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Bringing Students Outdoors Virtually Takes Collaboration and Creativity | By: Julia Pinnix, visitor services manager, Leavenworth Fisheries Complex
Photo: Students get hands-on during the Kids in the Creek Program at Entiat National Fish Hatchery, Credit: Julia Pinnix/USFWS
October is the month for Kids in the Creek (KITC), a program that brings high school students to Entiat National Fish Hatchery for a day of hands-on field biology led by natural resource professionals. This year, in-person field trips were not an option, but KITC partners pulled together and made a virtual but interactive program succeed.
KITC is managed by Leavenworth Fisheries Complex and Cascadia Conservation District. Now in its 27th year, this program pulls in partners from throughout the region, from the City of Wenatchee to the US Forest Service. Chelan and Douglas county teachers rely on KITC to provide real-life science experience for their students. So when we announced that the program would not run this year, they reached out and asked for an adaptation.
Photo: Kids in the Creek participants got their hands on some of Entiat’s huge salmon, Credit: Hayley Muir
But how to convert an immersive experience into something virtual yet still meaningful? The team was already at work on videos designed for interaction, due during winter. Wenatchee High School (WHS) science teachers begged for a live virtual program instead, and right now.
With less than a month to prepare, Julia Pinnix, Marjie Lodwick, and Barb Kelly from Leavenworth Fisheries Complex, Paula Salter and Kelsey Grover from the City of Wenatchee Public Works, and Jen Herdmann from Cascade Fisheries tackled the task of designing five different “virtual stations”: Macroinvertebrates, Fish Health, Habitat, Water Quality, and Riparian Zone. Everyone scrambled to pull together video footage, data, and lesson plans. The group collaborated on WHS’s Google Drive, creating worksheets with embedded videos and web links.
Photo: Students learned to identify caddisfly larva, Credit: USFWS
Over five consecutive school days, each presenter joined students live on WHS’s Zoom account. Presenters led four sessions for 50 students each time. Interactivity was built into each program. For example, the Macroinvertebrate class had students answer polls at the beginning and end to compare what they hypothesized with what their data told them. Working independently, they observed magnified videos of organisms collected in the wetland and river at Entiat NFH, used keys to identify them, and determined their tolerance levels for pollution. The presenter guided them through the process and answered questions as they came up, then led a discussion of results.
Photo: Columnaris disease on salmon gills, Credit: Betsy Bamberger, Douglas County PUD
Some things could be done in a virtual setting that aren’t possible in the field. Jen took students on a tour of the Entiat River watershed, zooming over the valley in Google Earth. Barb showed underwater video footage of how salmonids use rocks and logs for cover, something hard to see even when standing in the river itself.
The experience for the students was exciting and engaging. Teachers loved the interactivity and real-life connections. There is no substitute for putting on waders and getting into a river, walking a trail in the riparian zone, handling living fish, or conducting water quality tests in person. But making connections with natural resource professionals and their work can still happen effectively online. | https://medium.com/usfwspacificnw/bringing-students-outdoors-virtually-takes-collaboration-and-creativity-4958a553c0a8 | ['Usfws Columbia Pacific Northwest Region'] | 2020-11-23 15:12:12.286000+00:00 | ['Salmon', 'Science', 'Learning', 'Conservation', 'Homeschooling'] |
Bokeh 0.12.4 Released | We’re pleased to announce the release of Bokeh 0.12.4!
This update has the following highlights:
Efficient binary array protocol for column data sources.
Generalized mechanism to add CustomJS callbacks to any property.
callbacks to any property. Several fixes to log plots, as well as custom extensions.
Support for read-only (client-side) properties, such as a plot’s “inner” screen dimensions.
Guidance and examples for embedding a Bokeh server directly in standalone scripts, Jupyter notebooks, and Tornado and Flask applications.
Improved documentation and Sphinx extensions for the bokeh.palettes module.
module. Major refactor of including tests and expanded documentation relevant to extension authors.
As well as many other small bugfixes and docs additions. For full details, see the CHANGELOG and Release Notes.
As a reminder, we now package and upload examples for each Bokeh release to our CDN. Click here to download.
This release can most easily be installed from the Bokeh channel on Anaconda.org by executing the command conda install -c bokeh bokeh if you are using Anaconda or pip install bokeh otherwise.
Community
Before getting to the technical details of this release, I wanted to take a moment to recognize some stats about the community:
The public mailing list has more than 700 members
members @bokeh has nearly 4000 followers
followers The number of GitHub stars just hit 5200 (!)
(!) Before the holidays, combined conda+pip downloads exceeded 120k/month
Any one of these facts alone is humbling, and a testament to the work of so many contributors over the last few years. Which brings me to the most impressive number yet. Several people rose to the End of 2016 Contributor Challenge I posted on the mailing list, and I am happy to report that the tally is now:
Without fail, the number of issues grows with the number of users, so growing a base of developers to help with those issues is crucial to the long term health of the project. I’d like in particular to thank new contributors: bgbg, ivan-krukov, jfinkels, and souravsingh. Several small but important features and fixes were made by them, quickly, and Bokeh is all the better for it. Some of them are already working on their second PRs!
Binary Array Protocol
Since the project’s start, Bokeh has taken a fairly straightforward approach to serializing data to and from BokehJS, namely “JSON all the things”. With Bokeh applications, this also happens to occur over a websocket, but it’s still the same JSON mechanism, with the same associated overhead. For many common use cases this is fine, but when the data starts to grow larger (for example when dealing with data for images where the size grows as N 2), this overhead becomes noticeable.
For a long time we have wanted to investigate the use of a binary encoding for arrays, to help improve the performance of serialization. I am happy to say that this task has been accomplished, thanks to the great work of Philipp Rudiger, who is also a core contributor to the Holoviews project. As a result of Philipp’s effort, integer and floating point column data source arrays are now automatically serialized using a binary format. Encoding this way is already more efficient by itself, but it also means that BokehJS can now ingest data directly into JavaScript typed arrays, another efficiency improvement.
One quick and easy benchmark compares the “before” and “after” time to render images of different sizes:
As can be seen, things could get really bad for image sizes above 500x500. The new binary encoding reduces the time to display drastically.
Finally, during the course of implementing this, Philipp also discovered that the internal logic that prevents Bokeh app events from “boomeranging” between the client and server could be greatly simplified. This opened up even more opportunity for performance improvement.
Another way of visualizing the collective effect of these changes is shown below: A before and after execution log of a running Bokeh app with a periodic callback updating a plot every 100ms. In the before picture, individual events can be seen to be stacking up:
After Philipp’s changes, the execution handling each event is clearly separated:
Guidance for Embedding Bokeh Servers
As nice and useful as it is to run Bokeh applications with bokeh serve app.py there are also situations where it might be preferable to be able to embed a Bokeh server inside another script or application.
In particular an important missing piece has been the ability to define and interact with Bokeh applications directly in Jupyter notebooks. Although there is still some work to do to refine this capability, an example notebook was added that demonstrates a technique that can be used immediately. You can see the result below:
In addition to the notebook, examples were added to show how to embed a Bokeh server in a standalone script, a Flask application, and a Tornado application. You can see all the examples in th GitHub repository:
General JS Callbacks
Early on, when we were still sorting out the vision and kinks of the Bokeh server, the capability to add little snippets of JavaScript was added to afford people more possibilities for rich interactions. Until now, the places where CustomJS callbacks could be used were added in an ad-hoc fashion, often as a callback property on some Bokeh model. For instance, column data sources have a callback property that can trigger a JavaScript callback whenever a selection is made. This mechanism proved popular, with users wanting to put CustomJS callbacks... basically everywhere. It's time to make a more solid, generalized means for adding these callbacks. Now CustomJS callbacks can be added to any property of any Bokeh model, using the js_on_change method:
callback = CustomJS(args=dict(source=source), code="""
x0 = cb_obj.start;
x1 = cb_obj.end;
eps = (x1-x0) / 100
for (i=0; i<101; i++) {
source.data.x[i] = x0 + i*eps
source.data.y[i] = Math.sin(source.data.x[i])
}
source.trigger('change')
""") p.x_range.js_on_change('start', callback)
p.x_range.js_on_change('end', callback)
With this code, we can make a simple plot with a CustomJS callback that updates the value of the curve any time any of the x-range attributes changes:
Of course, you might have more interesting real-world use-cases, such as time-series or other windowed data!
The original motivation for this was actually to be able to have JS callbacks for ColumnDataSource streaming events. That's also possible with an expression like this:
source.js_on_change('stream', stream_callback)
One last thing to mention: with a general way to add CustomJS callbacks anywhere, the small set of ad-hoc callback locations that existed up until now will probably be deprecated in the future.
Documentation Improvements
The documentation for palettes was improved by adding full docstrings throughout the module, as well as by creating a new :bokeh-palette: Sphinx extension for displaying visual palettes in the docs. The result is nice sections like this one:
You can check out the full changes in the bokeh.palettes section of the Reference Guide.
Speaking of the Reference Guide, some parts of the library that were previously “internal” are now more interesting to general users, especially those who might be writing custom extensions. Accordingly, we’ve made a big push to document those parts much more thoroughly. Check out the docs section.
Client-side Read-only Properties
Another long-requested feature (by the Holoviews and Datashader project and others) is the ability to determine and respond to the “inner” dimensions on a plot.
The main obstacle to implementing this was the lack of a mechanism for “read-only” properties, which is to say, properties that are only able to be set from BokehJS, in the browser. The inner dimensions of a plot, determined on the fly by the BokehJS layout machinery, are just like this. Mateusz Paprocki implemented a mechanism for client-only properties in general, that can be used with with on_change callbacks in Bokeh applications, just like any other properties. The first two such properties added were inner_width and inner_height , on plots:
p.on_change("inner_width", some_callback)
p.on_change("inner_height", some_callback)
As a reminder, on_change style callbacks require a Bokeh server. However, these properties work in any situation with the new js_on_change feature introduced above, as well.
Improvements to Log Plotting
Basic log plot capability was added on early in Bokeh’s history, but has not seen much attention since then. Recently, more users have been asking for improvements to log plotting, so recent contributor Claire Tang tore through a whole pile of issues related to log plots:
#2789-Range padding possibly discards the log axis properties
#3834-Plot is empty when log scale is used
#5389-Creating a line plot with x_axis_type='log' fails when x_max < 1
#5549-Correctly handle data values <= 0 on a log scale
#5576-Initial range calculation for log plots can cause empty plots
Even more fixes and improvements to log plotting are on the way.
What’s Next?
A lot of the older (or “bigger vision”) tasks are getting put to rest. There is still plenty to do, but it’s time to focus on a few remaining features, polishing, and stabilizing. With that in mind, I expect the 0.12.5 release notes to look something like:
Fix lingering issues with layouts, changing Document children, and custom extensions.
children, and custom extensions. Add a new interactive legend capability for muting or hiding glyphs.
Remove JQuery, which will shrink BokehJS by another 10 percent.
Expose the UI event bus to make it accessible to JS and python callbacks.
Refactor categoricals to be more efficient, and support nested coordinate systems.
Continue strong pushes on documentation and testing.
Fix many other small (but annoying) bugs.
For more details, see the current 0.12.5 Milestone on GitHub or the larger Roadmap Document. These are not set in stone, and may certainly change. We do welcome feedback and discussion to help shape and set priorities.
Of course, with more help, we can get more done, more quickly. So please consider getting involved.
As we’re getting closer to a Bokeh 1.0 release, I’d like to thank the 200+ total contributors who have helped make Bokeh such an amazing project. As always, for questions, technical assistance or if you’re interested in contributing, please ask the Bokeh mailing list or join the chat on Gitter.
Thanks,
Bryan Van de Ven | https://medium.com/bokeh/bokeh-0-12-4-released-2a886dfc781f | [] | 2020-07-06 22:48:03.162000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Open Source', 'Data Science', 'Bokeh', 'Data Visualization'] |
The King Who Wished to Pardon Himself | The Frog Prince — raw and unDisneyfied (from “Ich war der Märchenprinz,” 1983)
I was brought up in Germany on the raw and unDisneyfied version of Grimms’ Fairy Tales. The version in which the princess smashes the Frog Prince against the wall instead of kissing him. That’s why my past four years in America were filled with childhood flashbacks. There were all the usual suspects: an ugly king with a beautiful daughter who wants to be queen one day, and an evil stepmother who is green with envy (or yellow according to the Grimms’ emotional color chart). Everybody else around the king has court jester credentials including his personal counsel Rudy Rumpelstiltskin who in the original story takes a very sad and, by today’s standards, clearly R-rated ending. He throws a fit after not winning his case, grabs his left foot and tears himself in two — something we might actually witness any day now in real life.
But it’s not just ancient folklore and feudalism that the Trump administration has taken its cues from. They must have scrolled through the American Film Institute’s list of the top 100 funniest movies all the way down to #69: Bananas. This 1971 movie — a big hit in Germany during my teenage years — is set in San Marcos, a fictional Caribbean island that has just been taken over by the deranged jungle despot Esposito. Because of his soft spot for blondes, Esposito’s first executive order is to make Swedish the official language of his freshly minted banana republic. The only difference with Trump’s early tenure is that he wanted more immigrants from Norway, not Sweden, but that’s close enough for someone who thinks Belgium is a city.
