a solid sense of our Self should occur, where what we do is not as important as who we are and who we are aspiring to become.
With Erikson’s theory being based on stages, each subsequent stage is based on successful completion of the previous one. Where things can go sideways in his stages happens as a result of unsuccessfully completing that stage, where Ego integrity can become compromised.
For example, each stage includes specific goals or virtues that are gained from successfully navigating through that stage which include: hope, will, purpose, competence, fidelity, love, care, and wisdom Bruttain & Lerner, 2013).
With regard to his fifth stage, if we navigate through it successfully, we master a sense of self-competence and an ability to be loyal (fidelity) to ourselves (our Self) and others. Struggling through this stage can create a sense of being unsure about who we 'are' and what our purpose is in life while struggling with remaining faithful to ourselves and others.
… which can affect subsequent stages.
This is why developing a solid sense of Self is so important in adolescence as it literally — sets the stage — for our adult development. Yet, many of us may have not received adequate nurtutance or support earlier in life, where we may be noticing 10, 20 or more years down the road that something may not feel right. If our caregivers were out of touch with themselves, they won’t be able to model the appropriate stages of development for us.
Unsuccessfully completing this stage can feel like you got the short end of the stick growing up or that you’re somehow behind others your age where you’re always trying to hurry up and play catch-up.
This feeling usually goes by the name “identity crisis”.
Building Our Sense of Self
Many of us may feel out of touch with who we are, and we may have moved through life identifying as our roles. Even if we weren’t taught necessary skills for autonomy or a solid self-purpose in its appropriate stage, we can still learn about ourselves and establish a solid self identity as separate from our roles.
Self-Connection. Connecting with our Self starts by recognizing who we are as separate and independent from our environment and others. Though self-connection, we’re reassessing ourselves, from the outside, in. In other words, we begin noticing ourselves based on how others respond to us, how we feel around them, and what our behavior looks like based on our likes, dislikes, values, and how our feelings resonate, both good and bad.
Challenge Accepted. Here is where we can start examining how we react under pressure, or how we feel and respond around people or things we may not like.
This also gives us the chance to compare how we feel, behave and think in times if negative challenge versus positive challenge. These experiences teach us how to stay in the present while remaining forward-focused.
Alone Time. When we’re focusing on personal growth, it’s an inside job and a one person show. There can’t be time for needless things that numb or derail us from our growth, or we aren’t growing.
Time alone should include learning to become our own best friend, becoming our own sense of safety and learning to be the first person we to turn to. This is how we grow self-trust.
Time alone is critical for learning about our sense of Self, as it teaches self-reliance and independence.
The fact is, if we aren’t comfortable knowing and loving ourselves, we can’t expect someone else to be either, as that would be the epitome of identifying with a transient role — if that person left, we would be at risk for an identity crisis.
Recognizing and appreciating ourselves is often trial-and-error and it takes time. There’s no shortcuts when it comes to establishing a solid self-identity. | https://medium.com/armchair-analysis/who-you-are-is-not-the-roles-you-keep-364793107121 | ['Annie Tanasugarn'] | 2020-12-11 23:12:11.361000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Psychology', 'Life', 'Mental Health'] |
How Much is Fare Scraping Costing the Travel Industry? | Scraper bots make up the worst of bad bot traffic for the travel industry, with sites witnessing over 90% of traffic attributed to fare scraping. Whilst this activity can be benign or even used for positive means, if uncontrolled it can impact top line revenue, bottom line profits and customer experience.
In a recent webinar, Netacea’s Head of Threat Research, Matthew Gracey-McMinn, and Enterprise Sales Manager for Travel and Tourism, Graeme Harvey, were joined by Ann Cederhall, Travel Technology Specialist at LeapShift.
The panel discussed the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the travel and tourism industry, the damage of fare scraping and excess web requests on travel booking sites, and how travel companies can take back control of their look-to-book ratio.
Catch up on all the key takeaways below or watch the full webinar on demand here.
What is the look-to-book ratio?
The look-to-book ratio is the number of requests made per booking on an online travel site.
Requests can be made by humans or bots, and the lower the look-to-book ratio, the better. A low look-to-book ratio means conversions are high from genuine customers browsing the website. However, scraper activity can cause look-to-book ratios to exceed several thousand. A high look-to-book ratio inflates the number of requests versus the number of conversions.
When scraper bots pull information from a website, they create excess web requests which, in turn, negatively impacts your look-to-book ratio. Increased competition driven from the pandemic, and the popularity of dynamic pricing, means this is fast becoming a top threat for the travel industry.
How does fare scraping work on travel booking websites?
In travel, web scraper bots are mainly used to collect fare and availability information by rival companies and aggregator sites, used for price comparison.
But also targeting travel booking sites are scraper bots, used to discover and publicize the availability of products and services such as flights, hotels or car rentals.
Attackers advertise the scraped information at lower price points on a secondary site, motivated by the financial reward of charging commission, stealing personal data, or generating advertising revenue.
Scraping is also often used to gather the data needed for more sophisticated or damaging attacks such as ticket spinning or denial of inventory. Preventing malicious scraper bots can cut out these further attacks early as the attackers do not have the data they need to progress.
‘The attackers who were working in travel have moved out of the space over the last year, but they are now coming back with new skills and techniques learned from other industries [during the Covid-19 pandemic].’ – Matthew Gracey-McMinn, Head of Threat Research at Netacea
What damage is inflated look-to-book ratios causing to travel companies?
‘The cost for an airline of having excess transactions — of having pricing systems being queried — can be very substantial, and also uncontrollable.’ – Ann Cederhall, Travel Technology Specialist at LeapShift
Excess traffic caused by aggressive scraping and high look-to-book ratios negatively impact airlines and travel companies both on their bottom line and on their technical performance.
Business costs
Additional costs (up to millions per year) to third-party services like Metasearch engines and GDS booking fees, which charge based on traffic volumes
Extra costs for SIEM and anti-fraud solutions, again which charge based on traffic volumes
Loss of pricing visibility leading to competitive pricing disadvantage
Misleading analytics from inaccurate number of website viewers interested in a certain product
Loss of ancillary revenues (or “add-ons”) e.g., hotels, travel insurance and car hire
Technical costs
Excessive infrastructure costs (up to 50%) used to serve bots
IT teams stretched to deal with bots away from daily tasks
Slowed website performance leading to negative user experience
Costly downtime in extreme cases
How to prevent scraping, excess transactions and high look-to-book ratios
The travel industry is one of the most severely affected by bad bots and has been since the advent of online travel. As bots grow in sophistication and volume, it is crucial for travel websites to accurately detect and bad bots without affecting good bots necessary for the steady running of your website, and genuine users’ experience.
As Ann Cederhall concluded in the webinar:
‘It’s all about control.’
Download the full guide: Fare Scraping and Excess Transactions: The Real Cost to the Travel Industry
The post How much is fare scraping costing the travel industry? appeared first on Netacea. | https://medium.com/netacea/how-much-is-fare-scraping-costing-the-travel-industry-2de459f25d6f | [] | 2022-01-10 10:57:12.092000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Airlines', 'Technology', 'Scraping', 'Business'] |
Why the Modern Resorts are considered to be the Ideal Vacation Spot close to the City | Why the Modern Resorts are considered to be the Ideal Vacation Spot close to the City Soumi Chowdhury Mar 18, 2019·3 min read
After investing a considerable amount of time in office work and the unending traffic in the congested streets of the city, all we need is spending a quality time far away from the city chaos. Be it an outing with college friends or a romantic vacation with loved ones, be it a short weekend vacation with office buddies or a colony picnic, the modern-day resorts have always got us covered.
The best resorts near Kolkata for couples boast of a plethora of mind-blowing features that allures people to spend some quality time with loved ones.
Here are some of the best features of these resorts:
• Super Connectivity: You don’t want to reduce the tenure of your short vacation on traffic. This is why connectivity plays an important part in determining your next vacation destination. Resorts in close proximity to the airport or railway stations are usually favoured.
• Mesmerising Location: The ambience or the atmosphere is the biggest asset of any venue. This is why most of the resorts boast of spectacular natural offerings with abundant greenery and water bodies. Nature plays a big role in painting a glorious ambience and resorts located in the lap of nature are very popular when it comes to spending quality time.
Deluxe Rooms: The most popular resorts come up with gigantic rooms designed with inspired interiors that bolster the aesthetic appeal. The spacious rooms are jam-packed with top-notch furniture and mind-blowing views that will captivate your soul. Furthermore, the rooms are packed with all the necessities, ensuring a luxurious stay.
• Appetising Delicacies: A holiday is incomplete without good food. Appease your taste buds with lip-smacking delicacies available there. Be it Thai, Indian, Chinese, or Continental, the multi-cuisine restaurant serves them all.
• Relaxation: Most of these resorts have a swimming pool which is centre to all the fun activities. People can spend a lovely time with their near and dear ones chit-chatting by the swimming pool over a glass of premium mocktail. A leisurely swim in the tranquil waters can also be a refreshing idea.
Entertainment: A holiday devoid of entertainment and fun holds no value. There is no stopping the fun at these resorts. When the sun sets, you can head straight to the pub and relax your mind with premium quality alcoholic beverages. You can unleash the party avatar in you by swinging your foot on to the pumping tracks played by the DJ.
The Ideal Fun Destination
Be it delicious food or a host of indoor games, be it the serene beauty or fishing in the tranquil waters, the modern-resorts offer almost everything to match the taste of every peace-hungry soul. Distant from the rush, the resorts have emerged as the ideal holiday destination for friends, families, corporate, and couples.
Head to these resorts and welcome a spectacular holiday with your loved ones. | https://medium.com/@soumi.ursdigitally/why-the-modern-resorts-are-considered-to-be-the-ideal-vacation-spot-close-to-the-city-85720dfe5c46 | ['Soumi Chowdhury'] | 2019-03-18 10:47:03.998000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Vacation', 'Resort', 'Kolkata'] |
Nvidia likely to lay down intel and amd | Nvidia to lav down Intel and AMD , and why this image ? as we all know what arm is arm (Acorn RISC Machine) is a company which produces RISC architecture based processor , now you may ask what is RISC it is reduced instruction set computer in this kinds of processors there are less number of transistors and are highly optimized set of instruction , now let me tell you one thing your phone’s processors are made by ARM that is the reason you are never much discriminated in playing any high graphics game on mobile phone but in pc you must have high end nvidia or the amd graphic card to render those graphics as they are made of CISC architecture (many of you may not have understood much now wait ill be making a separate post for this ) .
BTW moving to our main topic of today is that why will nvidia lay other as they both comprise of same instructions of CISC , let me tell you it was till now but yesterday Nvidia just knock the doors of ARM and announced that they will be buying ARM as whole for $40 billion with this we can also expect to see Nvidia to debut in mobiles which can drastically change the world of rendering and gaming and any one from home can render high end graphical pictures videos easily .
For more information stick on to this site- https://haptictechnology.blogspot.com/ | https://medium.com/@yashkameshwar10/nvidia-likely-to-lay-down-intel-and-amd-9f252a199f60 | ['Yash Kameshwar'] | 2020-09-23 09:31:14.890000+00:00 | ['Nvidia', 'Processors', 'Technology News', 'Technology', 'Graphics'] |
Adapting to the Mask-wearing Normal | I hated wearing my mask, until I found out that’s the best way to adapt in this challenging environment.
Safe Distancing Ambassadors in Singapore. Photo by grainfalls on Unsplash
Up till recently, I would shun away from people wearing face covering in public (for non-religious reasons): They are emblematic of mystery and terror. Covering masks to me used to be the Twitter egg avatar in the Twitter-less era. Hiding in anonymity, people in masks have more chances to strike fear and create trouble to the community. Loan sharks wear masks. Terrorists wear masks. Even bank robbers, not excluding those fictional ones, wear masks too. (Yes I watched La Casa de Papel and I loved every. Single. Episode.)
More troublingly, we now live in the era when beauty is pretty much skin-deep. The cosmetic industry is a multi-million dollar industry with its ads penetrating every single facet of our life. People, of both genders, spent significant amount of their income to groom their faces. Judging ourselves, and others, according to how they look has become second nature to us.
Taken to a more extreme level, the industry is also changing who we are. Netflix is dotted with shows that glamourizes skin-deep beauty. Cosmetic industry has provided a refuge to those who wish to run away from who they really are by altering how they look like. Increasingly, we literally take things at face value. (badum tss)
So I do get why people do not wish to cover their faces in public.
Actually.
Scrap that.
I don’t. I really don’t get it.
We are now waist-deep in the middle of the pandemic quicksand. The national tragedy in India sweeps countries in the entire region with rising cases, and each passing day brings more uncertainties into our future. Just like in the quicksand, the more we move about, the deeper we get into this mess. Epidemiologists agreed that wearing masks is our lifelines, aside from the vaccines that are currently being rolled out.
Yet I believe there is something bigger in people’s refusal to save the lower half of their faces from our sight. It is more than just the perceived look of mystery that a mask can give its wearer. It is more than just the feeling of discomfort; the limited freedom of expressing who we are and what we aspire to be and to look like. I think it has got to do with people’s ability to take in new information and adapt.
Adapting and overcoming challenges will always be key to our survival as a species. This was printed all over within our evolutionary history. People living in higher altitude has better lungs capacity due to the air that is thinner at these places. People in the tropics has more pigments in their skins that allow it to be more resistant against the ultraviolet rays of the sun.
Yet, humans are creatures of habit. What we are used to or comfortable doing might logically be at odds with the times, but it is very difficult to change those habits. Humans of younger age pick up thousands of new information everyday on their first few years, from walking to speech and cultural norms. However, even as we age in our formative years, we lose our ability to pick up new skills, as habits are formed and cultural norms are internalized.
So how do we make people more adaptive? I am proposing a few ways forward.
Firstly, we need to highlight the position of privilege we are in, in comparison with places that are currently affected by the pandemic. Singapore’s position of “low crime city” stand in stark contrast with big cities around the region like Jakarta, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. I had personal experience of losing my entire bag and important documents overseas — an experience that causes me to have little panic attack whenever I see people leaving their bags / laptops in local libraries for a lunch break.
National Library Building Singapore. Photo by bady abbas on Unsplash
We need to be on guard, at all times. Unfortunate things can happen to you if you are not careful, and worse still for the case of the pandemic, to the people around you as well.
Numbers talk, but big numbers rarely make sense to human brains. To highlight this enviable position we are in, we need to share the stories, albeit anecdotal ones, of people unable to see their relatives for the longest time due to isolation, of healthcare workers around the region being overworked to treat patients. Nobody enjoys being cared for in isolation; but it seems way too many people enjoy being oblivious to the tragic humanitarian crisis unfolding around the region.
Secondly, we need to start communicating risk factor better to the public. A few things I have in mind. One: We are one big community living in this small island. And therefore, the usage of terms “community” / “dormitory” to explain daily new cases in Singapore seem to imply that there are two separate systems of communities here, each living within their own bubble. With the current cases linked to the airport these days, it does not make sense to say “We are not in Changi Airport therefore we should be okay”.
Two: It does not make sense as well to say that we can relax the existing health and safety procedures because they are effective in reducing numbers of new cases. Instead, we need to understand it in the other way round: The low number of cases might be because of other things (for example, effective border controls and quarantine system).
The existing protocols that we have might have been broken all this while, but because of the low local cases, we have no way to prove its effectiveness. This rings painfully true in the case of disease transmission in a food court in Changi Airport Terminal 3. The existing law of gathering up to 8 people in public and allowing patrons to dine-in was not stress tested. Miscommunicating risk factors creates narratives that breed complacency among the community.
Humans are capable to understand new things. It is in our genes. We just need to work and think harder to adapt. Mask-wearing is freedom-restricting at best and suffocating at worst. It requires a lot of effort and will power. But I believe we are better than our worst instinct. Wear your masks. | https://medium.com/@fermawrites/adapting-to-the-mask-wearing-normal-e0d94a48ac39 | ['Ferma Writes'] | 2021-05-16 09:11:55.890000+00:00 | ['Masks', 'Habit Building', 'Adaptability'] |
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Author Casey O’Brien Martin Is Helping To Change Our World | Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
I was raised in Massachusetts by a single mother who had schizoaffective disorder. She loved me dearly but at times her mental health challenges impacted her parenting. Because of this, there was a lot of adversity for me growing up, and the educators around me didn’t seem to realize what I was struggling with. I don’t think there was awareness regarding the importance of social-emotional learning that there is now. I used the arts as a tool to cope and when I was a teenager I learned how to meditate. These two things were game changers for me and tools I still use to this day. My challenges during childhood are what drove me to study in the mental health field. Although it was a difficult time in my life, I know I am a very resilient person.
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
At around 15 years old I was at the library after school and I picked up a book on the shelf called The Art Therapy Sourcebook by Cathy Malchiodi. After taking it home and reading it, I decided I wanted to become an art therapist. My parents hadn’t graduated high school so going to college and then to graduate school was kind of a radical idea at the time but I was extremely inspired by that book. I had been using art on my own as a coping tool, and before reading that book I hadn’t realized there was this whole field of study, and even a career I could pursue to help other people through the healing power of the arts!
After reading The Art Therapy Sourcebook, I became extremely driven to become an art therapist and so I started college at 16. I was the first person in my town to participate in a dual-enrollment program, where they sent me to college while I was still enrolled in high school. Sometimes I wonder where my path would have led if I didn’t randomly pick up that book at my local library! Today I am proud to say that I am a Registered Expressive Arts Therapist (REAT) and I also in the Expressive Therapies Division at Lesley University.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting mistake that occurred to you in the course of your career? What lesson or take away did you learn from that?
Early on in my career as a School Adjustment Counselor, I made a pretty big mistake: when a child had a problem, I would try to swoop in and be the counselor who was able to calm down and de-escalate the child’s feelings. The issue was that I became their coping mechanism. This was not empowering to the child at all!
I reflected on this and realized that this approach was not effective. I started to shift my focus to empower all children by teaching them these important self-regulation skills. They needed to learn the skills themselves, not have a counselor swoop in to rescue them from their feelings.
I wrote Skills for Big Feelings as a fun, structured, and developmentally appropriate way to teach children coping skills. My hope is that by implementing these interventions earlier and with more children, we can help prevent the development of some mental health concerns.
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?
Imagine what the world would be like in twenty years if every child was taught the skills to cope with their feelings more effectively! Skills for Big Feelings is a practical guidebook for educators and mental health professionals to teach kids these important social-emotional learning skills. I wrote this book because I believe in the power of preventative, tier-one mental health support for all children.
All children should be taught social-emotional skills, including the ability to understand and cope with their thoughts and feelings. And with the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems that our children need these skills now more than ever.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
I don’t have a “story” as the book is non-fiction, but here is a description:
Skills for Big Feelings: A Guide for Teaching Kids Relaxation, Regulation, and Coping Techniques is a comprehensive and powerful handbook which seeks to empower children to cope with their feelings, manage anxiety, and learn to thrive, written by School Adjustment Counselor and Licensed Mental Health Counselor Casey O’Brien Martin. Built on a 12-week program based on cognitive behavioral techniques, mindfulness, breathing exercises, visualization, and gratitude, inside you’ll find a wealth of engaging activities for helping kids develop healthy emotional growth and coping mechanisms.
This book provides a wealth of social-emotional exercises for kids, including identifying and accepting feelings, dealing with unhelpful thoughts, and acknowledging triggers, as well as practical tools for adults such as S.M.A.R.T. treatment plans and IEP objectives, family handouts, letters, and surveys. Skills for Big Feelings is an invaluable tool for educators and mental health professionals working with kids.
What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
I work in a public school and I noticed lots of kids were struggling with anxiety and self-regulation skills, so I developed the initial Skills for Big Feelings curriculum for the kids I was working with. I collected surveys from the children that were very reaffirming about the work. And then, inspired by Brené Brown’s work on vulnerability, I started collecting surveys from their parents. When I saw the comments that the parents were making about the changes their children had made at home, due to the skills they had learned with me, I was inspired to share this work with the world on a wider scale!
Without sharing specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
The impact of this work has been reaffirmed to me time and time again. One day I received an email from a counselor at a different school that said they were working with an elementary student whose sibling had recently died. When this student came back to school, he said that his cousin, who was a student at my school, had taught him relaxation skills to use when he was feeling sad.
I read that email and cried. It was an important moment for me because I realized then that children were out in the community teaching each other these skills, by themselves, on their own time, without any encouragement from me!
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
I would love to see schools funded more equitably, as well as more funding and research put into social-emotional learning, and funding for mental health professional staff (school counselors, expressive arts therapists, social workers, psychologists, etc.) in all schools. Many school districts are not working with the suggested counselor to student ratios, so incentivizing districts to follow those ratios would be very helpful. I think grants and scholarships to train people to become school-based mental health professionals would also be great, as we need more staff and this would encourage people to serve, as they wouldn’t be discouraged from entering the field due to an exorbitant amount of student loan debt.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
I define leadership as the quality of inspiring, encouraging, and guiding other people toward a common goal. A good leader is willing to do anything they ask other people to do. They help instill confidence in others to take healthy risks and do their best.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
5 things I wish I had been taught about feelings when I was a kid:
1.) Your thoughts influence your feelings. You have the power to control your thoughts, so you can impact your feelings as well. And just because you think a thought — does not mean it’s true!
2.) All feelings are okay. It is such a powerful act to be able to name your feelings by saying how you feel. Your feelings will change — they’ll come and go, just like the weather, and that’s okay and that’s expected!
3.) Find a creative outlet to express your thoughts and feelings — whether that is through art, music, writing, dance, or drama. Find a healthy way to express yourself and connect with your creativity.
4.) Taking some slow, deep breaths is such a simple but impactful practice that will positively influence your day. If you can combine the deep breathing with some movement, then even better! Try to make your exhale longer than your inhale, and this can really relax you.
5.) There is so much power in the present moment. Don’t spend your time worrying about what might happen in the future, or stressing about what already happened in the past. Just find time to be present in this very moment. Try not to strive for things by thinking ‘as soon as I get this, I will feel that…’ Just try to be present, in this very moment, right now.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Frederick Douglass said that “it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men” and this quote really resonates with me since I have dedicated my career to trying to make the world a little bit brighter by helping children with their social-emotional needs.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
I have been extremely inspired by the powerful work of Brené Brown’s! Without her books and influence, I probably would not have written Skills for Big Feelings.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
http://www.wholechildcounseling.com
http://www.facebook.com/wholechildcounseling
http://www.instagram.com/wholechildcounseling
http://www.twitter.com/wholecounselor
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work! | https://medium.com/authority-magazine/social-impact-authors-how-why-author-casey-obrien-martin-is-helping-to-change-our-world-d0aa4b6908bd | ['Edward Sylvan', 'Ceo Of Sycamore Entertainment Group'] | 2021-02-22 08:36:31.789000+00:00 | ['Social Impact'] |
Mi “Casa” No Es Su “Caza” | Photo by David Monje on Unsplash
Before you started learning Spanish, you probably heard somewhere that it’s an easy language to learn because the spelling and pronunciation are so regular. Then you got going and discovered that “easy” is a relative term. Sure, spelling is more regular in Spanish than in English, but that’s an awfully low bar!
Even as a beginning learner of Spanish, you can probably look at a word on the page and figure out how to pronounce it without much trouble; but can you hear a word spoken and know how it’s spelled? And what’s up with the letters b and v sounding the same? Or the /s/ sound being spelled three different ways?
If spellings using c, s, and z to represent the same sound seem arbitrary to you — and especially if you’ve gotten to the point where -zar verbs are giving you a headache — read on to learn the logic behind the spellings of the /s/ sound.