Bananas might rank a lot higher on the American Film Institute’s list had Woody Allen been able to draw from the material so generously provided by the Trump administration. Just think of Esposito’s guerrilleros putting up fake ballot boxes or ambushing mail-sorting machines in the way Trump’s junta member Louis DeJoy did. Or how about a scene with a tyrant pardoning himself? Neither the Grimms nor Allen seem to have been aware of the comedic potential of such a scene.
They clearly lacked the imagination and fantasy of today’s originalists whose flashbacks have nothing to do with the Grimm Brothers but everything with the Founding Fathers. To them legal courts are Renaissance fairs where judges let their minds happily time travel to the 18th century before they make a decision. Imagine a legal séance where a presidential self-pardon simply sails through because nobody recalls hearing the ghost of a Founding Father stamp his foot and say no to it. Too bad that the Founding Fathers didn’t want to waste time and parchment on an extra paragraph in the Constitution to state the obvious — that self-pardons are ridiculous. Something must be really rotten in the state of Denmark (or District of Columbia for that matter) when court officials are debating in all earnest if the king can certify his own innocence — prophylactically!
And by the way, “The King Who Wished to Pardon Himself” is not in the Grimms’ portfolio. I made this up. There is however, and I am not making this up, “The King Who Wished to Marry His Daughter,” an old fairy tale that hails from Scotland — just like half of Donald Trump’s DNA. | https://medium.com/@schrohen/the-king-who-wished-to-pardon-himself-6a0458aaddae | ['Henning Schroeder'] | 2020-12-25 04:24:58.075000+00:00 | ['Grimm Fairy Tales', 'Germany', 'Trump', 'Pardon', 'Banana Republic'] |
Community Resilience: Why It Matters and What Your Company Can Do | Photo by Brian McMahon on Unsplash
The increasing pressure on companies to account for their impacts on the environment and on communities has been hard to miss.
There are concerns that the salaries that companies pay to attract top talent may be contributing to rising housing prices and homelessness. Or that the working hours and compensation they offer perpetuate working poverty, leaving employees unable to pay for essentials. Or that they are asking employees to put their health, along with that of their families and communities, at risk on the job.
Given this interest, it should come as no surprise that many companies (including yours, I bet) are making an effort to also “do good” in the community, often through philanthropy or community investment.
But while many companies have expressed an interest in supporting thriving communities, they are often unsure how best to go about it. We wanted to help companies figure out how they can contribute. And that’s why we took a deep dive into community resilience. Here’s what we learned.
Community resilience: what it is?
At its core, community resilience is about a community’s ability to respond and adapt to acute shocks and long-term stresses. It’s a complex issue, of course, and there are many contributing factors. Consider for example how a community might be affected by a healthy natural environment, good local jobs, good health and wellbeing, access to housing, social engagement, strong cultural connections, inclusive banking and credit options, and reliable emergency services.
What community resilience looks like on the ground is as diverse as communities themselves. But there are some common frameworks that communities are using to start to define and build their own resilience. We created a handy reference list to help you understand these approaches and how your company might use them.
Why does community resilience matter?
A really good place to start is understanding the importance of community resilience to your company.
There is a symbiotic relationship between a company and the communities around it. The long-term success of a company is directly linked to the resilience of the communities where it operates, as well as the resilience of the communities of its workers, its suppliers, and its customers. And vice versa.
If, for example, your company contributes to income inequality either because it does not pay fair wages or pays salaries that that are well beyond local averages, your company is likely eroding the resilience of that community.
And a community that is not resilient (that, for example, experiences growing inequality) may see declining educational attainment or health outcomes over time. It may become less safe for its residents. Or the community may become adversarial towards your company if you’re seen as a cause (think public protests against tech giants for declining housing affordability).
As a result, your employees’ wellness or productivity at work may decline, or such changes may affect your ability to hire employees or to sell your products locally. It may even affect how welcome your company is in that community.
Here’s the takeaway: any positive or adverse impacts your company has on the communities in which you operate can affect more than just your company’s reputation. They may directly affect your organisation.
Despite this, in many organisations, efforts to create positive social impacts are treated as public relations or employee engagement activities. They often live more in the “nice-to-have” space than on the “strategic” side. Only rarely are they treated as a crucial part of the business.
“So, what should companies do,” you might ask. “If we are already contributing to community organisations, isn’t that enough?”
To be honest, that’s just the start.
What actions can companies take?
Philanthropic efforts can make a substantial difference in the lives of individuals — there are plenty of inspiring stories, and this type of support can be crucial when disaster strikes or to address immediate needs.
But philanthropic efforts seldom address the systemic issues that cause and perpetuate inequity, environmental degradation, unequal access to healthcare and education, poverty, and other sources of declining resilience. And philanthropic efforts in one community certainly won’t balance out your company’s negative impacts on community resilience elsewhere.
This is not to say that your company should try to eradicate any and all social issues it becomes aware of. It shouldn’t and it can’t. What your company can do is contribute to supporting resilience building in specific areas where it makes sense to do so.
What that looks like will be different for each company and in each community. But here are some things to consider:
1) Learn more about local communities and their resilience
Start with making an effort to understand the local socio-economic and environmental context of the communities around you. This includes trying to understand each community’s local definition and vision of resilience. Without knowing what resilience means in each local context, you can’t identify how your company could best contribute to it.
Many communities will not have an explicit, accessible set of community goals or a vision. In that case, there may be an opportunity for your company to support the community’s current or planned future efforts to do so. Not by demanding a set of goals, steering community processes, or getting overly involved, but perhaps instead by funding, making space for, or convening conversations if the community is open to it.
2) Learn more about your company’s potential impacts on community resilience
Your company should also understand its own points of intersection in building or eroding local resilience. Where in your operations or value chain are your community resilience impacts? And where in the broader system does your company have leverage or is it positioned to support resilience and system change? What does it mean to do your part?
Your company’s risk management processes are another tool for surfacing opportunities to affect positive change. Intentionally identifying opportunities as part of your risk processes positions your company to make strategic as well as impactful contributions to community resilience.
3) Let the community help guide what action you take
Now that you have a good sense of what the community wants to achieve and where your company has the greatest impact, your company can engage with community organisations, representatives, and local governments to find out if there is an opportunity for your company to contribute to this vision.
Remember, this is not about your company’s idea of what a community needs — this is about supporting the priorities that the community has defined for itself.
Maybe that means paying a living wage or ensuring equitable access to your products or services (such as banking, loans, internet, transportation, or energy). It may mean sharing your emergency response resources or providing access to the environmental data you collect.
Your company and colleagues may be able to leverage their networks, the reach of their voice, their expertise, or their ability to convene in support of community resilience. Or there may be opportunities for your company (and others?) to codesign or collaborate on initiatives with local communities to build resilience through multistakeholder partnerships.
The main point is that your company’s efforts to do its part in supporting resilience start with better understanding each community’s own approach to resilience and by finding ways to support that vision. After all, building community resilience is both crucial to thriving communities, and a critical factor in your company’s long-term success.
And yes, this may also mean making financial contributions or dedicating volunteer hours to local organisations. But these efforts should be part of a more considered, broader strategy that puts communities first. | https://medium.com/embedding-project/community-resilience-why-it-matters-to-companies-and-3-things-your-company-can-do-dbeaac3f8f4f | ['Embedding Project'] | 2021-05-25 19:23:20.502000+00:00 | ['Systems Thinking', 'Corporate Sustainability', 'Social Impact', 'Sustainability', 'Community Resilience'] |
So You Wanna Be A Software Engineer? | Cost
With student loan debt at an all time high, the cost of your education is almost certainly a factor you are considering. A four year college can easily eclipse six figures when you factor in room and board and a private institution can leave you with a mortgage sized bill from tuition alone. Coding bootcamps provide an obvious advantage when it comes to cost. The typical coding bootcamp will cost around $15,000, with a range from $10,000 to $20,000. While this is still a considerable amount of money, it pales in comparison to a four year institution.
Another advantage that bootcamps provide are income share agreements. Many bootcamps will not charge you until you have secured employment with a minimum salary. The ISA will be more expensive than paying up front, but allows you to learn a new skill without draining your savings or taking out a loan you will have to pay back no matter what. Some bootcamps will waive your tuition or offer a refund if you are unable to find a job in a given timeframe.
Time Commitment
A four year degree will take, well most likely, four years. During this time you will only be in class a few hours a day, and possibly only at night which will allow you to work while you learn. This can help offset the cost of your education or keep your current job. The longer timeframe also allows you to learn about a wider variety and get in more practice. If you are looking to make a career change sooner than later, this might be too long of a time frame for you.
Bootcamps on the other hand are extremely condensed and typically last 3 months if you go full time. During the bootcamp, you will be in class around 40 hours a week and need more time to study and review. This would make it incredibly difficult to hold down a job during this period. The condensed coursework certainly makes bootcamps challenging academically as well. I can say from first-hand experience it is like drinking from a firehose and moves MUCH quicker than college courses. However, this does allow you to begin your career sooner.
What You’ll Learn
While you will get lots of material overlap, colleges will offer a much more in depth look at programming. Computer Science degrees focus more on the science of programming compared to bootcamps’ focus on job placement. College coursework will also include advanced mathematics and elective courses. Emphasis will be placed on theory and the architecture of languages.
Coding bootcamps will provide real world on the job skills. With the tight timeframe bootcamps operate on, you cannot learn as much compared to a four year degree, but will learn enough to land a job and provide value to your company. You will probably learn a few different languages that will allow you to make a web application from scratch. What you learn after a bootcamp provides you with this foundation is up to you.
Quality of Education
Four year institutions get the leg up here. An accredited program will always be a safer bet than a non-accredited one. Colleges have been established for decades, or even centuries and have developed reputations with employers for producing quality workers. They also have established alumni networks that can influence offers of employment.
Coding bootcamps have been around for about a decade and have not had the same time to develop reputations for quality graduates. That is not to say bootcamps do not produce good employees, you just have to be careful in selecting one. I personally chose Flatiron School because of their independent job placement report and a recommendation from a friend that graduated. Coding bootcamps can provide a wonderful education and so far Flatiron has provided instruction on par with my university. If you choose to go this route just be sure to do your research and know that it could be a riskier option. | https://medium.com/@comfortwb21/so-you-wanna-be-a-software-engineer-40c8cc22e07b | ['Will Comfort'] | 2019-10-17 13:18:30.482000+00:00 | ['Bootcamp', 'Programming', 'Software Engineering'] |
Pandemic Holidays: Give Up the Old, Reminisce, and Rejoice! | Everything is different this year for the pandemic holidays. With no company to be had, thanks to the virus, suddenly there is time and opportunity! Holiday partying has given way to quiet celebrations. Giving has become less about treating ourselves with the new and more about giving up the old to help those in need.
In the part of India where I grew up, a day in the middle of January is celebrated as the harvest festival. It is preceded by by house cleaning in December. A saying in the local language of letting go of the old is taken both literally and figuratively. That is the spirit that is guiding us this year.
Privileged and materialistic, we have accumulated much we will never use or need. Decluttering and letting go during these holidays is part selfish: When we rid of the old, we make room for the new. Part sentimental: We get to reminisce about what we’re giving away. And part joyful: The joy of giving. Just an example or two here to get your giving juices going.
My closet cleaning this afternoon yielded 30 T-shirts, half of them rarely worn. One that I am letting go is a T-shirt with the inscription Canaan Valley. The valley is in West Virginia. Yes, West Virginia is heaven. I reminisced about the time we were at the valley. It was December. We were snowed in. The deer were everywhere. A couple were peeking at us through the windows of the cabin. That winter wonderland is among the beautiful memories we got to recall as a reward for giving up that T-shirt.
My wife let go of our artificial Christmas tree. She had much enjoyment writing notes on assembling it and leaving instructions on how to make sure all its lights are connected properly — tasks that are complicated for people like me. We have had many great memories of gifts under that tree. But this year that tree is a gift for someone else to enjoy and cherish for years to come.
This is the third in the series this December as you consider making a difference in America or in India, by giving money for a cause of your choice or just giving up the old! I conclude with a pointer to the UNCF, the charity to which I’ve contributed the longest and one that helps make Black lives better.
May your holidays be merry as you make the lives better for those around us in this pandemic! | https://medium.com/@vijayviolet/pandemic-holidays-give-up-the-old-reminisce-and-rejoice-d3da0f671499 | ['Vijay Violet'] | 2020-12-21 20:38:37.150000+00:00 | ['Decluttering', 'Pandemic', 'Charity', 'Giving', 'Holidays'] |
How Can I Know Anything Without Awareness? | Photo by Christopher Campbell on Unsplash
A while back, a friend was attempting to persuade me that awareness is real. He told me that all the saints and sages have talked about Awareness or Consciousness as being primary. Until recently, I believed that to be true as well. I think he might have quoted people like Ramana Maharishi and Nisargadatta Maharaj. I don’t know much about those people, but I presume that they must have existed in the same reality as all of us.