The Big Picture
The first broad concept to keep in mind is that the spoken language exists first, and the written language represents it. Sure, spelling can also be influenced by etymology, which is often behind the doubts that even native speakers sometimes have about b/v distinctions or the presence or absence of a silent h. By and large, though, written Spanish reflects the language as it is actually spoken . . .
. . . but it’s not spoken the same way everywhere. If the written distinctions between c, s, and z strike you as totally arbitrary, you’re not imagining things; you’re learning Spanish as it is most commonly spoken in the Americas.
And that, of course, is fine! I’m not here to suggest that learning to speak like a madrileño is the only worthwhile goal; on the contrary, all dialects and accents are valid. However, taking a few moments to understand a key difference between the dominant pronunciation patterns in Spain and the Americas can demystify some patterns in the written language.
Seseo and ceceo
Do the first consonant sounds in the words cerca, serio, and zapato all sound the same to you — and they all sound like the English letter s? This reflects seseo, the standard pronunciation for a large majority of Spanish speakers worldwide. Simply put, ce, ci, and all occurrences of s and z are pronounced the same, using the /s/ sound.
Some native speakers — located primarily in southern Spain, but also in some communities in Latin America — instead use ceceo. The general concept is the same, but in this case, the pronunciation is /s̟/ or /θ/, something like the unvoiced th sound in English (think, fourth).
If you speak using seseo or ceceo, the nouns casa (house) and caza (hunting) will be pronounced exactly the same: from an English speaker’s perspective, they’ll sound like KAH-sah using seseo or KAH-thah using ceceo. Which leads us to…
Distinción
The pronunciation pattern most commonly used in Spain, distinción, means exactly what it suggests: speakers draw a clear distinction between these sounds. Here’s how it works:
S always sounds like /s/
Z always sounds like /θ/ (the unvoiced th sound in English)
C also sounds like /θ/ when followed by an e or i; otherwise, it sounds like /k/
A speaker using distinción, then, will pronounce casa and caza differently: KAH-sah and KAH-thah, respectively. Returning for a moment to the principle that the written language reflects the spoken language, we can see now why these two words are spelled differently: for a considerable number of native speakers, they are pronounced differently.
Let’s say you hear a word like selva and you want to look up its meaning. If it’s pronounced by a speaker using seseo, you might not be sure whether it’s spelled with an s, c, or z. If you’re hearing it from a speaker who uses distinción, however, there’s no question about it: the spoken /s/ sound means the word must be spelled with an s.
C or Z?
There’s still plenty of room for confusion, though, since c and z can represent the same sounds. If you hear a word pronounced with /θ/ (the unvoiced th sound), how can you know whether it is spelled with a c or a z? Fortunately, once again, something that looks arbitrary at first glance does have a logical pattern behind it.
As previously mentioned, a c in Spanish makes the /k/ sound if it’s followed by a, o, u, or a consonant, or if it’s at the end of the word. (This is an easy pattern for English speakers to recognize, because we do the same: cat, coat, cup, act, disc.) C only makes the /θ/ sound (or /s/, in seseo) when it is followed by e or i. (Again, we do this in English as well: certain, city.)
Meanwhile, z always makes the /θ/ sound (or /s/, in seseo). So why not just use z and forget about c altogether? Well, Spanish allows for the ze and zi letter combinations . . . in words of foreign origin. This includes words like zeta (borrowed from Greek), zigzag (from a German root), and zebra (borrowed from Italian . . . and with the alternate spelling cebra, because that just looks right).
To summarize, here are the letter combinations representing the /θ/ sound in speakers using distinción:
In fact, c and z are often two sides of the same coin, used in words that share a root but contain the /θ/ sound in different contexts. For example, the noun capacidad is related to the adjective capaz. The same consonant sound is used in both words, but the spelling reflects the difference in context (z at the end of a word vs. c used before -idad).
This helps clarify a common source of frustration for intermediate learners of Spanish: the spelling changes that occur in the imperative, preterite, and present subjunctive forms of -zar verbs. It can seem picky and unnecessary to change from z to c (for example, yo lancé rather than yo *lanzé), given that both letters represent the same sound. But if you keep in mind that the combinations ze and zi are rare and limited to words of foreign origin, the rules make plenty of sense.
Remember when I said that all dialects and accents are valid? I’ll go a step further: the more accents and regionalisms you’re exposed to, the better. Keeping an open mind to the variants of your target language helps you develop your comprehension skills, your cultural competence . . . and yes, in this case, even your spelling! | https://medium.com/language-lab/mi-casa-no-es-su-caza-5dc9ee42e448 | ['Laura Nagle'] | 2020-09-04 01:08:54.875000+00:00 | ['Spanish', 'Language Learning', 'Spanish Language', 'Phonetics', 'Language'] |
Conquer The Command Line: The open Command | How to use the Linux open command on Mac plus essential options
In this installment of “Conquer The Command Line” we talk about how to use the Linux open command on Mac.
When ever you want to open a file, a directory, or an application from the command line on a Mac, use the open command.
To use the open command, you need to have your Mac terminal open. oOnce opened, type open <item> . Item can be a file, an application, or a directory.
As an aside, I have always wondered why the directory tree has that name and why the main directory, the one that the other directories branch from is called the root. I googled and found this page about tree roots among other things. It says that trees grow root systems that keep up with the branches we see above ground. Now I’m good with this, because I thought that the developer jargon didn’t make sense.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Opening The Current And Parent Directory
Linux uses two special designations for directories. . means the current directory. .. means the parent directory, the directory one level closer to the root, which is the highest directory in the tree of directories and files. Since Mac OS, operating system, is based on Linux, it honors this.
To open the current directory, type open . .
To open the parent directory, type open .. .
Essential Options
If you have a Mac, you will find the options for the open command by typing the man command at the terminal prompt.
Related Commands
To print the working directory, the one you are currently pointing to, use the pwd command.
To change to directories, use the cd command.
To list the contents of a directory, use the ls command.
To make directories, use the mkdir command.
To remove directories, use the rmdir command.
To create files or change their time stamps, use the touch command.
To move or rename files and directories, use the mv command.
To copy files and directories, use the cp command.
Remember to use the man command to find all the options for any command on your system. And remember that for a less technical explanation of commands to check out tldr pages.
What Now?
Hopefully this post has helped you take one more step in conquering the command line. I welcome any feedback.
This post was originally written at https://www.jimhomme.com | https://medium.com/@jhomme1028/conquer-the-command-line-the-open-command-3f1dbdddd6c9 | ['Jim Homme'] | 2020-12-21 00:18:44.099000+00:00 | ['Tutorial', 'Command Line', 'Beginner', 'Linux', 'Programming'] |
SwiftUI: What you need to know for your next technical interview | If you’ve had the chance to check out recent announcements from WWDC, you’ll certainly be aware of a new and upcoming framework called SwiftUI. This surprise introduction for creating interface components creates fantastic new opportunities and will undoubtedly have an impact on how all of us write apps. This essay reviews its key concepts for those preparing for their next technical interview.
Goodbye Quartz, UIKit, Autolayout…
Back when I started iOS development, the tools needed to write code and build user interfaces were separated into two applications: Xcode and Interface Builder. Beyond the introduction of Storyboards and Autolayout, how we create interfaces has remained largely the same. This includes the use of Core Graphics, Core Animation and Quarts when subclassing UIView. Often, implementing custom interfaces felt foreign when compared to the typical flow of an app. This was largely due to the code’s procedural design and lack of object-oriented principals. For example:
//draw a line using Quartz - (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
CGContextSetLineWidth(context, 2.0);
CGColorSpaceRef colorspace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
CGFloat components[] = {0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1.0};
CGColorRef color = CGColorCreate(colorspace, components);
CGContextSetStrokeColorWithColor(context, color);
...
}
If you don’t recognize this style, don’t worry. It’s likely much of it will fade away with the introduction of SwiftUI. Entire techniques such as Storyboards, Autolayout or the entire UIKit are yet to be seen.
Hello SwiftUI
To understand the flow of SwiftUI, let’s test some basic concepts you can apply to your next technical interview. Consider the following:
imports SwiftUI struct HelloView: View {
var body: some View {
Text("Hello World..")
}
}
Assuming you’re running Xcode 11 or later, the following is all you need to build a simple View with the words “Hello World..” displayed on screen. Even though we just have a few lines of code, note how there are no import references to UIKit and that the HelloWorld struct conforms to the new View protocol. Another important highlight is that a View should not be confused with a traditional UIView. In addition, the body of our code is defined as a computed property.
Taking Action
With a basic View defined, let’s proceed to add a Button. With SwiftUI, the typical target/ action sequence has been replaced with a two-closure method signature for action and label respectively:
struct HelloView: View {
var body: some View {
Button(action: processAction) {
Text("First Button")
}
}
} func processAction() -> Void {
print("First Button Pressed..")
}
Declarative Statements
Experienced developers may be skeptical of the (over) simplification of the tools needed to build complex user interfaces — (will this really work)? What makes the new modeling technique both exciting and powerful is its declarative style. This means SwiftUI features aren’t based on a strict OO composition design pattern, but can be blended to a make a custom design of your choosing. To see how this works, let’s enhance our button with an image:
struct HelloView: View {
var body: some View {
Button(action: processAction) {
HStack {
Image(systemName: "pencil.tip")
Text("First Button")
}
}
}
}
Assuming we wanted to replicate the same design with UIButton we’d have to first check to ensure our object supported properties for UILabel and UIImageView. With SwiftUI, we can nest seemingly incompatible objects to achieve our desired layout.
Working With Lists
Beyond basic controls let’s consider how SwiftUI handles list-based content such as tableViews. As we’ll see, this area has also been refined and simplified. To illustrate, assume I want to extend my current iOS Interview Email Course as an app. To start, I would have users choose from a list of possible topic categories. Defined as Topics , the metadata would be as follows:
imports SwiftUI struct Topic: Identifiable {
var id = UUID()
var name: String
}
What’s new is the Identifiable protocol. This will allow our Topic to employ fast-enumeration when working with native SwiftUI objects. To see how this works, let’s define some test data and create a new List :
struct ListView: View {
//list of topics
let topics = [
Topic(name: "Syntax"),
Topic(name: "Design Patterns"),
Topic(name: "Algorithms"),
Topic(name: "System's Design"),
Topic(name: "Project Management")
] var body: some View {
List(topics) { element in
Text(element.name)
}
}
}
This code generates a basic list, but doesn’t yet function like a regular TableView. Let’s enhance our model with a NavigationView :
struct Topic: Identifiable {
var id = UUID()
var name: String
var image: String
} struct ListView: View {
//list of topics
let topics = [
Topic(name: "Syntax", image: "pencil.tip"),
Topic(name: "Design Patterns", image: "rectangle.stack.fill"),
Topic(name: "Algorithms", image: "cube.box"),
Topic(name: "System's Design", image: "skew"),
Topic(name: "Project Management", image: "doc.text")
]
var body: some View {
NavigationView {
List(topics) { element in
NavigationButton(destination: Text(element.name)) {
HStack {
Image(systemName: element.image)
Text(element.name)
}
}
}
.navigationBarTitle(Text("Flashcards"))
}
}
}
These enhancements now provide us with the desired effect. Things to note include the implementation of the NavigationButton as well as the use of the new SF Symbols icon library, seen with the syntax Image(systemName:).
Room With A View
Arguably the most important aspect of SwiftUI is that all items are treated as a View. This could make traditional challenges like casting and inheritance a thing of the past. Considering our example, this allows us to not only push traditional subViews (to the Stack), but is flexible enough to push non-standard items like Text or Buttons:
...
NavigationButton(destination: Text(*element.name*)) {
...