After I demonstrated that I wasn’t willing to argue with concepts vaguely related to apparently dead people, my friend asked me, “Did you drink coffee this morning?” After I told him that I had, he claimed that this was evidence of awareness or consciousness.
To me, this sounds the same as arguing that if you tap a spoon on the edge of a plate and it makes a sound, then you can claim “Ah-ha, the plate knows that it was made on a potter’s wheel, from clay, and it is therefore conscious.” But the plate is just no-thing plating. In the story, the spoon and plate seem to make the sound because the plate (and spoon) were made, but they are not in themselves conscious of having been made. In reality, they were not even made. There is just unborn no-thing clinking. A human responding to a question is no different; just no-thing responding.
In the story of me, I had drunk coffee, but that response doesn’t require consciousness or awareness. There are a few false presuppositions that the question is based upon, including that there is a past, that there is a thing called me, and that I can know anything.
When the question is apparently asked, it is no-thing questioning. Then, in the apparent story of time, there is a memory of drinking coffee, which is no-thing appearing as memory, and then, in the apparent story of time, what seems to be a response is no-thing responding. In the whole interaction, nothing happened, as nothing ever does.
Okay, you might say, but what about in the “present moment”? Isn’t there something aware of drinking coffee as it’s happening. Actually, there isn’t even that. Each thing that seems to be happening is no-thing thinging. Every apparent experience is unborn wholeness being itself without witness.
The touch of the fingers on the cup, the seeing of the cup approaching my mouth, the taste, the swallowing of the coffee: there is nothing witnessing any of this. All that appears to be happening is actually no-thing touching, no-thing cupping, no-thing seeing, no-thing tasting, and no-thing swallowing. Each apparent thing is no-thing being everything. There is no separation from wholeness that could be aware or conscious of wholeness.
Just to be clear: when I write “no-thing seeing,” I don’t mean that there is a thing called no-thing that is the subject that is seeing something. I mean that no-thing is appearing as seeing, and appearing for no one. It’s more like no-thing is being seeing, whole in itself.
The illusion of individuality recasts all of what is apparently happening to be about the individual: I am inside this body experiencing or witnessing all of this as awareness or consciousness. When wholeness is contemplated from the perspective of separation, it can seem to be some kind of universal consciousness or awareness, but that is a projection of individuality onto it. In itself, wholeness is neither conscious nor aware. | https://duncanr.medium.com/how-can-i-know-anything-without-awareness-9e3780f1b25c | ['Duncan Riach'] | 2018-11-24 07:51:01.650000+00:00 | ['Meditation', 'Psychology', 'Self', 'Philosophy', 'Life'] |
Bernie Campaigning in Republican States On Infrastructure | Senator Sanders is talking to Republican voters in Iowa and Indiana. Good.
Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash
It’s no secret that I was one of his biggest supporters of the 2020 primary campaign. One of the things that attracted me to him was that he spoke from the heart and talked about policies, and talk to people regardless of political affiliation with respect and honesty. That authenticity is something that is lacking among mainstream Democrats, and that appeals to not just independents but Republicans.
One of my Republican coworkers ended up supporting him in his previous run. He disagreed with him on social issues, but when he heard Sanders discuss trade policy, climate change, and getting ripped off by Big Pharma he endorsed him. “I spend more on healthcare than my extended family does in Canada. If I was sold a car for twice the price, I’d expect it to be twice as good. Instead I’m spending $700 a month while my Canadian counterparts are spending $180. It’s insane” he said to me.
The story from today on MSN was Bernie Sanders campaigns in pro-Trump districts to get more Republican support for the reconciliation package. It would include investments for infrastructure, climate change, housing, college, and more. The only thought that came to mind was why aren’t other Democrats doing this?
While the corporate press has been largely focused on the inadequate $1 Trillion privatized infrastructure plan with a mileage tax, the $3.5 Trillion plan over ten years benefits the bottom 90% rather than the top 1%. It expands Medicare to include coverage for dental care and vision; makes community college tuition free and invests in infrastructure over ten years. It has no mileage tax in it, provides paid family leave (like other industrialized countries have), invests in mitigating the impact of climate change, affordable housing, and make sure the wealthiest corporations finally pay their fair share in taxes.
If you truly believe in something you must be willing to put yourself out there and fiercely advocate for it. That is what Bernie Sanders is currently doing behind the scenes. And if his colleagues follow suite, it might work. | https://medium.com/@acbc89/bernie-campaigning-in-republican-states-on-infrastructure-ce8201707e7c | [] | 2021-08-19 20:44:23.156000+00:00 | ['Infrastructure', 'Bernie Sanders', 'Politics', 'Education', 'Policy'] |
Creating inspiration, part 1: Speak with your own authentic voice | In this time of churning and change, your ability to inspire yourself and others becomes essential.
There is no one right way of doing this but there are seven standard building blocks that you can combine and use in your own way.
The first of these is to speak with your own authentic voice.
Queen Elizabeth I of England provides a good example. Four hundred years ago she faced a difficult world. Many of her own people thought she could not rule, simply because she was a woman. Some of them had tried to kill her. And, seeing her weakness, a foreign power had decided to invade.
Faced with these perils, Elizabeth might simply have run away. Or she could have tried to bluff her way through. Instead, she chose to speak her authentic truth.
Wearing armour (unheard of for a woman) she rode “like some Amazonian empress” into the middle of her assembled army with an escort of only six men and two page boys.
Having put herself at the mercy of several thousand heavily armed troops, she then spoke clearly and authentically what became her most famous words:
“I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too!”
Her authenticity won her audience over.
And once they had decided to listen to her then they listened to what she had to say. And once they had heard what she had to say then they did what needed to be done. The invader was repulsed and Elizabeth has gone down in history as one of her country’s greatest rulers ever.
When we speak authentically, other people can hear it and they know who we are. Our words will then resonate most strongly with the people who will join us for the long haul. And when we have an inspired team, working together and pulling in the same direction, we can achieve anything.
In your life and in your work, do you speak authentically what is true for you or do you say what you think you should? What outcomes does that create? What would happen if you spoke more of your authentic truth — first to yourself and then to others? | https://medium.com/finn-jackson/creating-inspiration-part-1-speak-with-your-own-authentic-voice-c1a7f8de00c | ['Finn Jackson'] | 2020-08-27 11:01:01.229000+00:00 | ['Conscious Leadership', 'Self Leadership', 'Antifragility', 'Change Management', 'Leadership'] |
Book Review: Ottoman Dominion | Ottoman Dominion
by Terry Brennan
Independent Publishers Group
Kregel Publications
Christian | Mystery & Thrillers
Pub Date 17 Nov 2020
I am reviewing a copy of Ottoman Dominion through Independent Publishers Group/ Kregel and Netgalley:
Brian Mullaney is a diplomatic security agent who wants out. He has been drawn against his will into a dangerous international mission with world-ending implications. His final assignment is going to pit him against the terrifying, evil entity known only as the Turk.
After the Turk’s minions breach the US embassy in Israel and the American ambassador disappears, Mullaney has no choice. He must accept his role as the final guardian of a mysterious box, the box is his only weapon against the powers of darkness bent on preventing the second coming of the Messiah, no matter who or what they annihilate to accomplish their goal.
Will Brian Mullaney who has already lost so much be able to find the strength and faith to save the world and fulfill the prophecy of peace?
I give Ottoman Dominion five out of five stars!
Happy Reading! | https://medium.com/@michellereneekidwell-95261/book-review-ottoman-dominion-87860a9b0a7b | ['Michelle Renee Kidwell'] | 2020-12-23 04:26:13.192000+00:00 | ['Christian', 'Suspense', 'Book Review', 'Mystery Thriller'] |
HOPE at the end of the line: meet the team responsible for aiding MARTA’s unsheltered | HOPE at the end of the line: meet the team responsible for aiding MARTA’s unsheltered HOPE Atlanta Aug 9·6 min read
When Gloria Woodard encounters people experiencing homelessness on the job as a MARTA HOPE Atlanta case manager, she doesn’t see panhandlers or public nuisances. She sees her past self.
Once homeless herself, Gloria is now part of a team of HOPE Atlanta social workers and MARTA field protective specialists who work tirelessly to engage people who have taken refuge on the transit system and connect them with the resources they need to transition out of homelessness.
“The reason why I’m very passionate about my job is because I’ve been homeless before, so I can self-identify with the people I interact with.” – Gloria Woodard, MARTA HOPE Case Manager
A compassionate approach to a persistent problem
The MARTA + HOPE Atlanta partnership officially launched in August 2020, amid the COVID-19 crisis and nationally spiking homelessness rates. With homelessness suddenly presenting a public health issue as well as a humanitarian one, local agencies and organizations (including HOPE Atlanta and MARTA) quickly mobilized to transition high-risk people sheltering on MARTA and at the airport to designated hotel rooms to quarantine. There, they would receive hot meals and individualized support to help them toward self-sufficiency.
“The airport situation got a little more under control when the hotels were open,” said Timothy Robinson, another HOPE Atlanta case manager, referring to the many people who were riding MARTA to the airport at night seeking a safe place to rest. Last spring, up to 350 people slept on chairs and benches across the airport terminal every night, fueling concerns about a COVID hot spot.
Since then, Hartsfield-Jackson International has moved to restrict overnight access to the airport. Instead of criminalizing homelessness, authorities have emphasized the need to connect individuals experiencing homelessness with shelters and social service agencies. Enter HOPE Atlanta.
A day in the life of a MARTA HOPE case manager
A small office at the Five Points MARTA station serves as MARTA HOPE’s home base. Here, the team counsels clients, coordinates with dozens of other agencies and nonprofits, and stockpiles supplies like food and hygiene kits to offer people they meet — who often have nothing.
It was a hot Monday morning in July when we met Gloria and Timothy, the two case managers on duty. The young man Timothy was assisting in his office was growing increasingly agitated, and tensions soon spilled over into the lobby; Protective Specialist Dunn, on duty at the time, swiftly intervened to defuse the situation.
“It’s a team effort,” said Gloria. “Sometimes people get combative or just downright ugly.”
Not everyone is receptive to HOPE Atlanta’s assistance or willing to go to a shelter, especially during warm weather. Many people experiencing homelessness can’t produce identification or negative COVID and tuberculosis tests, making it frustratingly difficult for them to secure a shelter bed.
Case managers Gloria Woodard and Timothy Robinson and Protective Specialist Dinkins ride the eastbound MARTA train
The team not only meets with clients in the office, but also makes referrals, and works the phones from their office. They ride the train and streetcars several times per shift, actively seeking out people who need their help. Today they found a receptive audience at the Indian Creek Marta Station, the easternmost stop on the Blue Line.
Timothy helped a 20-year-old man secure bus transport to get to Covenant House, a youth shelter in Atlanta. At the same time, Gloria encouraged another man to get to St. Jude’s Recovery Center, where he could receive detox treatment despite lacking health insurance.
“We’ve been trying to catch him for four months,” Gloria said. They often encounter the same people during their routes, offering compassionate support and letting them know they’re here when they’re ready to receive help.
“They want to know that someone hears them,” she said. “You work hard to get that person to a better place on that particular day.”
After counseling several people, Timothy and Protective Specialist Dinkins (who accompanied the case managers) escorted the first man back to the Five Points station to see that he safely got on the bus to Covenant House.
“I want you to call me when you get there,” Timothy could be heard saying on the train. Besides being many people’s “ticket” into a shelter like Covenant House or Gateway Center, where the MARTA HOPE program has five designated beds, the HOPE Atlanta case managers often become friends to people who have nowhere else to turn.
Once individuals are sheltered and consistently showing up to case management appointments, the HOPE Atlanta team can connect them to programs like Georgia Works, substance abuse treatment, or permanent supportive housing. You can learn more about the team’s process and see them in action by watching MARTA’s video here.
A coordinated response to an overwhelming need
Sadly, they can’t assist everyone. One major challenge Timothy noted is the lack of shelter space for women, who make up around 20% of the unsheltered people he encounters. Many of them have children in tow.
“It hurts my heart when I don’t have somewhere to refer people,” he said.
Still, the team exhausts every possible option to keep them safe, even using patrol cars to escort women to shelters or crisis centers when domestic violence is involved. “Any time I run across women with kids, that’s a high priority,” said Timothy.
Then there is the sheer number of unsheltered people on MARTA and throughout Metro Atlanta. Gloria estimated that, at one point, they would see ten people experiencing homelessness on every train. During the January 2020 Point-In-Time study, volunteers counted 939 unsheltered individuals in Atlanta neighborhoods, though homelessness is also a growing problem outside city limits.
With many experts bracing for an eviction crisis when the federal moratorium expires, the situation could get even worse. Fortunately, MARTA HOPE plans to add resources to meet the need.
MARTA HOPE gains momentum
If word-of-mouth is any indication, the program has been wildly successful.