}
With such profound changes to the iOS ecosystem, developers should be studying SwiftUI now as hiring managers will eventually seek candidates who have an understanding of the new model to refactor new and existing applications. The introduction of SwiftUI has been well received. As a result, one should double down on their mastery of Swift language syntax as Xcode development moves toward a more fluid model between WYSIWYG and code-based tools. | https://medium.com/swift-algorithms-data-structures/swiftui-what-you-need-to-know-for-your-next-technical-interview-8ed977992c17 | ['Wayne Bishop'] | 2019-06-26 20:42:00.693000+00:00 | ['Computer Science', 'Interview Questions', 'Swift Programming', 'iOS', 'Xcode'] |
Amal Totkay. Amal totkay consists of simple 5 steps… | Growth Mindset VS Fixed Mindset
In my opinion growth mindset is a mind that grows without limitation. A growth mindset tells us how to think out of the box and without limitations. I strongly believe that the growth mindset is necessary to survive in this society. If we talk about the fixed mindset it means you think that you have learned all the things already in my opinion there's no future for a fixed mindset. Fixed mindset people always in the box with a fear of lose.
Amal totkay consists of simple 5 steps that are very clear and super amazing.
1. Self Talk
When I was reading about Amal Totkay it was the point that I like the most. We always self talk but not make it very clear and didn't talk for a single point. We need to self-talk very specifically for greater results.
Self Talk
2. Getting out of Comfortzone
If we want a growth mindset then always live out of the comfort zone. Comfortzone is not the place for growth mindsets but fixed mindsets.
Since I joined the AMAL it helps me how to live out of my comfort zone always.
3.Develop new habits
New habits are like learning new things. We need to make it a habit. A good habit means a step towards development. It could be helping others, Be generous and etc. Amal is the best practice always to learn and develop new habits.
4.Seek help from experts
Always be cleared and ask for help whenever you want from experts. Taking help doesn't mean any shame but it will help you grow and increase productivity. In AMAL we always ask for help from other fellows as PM/AM.
5.Fake it till you make it
We always try to become fake but not for productivity and learning but to show others. When you are fake for productivity and development it will help you grow and it's a great point that motivates and help me to stand in many fields of life.
a) How did I find the 5 tips?
These are more important as much as AMAL fellowship. It gives us a sequence of all the important aspects which we normally do but unintentionally.
b) What are my takeaways?
My takeaways include that I spend valuable time with myself as well as will always ask the experts for help without any hesitation.
c) What are my favorite tips?
My favorite tip was Self Talk which I normally do but not very specific. From now onwards I will try to make it super worthy.
d) What have I started implementing already?
I already started the Totka of ‘Getting out of my comfort zone’.
e) What I can do to develop a growth mindset beginning from today?
I strongly believe that if I started following all the above Amal Totkay I will definitely start moving towards a growth mindset. | https://medium.com/@farhan-zahoor163/in-my-opinion-growth-mindset-is-a-mind-that-grows-without-limitation-fd7aa105ec6a | ['Farhan Zahoor'] | 2020-12-25 19:41:54.215000+00:00 | ['Amal Academy', 'Amal Totkay'] |
1,000 South Carolina Women Endorse Bernie Sanders for President | 1,000 South Carolina Women Endorse Bernie Sanders for President
CHARLESTON, S.C. — In a signal of the growing support for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign in South Carolina, more than 1,000 women across the state have endorsed his candidacy.
“We are thrilled to have such broad enthusiasm among local women for Sen. Sanders,” State Director Christopher Covert said Thursday. “Sanders has fought for women’s rights and economic fairness throughout his life and the support in South Carolina reflects the national movement of American women joining our campaign.”
Christale Spain, the South Carolina Director of Political Outreach, said that “as a black woman and a single mother, it was crucial to support a candidate who has demonstrated a commitment to advocating for me and the issues that impact my community. Sen. Sanders has been a champion of civil rights and economic equality for women for thirty years, and I am proud to endorse him.”
Dr. Gloria Tinubu, the first African-American woman in the state to win the Democratic nomination for Congress, believes that “Sanders is in the tradition of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who lead our parents and grandparents through one of the most challenging times in our nation’s history. Like President Roosevelt, Bernie is fighting to protect our democratic way of life and our four freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.”
A new Clemson University Palmetto Poll shows that nearly one in two South Carolina Democratic primary voters remain undecided about whom to support in the February primary. | https://medium.com/@SouthCarolinaforBernieSanders/1-000-south-carolina-women-endorse-bernie-sanders-for-president-40385aa1f558 | [] | 2015-12-27 04:33:36.244000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Bernie Sanders', 'South Carolina'] |
How to find your ideal podcast episode length | Photo by ConvertKit on Unsplash
Is there an ideal podcast length?
Since 2015, I’ve shipped 1000s of episodes and earned millions of downloads via my two podcasts. When I first started out I recorded long, epic conversations with my guests and then I cut my podcast episodes in half.
Why?
The data told me too.
For this process to work you need to put your ego to the side because what you find out might hurt.
Over the years I’ve learned that I love my work much more than others. So from an objective point-of-view, I should let the data tell me what is working.
How to find your listener data
I use Libsyn for podcast hosting and distribution.
Libsyn will tell you all sorts of interesting data like:
Downloads per day
Downloads per episode
Downloads per destination (Libsyn or Player.FM)
Downloads per country (138 listeners in Ghana — my favorite west African country!)
Downloads per user agent (Apple or Spotify)
But this data won’t tell you what you need to determine your best podcast episode length.
For that, you need to log into Podcasts Connect and use your Apple ID to login.
This will bring you to a screen that shows your podcasts. Here are mine (I just launched a third “archive” show because Apple only allows you to have 300 episodes per feed and I don’t want to lose the content from my main show).
Click on “podcast analytics” to get the data you need.
Note: The only drawback to Podcasts Connect is that it only reports Apple statistics. It’s not a deal breaker. Apple is the largest provider of podcast listens, so I think it is safe to generalize what you are seeing here.
How to analyze your listener data
Below is a screenshot of the analytics of my main show, The Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast.
You’ll see that my shows range from 30–46 minutes. Average consumption ranges from 43–65%. The time per device column does the math for me so my audience is listening between 15–25 minutes per show.
Here I’m only showing the data for the shows released at the beginning of 2021.
Let’s hold those numbers in our minds and look at my second podcast for some more info.
The School Leadership Series is different. It’s Monday-Friday and always less than 5 minutes. Does that matter?
Each show here is either 3 or 4 minutes in length. Consumption ranges from 76–95%. The time per device is between 2–4 minutes. Although we don’t see it in this span of shows, it is not uncommon to see an above 100% listen rate, like below:
How to respond to the data
So I have some choices to make.
If my priority was to increase the consumption rate, then my analysis tells me two things:
Create a show around 20 minutes, or
Find the shows with the highest listen rates and create more shows on those topics
From my creator’s perspective, I’d find it hard to have the kind of in-depth conversation I want to have with my guest so creating a 15–25 minute show would be quite a stretch.
My second podcast tells me that the shorter the show the better (in terms of consumption rate).
This data also tells me some episodes are much better than others. For example, “Reflection Questions for 2021,” shows that my audience will listen more than once because they see it as massively valuable. Check out that episode for yourself. Listen here on Apple or Spotify (subscribe if you enjoyed it).
My goal for this post was to be transparent about how my podcasts perform. Represented here was data from two shows with 1000s of episodes and millions of downloads. I hope you can learn from a behind-the-scenes peek at one platform’s performance. | https://medium.com/@alienearbud/how-to-find-your-ideal-podcast-episode-length-a8581db0259f | ['Daniel Bauer'] | 2021-03-09 16:58:45.999000+00:00 | ['Podcasting', 'Podcasting Tips', 'Audience Insights', 'Podcast', 'Audience Engagement'] |
Coindelta and Aniko announce strategic alliance to drive adoption of tokens and Blockchain in India | Coindelta and Aniko announce strategic alliance
Today, Aniko and Coindelta are pleased to announce a strategic alliance, making an important step towards widespread adoption of tokens and Blockchain in India.
Aniko sends money across borders faster and cheaper than ever before — for people and businesses. Powered by a proven crypto-arbitrage engine, the Aniko-platform and mobile wallet provides access to billions globally.
As a part of this alliance, Aniko and Coindelta will work towards a widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies in India. Aniko will further develop a trading relationship with Coindelta, giving them the access to liquidity pools in major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. The range of crypto-currencies offered by Coindelta is ideal for the Aniko Platform; Aniko’s crypto-arbitrage engine works off trading across multiple currencies to find the optimum price/volume point and liquidity.
India will be a key market for Aniko and as this industry continues to take shape in this rapidly growing economy, partnering with exchanges such as Coindelta will enable Aniko to execute large volumes of orders for its customers, whilst providing Coindelta with consistent liquidity across a basket of cryptocurrencies.
Additionally, following the completion of the Aniko ICO (expected end of Q3 2018), ANKA token will be looking to list on the Coindelta platforms, making it more accessible for Indian users.
Both Aniko and Coindelta are well positioned to capitalise on the cryptocurrency market in Asia and their collaboration in this space will result in significant value creation.
Please follow Aniko on Twitter for further updates, regarding partnerships and launch of its Wallet in the App and Play store later this summer.
Follow us on Twitter, and join our Telegram community. | https://medium.com/coindelta/coindelta-and-aniko-announce-strategic-alliance-to-drive-adoption-of-tokens-and-blockchain-in-india-d99e0a95e9e6 | ['Shubham Yadav'] | 2018-08-07 09:41:29.777000+00:00 | ['Announcements', 'Aniko', 'Blockchain', 'Coindelta', 'Bitcoin'] |
For Mother’s Day, I Want My Daughters Vaccinated | For Mother’s Day, I Want My Daughters Vaccinated
Image from author’s photo album.
Life has always since they were born, revolved around my daughters. They are my world. At the ages of 35 and 33, they don’t need me as much but I still need them. When something funny happens, I call them. Yesterday, I shared a story of our Yorkshire Terrier chasing a deer. They are my go-to people to discuss concerns because they understand words don’t solve problems but standing together provides support. Daily our phones ping with texts of memes, pics of grandchildren, and questions of what to do now. They are my best friends.
However, COVID placed a wall between us the last year that prevented us from visiting as much as before. We had to plan space to social distance and meet the CDC’s guidelines. I love them enough to be separated, and they love me enough to take precautions. Now, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it may be time to pull the wall down. However, first, we all must be vaccinated.
Nobody’s life remains trouble-free. But when life hurls problems onto our playing fields, hugs, hand-holding, and supportive touch provide strength to make it.
Through heartbreaks, I sat on their bed as they cried themselves to sleep. I sat on the ground beside Kari when the paramedics cut her pants off, and the police stopped traffic after she was discovered outside her wrecked car on the side of the road. We held Kat when the doctor announced she had cancer and celebrated when he declared her cancer free. They held my hand when my mother, their grandmother, passed away. We offered support when in the hospital as we confronted childbirth, a stroke, appendicitis, and depression. During the worst times, love was shared through touch which expressed compassion clearer than any words.
“Successful mothers are not the ones that have never struggled. They are the ones that never give up, despite the struggles.” — Sharon Jaynes
Last July, together but distanced, we stood outside my father’s hospital room and shared his last moments through the window. We waved, smiled, and blew kisses at him unable to caress his hand in his final days due to COVID. It sucked. I am sure every person has a story to share about the traumas presented during the pandemic.
Now, as each of us contemplates whether we should vaccinate or not, many considerations rise to the surface. Everyone will make the decision based upon their own beliefs, health history, and values. Just as a teacher wants every student to graduate for the satisfaction that they made a difference, or like a pastor desires the pews are filled with parishioners to share his message, I want my girls to be vaccinated so I can be an active part of their lives.
However, not all students graduate. Many live satisfied, fulfilling lives by following different paths. Walt Disney, Lucille Ball, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Nicole Kidman never graduated from high school but found success. Some highly respected people questioned faith or lived as atheists, yet they significantly impacted the world in positive ways: Stephen Hawking, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein.