“People come to the station because they know we are offering assistance,” said Protective Specialist Dinkins. “We go out of our way. We will escort people home, assist with reunification. I’ve had a lot of [MARTA] customers thank us for what we do.”
After learning about the HOPE MARTA partnership last September, an anonymous benefactor donated $500K to further the program’s impact. The gift was instrumental in providing much-needed designated beds and additional case management support. According to HOPE Atlanta CEO Jeff Smythe, the gift was “nothing short of transformational.”
Since the program launched, the team has assisted more than 2,100 individuals and helped to transition more than 498 into permanent housing.
One such person was a young man that Case Manager Vinson Allen encountered in June, asleep on the southbound Gold Line. After engaging the man in conversation, Vinson learned that although he was homeless, he was employed and had recently moved from California to Atlanta seeking a better life for him and his son. While he briefly stayed at the Gateway Center, the HOPE Atlanta team worked tirelessly to find affordable housing for him.
Not only did they find suitable permanent housing for the young man, but they helped him back on his feet by securing money for a deposit and the first month’s rent. Today, he’s working toward his GED and hoping to go to college.
Outcomes like this don’t come easily, but with the community’s continued support, the HOPE MARTA team will continue to fight for as many success stories as possible.
“I’ve seen these people pull some miracles,” said Protective Specialist Dinkins of the MARTA HOPE caseworkers.
Put your HOPE in Action. Be the reason someone sleeps in a bed and not on a train. With your donation, you’ll help us meet a growing need for social services on the MARTA system amid the looming eviction crisis. You’ll help provide HOPE. Donate Now! | https://medium.com/@hopeatlanta/hope-at-the-end-of-the-line-meet-the-team-responsible-for-aiding-martas-unsheltered-7c6972d6229f | ['Hope Atlanta'] | 2021-08-09 20:29:01.655000+00:00 | ['Homeless', 'Transportation', 'Homelessness', 'Give Hope', 'Atlanta'] |
How to Easily Raise Your Prices (Seriously) | Last week I was in Da Nang, a mid-size city in central Vietnam.
I lodged at a homestay, and the host and I started to talk about her business one day.
The homestay is beautiful, clean, completely modern and close to the center of town (but far enough that you don’t hear the city noise). In other words, her product is fantastic. Yet, she was only charging a modest rate. “I want to raise my prices,” she told me, “but I can’t.”
The fact is, most businesses are in this same boat: They have great products and services, but they’re unable to charge significantly more than the market rate.
Can you relate?
We started by browsing her website and social media channels — and I immediately noticed her problem. The website looked and felt like it was designed by a ninth grader, totally lacking the kind of customer experience on which effective websites are built. (In this case, effective means a website that turns prospective customers into paying ones.)
And her social media channels? I commend her for trying to use social media, but she was promoting the wrong message — “Look how amazing my homestay is!” — instead of a message that compels people to both book a room at her homestay AND pay a higher-than-average price.
That message is this: Promote the experience, not the product. (In the case of this business, promote the experience of traveling in Da Nang and Vietnam, not the homestay.)
Why? Because people are willing to pay as much as 25 percent more for experiences than they are for products and services.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to turn your business on its head and start creating additional experiences for your customers. Instead, it means making customer experience the focal point of your marketing (e.g. your website, social media channels, email newsletters, online and offline ads, et cetera).
Do this and you can easily raise your prices. | https://medium.com/build-something-cool/how-to-easily-raise-your-prices-seriously-c611ec53524b | ['Josh Hoffman'] | 2017-03-02 17:07:03.528000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Social Media Marketing', 'Digital Marketing', 'Business', 'Customer Experience'] |
Am I cheap? Understanding the energy of money | It flows in the direction of where it is wanted.
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
It’s one of those things that nobody wants to be called. I was looking at this pair of shoes for work, because I REALLY needed a new pair (my current ones had started to squeak — no, not a good look or sound). The pair in my hand were gorgeous — beautiful black leather, good sole, the shape that I like — all good.
Then I look inside where the price was apparently waiting to surprise me. My eyes widened. My partner saw my eyes widen. The sales clerk saw my eyes widen. I think the whole store HEARD my eyes widen. I cleared my throat. Phil knew what that meant and rolled his eyes in frustration. “Kayus, don’t be cheap” he blurted out.
That word stung me. “I’m not cheap, I’m frugal”, I responded defensively. He might as well have called me an uncultured buffoon. I put the shoes down, thanked the sales clerk for her time and walked off in a sulk. “Am I….cheap?”
Ah, you beauties! It just wasn’t meant to be. Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash
The question haunted me and I searched my mental catalogue of expenditures for evidence to the contrary. Those concert tickets last year were NOT cheap. And that dinner at that nice restaurant — did you SEE the bill? And what about those Christmas and birthday presents I bought for people over the years? But as I thought about it, the truth dawned on me that every time I went to spend money, I felt this pang of hesitation.
Was I spending too much? Could I get this for less? Do I really need this? It’s a constant battle. Can you relate to this? I’ve read that people are either in 1 of 2 camps when it comes to spending: either 1) they buy what they want and worry about the cost later, if at all OR 2) they think long and hard about what they spend their money on and only buy what they think they can afford. I think that I’m definitely in the second category, but I take it a step further: I only want to buy what I think I will get some pleasure or utility from over a long period of time.
So for example, I would prioritise a pair of good jeans over something super trendy. Or I’d rather buy a piece of good kitchen equipment (like a juicer) over a fancy meal every weekend. There’s just something about frivolous spending that makes me uncomfortable.
But the flip side of this, is that I tend to miss out or undervalue things that really add to my life. One big example of this is holidays (or vacations, for my American readers). Because I’m based in London and I have friends and relatives all over the world, there is always an opportunity to jump on the plane and go somewhere interesting — and I absolutely love experiencing new places and cultures (my social media can attest to this!) BUT booking a ticket is like the HARDEST THING for me to do!
I just think, “how can I justify spending so much on a flight and accommodations?” In those moments, I think of all the obligations that I have and I hesitate. And this hesitation has caused friction and irritation over the years, where people just assume that I’m being the c-word: CHEAP!
In my mind, they’re being frivolous and in their minds, I don’t want to let go of my hard-earned cash. And in some ways, they have been right. So, it’s this dilemma that I want to address.
“This has been a difficult lesson for me, but I have come to accept that there is such a thing as a scarcity mindset, and being cheap is just an outcome, a byproduct of that. Cheapness says to the world that I have a limited expectation and limited capacity for abundance and to enjoy my wealth.”
What I’ve come to learn over the years, in particular the last 5 years or so, is that money is energetic. Just like anything else, it responds to energy, either positively or negatively.
For instance, I am a firm believer and witness of the fact that people who speak negatively about money, tend to be unable to make or keep more of it. Their words, such as “I’m broke” or “I only need enough to get by” literally REPELS money, because their words are a reflection of their internal dialogue and belief system about abundance.
As a result, money “sees” this as a negative environment, and therefore has no reason to flow in that direction. Conversely, those who have cultivated a mindset of abundance, seem to find opportunities all around them to attract money. The key word here is ATTRACT!
Wealthy people are those who are able to attract wealth to themselves again and again. Everyone is familiar with the adage that the rich just seem to get richer, while everyone else gets poorer or at best, just continue to make ends meet. The big difference between the wealthy and everyone else, is that wealthy people have an expectation and belief that money should come their way. They have absolutely no doubt about it — and this absence of doubt creates a fertile energetic environment, to which money WANTS to flow.
And so, as a result, these people know how to enjoy their abundance, with the full knowledge that they have more of it coming. It’s like when you turn on the shower and step underneath. You get all lathered up, because you fully expect water to continue to flow and it does! This is what it feels like to have an abundance mindset and it’s the only way to create a positive enough energy that attracts money to your existence.
But, like anything else, money responds to being respected. Think about it, if you have a friend that you bad-mouth, or take advantage of, or take for granted EVERY SINGLE TIME they come around, how long do you think they will continue to visit or stay with you? Not long at all. And this is exactly how money is.
Abusing your wealth, not being responsible with it and treating it with respect is a sure recipe for telling your money that it isn’t welcome. What do I mean by this? Not paying your bills on time. Defaulting on loans from companies (and worse) or personal loans. Overspending because you can. Not saving or investing for the future. All of these behaviours are equally as negative as a scarcity mindset, because they create a negative energy that only has one result. Money will be REPELLED from you.
So what am I supposed to do? On the one hand, I don’t want to live in a mindset of scarcity and on the other hand, I don’t want to be irresponsible with my earnings. Well, like anything, it’s all about balance.
It is possible, and I think absolutely necessary to take care of your financial future with forward planning AND to build into that plan, the ability to enjoy your money. I have found that using a budget to target where every single pound (or dollar) of my earnings goes, gives me the assurance that I am taking care of my savings, investment and future goals, while allowing myself the freedom to enjoy my life.
You see, a budget is one of the best ways (if not THE best way), to give yourself the confidence to develop and live within an abundance mindset, because you’re being proactive in making sure that you are taking care of yourself. Trust me, if you are struggling with money, a budget is going to be a big life-saver. I can tell you, it has worked for me and continues to work for millions of people all over the world.
What has been your experience with spending? Do you consider yourself cheap? Do you spend without much thought? Or are you somewhere in between? Do you believe that money has energy, and how has this played out in your life or in the lives of others? | https://medium.com/@kayusfernander/am-i-cheap-understanding-the-energy-of-money-bec07089bfa2 | ['Kayus Fernander'] | 2020-12-10 07:20:26.944000+00:00 | ['Money', 'Positive Energy', 'Budget', 'Money Management', 'Enjoying Life'] |
In Blue | Here you’ll find the bits and pieces that don’t really fit anywhere else. A place for everything and anything!
Follow | https://medium.com/imperfect-words/in-blue-de4e6c32b92a | ['Tasha Lane'] | 2019-11-04 00:51:26.109000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Haiku', 'Poem', 'Poems On Medium', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
How a good brand speaks to your customers (but not necessarily to you) | How a good brand speaks to your customers (but not necessarily to you)
Your audience is hungry for something, and it doesn’t really matter whether you happen to have the same appetite.
You are not your target audience.
Okay, maybe you are. Maybe you buy all the same shoes you sell. Maybe you eat out every day at the same kind of restaurant you run. Maybe you personally rely on the very same technology you offer to your enterprise customers.
Maybe — but maybe you don’t.
If your clients and customers possess an age bracket, gender, and set of needs that are qualitatively different from your own, it’s rather important to put down your own glasses when you’re looking at your brand, and try on theirs.
Have you read the label?
Eight years ago, when I was just starting out as a copywriter, I stumbled across a handy little proverb that’s only felt more true the longer I’ve been in the industry:
“You can’t read the label from the inside of the bottle.”
People within an organization tend to be experts on what they sell, why it matters, how it works and where they want to take it in the future. They understand the features of their products and services very well; equally, they understand why their clients or customers should care. “Should” being the operative word.
The problem is that your audience doesn’t always behave the way we think they should. That’s why organizations hire copywriters to craft their message, so they can help their audience grasp what’s important about what they’re offering.
To create such a message, you have to get inside your audience’s head. You have to imagine your offerings not from the inside, where you live and work each day, but from the outside, where they’re standing. You have to accept that the most persuasive points in your opinion are not necessarily the ones that are going to register in a compelling way for your audience.
In other words, you have to know who you’re talking to — and talk to them. To borrow from another handy proverb: you have to point that podium of yours away from the choir, and start preaching to the congregation.
There’s a difference between “I like it” and “it’s working”
The same principle is as true for branding in general as it is for copywriting in particular. Branding, after all, is a complex, multi-dimensional message — and when sending a message of any kind, it’s your audience’s opinion that counts.
At Madison Ave Collective, we often give this example: you may love the color red. It may be your favorite color. But when designing your website, or the materials for your marketing campaign, or the packaging on that shoebox, red may not be the best color to use. In fact, it may be important to pick any color but red. If red carries the wrong feeling for your audience, it’s simply not going to work. It’s not going to communicate what you’re trying to get across. And your brand is nothing if not communication.
You can compare this principle to the service industry. When someone on your waitstaff is walking a platter of food out to a table in your restaurant, it doesn’t matter whether or not they happen to have an appetite for the food they’re bringing. They’re not doing it for themselves, after all. They’re doing it for the patrons.
Your brand has to serve your audience just that selflessly. Your audience is hungry for something; once you’ve figured out what that “something” is, your job is to deliver it to them as seamlessly as possible, with consideration for their desires, needs and tastes, rather than your own.
How do you figure out what they want, and how do you present that in a way your audience will respond to? How, in other words, do you read the label? Good questions. Those go to the heart of the branding process, and when you hire an agency to help you untangle them, the journey will begin with an exploration phase whose very reason for being is to unearth the answers.
Now, if you do happen to be your target audience, you may suppose you have a pretty good idea of what you’ll find. But the discovery process will most certainly yield unexpected insights — perhaps including, among other things, whether or not it’s a good idea to go with red. | https://medium.com/madison-ave-collective/how-good-brands-speak-to-your-customers-though-not-necessarily-to-you-28f35c35300e | ['Elisabeth Mccumber'] | 2017-04-19 17:06:41.350000+00:00 | ['Branding', 'Marketing', 'Copywriting'] |
18 Psychological Effects to Learn Human Behavior | Understanding human behavior is not an easy task, but these psychological effects can help you to understand human behavior.
If you want to understand the psychology of our behavior, or want to increase your knowledge about human psychology, then this article is for you.
These psychological effects can refer roughly to all basic human actions, including behaviors that have no logic.
All these psychological effects have been observed and proven by researchers.
So let’s see some amazing psychological effects of human behavior.
1. Social Facilitation Effect
Researchers have seen improvements in individual performance when working with others (who are performing similar tasks) rather than alone.
And this phenomenon is known as the social facilitation effect.
According to this psychological effect, a person’s performance will be increased when he is working with other individuals who are performing similar tasks (especially in an organization or office).
The social facility was first identified by Norman Triple in 1898, when he observed that the performance of a cyclist was facilitated (helped) during training as a group.
You can use this psychological effect to increase your productivity. Now let’s move on to our next effect from the list of 18 psychological effects.
2. Birthday Number Effect
The birthday-number effect is a subconscious tendency of humans, where people prefer their date of birth numbers (compared to other numbers).
Most people like themselves, and birthday is associated with themselves, and therefore birthday numbers are liked by many.
Those who do not like themselves do not demonstrate the birthday number effect.
The birthday number effect was first reported in 1997 by Japanese psychologists Mayumi Karasawa and Shinobu Kitayama.
3. Bystander Effect
The bystander effect states that the more people present, the less likely it is that one person helps another person in a crisis.
This happens because being a part of a large crowd, a person does not have to take responsibility for action.
In a 1969 experiment, Rodin and Latane found that about 70% of people helped a woman in distress when they were the only witness.
But when there were others, only about 40% had helped.
So make sure to ask for help from any person alone and not in a group. Now, let’s move to our next effect from the list of 18 psychological effects.
4. Cheerleader Effect
According to Cheerleader Effect, an individual seems to be more attractive in group pictures compared to a single.
This means that when photos have many people it makes a person more attractive.
This effect name is cheerleader effect because cheerleader looks more attractive when she is with her team than alone.
And similarly, individuals in a group seem more attractive than singles.
Use this effect to look more attractive in pictures. Now let’s move on to our next effect from the list of 18 psychological effects.
5. Cocktail Party Effect
The cocktail party effect refers to the ability of people to focus on one thing in a noisy environment.
This means that people can listen to another person in a noisy environment and do not notice the noise until they focus on it.
It was first described by a British scientist Colin Cherry, in the 1950s.
An example of this effect:- If you are talking to your girlfriend at a noisy party, you can understand and hear her voice, but ignore what other people around are saying.
In evolution, our brain developed the ability to filter out the noise so that we can get the most accurate and relevant information from our surroundings which was necessary to survive ourselves from animals.
6. Einstellung Effect
According to the Einstellung effect, humans have a tendency to use the old solution (already used solution) for any problem, even if we have a more effective solution for any problem.
Our brain tries to work efficiently by using old solutions for the same problem because it saves a lot of energy and time.
By using old solutions for the same problem, we save energy and time, but by this, we do not do anything new.
A study taken by researchers, where participants have to solve a series of water jar problems.
After solving many water jar series, participants use the same solutions for solving other water jar series even though easier solutions existed.
Now let’s move on to our next effect from the list of 18 psychological effects.
7. Generation Effect
The generation effect is a psychological effect, where information is remembered better if it is generated by our own mind as compared to reading the information.
A person is more likely to retain information when asked to generate an answer with their own mind, compared to having that same information provided.
For example:- Students are more likely to remember an answer if it is produced by themselves as compared to provided answers by teachers.
This effect is very useful for teachers and parents to help their children, just explain everything to them about any chapter and ask them to answer the questions.
8. Golem Effect
The Golem effect is a psychological phenomenon in which a person’s performance can be increased or decreased by their leader’s expectations.
If a leader has high expectations from a person, then the performance of a person will increase but if the expectations of the leader are low, then a person’s performance will decrease.
For example:- In-office employee performance will be increased if his manager has higher expectations with him, but if his manager has lower expectations then his performance will be decreased.
Use this psychological effect to improve one’s performance. Now let’s move on to our next technique from the list of 18 psychological effects.
9. Google Effect
The Google effect is the tendency of people to forget information that can be easily found using Internet search engines (eg: — google and yahoo).
This psychological effect was first explained in 2011 by Betsy Sparrow and Jenny Liu and Daniel M. Wegner.
According to the study, people are more likely to forget the information if they believe that they can easily get that information with the Internet.
This study also suggests that your memory power will not be affected by this.
My main purpose of covering this psychological effect is to convince you that reading from books is more beneficial for you.
Now let’s move on to the next effect from the list of 18 psychological effects.
10. Halo Effect
The halo effect is a tendency of people, where a person’s positive influences in one area positively influence his or her opinions in other areas.
For example:- A good-looking person may think that he is more intelligent and smart than others but in reality, this was not true.
Click on the notification bell for future updates. Now let’s move on to our next effect from the list of 18 psychological effects.
Click to read the full article:- https://cenifen.com/18-psychological-effects-to-learn-human-behavior/ | https://medium.com/@cenifen/18-psychological-effects-to-learn-human-behavior-459ce3e18ba2 | ['Sahil Kumar'] | 2021-03-07 06:59:46.673000+00:00 | ['Human Psychology', 'Human Behavior', 'Psychology', 'Social Skills', 'Psychological Effects'] |
*How i got to know about this platform. (Medium.com) | *How i got to know about this platform. (Medium.com)
It was a cold evening and as usual i was busy in managing my daily stuff.
-What happened next is pretty amazing.!
So listen, ☺️
>Before this turning over dusk of my life ,i was least interested in online stuff .Then one of my dear friend happened to meet me,infact i would love to mention his name Idrees.
>Who shared some sort of ,what we can say is,coolness of online blogging, Especially Medium.com.
>Lying apart,at first his stuff felt me boored and sucked.But when he showed me the other side of the picture, i mean to say during that phase he produced some wonders which really hit me .
>He emphasised me to involve myself in online blogging because he was very well aware of my skills .
>This is where it all started .
>This is the brief storyline behind my beginning of online blogging.
-By the way ,I am Kamran Ali .
-And I believe,I am quite good writer.
-Hoping to provide u with some real interesting stuff.
-Currently studying in Medical school.
-4th year (Mbbs) student 👨🎓
-Now i am,here in steemit,with you wonderful people. | https://medium.com/@kamranraees77/how-i-got-to-know-about-this-platform-medium-com-4e657e41014a | ['Kamran Ali'] | 2020-08-13 08:43:03.532000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Health', 'Introduction', 'Pandemic', 'Doctors'] |
Bye Bye 403: Building A Filter-Resistant Web Crawler Part III: User Agents | So we’ve covered what web scraping is. We’ve also covered how to cycle proxy information to disguise our IP Address. And if you haven’t 1) Shame on you, 2) Why would you read a post with “Part III” without having read parts “I” and “II” and 3) Cheekiness aside, here are links to the other articles:
Part I: https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/bye-bye-403-building-a-filter-resistant-web-crawler-part-i-what-is-web-scraping-442b268f64f3
Part II: https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/bye-bye-403-building-a-filter-resistant-web-crawler-part-ii-building-a-proxy-list-49ffe437f458
But there is another step in masking the scraper that we now must consider. To illustrate, think of it this way:
Imagine that somebody is bugging you on any social media platform and you’ve blocked them. Let’s say you’re an influencer so you get hundreds of follows every day and it is really hard to do a “profile check” of every follower to make sure that they are not the person who you’ve blocked. What would be the easiest way for you to make a preliminary guess? Obviously, checking the name of the new followers would be your first line of defense. Well, what if somebody with the same name and profile picture started following you? Would the fact that their profile snippet listed them as being from a different country than before keep you from blocking them right away? Not likely. In all likelihood, it would make you more suspicious of this person because they are being deceitful.
Think of a web server bot filter as the “influencer with an annoying follower”. By cycling our IP address, we change our respective location ID, and “profile pic”, but we are still listed as a connection from the same type of laptop, with the same OS version, from the same browser, etc. It’s pretty easy to peg and filter. So what is a budding web scraper to do? Cycle your User-Agent.
A User-Agent is essentially a field in your HTTP/S headers that tells the web server the browser version, host OS version, host machine form factor, and some other small tidbits about every request that comes through. This serves two purposes: diagnostics of the web content (to see if a certain bug is only reported on certain OSes, Browsers, or some combination of the two) and security (to see who’s connected and what are they connecting from to track possible offenders during and/or after a security incident). So in layman’s terms, a User-Agent tells the web server about the connecting machine, whereas an IP address tells it more about where you’re coming from. Make sense? Good!
To begin cycling User-Agents, head here for an up-to-date collection of desktop User-Agents:
Pro Tip: We can also scrape the mobile versions of websites by changing the User Agent. That is actually how the “show desktop site” option on Mobile Browsers works. The browser will spoof your User Agent as if it came from a desktop device despite the fact that you are on mobile, thus showing you the “desktop version” of any content. The same works in reverse for scraping mobile-only content
Now, we could just copy/paste all of these user-agents into a file, but this is a web scraping post series after all so instead, create a new project file and call it user_agent.py
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup import random
import requests class UserAgent: ua_source_url='https://deviceatlas.com/blog/list-of-user-agent-strings#desktop' def __init__(self):
self.new_ua = random.choice(self.get_ua_list())
So first we’re making the UserAgent class. If you’ve made it this far into the series you can probably put together that I am a big fan of encapsulation. This is largely due to coming from the Network Engineering and IT Technical worlds before I started writing code where, it is assumed, that an incident WILL wake you up EVERY TIME you are on call at no earlier than 4 AM. Because of this, I am a huge fan of creating things that are easily debugged. Getting paged at 4, getting to the office by 4:30, and leaving by 4:45 to actually have some semblance of a morning with my family is preferred to taking 3 hours to fix a simple issue that was buried under layers of junk. Because if it takes me 3 hours, then I have solved my problem by 7:30. You know, just in time to start “normal” work for the day…
That being said, the UserAgent class is going to handle all the user-agenty things for us! The class variable we’ve created ua_source_url is outside of the __init__ function, as you might have noticed. Why is that? Because everything inside __init__ only “exists” after an instance of the class is called (aka instantiated) in your code. Class level variables can be referenced directly and more importantly, are shared among all instances of that class. Meaning when we multithread this bad boy, we won't have to store that particular string in memory more than once.
Within our __init__ function is the new_ua property which we want to be different for each instance of this class but not be pulled into existence until the class is created.
Side Note: For a further understanding of __init__ , what it does, and how to use it, stick around. There is a post coming on that very soon!
The new_ua property picks a random user agent from a list of user agents. Where will we get that list you ask? From the code your about to type:
def get_ua_list(self, source=ua_source_url):
r = requests.get(source)
soup = BeautifulSoup(r.content, "html.parser")
tables = soup.find_all('table')
return [table.find('td').text for table in tables]
So what have we done here? Well, we have scraped the page above (as we do) for the user-agent information listed on that page. As with all of our little scraping scripts, it started with a Requests get() function, fed the response content to our HTML parser (BeautifulSoup), found the table markup for each user-agent, and extracted the text of the data of each table. Now that this function is complete, does the __init__ make a bit more sense? If not, allow me to explain:
As soon as we create an instance of the UserAgent class ANYWHERE in our code, it will run this function without us needing to touch it. When the function completes, it will have assigned the list of potential UserAgents to the property new_ua . How is this relevant? Take a look at the terminal screen capture below which shows the output of the following code:
i=1
while i <= 4:
print(UserAgent().new_ua)
i+=1
As you can see, we do not need to write the user agents to a file, which involves opening the file, reading it, then closing it again, relying on disk memory. Instead, we read this list into RAM (the faster, easier-to-clean storage) and retrieve it only when we need it, getting a different UserAgent each time through the random.choice() function
Pro Tip: For those of you who are unfamiliar with random.choice() , it basically does the same thing when selecting from a list or iterable as random.randint(0, len(sample_list)) . Simply put, it selects a pseudo-random item from any iterable data structure you pass to it. In instances like this, random.choice() is my preference because both approaches do roughly the same thing and .choice() is fewer keystrokes.