As parents, we can guide our children in directions we believe will provide contentment and model behavior that provides us happiness. We can provide positive influences and make intelligent suggestions. In the end, children must follow their own paths, down roads that provide them happiness and satisfaction.
I will let them be little, fill their heads with laughter, help them grow wings, nurture their sense of wonder, inspire them to believe and love them like there is no tomorrow.” — Author unknown
Mother’s Day is only hours away. Would I like to spend the day partying with my daughters near, close enough to hold their hand? More than almost anything; however, not at the cost of taking away their individuality, rights, or encroaching on their priorities. This year virtual hugs will have to suffice.
I would never directly ask my daughter to get the COVID shot because that is a deeply personal decision. In fact, I will not share this post with them. I respect their choices but what I want for Mother’s Day is to embrace them, eat a meal with them in arms reach, and simply sit beside them and hold their hand. For now, I will cherish past embraces and smiles of the present while looking forward to future hugs. | https://psiloveyou.xyz/for-mothers-day-i-want-my-daughters-vaccinated-4baf4fcb61b2 | ['Brenda Mahler'] | 2021-05-08 14:00:19.974000+00:00 | ['Mothersday', 'Motherhood', 'Mothers And Daughters', 'Covid', 'Love'] |
Summary of Function X All-Hands Meeting on 16th September 2021 | Thank you for those who have participating the September All-Hands meeting via Twitter Spaces. We have 95 participants in this meeting. Here is the brief summary:
As we mentioned in the August All-Hands Meeting, Function X Foundation has allocated 75mil $FX for EGF (Ecosystem Genesis Fund) and will be utilized for marketing, third-party developers, exchange listings, etc. We have seen that many people are interested in developing in Function X and we want to reward the community to grow Function X.
2. Function X Decentralized Marketing (FXDM)
The idea is to involve our community in growing Function X with us. Among our community, we know there are many creative/marketing people and we want to reward community for their creativity and marketing efforts. (i.e: blog, social media,etc)
Hiring Marketing agency / company will be a separate proposal. The aim of the FXDM is to grow the project and reward the marketing efforts contributed by our community members. If there’s a professional marketing agency, they can come up with the proposal and budget estimate to pitch. It will be allocated from the EGF.
There will be no on-chain voting process for FXDM. Community can simply start to create quality content, submit to the committee and earn the rewards.
3. Upcoming activities
There will be many exciting updates in October and community can participate in it. Here are the details:
A. On-Chain Voting
Our team is currently developing the on-chain voting website (similar to snapshot.org on Ethereum) and estimated to be launched in early October. As discussed in the forum, if the website is not ready in time, we will do manual governance votings first, including Binance Chain integration and some EGF proposals.
B. Function X Public Hosted Validator
There will be a live session training by our blockchain developer (Richard) to teach people to setup the validator nodes on f(x)Core next month. We will announce more details.
September Hash Out will cover the general information regarding to the validator setup. Community can read this article prior to the live session training.
C. Pundi X Chain
In October, we will launch the Pundi X chain to public. We plan to have this chain to support cross-chain transactions not only between Ethereum and Function X but also Binance Smart Chain and Function X, bringing more utilities to f(x)Core.
4. Exchange Listing
For reputable exchanges, we need to go through a comprehensive review process and it will take longer time. We are in touch with several exchanges and we are restricted to announce anything before the exchanges.
Currently, there are stricter regulation for exchange listings, and we are working to comply. Also, some reputable exchanges are evaluating whether the project is decentralized enough to operate without the original team behind. That’s why we allocated funding around one forth of the capitalization to enable more parties to join and grow Function X.
How can EGF fund help us on listing? Exchanges which list FX can utilize the fund to support the Exchange marketing budget. This is a win-win situation, since the fund can be utilized as marketing campaign, i.e trading competition.
5. Inputs From the Community
There is a proposal from community member to develop a browser extension for Function X. Our development team is currently developing it, but we think it is a good to have more than more browser extensions in our ecosystem.
Stable coin on Function X
Currently, there two options for this: bring the existing stable coin (USDT,USDC, etc) to Function X or build our own stable coin (FxUSD). It is something needed in our ecosystem and we are still reviewing it. More details will be announced soon.
Currently, there two options for this: bring the existing stable coin (USDT,USDC, etc) to Function X or build our own stable coin (FxUSD). It is something needed in our ecosystem and we are still reviewing it. More details will be announced soon. Marketing team and resource allocation
Our marketing team is small, locating across different countries. They cover both marketing as well as business development for Pundi X. Hence, our marketing strategy focuses on the organic growth. We don’t do paid marketing. It has always been like it. That’s why we have proposed FXDM to involve community talents to grow Function X, including creating marketing content for Function X official accounts and reward the content related to Function X distributed via the 3rd-party social media / news channels.
Once again, thanks for your participation in this meeting.
What do you think about our All-hands Meeting in Twitter Spaces? Is it a good way for you to engage and participate? What can we do to make it better? Welcome to discuss and feedback at https://forum.functionx.io | https://medium.com/functionx/summary-of-function-x-all-hands-meeting-on-16th-september-2021-e6f15ec4a8b1 | ['Indra Winarta'] | 2021-09-16 16:11:05.577000+00:00 | ['Functionx', 'Blockchain', 'Validator', 'Decentralization', 'Ecosystem'] |
ASP.NET Core: Supporting multiple Authorization, route branching | Each branch will have its own MVC pipeline and its own authentication mechanism. They both share the same codebase, but different configuration.
What is the benefit of this?
The benefit of this setup is that both branches (/api1 and /api2) receive their own IOC container and therefore each branch can handle their own kind of authentication. The use cases for this can vary, you could handle multiple tenants using route branching, multiple environments with different implementation. You could, perhaps, build your own API gateway using this technique.
Let’s see how this is done effectively, let’s start by adding the controllers:
We want both controllers to be authorized using the same Authorization Policy (MyDbPolicy) that only requires an authenticated user.
However, we’ll need to support two ways of authenticating, either using the MyDb1 authentication database or using the MyDb2 database.
Please note that these can be two entirely different authentication mechanisms, I’m omitting a lot of plumbing by simple authenticating against a database in plain text, I hope you get the idea.
To solve this issue, I suggest to branch the application into two branches, one with MyDb1 authentication and the other with MyDb2 authentication, both using the same authorization policy, as a result, the API’s will authenticate against their own predefined database, but executing the same business logic code. This way, the logic will be unaware of the authentication mechanism. All that’s required is any authenticated user to run the controller logic.
To setup ASP.NET Core pipeline branching, you’ll need to install the WebApiContrib.Core nuget package first: https://www.nuget.org/packages/WebApiContrib.Core/
After the installation, we’ll split the pipeline using the UseBranchWithServices extension method from the package, our Startup file should look like this:
Since we’re not doing anything related to MVC in the ConfigureServices and Configure methods, the application will respond with “Branches configured!” when browsing to the root /.
This makes sense, since the pipeline has not been configured to use MVC, it is only in the branches that MVC is setup.
A fully working solution is available through a GitHub branch.
After cloning this repo, please check out branch origin/route-branching-separation to see the fully working solution.
git checkout -b route-branching-separation origin/ route-branching-separation
Before running the repo, make sure to have two local databases running first (MyDb1 and MyDb2). Run the SQL\create_auth_table.sql script for each database to ensure the Authentication table on both databases.
After the application is up and running, open postman to test both API’s.
These are the results for /api1:
The following are the results for /api2:
As you see, two different routes using different authentication methods. The pipeline split into two entirely different branches.
We could go even further and separate the controllers entirely to only be visible to a specific branch.
The diagram below describes what we will achieve next, the /api1 branch will host the users API, the /api2 branch will host the data API. Both branches will be hosting the common API. But only the branch-specific API’s will be exposed by their respected branch. Navigating to /api2/users will result in a 404. | https://medium.com/@maartenmerken/asp-net-core-supporting-multiple-authorization-route-branching-cad3ab632410 | ['Maarten Merken'] | 2020-09-03 08:15:59.212000+00:00 | ['Microsoft', 'Aspnetcore', 'Routing', 'Mvc', 'Dotnet Core'] |
Feel | All images’ credits go to their owners unless otherwise stated.
You know that feeling when it rains?
The peaceful fresh feeling that makes you want to curl up in a little open air shelter and just listen and watch the raindrops drip from leaves surrounding you. To breathe deeply and feel a restful sort of peace that only rain brings.
It makes you grateful to stay warm and dry, but so close to the rain that reassures you everything is being washed and cared for.You know the feeling of Christmas? Surely you do! The sparkly bright kind of excitement that makes you smile and look forward to every moment? You know the feeling of pure joy when you first step out to play on a sunny day? It is very free and you can’t help but run for all you’re worth because it is just so good. You know the feeling of savoring an ice cream cone on a hot summer day, each bite a taste of heaven you wish would never end? or braving the deep darkness of a cold swimming hole after a long hike? In my childhood these feelings and more were so alive. I felt everything as a child, each feeling attached to a certain time, place, event, or person. Now I am callous, mostly numb. The sensitive softness of my youth is hidden in a sea of memories and pain. I long for it to return. Somewhere along the way I lost them, all my feelings faded to gray. Sad, lost, monotonous. Not new, or exciting, or full of pleasure. The color left.I long very much for all of it to return, but I know it means facing the pain as well, feeling it all — the good and bad. The pain that drove me to cut and bruise my heart and hide it where it could only feel grayness. I want to be wide eyed and full of joy again like the little girl in all my young memories. I am young, yet I feel so old. So ready to be done. Forlorn, I long to find the joy I once knew, the pleasure I felt so easily and unhindered. Tears steal down my cheeks for the loss of my childhood, and for the forest which is no longer my home.
-PKL | https://medium.com/18percent/feel-dfa74ca0ab7a | [] | 2020-01-11 17:51:32.889000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Sad', 'Real', 'Poetry', 'Life'] |
Pandemic Dating Is Going Quite Well, Thank You For Asking | Pandemic Dating Is Going Quite Well, Thank You For Asking
Am I more single than ever before? Indeed I am.
Photo by Anastasiia Chepinska on Unsplash
Have my attachment issues to my vibrator become somewhat problematic? Maybe.
Am I worried that sex is nothing like riding a bike and I will in fact forget how to do it? A little.
Am I irrationally angry at my partnered friends? Of course.
Have I familiarized myself with every local park, analyzed the likelihood of receiving an open container violation, and cross-referenced it with the number of children present at a given time in order to identify the prime socially distant first date location? Duh.
As a result, do I never want to step foot in a fucking park again? Obviously.
Do I delete and re-download all of the dating apps twice a week on average? Who doesn’t!
Have I considered purchasing a ring light to look hotter in all of my zoom dates? Seems like a solid investment.
Do I have 5+ phone boyfriends that I have no intention of ever meeting in real life? Totally.
Did I spend six months more invested in sexting my ex than in meeting someone new? Definitely.
Did I write a three-page single-spaced essay explaining why it was actually a good idea for me to sext my ex? As a therapeutic exercise, sure.
Is he still the last person I slept with? He most certainly is!
Have I gotten more comfortable with being alone? Absolutely not.
Did I tweet “If there are any guys out there that are secretly in love with me and too afraid to say something — let me just tell you, now’s the time” and sincerely hope that someone would reach out? I plead the fifth.
Do I want my sister and brother-in-law to contractually commit to our platonic throuple relationship? 100% yes.
So yes, I’d say pandemic dating is going quite well. In fact, there has never been a better time to be a single woman in her thirties, thank you for asking. | https://medium.com/slackjaw/pandemic-dating-is-going-quite-well-thank-you-for-asking-44471c0c0342 | ['Dani Mahrer'] | 2020-11-22 18:07:00.636000+00:00 | ['Dating', 'Humor', 'Covid 19', 'Sex', 'Satire'] |
31 Creative-Activities Done Under 10 Minutes To Make Your Year Remarkable | 31 Creative-Activities Done Under 10 Minutes To Make Your Year Remarkable
girl in white dress sitting on a couch | https://medium.com/@thejyothirmayee/31-creative-activities-done-under-10-minutes-to-make-your-year-remarkable-540a7307132d | [] | 2020-12-01 14:31:26.546000+00:00 | ['2020', 'Self', 'Prompt', 'Self Love', 'Year In Review'] |
Top 10 Highlights From My Professional Fellowship in Chicago | 1. Why I’m in Chicago?
I’m thrilled to be one of the 15th elected participants for a Professional Fellowship Program | Tech, Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Fall 2019 from the Balkans.
The Professional Fellows Program (PFP) is a two-way, global exchange program designed to promote mutual understanding, enhance leadership and professional skills, as well as build lasting, sustainable partnerships between mid-level emerging leaders from foreign countries and the United States. As PFP participants, we are placed in intensive 5–6 week fellowships in tech companies, non-profit organizations, private sector businesses, and government offices across the United States for an individually tailored professional development experience. This way, we build a broad network with American and other program participant colleagues as we develop a deeper understanding of U.S. society. The PFP is a two-way exchange, with American participants who have hosted foreign fellows traveling overseas for participant-driven reciprocal programs.
Pro Fellows, Fall 2019, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia & Herzegovina
The Tech, Innovation & Entrepreneurship program brings together a group of tech and innovation leaders from Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovenia for a five-week immersive fellowship experience in Chicago that is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. I’m happy to be part of this program because I stand for Citizen Diplomacy which is the main idea behind this program, where individuals have the right and responsibility to help shape U.S. foreign relations through person-to-person interactions with citizens of other countries.
It’s an excellent opportunity for a fellowship in the U.S. in technology and entrepreneurship! It’s indeed a really intensive fellowship program designed to broaden our professional expertise.
With my fellows from Macedonia and other Balkan countries, we are closely working with startups, incubators, and innovation hubs around the city.
2. Homestay host: Playing board-games is a big thing in the Ungaro family
So, basically, every fellow is staying in a different neighborhood with their homestay host. And I was really lucky to have Lauren and her husband Tom and son Patrick as my homestay hosts. They are so welcoming and nice to me. I feel like I am kinda part of the family. I’m so happy because I was staying in this rare American home that is having the same values as my family. Sitting down for dinner, all together, having wine (Lauren’s son Patrick is a sommelier, so we were tasting plenty of different American wines) and a lot of nice talks on million different topics is maybe one of the reasons why I never felt homesick. The interesting thing about me and Lauren is that we both like pretty much the same music, films, activities and we love traveling. So we just enjoyed spending time together. Walking the dogs, shopping, going to a haunted house for Halloween, Brookfield ZOO and having a proper American breakfast at Tony’s are just a few great things we did together.
I’ll miss them, indeed!
3. Fellowship placement: Chicago’s FinTech Hub
As a ProFellow, I had the pleasure to have my fellowship at FinTank in Chicago. In the previous 4 weeks I gained a lot of professional experience in the States thanks to my mentor George.
After helping build 1871, the #1 ranked incubator in the world, George founded FinTank which is an innovation hub that helps startups become more effective more quickly. He partnered with the larger enterprise organizations and universities to grow a Chicago and global FinTech community. Afterwards, recruited innovative startups in areas related to blockchain, artificial intelligence, data analytics, cybersecurity and areas related to AR/VR and gaming. At one point, he testified before the Illinois House of Representatives on topics related to blockchain and cryptocurrency.
He also led the startup efforts for 1000 Angels in Chicago and managed the ongoing operations.
*1000 Angels is the world’s largest digital-first investor network that allows members to build a venture portfolio free of management fees.
FinTank aims to foster collaboration and support the development of the financial technologies transforming our world. They facilitate multiple networking events and programs to encourage collaboration, host monthly seminars, and workshops covering FinTech sectors, provide hands-on support and resources for start-ups, and facilitate innovation in companies of all sizes.
For a period of one month, as part of the FinTank team I attended many differet events, meetups, conferences. I was regularly attending their board meetings and also had the chance to attended two great startup pitch sessions. I learned a lot about startups in the FinTech sector in USA, especially the Chicago area. I’m looking forward to implementing that into my work at Web Factory LLC, and the software solutions we do for innovative Fintech startups worldwide.
4. Networking in the Tech community
Living in an era od rising globalization, it’s all about networking. I really needed this motivational boost to re-ignite my networking flame and start building better relationships with tech people. It was amazing meeting MANY people with diverse backgrounds, from different companies, industries and so many different interests. Enjoyed the mutual openness and eagerness to learn new things.
One of the many things I appreciate are the engaging icebreakers! Every meetup aims to engage all of the people in the venue and it’s really focused on personalized networking.
Networking works best in Chicago, because there is a wide, robust and active community of contributors.
5. Events: All over!
In the past 4 weeks I went on more than 40 big events, workshops and meetups. Here, I will just mention some of the most interesting ones:
✅Chicago Innovation Awards
✅1871 Hub tour and meeting with Mike Zafirovski
✅Customer Engagement with Daniel X. O’Neil
✅Branding with Melissa Harris, about her work with Cards Against Humanity
✅Workshops with Ellen Rogin
✅Action Planning with Terra Winston
✅WorldChicago Fundraising Night
Pro Fellows, Fall 2019, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia & Herzegovina
✅Chicago Inno 50 on Fire
✅Chicago Startup Week |TechStars
✅Built in Chicago | Tech Companies
✅Aurora | Smart City
✅FinTank — Cybersecurity with Israel’s Cyber Unit 8200
✅Demystifying Data in Marketing |Connectory
✅MATTER Pitch Session | $71M in MATTER startup raises | Advocate Aurora Health chooses the 2019 Health Tech Venture Challenge
✅Chi Hack Night | Action Plan presentations
✅Hidden No More: Empowering Women Leaders in STEM
✅IMC Company tour | Willis Tower
Pro Fellows, Fall 2019, Macedonia: Aleksandar, Celeski, me, Ljupka Naumovska and Dimitar Jovevski
✅Coleman Entrepreneurship Center | DePaul University with Bruce Leech
✅Knight Lab | Northwestern University
6. Google Office Tour & Lunch: Noogler for a day
We all know that Google is one of the coolest companies with the best offices ever. But a gut-rehabbed former cold storage facility?! Who would bring an old train car on the rooftop and turn the space into one of the coolest Chicago tech offices?! 🤩
Icy rooftop with amazing city view and old train car as a final touch
As a co-organizer of Google Developers Group Macedonia🚀, I had the privilege to experience an amazing tour & lunch at the Google offices here in Chicago, and I loved every inch of it 😍 Carlos Ortiz & Chloe Prince, both great Google Cloud Customer & Sales Engineers, organized this tour for me and we had a very nice talk about working at Google and my wonderful and positive experience about my work at Web Factory LLC and all of the work we do with Google Developers 🤗 This is definitely one of my top highlights during my fellowship 🙌🏻 | https://medium.com/web-factory-llc/top-10-highlights-from-my-professional-fellowship-in-chicago-a7543194254d | ['Ivana Spasova'] | 2019-12-16 18:39:40.283000+00:00 | ['Professional Development', 'Tech', 'Chicago', 'Profellows', 'Startup'] |
John Milton — Poet, Polemicist & The Secretary of Foreign Tongues | John Milton — Poet, Polemicist & The Secretary of Foreign Tongues
“ A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit.”
John Milton. Image: Kaliope
In March 1649, less than two months after the execution of Charles I, John Milton took on the position of Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Commonwealth Council of State. Such a position would undoubtedly have come about as a result of a pamphlet written by Milton approving of the king’s execution, printed just days after the event. The new Commonwealth, and later Cromwell himself, needed good scribes to deal with communications from foreign nations. Milton, an affirmed anti-royalist, poet, and self-appointed supporter of Oliver Cromwell, was their man.
A contemporary painting of Charles I execution. Image: vanproveratwordpress
John Milton soon made himself indispensable to the powers that be, and with six or seven languages under his belt, he quickly rose to a position where Cromwell could make good use him.
Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud
Not of war only, but detractions rude,
Guided by faith and matchless fortitude,
To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed,
And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud
Hast reared God’s trophies, and his work pursued;
While Darwen stream, with blood of Scots imbrued,
And Worcester’s laureate wreath: yet much remains
To conquer still; Peace hath her victories
No less renowned than war: new foes arise,
Threatening to bind our souls with secular chains.
Help us to save free conscience from the paw
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their maw.
The above poem, To The Lord General Cromwell — May 1652, is Milton’s plea to Oliver Cromwell to ensure the peace, hard won, is worthy of the blood spilled and lives lost.
Cromwell would certainly have read Milton’s poem, no doubt smiling ruefully as he did so, knowing full well that his most ardent supporter was right, yet impatient at his Secretary of Tongues impudence when England was now at war with Holland (on the high seas), with Cromwell also having to deal with a parliament that had once again lapsed into indolence. The chances are that the soon to be Lord Protector may have ordered Milton to be brought before him, and then, finding the now completely blind poet wholly unfettered in thought and word about the heavy-handedness of many of the edicts that came from parliament, and did our Lord General not realise just how many people were homeless and starving in the villages, and on the city streets, and that his 60,000 strong army were, through idleness and gossip, becoming restless. He may also have added:
“ And it must not be forgotten, sire, that you have promised the people a bill of representation?”
The smile may then have left Cromwell’s face as he led Milton to a chair, asking his aide to bring the illustrious poet some refreshment.
“ Do you think I am not aware of these things, John? But the king’s son had to be dealt with, and then we had to suffer the Irish and the Scots, and now the Dutch. When they have been dealt with by our navy we can move forward and build a new nation for all.”
As Cromwell’s aide handed Milton a glass of Rosa Solis cordial and a small finger biscuit, and Cromwell looked from his window at a beggar crumpled at the river’s edge, Milton asked:
“ And what of books sire, now that you are Chancellor of Oxford University?”
“ Oxford, eh, and we both Cambridge men. Books indeed Milton. But Parliament first I think?”
And Cromwell closed Parliament, and took personal control of the country. Some wanted to make him King.
Written and printed at the height of the Civil War, Milton’s essay against the censorship of books, Areopagitica, was an early reminder to parliament of one of the many reasons why England was at war with a traitorous king. It was also a treatise that became one of the first building blocks advocating uncensored literature and free speech, and an essay that, one-hundred-and-thirty years later, would help fuel the Enlightenment in Europe and, quite independently, the authors of the US Constitution. And Milton’s cry that “…a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit.”, entered deeply into Cromwell’s psyche who, as a deep and learned reader of history (along with the psalms, which he saw as building blocks for the future), knew the importance of an educated society as well as a well housed and well fed one. In many ways Milton’s work kept Cromwell’s conscience well pricked and alert to the future needs of an England that had been kept in servitude for far too long. Milton would not allow Cromwell to lose sight of his vision for a prosperous, happy, democratically represented, and influential England, led by a Lord Protector who loved his people (all of his people), with Jesus Christ and John Milton at his side.
Earlier this century I wrote, produced, and directed a dinner play called 1651, An Evening with Oliver Cromwell, where the audience, gathered at a large table, dine with Oliver Cromwell, Major General Thomas Harrison, and John Milton. For the purposes of my play Cromwell had promoted the poet to the position of his Chief Advisor which, as some have suggested, is a “ tantalizing thought.” What my Milton gave to the play (set just a few days before the Battle Worcester) was his ability to interject fearlessly between Cromwell and Harrison, with questions of purpose and policy, which often stoked the two soldiers to a shared frustration they often found hard to suppress. Milton then cooled the heat by informing Cromwell of a letter received only that morning from his agent in Italy that the English flag now flew proudly in the Mediterranean. The young actor, James Keningale, who played Milton, really did put flesh on my dramatic skeleton. The play also brought together John Bunyan (who served in the Parliamentary Army), Cromwell’s daughter Elizabeth, bringing letters from her mother, plus Prince Charles (Charles II), in disguise. We’ve done the play several times, not least for The Battle of Worcester Society, organised by Oliver Cromwell’s great-grandson several times removed.