Alright, Mavericks (Season of the Drifter anyone 😉) you’ve got the tools to fool 99% of bot filters. But do you know how to use them? Head out into the Wild and find out, then report back. I’d love to hear your stories of the datasets your gathering and what you plan to do with them! Successes and failures are equally welcome because this completes the first set of countermeasures we’re going to discover. These are referred to (by me at least) as the “hard skills” of web scraping. The skills we need to develop our knowledge. But how are your instincts? Find out next week in part four when we break into the intermediate stuff: Timing and Throttling! | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/bye-bye-403-building-a-filter-resistant-web-crawler-part-iii-user-agents-5df330ce253 | ['Jake Cahill'] | 2019-03-30 05:13:07.922000+00:00 | ['Web Scraping', 'Data Science', 'Programming', 'Python', 'Web Development'] |
Buzz Tracking — Know What Audience Says About Your Brand | As a marketer or a business owner, you might be having a large fan base who could be mentioning, liking, commenting, or tweeting about your brand. But, have you been able to track any of these? If not, then it’s time for you to resort to buzz tracking or buzz monitoring to catch every brand mention in the online space.
Nearly 97% of consumers use online media to research any product or service they want to buy. Upon that, 89% of consumers read online reviews and business responses to understand the way you react. Now, how are these statistics relatable to buzz tracking?
It indicates that customers are talking about your brand online. They want reassurance before they invest in your products or services. For this, they are turning to every possible medium in the online space right from online review sites to social media sites. All they want is to learn about your products and services. They repeatedly visit your website and talk about your brand everywhere that creates buzz, which acts as social proof.
There are numerous ways you can track buzz that we will be discussing in this blog, but before moving forward, let’s see how you can create a buzz.
Here’s how you can create a social buzz
A great way to create social buzz is by launching new products and services and bringing them into the public eye. And, one that’s hot and trending currently is sharing teasers that get the customer excited. However, you have to be clear with the platform you choose to release teasers. Here, Twitter is the appropriate platform that would be useful for your products and build anticipation. Also, email marketing will play a significant role in sharing the details further.
The best example is the Amazon that created a buzz for their gadget “The Echo” or popularly known as Amazon Alexa for which it created three teaser ads. Missy Elliott, Alec Baldwin, and former Miami Dolphins quarterback, Dan Marino were the stars who acted in the commercial. You can have a look at the commercial down below-
Another great way to get the people talking is by building awareness that the non-profit organization- Worldwide Breast Cancer did so well. The organization created a campaign known as #KnowYourLemons. It used a crate of 12 lemons to explain different warning signs, as shown in the image down below.
We can say that it is one of the biggest and most powerful routes to persuade customers into buying your products and services. It is crucial that you accurately track your buzz on various digital avenues. All you need to do is to tap into customer conversations, opinions, and recommendations. Other important things you have to consider are:
Public discussion avenues on the Internet like boards and forums
Consumer ratings
Moblogs
Social networking sites
What Will You Get Out of Buzz Tracking?
When it comes to buzz tracking, the most important benefit it gives is marketing insight into the consumer attitude and perception that it has for your brand. Other than this, there are many more benefits that will compel you to resort to buzz tracking. Here are some of them noted below, let’s have a look:
Sentiment Analysis
When it comes to buzz tracking the very first thing that comes to our mind is sentiment analysis. Buzz tracking aids the identification of important topics that trigger a specific sentiment and shapes public perceptions. Whether positive or negative comments surround your brand, they will help you spot the key factors or trigger points that you might not have otherwise. And, working on those key factors you can attract a large customer base by creating a marketing strategy around their sentiments.
More Market Intelligence
One of the biggest advantages of buzz tracking is the ability to locate your market and get more insights about who is talking about what and when. As soon as you get insights into your niche market, you get to know which product or service of yours people are looking for. This way, you can reach people, help them, and generate a sale. Moreover, you can benefit your brand’s image tremendously.
Apart from this, pinpointing your customers will allow for more effective targeting. You can also identify influencers in your industry who could assist you in spreading brand awareness and gauge customer opinions.
Access to all Relevant Discussions
Buzz tracking gives you access to what and how much people are talking about your brand. Whether you are a small business owner or a fortune 500, you will know what is being talked about you. It is always great to have a positive comment about your brand; however, even if you get a negative comment or negative buzz, it will help you spot the issues. When you solve their problems it gives an impression that you are concerned about them. This way, you can make your unhappy customers happy and get things right.
Also, it shows their side of the story that helps you identify the common issues customers face when they use your products or services.
So, now that you know how buzz tracking can benefit your brand, let’s have a look at the steps you can follow and leverage all the social data at your disposal.
2 Steps to Buzz Tracking and Benchmarking Social Conversations
You will get to know the steps to create a buzz baseline to gauge consumer opinion. So, let’s have a look at the outlined steps at different stages of the campaign:
#1 Before You Start A Campaign
The best way to begin buzz tracking is to chart day-to-day conversations and general sentiment about your brand across various marketing avenues available online. Here’s what you need to do:
Find Your Baseline
When we talk about establishing a baseline, begin tracking social channels and understand what people have to say about your brand today. Also, consider how many times you have been a part of the discussion.
The purpose is to know and understand the conversations your brand already generates usually, without the need to launch a campaign. You will also know what your target customers are currently talking about and what is their concern? Also, you will know the buzzwords they are using. All these insights will help you in developing a marketing strategy. You will exactly know what to include in your message and what to leave.
Find Your Competitors’ Baseline
In the step above you have been setting the baseline for your brand. But in this step, you will set the baseline for your competitors. Here you have to consider their brand mentions, likes, comments, traffic, shares, and other important elements. You can use social media analytics tools to get the insights as manually it takes a lot of time.
Consider what their customers have to say about their brand. You will get to know whether they are happy or complaining, which could be a valuable insight to feed your own marketing strategy.
Find Your Industry Baseline
Now you have to set your industry baseline. The purpose is to know what people have to say about your industry, and how often they like to talk about it. Consider industry mentions and take a look at the conversation around the mentions.
Set Goals
Now that you have set a baseline, it’s time to set the goals that can give you a meaningful comparison. You will know how far you have been successful in persuading people at the end of the campaign. The common goals include traffic, lead generation, thought leadership, brand awareness, crisis management, or leads. As long as you delve into the practice of creating social media campaigns and running them across different avenues, you will realize that your marketing goals and predictions are becoming more accurate.
#2 During the Campaign
Look at the Right Numbers
As discussed in the above point, the marketing goals of buzz tracking could be different, but creating a buzz can help you fulfill many goals. Let’s see how you can tap into the conversation and track them to achieve your marketing objective:
Traffic
When it comes to traffic, track what people are more likely to share. It gives you an idea, what appeals to the audience the most. You can also consider the email traffic you received, the number of time people stayed on your page and the source from where people are coming.
Lead Generation
Lead generation is related to sales activities that take place on your page. So, the factors would be different from others, where social shopping is the main focus; especially, if it is an eCommerce website. Here you can track social listening metrics that include conversations, feedback, suggestions, and product reviews.
Thought Leadership
After lead generations come thought leadership, where you have to track different elements. It includes- mentions of your brand or thought leaders, referral visits to your website, backlinks, comments, shares, and retweets.
Brand Awareness
Brand recall and brand recognition are two parameters that come to mind when we think of awareness. To measure brand awareness and the buzz created around your brand, you need to track the following:
Impressions, reach, brand mentions, the share of voice, likes comments, and shares, and lastly the public sentiment that surrounds your brand. Monitoring these, you will know whether you are heading in the right direction or not.
Look Beyond the Numbers
Many marketers are fooled as they completely focus on numbers. They only consider the volume of posts, mentions, likes, shares, and followers. Based on these, they decide whether their marketing campaign is a hit or a miss. But, when it comes to buzz tracking, a completely different picture emerges in the absence of context and sentiments that surround your brand.
When you consider public sentiments and context, you get a closer look at what type of buzz surrounding your brand. You need to look into public perception by reading the comments and understanding the discussions. Supposedly, you encounter negative reviews and frustration, it’s too early to equate the number of comments and shares with success. So, ignoring the context can prove dangerous.
Make Changes as Needed
Now that you have considered every aspect of buzz tracking the biggest advantage you can have is the margin and opportunity to make changes in the strategy of the campaign.
Real-time buzz tracking will allow you to tweak the tonality of the message you want to spread, or change the concept after discovering the trigger points. However, make sure that you plan for a long-running campaign to have a more accurate picture of the buzz it will generate. Also, you have more time and margin to make changes as campaigns designed for a short duration don’t give a complete picture. We would recommend you to follow a structured plan even if you are making changes so you can use the social data to its full capacity.
Summarize and Record
After considering numerous elements and measuring the results, it’s time to record what you did and the time you made the change. As you aggregate and summarize the results, you can refer to them later on for review and incorporate all that you learned into your next marketing campaign. It provides for a better ground of comparison and understands the intensity of impact it left on your customers.
How Mentionlytics Can Help in Buzz Tracking?
Buzz tracking involves loads of information available online that your consumers or audience share on different marketing avenues. It can be challenging to track this and more time-consuming. Instead, we recommend using social media monitoring tools for buzz tracking. It will give you a complete picture of your customers’ behaviour, preferences, sentiments, and engagement.
One such social media monitoring tool is Mentionlytics. With Mentionlytics, you can enjoy a hassle-free time tracking loads of information in one go. It offers numerous features that are incredibly beneficial for your brand management that include:
You can collect important insights,
Look for trends and strategize your campaign
Access to mention insights,
Find the right influencers for your brand,
Grow your brand’s reputation and sales
Know about your competitors, products, and industry
Discover public opinion about your brand
Complete media coverage, including social media, online news, blogs, and any website.
Apart from this, you can also join in forum discussions, comments, and blog posts to spread awareness about your brand with Mentionlytics.
So, what are you waiting for?
Get started with a free version here!
Original article: https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/buzz-tracking-know-what-audience-says-about-your-brand/ | https://medium.com/@mentionlytics/buzz-tracking-know-what-audience-says-about-your-brand-84b92ab8e167 | [] | 2021-03-22 17:39:24.670000+00:00 | ['Audience', 'Tracking', 'Brand Strategy', 'Monitoring'] |
Where To Invest In Europe Post-Pandemic | Where To Invest In Europe Post-Pandemic
Article exclusively based on publicly available information and reflecting solely my personal convictions.
COVID-19 crisis is an unprecedented sanitary crisis that will inevitably lead to an unprecedented societal, economic and financial crisis. Current pandemic plunges the planet into the dark and forces individuals and businesses to adapt.
Today, we find ourselves in the early innings of a new period sending us into a world of uncertainty. Global shockwaves can accelerate adoption rates and even propel us into a new future. With Covid-19, we are already seeing early signs of a shift in how consumers and businesses behave.
Some of these shifts will stick around and create long-term digital disruptions that will shape businesses for decades to come and define the post-pandemic environment. These societal shifts will translate into new promising ventures that will thrive in the post-pandemic world.
In this article, I will analyse some of these promising sub-sectors. | https://medium.com/@antoningurycoupier/where-to-invest-in-europe-post-pandemic-aaf52101dbf2 | ['Antonin Gury-Coupier'] | 2020-05-21 07:45:33.443000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Venture Capital', 'Pandemic', 'Startup', 'Investment'] |
Chocolate: I Don’t Want a New Drug | 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/the-bad-influence/chocolate-i-dont-want-a-new-drug-d3e6f4312bca | ['Julie Ranson'] | 2020-12-23 21:13:59.778000+00:00 | ['Chocolate', 'Stimulus', '50 Words', 'The Bad Influence', 'Stimulants'] |
What are the new MOT test rules and who is exempt? | Photo source — Ashcroft Auto Centre — Facebook Page
The MOT test is conducted essentially to ensure the protection of drivers while driving on the road and to make sure your car is in the good condition to hit the road. The MOT in Warrington is supervised by the local committees and the administration itself. If you are operating a vehicle without an up-to-date MOT history, it is against the law. It will indicate your vehicle insurance is invalid, and you would not be able to refresh your tax record as well. Due to the covid-19 pandemic, many changes are executed across the country. And also, MOT rules are modified with the altered protocols. Nevertheless, lockdown means are gently being rolled back, and many car owners may inquire if anything has changed related to MOT checks.
Take a look at the following points if you want to know the new MOT test rules:
As per the information, MOT expiry dates were earlier extended by six months for all vehicles such as cars, vans or motorcycles, which were due for a test on or after 30 March 2020. But according to new rules, any cars, vans or motorcycles which are due for MOT tests from today, will be needed to get a test pass.
As the rules have changed from today, those who are qualified for the six-month extension can however use that extension. It means if your vehicle was due an MOT test between 30 March and 31 July, your MOT test is still valid. Your history will show that your MOT is valid till the six months.
Get more information about new MOT test rules. We are always here for our customers to provide the best. There are many MOT Test centers where you can book your appointment and get the best customer service! | https://medium.com/@breakdownrecoverywarrington/what-are-the-new-mot-test-rules-and-who-is-exempt-c85132ba4d83 | ['Breakdown Recovery Warrington'] | 2021-07-06 07:16:08.865000+00:00 | ['Mot Warrington', 'United Kingdom', 'Automotive', 'Automobile'] |
Why Was Kristy Bamu Murdered On Christmas By His Sister? | This story depicts the incredibly heartbreaking murder of Kristy Bamu and gut-retching torture of him and his siblings leading up to Christmas day by their eldest sister Magalie Bamu and her boyfriend Eric Bikubi.