James Keningale. Image: Mandy
John Milton was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, London, in 1608. His father John, was an aspiring composer, and newly converted to the protestant faith, which meant he had to flee his parent’s Catholic home (he was probably thrown out) to settle in London. And it may have been at church that he later met and, later still, married Sarah Jeffrey, John’s mother. Finding employment as a scrivener (scribe) with a firm of lawyers, John Milton the elder prospered. And as the John Milton Academy Trust describe it: John Milton came into this world in “ …a century of revolution — in politics, print, science and the arts.”, with the baby’s parents embracing it all. The baby, as he grew, also knew he had a big part to play in the century of revolution.
Milton attended St. Paul’s School, founded in 1509, then “… had lessons with ‘my excellent tutor’ Thomas Young who was later to become Vicar of Stowmarket and Master of Jesus College Cambridge.” Milton found his love of books at St. Paul’s (as would Samuel Pepys when a student at the school a generation later) and would define education as:
“ …that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and publicke of peace and war.”
Baroque Music 1 The Concert Theodoor Rombouts 1597–1637. Image: warwickvalleyliving.com
When finished for the day copying deeds, and writing-up briefs, Milton’s father would take hold of a different quill to compose songs, and music for the lute and violin, instilling into his son a love, and an understanding, of music; an understanding which can be felt in Milton’s poetry which, if kept in mind when reading his work, can be a useful aide to understanding the poet’s inner mental rhythms and passions:
Hail, native language, that by sinews weak
Didst move my first endeavouring tongue to speak’
And mad’st imperfect words with childish trips,
Half unpronounced, slide through my infant lips,
Driving dumb Silence from the portal door,
Where he had mutely sat two years before:
Here I salute thee, and thy pardon ask
That now I use thee in my latter task…
Milton as Poet and Civil Servant. Image: Colby College
After St. Paul’s Milton made it to Christ’s College Cambridge, graduating in 1629 with a BA, then an MA in 1632. He continued there, studying languages, and preparing himself to join the priesthood.
The idea of becoming a priest soon waned, and in 1638, Milton took off for Italy and Sorrento (via France), the birthplace of the late Renaissance poet, Torquato Tasso (who had died in a mental institution, just thirteen years before Milton’s birth), whose epic poem, Gerusalemme liberata, which describes the siege of Jerusalem during the First Crusade in 1099, and a poem that would have stirred the young Milton to his very soul. Milton may very well have translated the poem into English. There can be no doubt that Tasso’s masterpiece will have influenced Milton in both style, and length.
A few years ago my wife and I visited Sorrento, staying in the Hotel Tramontano over looking the Bay of Naples. It is a beautiful hotel that had, in Milton’s time, been a private house that doubled as a pension for those who came to worship Tasso. Milton was no exception, staying at the Tramontano pension (there’s a plaque in the hotel’s foyer saying so) for a couple of weeks as he searched out Tasso’s birthplace, trod the pathways that Tasso had walked, and perhaps rested in the shade of an ancient lemon tree where the great poet may have parked his poetic bottom. Milton also made the long walk to Naples to speak with Tasso’s biographer, who introduced Milton to Giovanni Battista Manso, one of Tasso’s patrons. Before leaving Italy Milton also visited the astronomer Galileo. Milton’s visit to Sorrento started something of a trend, with most of the English Romantic poets congregating at the Hotel Tramontano in the early 19th century, probably as some sort of intellectual energy boost before moving on to Rome.
The song, Torna a Surriento (Come Back To Sorrento), was composed at the Hotel Tramontano in 1894 by Ernesto De Curtis, with words by his brother, the poet and painter Giambattista De Curtis.
Listen to Dean Martin’s version
Image:ebay
With the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, Milton, now politically out of favour (and very lucky to escape with his life), was depressed, and hugely saddened by Cromwell’s death, and hopes they both had for England. As a solace he returned to poetry, producing, by dictation, his masterpieces, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and the extraordinary poetic drama: Samson Agonistes.
Sam:
A Little onward lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on;
For yonder bank hath choice of sun or shade.
There I am wont to sit, when any chance
Relieves me from my task of servile toil..
Milton would marry three times. Firstly to Mary Powell (with whom he had four children: Anne, Mary, John and Deborah), with Mary dying in 1652 after the birth of their fourth child. The next marriage was to Katherine Woodcock, who died just four months after the birth of their daughter Katherine. And finally to Elizabeth Mynshull (who was thirty-one years Milton’s junior). The couple lived happily together until Milton’s death.
John Milton died in 1674, aged 65.
Read: Oliver Cromwell: A Profile (Part One)
Bibliography: Antonia Fraser — Cromwell: Our Chief of Men (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1973); The Work of John Milton ( The Wordsworth Poetry Library, Ware, 1994); John Buchan — Oliver Cromwell (Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, London, 1934); Samuel Pepys — Plague, Fire Revolution, Edited by Margaret Lincoln, with a Foreword by Claire Tomalin (Thames & Hudson, London & the National Maritime Museum, 2015)
With acknowledgements to: John Milton Academy Trust
| https://medium.com/books-are-our-superpower/john-milton-poet-polemicist-the-secretary-of-foreign-tongues-ffae5ca25a6a | ['Steve Newman Writer'] | 2020-11-11 14:45:35.508000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Poet', 'Biography', 'History', 'John Milton'] |
Sexuality, stigma & discrimination, why do people even care? | Sexuality, stigma & discrimination, why do people even care?
Pride Month
In the early hours of June 28th 1969 in Greenwich Village, New York City police raided a gay club named the Stonewall Inn. This raid started a riot among bar patrons and neighbourhood residents as police roughly hauled employees and patrons out of the bar, leading to six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar on Christopher Street, in neighbouring streets and in nearby Christopher Park. The Stonewall Riots served as a catalyst for the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.† To commemorate the Stonewall riots, we now hold Pride month every June to recognise the impact LGBT people have had in the world.
Annual LGBT Pride celebrations are a time where everyone shows up for inclusivity — including big companies. While companies such as Adidas, Calvin Klein, Under Armour, Spotify, Dr Martens and many more show their varying degrees of support in this time, it’s a real shame that many companies use this as a marketing opportunity and negate these values for the other 11 months of the year. Don’t be fooled, nine of the biggest, most LGBTQ-supportive corporations in America gave about $1 million or more each to anti-gay politicians in the last election cycle.*
There are many companies across the world hiring with complete inclusivity. This has endless benefits including a collective experience that can only enhance companies values and cultures. Check out some of the companies in the Stonewall Top 100 employers list. The list is compiled from the Workplace Equality Index — the UK’s leading benchmarking tool for LGBT inclusion in the workplace:
Inclusive companies website also has their own list which goes deeper into companies to show the UK’s top 50, that promote inclusion throughout each level of employment within their organisation. This list shows companies that hire without discrimination against age, disability, gender, LGBT and race. The Inclusive Top 50 UK Employers 2019/20 List has many names you will recognise and maybe even use every day including:
Sky
AutoTrader
NHS
E-on
Specsavers
Moneysupermarket
Bupa
As well as being a month long celebration, Pride is also a big opportunity to peacefully protest and raise political awareness of current issues facing the LGBTQI+ community. What most people know as ‘Pride’ is a parade in which there are street parties, community events, public speaking, festivals in the streets and educational events in most cities across the world.
My experience
I am not someone who gives out personal information like smiles, not everyone needs to know the ins and outs of my life, my thoughts and my feelings. I am however, an extremely open and honest person. These two things seem like they couldn’t coexist but it’s just about balance. You can be open and honest without giving information that is personalised to your experience. This is actually something I had to learn over many years due to inadvertently ‘lying’ through other people’s assumptions.
So a real-world example of this, for me, is sexuality. My personal feelings on this matter are generally that you shouldn’t have to ‘come out’ as gay, just as much as you shouldn’t have to ‘come out’ as straight. People have preset assumptions about you, and if you don’t meet those assumptions there’s a sense of unease — while, if you don’t correct the assumption you are seen as misleading. There’s also the idea that you have to fit in to a certain box, e.g. you are straight or gay — when in reality people come in all shapes, sizes, colours, orientations and that’s amazing.
I am not ‘straight’
There are so many words now for what I am… bisexual, pansexual? Whatever you call it, I have always been more interested in the things that people can choose and change than the things they can’t. If someone is an amazing, loving, considerate, genuine, caring person — these are things they can choose, and really, why wouldn’t you love someone like that? And while this is my life, it’s not information I feel the need to share when I meet people. The people I am close enough to, know this about me, and there will be a few people that are surprised by this post — and really, if you’re surprised you should be a little bit ashamed.
I am a young female UX designer in the financial sector, I am sure just from that statement you can imagine all of the stigmas I manage day to day. These stigmas definitely don’t come from my team — creative people are just built differently, they are so much more open to equality in the world. My career is probably one of the reasons I have grown the way I have in my personal life — for example, if I am asked about my past relationships I will openly say “ex-girlfriend” or share my experience, but otherwise it’s nobody’s business. If it’s not a conversation that would have been had without the knowledge, then it’s not a conversation I am starting.
Navigating your way through your feelings, whatever age that happens, is not easy in this world. Pride is a place where people can feel like they are different, they don’t need to explain themselves and they can just truly be who they are — whatever that entails. Even with the most amazing parents and friends, I was scared to tell them. The idea of having to even understand how to communicate something so deep and personal to people that would usually be there to help you is honestly terrifying. But, once you have that foundation it does get easier. And the way you end up telling the people you love is different for everyone and it may not be ‘perfect’ — I mean, I was a teenager, petrified and ended up sending my Mum a message to ‘let her know’, as if I was staying out for the night. And in hindsight, that was so true to the way I feel about it and I wouldn’t change that now.
Everyone is vulnerable, raw, real and weird — no matter how well hidden it is. When you approach people in any situation, I think that we could all take more caution in being respectful. You don’t know what people are going through and while I don’t usually share personal information like this, if this post could help even one person to feel accepted or educate someone as to why we celebrate pride and why it’s important — it’s worth it.
The reality
Around 40% of homeless youths are LGBT, this is mostly due to rejection from their friends and family. Along with this, gay and bisexual youth and other sexual minorities are
8 times more likely to have tried to commit suicide
6 times more likely to report high levels of depression
3 times more likely to use illegal drugs
Discrimination
When people decide to act on their prejudice, stigma turns into discrimination. Discrimination is when you treat people differently based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they are seen to belong, and it is not okay.
Discrimination can take different forms, it’s not always something clear and aggressive, it can take the form of:
Obvious acts of prejudice and discrimination — e.g. someone who is open about being transgender or their sexual orientation and being refused employment or promotion due to this
of prejudice and discrimination — e.g. someone who is open about being transgender or their sexual orientation and being refused employment or promotion due to this More subtle forms of discrimination, but no less harmful, are reinforcement of negative stereotypes and feelings of isolation — e.g. use of the word ‘gay’ as a derogatory term or teaching your child that being different is a bad thing and to discriminate against people of a different size, race, culture or sexual orientation
The law for workplaces
Everyone has the right to be treated fairly at work and to be free of discrimination on grounds of age, race, gender, gender reassignment, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief. For more information about discrimination in the workplace and what you can do about it, check out gov.uk.
Schools and Colleges
Schools have a responsibility to be diverse and empower young people to be open and inclusive. During School Diversity Week, primary and secondary schools as well as colleges across the UK celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans equality in education. In 2019, schools and colleges representing 1.4 million pupils signed up to take part and received their free toolkit from Just Like Us.