Backstory:
Magalie Bamu and Eric Bikubi were jailed for life for torturing and drowning Kristy Bamu. Photograph: Metropolitan police/PA
On February 21st, 1983 in Zaire; previously known as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Magalie Bamu was born to her parents Pierre and Jacqueline. The family then moved to Paris, with Pierre opening his carpentry business designing and manufacturing furniture. He later moved him and his wife back to Congo to continue the business and 13-year-old Magalie was left to live with her mother’s niece Pheobe and her husband Ferdinand in Dagenham, East London. She was treated horribly, like a slave.
Later in her life she met Eric Bikubi through a mutual friend and the two hit it off instantly. He was a football coach and the relationship started off great, but it did not last long. Unfortunately, Eric became extremely controlling, verbally abusive and refused to let her wear make-up or see her friends.
Eric Bikubi was also born in Congo in 1983, his mother died during childbirth. Throughout his life his father taught him about a type of witchcraft called kindoki; which was widely believed in Congo to be responsible for child possessions. When a child is pointed out, usually by a religious leader or elder, as possessing kindoki steps would be taken to rid the child of the evil spirit that was possessing them. This included: beatings, salvation submissions, water deprivation and continuous prayer without food. It is believed during the possession this evil spirit has taken over the child, so they are unable to feel the pain from the horrible mutilations and beatings, which is obviously not the case. Simple things children do are viewed as indications of kindoki possession such as wetting the bed, biting your nails, and stealing a pencil. Very ordinary things with an extremely dangerous consequence.
During their relationship, Eric would talk about the visions he would have as a child like seeing rats that were never there. Much like Magalies family Eric and his Uncle fled Congo in 1990 to escape the war there and settled in London and his Uncle would talk more with him about kindoki and witchcraft before he passed away. Throughout their relationship Magalie said he grew more obsessed with sorcery and witchcraft and began having dreams of his brother killing him. To rid himself of what he believed to be evil spirits, he moved around London to many different apartments to outrun these spirits, but this did not work so he began consulting Nigerian pastors for help.
Listen to this podcast to learn more on kindoki https://www.barnardos.org.uk/podcast/witchcraft-mardoche-yembi
Christmas 2010: Torture and Murder
Kristy Bamu (bottom) pictured with his siblings Source: https://images.app.goo.gl/Xqm9v8FhA8t7SqiR6
Early in 2010, Eric proposed to Magalie which made her siblings even more excited to come from Paris to London to visit the couple for Christmas. According to Kelly Bikubi (20-year-old sister) everything started off very well for the first couple of days but suddenly it turned sour when Eric and Magalie began accusing all five siblings of being possessed with kindoki. Other than Kelly all the siblings were born and raised in Paris, so they were extremely confused and pled against the accusations, nevertheless the torture began.
The siblings were made to pray constantly, they were refused food and drink, beaten and Eric even forced them to jump out a window to see if they could fly. Kelly said no matter how much they begged him to stop torturing them it was clear his mind was made up and he genuinely believed the siblings had travelled to London to kill him. This was someone they looked up to for protection and safety, but their 29-year-old sister was allowing this to happen. Eventually, Kelly and her 11-year-old sister confessed to being witches to avoid the beatings which worked for them. Woefully, this did not work for Kristy.
The same night of the sister’s confession Kristy was beaten and involuntarily wet himself, once Eric found his underwear, he took this as a sign that Kristy was the one who bought the kindoki into his house and began to focus on him; even encouraging the other siblings to join in. They were forced to restrain Kirsty whilst his sister Magalie smashed bathroom tiles on his back, hit his hands with a hammer, used a knife to make cuts all over his body and used pliers to mutilate one of his ears. For 3 ½ days this torture continued resulting in 130 separate injuries. On the fourth day, Christmas eve, Kristy was begging and pleading for his sister Magalie to just let him die. Eric began forcing the siblings to clean the blood from the apartment whilst playing loud music and screaming at them which led to a noise complaint from a neighbor, but the complaint was not followed up.
Brutal: Blood is splashed across the ceramic tiles used to attack Kristy (Image: PA)
Later that night, Eric made a call to Pierre and Jacqueline telling them Kristy was possessed and if they did not come to Kristy, he would kill him. At first the parents were in disbelief, but they suddenly began panicking trying to organize a rental for the 6-hour car journey from Paris to London. Whilst the parents made this journey Eric and Magalie forced all five children into the bathtub and started hosing them down with icy water as a cleansing ritual. As a result of the 3 ½ days of torture, alongside the sleep deprivation and 130 injuries Kristy was mentally and physically exhausted on the 25th December 2010 his head slipped under the water. The couple called the ambulance and the paramedics arrived at the scene taking him to the hospital to resuscitate him, but he was already dead. At 8:00pm that night Kelly Bamu called her father and informed him her brother… his son Kristy was dead.
Eric and Magalie were arrested at once and charged with murder and two counts of actual bodily harm.
The trial
They both pled guilty to actual bodily harm on the grounds of diminished responsibility caused by brain damage, but this was rejected, and the case had to go to jury trial. The jury consisted of seven women and five men, the judge said due to the gruesome evidence of these horrific crimes they were excused from serving jury duty again. Eric’s defense claimed his brain injury, his cultural upbringing and schizophrenia diminishes his responsibility for his actions. Magalie’s defense argued she was manipulated as she did not believe in witchcraft. Kelly however testified against her sister and had no pity for her as she spoke of the lack of remorse from her sister whilst her and her siblings begged her to stop as she brutally beat and tortured them.
A court artist’s drawing of Eric Bikubi and Magalie Bamu. Illustration: Julia Quenzler/Central News
At the trial a young woman, Naomi Ilonga and her boyfriend stayed with the couple two years prior to the murder in 2008 and was accused of being possessed due to her biting her nails. The three days that she stayed with them Eric refrained her from eating and sleeping. He and Magalie would sit and pray with her. Her hair that was previously down to the middle of her back was forcibly cut short to release the kindoki. Luckily, she called her Mum to rescue her and she was able to get away. Unfortunately, for Magalie this resulted in punishment for allowing her to leave and Eric forced her to eat off the floor and gave her a black eye, so she went to stay in a women’s refuge. Unbeknownst to her family three months later they got back together, moved into Manor house, and got engaged.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/06/murder-suspect-witchcraft-accusation
Eric Bikubi was eventually sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison and Magalie was sentenced to a minimum of 25 years. The judge told the couple that case was very sadistic and the belief in witchcraft however genuine cannot excuse the assault and killing of any other human being. | https://medium.com/crimes-that-shocked-britain/why-was-kirsty-bamu-murdered-on-christmas-by-his-sister-cdb05029f4e9 | ['Charmaine Wilding'] | 2020-12-26 14:41:39.512000+00:00 | ['Murder', 'Witchcraft', 'True Crime', 'Crime', 'Torture'] |
That awkward feeling after long business presentation :-P | A traveler of both time and space...to be where I want to be…find me another space in another time.
Follow | https://medium.com/datacrat/that-awkward-feeling-after-long-business-presentation-p-870dbce04337 | [] | 2019-02-08 07:41:12.938000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Business', 'Charts', 'Data Science', 'Big Data'] |
The Most Frightening Person I Faced In The Police | Crafty police officers always had a trick up their sleeves.
They knew where to hide to get forty-winks on the night-shift, where to grab a free coffee and the shortest route to eternal damnation.
PC Ewan Hill was a sociable type, always full of jokes and patter. But Ewan had a self-destruct button, he liked to take it out and contemplate it’s inviting colour, he took pleasure in caressing its smooth rounded shape and once in a while he said, ‘screw this,’ and pressed the damn thing.
One cold night, Ewan and I were sent out to walk the town. Foot patrol in a nippy Scottish winter is no cop’s idea of fun. My tutor was crafty enough to avoid being out in the cold for too long.
A quick jaunt through the town confirmed no-one was hanging around and then Ewan took me to the local clothing factory. The security guards welcomed us into their office and we sat warming ourselves in front of the fire with a piping-hot mug of tea, oblivious to what was to come.
Photo by Calum Lewis on Unsplash
The scariest man.
The instruction to walk the town centre had come from Inspector McDuncan, a strict officer, known for a bark that left teeth marks. We cowered in his presence, woe betides the officer who crossed him. He had a management style so brutal Robert Mugabe and Colonel Gaddafi used to phone him up for advice.
Like most cops, I was worried about getting caught out by Inspector McDuncan. Not crafty Ewan, he laughed it off, ‘He won’t catch me out,’ was his mantra. Ewan was my tutor and I fell in line.
The security office was safe, cameras covered every approach. It was cosy warm. Sprawled in our chairs we drank tea and swapped stories. Idle as a pair of wellies in summer.
Our radios came to life.
A tinny sound and a question, “PC Hill, PC McEwan — where are you?” It was the formidable Inspector McDuncan. PC Hill remained sprawled in his chair, legs crossed on a small table. He radioed back, “We are in the High Street checking the property, Inspector.”
Puzzled silence.
Seconds later, “I’m in the High Street,— and I can’t see you.” We bolted upright. Eyes as wide as our jaws.
“Er no, Inspector. We are checking around the back of the shops, we will join you shortly,” PC Hill quivered as we scrambled out of our chairs. Like sprinters out of the starting block, I followed Ewan out of the security office.
We ran up the lane towards the town centre, crossed through the car park, raced around the Post Office and dodged through an alleyway. It took us out into the bottom of the High Street, yards from where Inspector McDuncan stood, arms folded, the shiny black brogue on his right foot tapping on the ground.
We tried to hide our breathlessness.
Inspector McDuncan’s face rumpled with disdain, he peered at us through screwed eye-sockets. I wasn’t confident we’d been quick enough to allay his suspicions. He scowled some more, looking us up and down.
“You have been hiding somewhere, haven’t you?” “No. No. Inspector, we were just checking the rear of the properties,” Ewan, answered. “You have been sitting somewhere drinking tea haven’t you?” Inspector McDuncan challenged again. “Not us inspector. We like to do our job thoroughly. More properties get broken into round the back, so we like to nose around there.”
More muttered insincerity, but maybe, just maybe, it was enough. If we stuck to our guns we might hoodwink the scary Inspector McDuncan into believing it. Inspector McDuncan looked away from Ewan and landed his gaze on me.
“Have you two been sitting in the clothing factory security office drinking tea?”
More of a statement than a question.
Despite quaking in my boots I felt obliged to stick to my senior colleague’s story. I couldn’t let Ewan down.
“No Sir.” “Are you sure?” “Yes, sir.” “Then why have you got one of the security officer’s hats on?”
Ewan looked at my head and groaned. We’d been rumbled. In our rush to get out of the security office — I’d grabbed the wrong hat. | https://medium.com/the-haven/the-most-frightening-person-i-faced-in-the-police-358aa41bb543 | ['Malky Mcewan'] | 2020-12-12 19:11:54.920000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Funny', 'Storytelling', 'Leadership', 'Humour'] |
Vuejs object updating inside Vuex array: CRUD | Vuex state management and interactions
Vuex is a state management library for Vuejs applications by providing a central data store with consistent ways of updating an object of an array inside the state of the Vuex store.
Components of a Vuejs application may call and use the defined actions to trigger or dispatch mutations that actually poses a first-hand access to the state of the Vuex store. Upon changes to the state of the store components can fetch the updated state for view.
The goal of this article is to discuss the proper update of an object inside the array using mutations and actions. Setting up a project with Vuex and Vue will give us a project structure that looks as like this.
Project folder structure
Here is a snippet of the App.vue component where we fetch and display the array of items from our store. Each item is described as an object with a text attribute. For instance: text: “vuex wins”. The array holds all the item objects wherein each object has a text attribute. The challenge we have picked up today is updating the text of a specific object in the middle of the array.
/!-- App.vue -->
<template>
<ul>
<li v-for="(item, index) in loadItems" :key="index" >
<span @dblclick="enterEditing(index)">{{item.text}}</span>
<input v-show="edit" :value="item.text" @keyup.enter="updateItem">
</li>
</ul>
</template>
<script>
export default {
data() {
return {
edit: false
}
},
methods: {
updateItem(e) {
const newValue = e.target.value.trim()
this.$store.dispatch('updateItem', {
index: this.newIndex,
text: newValue})
.then(() => {
this.edit = false
})
}
},
}
</script>
The actions and mutations of the Vuex implementation understand each other using mutation types definition. Here we will focus on the update aspect of the CRUD operations. The rest of the CRUD is available in the full implementation available on Github. Most of this is inspired from a Stack overflow post and the official Vuex todos application.