Educating young people
Just Like Us send LGBT+ young adult ambassadors to deliver talks and workshops championing LGBT+ equality. They speak honestly about who LGBT+ people are, and share their own stories growing up today to connect with all students in a powerful way. After their sessions, 86% of students understand why everyone should care about LGBT+ issues
Parents
A parent’s role and response in their child coming out is one of the most impactful interactions that will shape their thoughts and mental state. As a parent you need to be open, responsible, positive and know how to react. There’s so much information online that you can educate yourself with — and if your not a parent, you are a role model. You may have nephews, nieces, friends children, godchildren and even younger colleagues that may come out to you and you should be equipped with tools to know how to deal with the situation in a positive way.
Support
There are many charities and support groups that you can contact if you don’t have anyone to open up to or if you are struggling to connect with people that understand — but just know, you are not alone! It feels like a big step to contact any of these companies but just opening yourself up a little bit can introduce you to a world of acceptance and new friendship.
MindOut is a mental health service run by and for lesbians, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer people. Their vision is a world where the mental health of LGBTQ communities is a priority, free from stigma, respected and recognised. They do this by:
Listening to and responding to the LGBTQ experience of mental health
Offering hope through positive relationships and professional expertise
Preventing isolation, crisis and suicidal distress in LGBTQ communities
Providing safe spaces for people to meet and support each other
Helping people protect their rights and get their voices heard
Campaigning and creating conversations about LGBTQ mental health throughout the world
MindOut is needed because LGBTQ people:
do not get the support they need for their mental health from mainstream services
often feel isolated from LGBTQ communities
face additional discrimination, exclusion and minority stress
deserve a space where their identities are recognised and understood
Top tips
Whether you have children or not, you should educate yourself on how to make coming out a positive experience.
Do not pass on your discrimination to the children in your life — if everyone is inclusive now, the next generation will turn out inclusive. It’s that simple!
If you wouldn’t ask about someones sex life before, don’t ask now.
If you want details — ask google. We are not an encyclopedia of sexual orientation and shouldn’t need to explain this to everyone we meet.
Sexual orientation does not mean that you find every person of that sex attractive.
Sexual orientation is not a fun fact to be pulled out in ‘get to know you’ games or after a few drinks.
If we’re not close, it’s not okay for you to joke about my sexuality.
And finally… It’s never your place to reveal someone’s sexual orientation to other people.
* Forbes
† History.com Stonewall Riots | https://aninjusticemag.com/sexuality-stigma-discrimination-why-do-people-even-care-8051e025b295 | [] | 2020-11-28 22:06:46.511000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'LGBT', 'Pride', 'Discrimination'] |
10 LIFE-CHANGING BENEFITS OF BANANAS. THE LAST ONE WILL BLOW YOU AWAY! | Believe me. I’m not monkeying around. Bananas are not only delicious; they have tons of benefits for our bodies. They are good for more than making a thousand different kinds of desserts.
Most people love bananas. They are sweet, nourishing, and can be eaten easily without a hassle. But what many people still don’t know is that bananas are your one-stop-shop for a lot of ailments and becoming healthier. Whether you’re looking to lose weight, reduce bloating, increase muscle strength, or fighting cancer, bananas are your allies through and through.
DROPPING SOME KNOWLEDGE
Although we all think of it as a fruit, according to Wikipedia, botanically, they are berries that are produced by large herbaceous flowering plants. For a long time, they were associated with babies, slapstick comedies (think Mr. Bean and Charlie Chaplan) and monkeys. But as time went on, they were found to be super foods. They contain not only fiber, potassium, vitamin B6, and vitamin C, but also antioxidants and phytonutrients.
According to healthline, a medium banana contains the following nutritions :
· 89 Calories
· 75% water
· 1.1 grams protein
· 22.8 grams carbs
· 12.2 grams sugar
· 2.6 grams fiber
· 0.3 grams fat and more.
So without any more monkey business, I give to you, the non-comedic benefits of eating bananas.
BURN BODY FAT
Bananas contain a fat reducing B vitamin called Choline. A medium banana might contain around 12mg of this B vitamin. It directly affects the fat storing genes in our bodies. Choline is necessary for our liver function, brain development, nerve function, muscle movement and ensuring a good rate of metabolism.
HEALTHY EYES
Bananas have also been found to contain both vitamin A and vitamin C. these vitamins are excellent antioxidants as well as good for our eyes and our skins. Their antioxidant properties help protect our cells and repair any damage that has been inflicted. Bananas also contain vitamin E and lutein both of which positively affect our eyes and helps prevent degeneration.
PREVENTION OF DISEASES
Bananas have been known to help protect us from chronic diseases like certain types of cancer, heart diseases, and diabetes. How do they do that? Well they contain three different types of carotenoids (namely provitamin A carotenoids, beta-carotene, and alpha-carotene). According to an article from Food and Nutrition Bulletin, foods that contain carotenoids help our bodies by protecting them against various diseases.
INSTANT ENERGY
Have you seen people working out? If you have, or if you work out yourself, you will have definitely noticed that most people grab a banana right before they start their exercise, or right after. They may even have a banana in the middle (who are we to judge?). They all, even the ones that eat bananas during their workouts, have a good reason to do so. Bananas are instant energy packets. They deliver instant and maximum level of energy so you can run, swim, row, lift weights, or do anything else with a full charge. If you eat a banana right after your workout, you will easily refill your batteries and won’t feel any exhaustion or fatigue. Try having a banana or two after your HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workout. See how you feel.
STRONGER BONES
According to a study by The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, bananas contain fructooligosaccharides. I dare you to say it three times fast. Anyway, they help our body’s ability to absorb calcium and ferment it. So, even though they don’t have a lot of calcium themselves, bananas help promote calcium absorption and digestion because they contain fructooligosaccharides. Oops! I said it again.
REGULAR BOWL MOVEMENT
Bananas are high in fiber. We all know that fiber helps normalize bowl movements. Not only bowl movements, they are also highly effective against diarrhea. They contain prebiotics that help the microbes in our guts. Apart from this, they are also beneficial for our digestive systems. It’s all because of, here it comes again, fructooligosaccharides and prebiotics.
REDUCE BLOATING
Many of us suffer from a bloated stomach. No matter what we do, we can’t seem to get rid of it. A bloated stomach is the result of gas and water retention in our bellies. Bananas help us as they contain lots of potassium, which helps our body reduce the fluid retention. According to a study, women who eat bananas twice a day, before meals reduced their belly-bloat by 50% in just 60 days. Wooohooo!
PROTECT TOOTH DECAY
Believe me or not! Bananas are the best way for you to fight bad breath, tooth decay, and a whole lot of tooth and gum diseases. Just take a banana and peel it from the bottom to the top. Break off a piece of it and mash it until it becomes like a paste. Now take the paste on your finger and apply thoroughly to your teeth. The front, the back and everywhere in between. Once you have applied the paste, take your toothbrush and clean your teeth in a circular motion. You can do it with your finger as well, but using a toothbrush will ensure that the paste gets into every nook and cranny. Leave the paste for 2–3 minutes and then use your toothbrush to clean it off. You can even use your toothpaste to make sure that there’s no banana in your teeth. After a few days, you will start seeing the results.
Can you believe how many benefits there are of using bananas? And it’s not like I’m trying to pull your leg. It’s all legit. So, next time you are feeling hungry, or want to lose weight, or get your energy back, just pick up a banana. The best part is that you can use bananas in all sorts of recipes if you are bored of the old-school peel and eat routine. So, give it a try and let me know how it went. | https://medium.com/@sheheryar.amin/10-life-changing-benefits-of-bananas-the-last-one-will-blow-you-away-9cb7549c570c | ['Sheheryar Amin'] | 2019-09-14 18:43:28.012000+00:00 | ['Strength', 'Wellness', 'Health', 'Nutrition', 'Health Foods'] |
Is Distance Good for a Relationship? | Frequently Asked Questions
Why does my partner want space?
Your partner may want space because they need some alone time or want to spend more time with their friends and family. If you have many arguments, they may want to have some peace and time to reflect on the relationship.
Is it wrong to want space in a relationship?
Having personal space is an essential part of your life. You need space to develop as a person and pursue your dreams, goals and ambitions. Sacrificing your time and space for your partner will leave you feeling incomplete, nor will it contribute to a healthy relationship.
Why is personal space important?
When you are in a relationship, you want to spend a lot of time together. But after a while, this could mean that you and your partner may not get any personal space for yourselves. While it’s fun to spend time together, you also need some space for your passions and interests. It’s essential for your personal development regardless of whom you are in a relationship.
Can distance ruin relationships?
A lack of distance or too much distance can, in some cases ruin a relationship. When you live together, you need to have personal space. If you are in a long-distance relationship, you need a plan to make it work and a timeline for when you move in together.
Does distance affect love?
Distance affects couples in different ways. Some get obsessed about not being able to have sex and others enjoy having more time for themselves. When you live together, it’s easy to start taking each other for granted. In this case, distance can help you appreciate each other and can indeed increase your love for each other. The distance can show you how much you love each other.
How do you not grow apart in a long-distance relationship?
To avoid growing apart in a long-distance relationship, you should maintain an emotional connection, visit each other frequently and have a plan to move in together. While a lack of physical intimacy is a big problem, you can use effective communication to maintain emotional intimacy.
Does distance kill love?
The distance can show how much love there is in your relationship. After spending some time apart, you may find that you love each other and will appreciate being together. If your love isn’t that strong, being apart will reveal that. In this case, you will know that your relationship may have been based on habit, attachment or fear of being alone.
Can you fall in love, long-distance?
When you meet someone online, you create an idea of that person. You can then get to know them better and get a better idea of who they are. But until you meet in real life, this person will remain as an idea. You could fall in love with the idea of being with this person.
Does distance make the heart grow fonder?
If you are with somebody all day every day, a week apart can be a welcome change. But if you are seeing each other only on the weekends, skipping a weekend can seem like forever. It depends on how you are feeling about your personal space. Sometimes we want to share, and sometimes we want to be alone.
Can distance separate true love?
True love is when partners are connected physically, emotionally, and spiritually. When your relationship is healthy, and your bond is strong, you will find a way to make your long-distance relationship work.
Is distance a reason to break up?
Usually, distance isn’t a reason to break up as long as you can find a way to make it work and at some point, move in together. If you are facing a long-distance relationship, you should understand what it is and what it isn’t. Then you should discuss it together with your partner and decide if you are willing to try and make it work. You can break up anytime, so why make rushed decisions? | https://medium.com/long-distance-relationship/is-distance-good-for-a-relationship-f921716429b5 | ['Couples Coaching Online'] | 2021-06-08 02:01:54.681000+00:00 | ['Couples Coaching Online', 'Longdistancerelationship', 'Relationship Advice', 'Relationship Help', 'Relationship Coach'] |
I disagree with this view. | I disagree with this view. Holding character as an end in itself apart from how one’s character redounds to himself divorces the relationship between life and values. Broadly speaking, one should consider how a value benefits or inhibits his biological survival. Without being alive, one can not value anything. The purpose of ethics is to identify what values are worth pursuing and how to achieve them.
Let me give an example: maintaining the virtue of honesty. Why should a man do this? He should be honest because exercising honesty keeps his mind in accordance with the facts and the context of his knowledge. He knows what he knows and never overstates his position. He refuses to evade facts even when presented difficult obstacles. For instance, perhaps a friend defames him unjustly behind his back. He can either rationalize and excuse this behavior or he can be honest about the facts and revoke his sanction. By maintaining the virtue of honesty, he acknowledges the facts and refuses to associate with dishonest people. How does this benefit his survival? It does so because one can expect dishonest people to be unworthy of friendship and he will be protecting himself from their harmful behavior.
In short, consider first the relationship between values and your own life before thinking about how to achieve that value. | https://medium.com/@kyleratliffblog/i-disagree-with-this-view-a58fd19dd846 | ['Kyle Ratliff'] | 2020-12-06 20:04:23.200000+00:00 | ['Morality', 'Objectivism', 'Stoicism', 'Ethics', 'Values'] |
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