<!-- store/mutation-types.js -->
export const UPDATE_ITEM = 'UPDATE_ITEM'
<!-- store/actions.js -->
export const updateItem = ({commit}, newUpdate) => {
commit(types.UPDATE_ITEM, newUpdate)
}
<!-- store/mutations.js -->
[types.UPDATE_ITEM] (state, payload) {
Object.assign(state.Items[payload.index], { text: payload.text });
// Other ways to update
// this.Items[payload.index].text = "CHANGED";
// Vue.set(this.Items, payload.index, { text: "CHANGED" });
}
I hope this helps fellow developers in their projects. Here is the source code links. | https://medium.com/@fthialem/vuejs-object-updating-inside-vuex-array-crud-90cf25c00011 | ['Fthi Arefayne'] | 2019-10-18 07:25:50.989000+00:00 | ['Vuejs', 'Vue', 'Arrays', 'Objects', 'Vuex'] |
If God is Love, Why All the Destruction? | by Jim Gordon
In the bible we read that God is love. That sounds so nice, especially when the meaning according to the dictionary is strong affection for another; affection and tenderness; affection based on admiration; profoundly tender.
Yet we read in the old testament about a God that sounds so different from this description. We read of a God of destruction, vengeance, punishment and hatred. One that kills people whether it be men, women or children. A God that kills animals and destroys property. What kind of love is that?
The new testament tells us more about a God of love. Jesus came to this earth to show us what God may really be like. The examples Jesus showed were love, forgiveness, acceptance, affection, tenderness and compassion.
My personal opinion is that God is like the God Jesus portrayed. I think the old testament was more about the views of human beings, what they thought, how they perceived God and how they used God to promote their desires and hatred of their enemies. Again, this is just my view but it makes more sense to me knowing that the bible states that God is love.
People will argue that God’s ways are higher than ours and we cannot always know and understand what the purpose of God is in different situations. They will also argue that the bible is perfect and inerrant and we cannot question what is written therein. Yet I do not believe the perfect godly trinity is Father, Son and Holy Bible. I believe the bible was inspired yet written by men. Men also translated and interpreted it. I feel that over the years of man having a hand in doing these things that many things got changed, misinterpreted and mistranslated. I think God got a bad rap due to the involvement of man in the process.
Even the bible itself does not say it is inerrant. The bible makes clear who the perfect, living Word of God actually is, and it is not a book. We read in John 1:1, John 1:14 and John 5:39 that the Word of God is Jesus.
I say all this not to try and disprove the bible. I say this to show that God is love. God is not out to punish and destroy his creation just because of things they do. He sometimes will correct us, just as a parent does their children. This is also done in a loving manner. As a loving parent, we want the best for our kids and sometimes it involves a disciplinary action for their own good. But disciplining in love is completely different from beating, injuring, being hateful and killing to make a point.
It frustrates me when I read articles about various christian leaders making comments about how God is punishing someone or some area with earthquakes, fires, sickness and death because of something they consider to be sinful. To me, that is the god of the old testament. One that men use to validate their own thoughts and desires.
The best way to find out what God is like is to read the gospels written about the life of Jesus. He represented what God is really like. He loved people. He did not force his views on others. He accepted people, healed people, fed people and offered them a better way of living. A way of love. It did not depend on who the person was, what they looked like, what their color or nationality was, who they loved or what political party they followed. Jesus loved them all and treated them with respect and kindness. How much better our world would be if we, who claim to be children of God (1), treated all people with the same love, kindness and respect. Rather than demanding judgment, exclusion and killing; or demanding our views and opinions be forced on others or our political views be enforced on all. I say look out for the best interests of others, and do so in a loving and kind way. Live your life as you feel the Spirit is leading you, but do not force others to see things the same way. Remember Jesus told us to love God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There should be no mistake here, God is love and we are to show that love to everyone.
(1) Link to article by Damon Brewster | https://medium.com/@donewthreligion/if-god-is-love-why-all-the-destruction-c8cb80a4dc85 | ['Done With Religion'] | 2020-01-18 18:45:01.723000+00:00 | ['Forgiveness', 'Bible', 'Acceptance', 'Destruction', 'Christian Living'] |
MBL snapshot CBK Airdrop support exchanges | 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/moviebloc/mbl-snapshot-cbk-airdrop-support-exchanges-87a0ee86c7ff | [] | 2020-12-22 05:48:36.113000+00:00 | ['Snapshot', 'Airdrop', 'Exchange', 'Cobak', 'Moviebloc'] |
History of Gambling Part I — Origins | History of Gambling Part I — Origins
History of Gambling Part I — The Origins
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about gambling? Poker and Blackjack? Baccarat and Roulette? Or maybe sumptuous Casinos in Las Vegas? But did you ever think about its origins?
Actually, gambling is a pursuit as old as mankind and there is evidence that many civilizations supported and encouraged this. Moreover, it also played an important role in the history of the nations as we nowadays know them.
The earliest evidence of gambling is dated around 2300 BC. And it comes from Ancient China. Tiles which presumably were used for “chance games” and lottery-type games were unearthed from different sites. Other gambling artifacts, like dices, were discovered in sites from Rome, Greece, Egypt and India. Did you ever think why the 6–6 dice combination is considered to be good luck nowadays? Apparently, the ancient greeks named this “the throw of Aphrodite” and it would have indicate the game’s victory.
In Greek legends, it is said that Zeus — the god of the sky, Hades — the god of the underworld and Poseidon — the god of seas, divided the Universe with the throw of a dice. In the northern countries history, kings of Sweden and Norway are stated to have divided lands by a roll of dice.
When it comes to card games, the credits goes once again to the Chinese people. Evidence relates the chinese used to play cards since the 9th century. But certainly, the cards used in that time were very different from the 52 card-deck we are used to today.
We will continue our tour through gambling history with an upcoming article where we will discuss about Gambling Evolution through time. | https://medium.com/@DragonINC/history-of-gambling-part-i-origins-7dc7a54347e6 | ['Dragon Inc.'] | 2017-12-16 16:56:00.549000+00:00 | ['Gambling', 'Gaming', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain'] |
Are We Doing This Mother’s Day Thing Right? | by Tristan Misko and Uma Krishnaswamy
Over 84% of Americans celebrated Mother’s Day in 2019 by making some sort of purchase, with an average spending of $196 per consumer.
What images flicker across your mind when you think of Mother’s Day? A blue skied May day, a box of chocolates, a lively bouquet, a trip to a nice restaurant, and perhaps a few more items with a hefty price tag. Given the current circumstances, many of these aren’t possible, but is ordering a late arrival box of chocolates from Amazon really the way to go?
According to the National Retail Federation, over 84% of Americans celebrated Mother’s Day in 2019 by making some sort of purchase, with an average spending of $196 per consumer. For retailers, Mother’s Day is a multi-billion dollar industry. They state that over 80% of Americans look to retailers for “inspiration” for their gift giving.
The Buddhist economist sees this kind of behavior as muddleheaded, the product of a pure intention corrupted by worldly desires, corporate greed, and lurid advertisements. This kind of criticism of Mother’s Day is not new. In fact, Anna Jarvais, the woman credited with starting the formal holiday in 1908, became disgusted by the commercialization of the holiday. It was supposed “to be a day of sentiment, not profit.” She fought against commercialization from the 1920s onward, eventually even advocating its repeal.
So, the Buddhist economist wants us to remember that Mother’s Day is a time for us all to acknowledge our profound interdependence with our mothers who bore us and brought us into this world, and to honor the mothers in our lives. She interprets motherhood abstractly, appreciating the maternal roles that our community and our planet play for us, and does her best to honor these as well.
This abstract sense appreciation is nice, but how do we actually change our behavior on Mother’s Day to reflect our values? To answer that question, let’s look at some common practices and suggest more mindful and appropriate alternatives for our current times:
Pick up a new craft together. Over $5 billion is spent on jewelry in the United States for Mother’s Day. Maybe it’s worth considering sitting down with the women in your life, whether that means constructing jewelry, knitting a hat, or decorating a pair of jeans.
More than half of Americans treat mothers to a special outing, usually a dinner, spending over $4.6 billion dollars collectively. While tasty food is a large contributor to spending on Mother’s Day, it’s difficult to source the food served in restaurants. That, and the current pandemic situation render this type of celebration pretty difficult. Think of how meaningful it would be to start a garden with Mom, responsibly sourcing your food and bringing it to your kitchen to cook. Spend an evening cooking with Mom, honoring both your birth mother and Mother earth.
Get creative with the junk lying around your house. The average American throws away approximately 81 pounds of clothing every year, and the fast fashion industry only makes this number worse. Perhaps take old clothes and make them into a blanket, or convert an old sports jersey into a cute top. Picking up a new skill with Mom could be a new way to accomplish a task lying around, while still giving back to our Earth.
Is engaging in rampant consumerism really reflective of how much we love and revere the women in our lives? Is capitalizing on maternal love really an ethical means to celebrate this holiday? Let’s reflect on the more meaningful ways to show we love them.
Tristan Misko and Uma Krishnaswamy are second-year students at University of California, Berkeley. Tristan studies Economics and Math, and Uma studies Economics and Data Science. Both have interests in economic policy and inequality. This article is written for their Buddhist Economics seminar. | https://medium.com/@umakrishnaswamy/are-we-doing-mothers-day-right-955fafbf4b1f | ['Uma Krishnaswamy'] | 2020-05-09 18:15:16.291000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Consumerism', 'Buddhism', 'Earth', 'Mothers Day'] |
June Culturati Magazine | What do our people need today to feel safe, respected, a part of the team, and inspired to meaningfully contribute in the midst of all this turmoil?
I started off asking this question on behalf of our members companies. But then it dawned on me, we should be asking the same for our neighbors, for their neighbors, for the men & women all over the country as we mourn the loss of George Floyd and so many others and rise to demand social and economic justice.
Several weeks ago, Culturati Summit speaker Drucker Professor Jeremy Hunter kicked off Culturati: LIVE. He spoke about how we manage ourselves so that we will emerge even stronger after the “storm.” At that time, there was only the pandemic. Obviously, the storm’s gotten worse as riots have broken out across the country.
“But one thing is certain, when you come out of this storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm is all about.” — Haruki Murakimi, Kafka on the Shore
How do we make the storm(s) a positive, growth oriented event so we’re stronger, more effective, more loving? Professor Hunter told us — during the April Culturati: LIVE — this is a matter of skill.
Jeremy builds off Peter Drucker’s idea of knowledge workers as someone to invest in, develop, help actualize — acknowledging that our inner state impacts our productivity and creativity, thus meriting attention from management.
Especially as managers, we must take responsibility for ourselves, which requires being self aware. And, we’ve got to teach others (knowledge workers) how to take care of themselves.
Jeremy lists the three principles of awareness for managing ourselves during a storm:
Acknowledge what you are experiencing. [body, emotions, stories] Accepting inner experience allows it to flow; resisting/fighting/denying it creates struggle. [Accepting what you’re feeling helps you keep it together.] Attention needs somewhere to go. [Too easy to get over focused on the threats. How do you manage your fear, or is fear managing you?]
Managing ourself means managing our nervous system — the parasympathetic system (relaxation) and our sympathetic nervous system (the “gas pedal”). We need to learn when we’re in overdrive (that unsustainable, flight/fright or massively creative state), from which we’ll crash if we’re not careful into a lethargic, angry, unproductive state. The middle, what Jeremy calls the Green Zone, is when we’re sleeping, calm, humorous, feeling safe, relaxed, fun, easy to be with. We’re an “island of coherence in a time of chaos.” The place from which we manage best, where we can sustain.
I’ll share more about Jeremy’s ideas on attention as the most essential human resource & how attention affects everything we do in a later issue.
You’ll find Jeremy’s Culturati: LIVE presentation here.
I don’t intend to make this introduction about the protests against police violence against Black Americans — the riots happening across America. I’ll simply ask for prayers for the memories of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Freddie Gray, Sam Dubose, Atatiana Jefferson, Philando Castile, Terence Crutcher, Alton Sterling, Jamar Clark, Jeremy McDole, William Chapman II, Walter Scott, Eric Harris, Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Ramos, David Joseph and so many others.
I recommend watching Trevor Noah on George Floyd, Minneapolis Protests, Ahmaud Arbery & Amy Cooper, here.
Fondly,
Eugene Sepulveda | https://medium.com/culturati/june-culturati-magazine-4245099895ad | ['Eugene Sepulveda'] | 2020-11-06 21:35:54.804000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Racial Justice', 'Culture', 'Mindfulness'] |
If you build this, your real estate leads will come… | If you build this, your real estate leads will come…
Remember that old saying…. “If you build it, they will come.”
Guess what: That’s 100% true if you talking about real estate lead generation funnels. I’m going to explain how to build profitable lead gen sources today:
Let me clarify a few things before I dive in:
New marketing tactics are not better than old ones. Marketing does not exist in real estate. Lead Generation does.
Top producing agents have 10–20 lead generation sources for their businesses.
They often span new and older lead generation models. I’m a fan of building new lead generation funnels to your business weekly.
They can be as old as calling on FSBOs. Or they can new tactics like Facebook remarketing.
Here’s an example of what a Top Producers Toolbox would look like:
Matt can get leads from:
YouTube SEO FSBO’s Expired His Sphere Facebook Twitter Referrals
…the list goes on-and-on.
The thing to keep in mind is that marketing isn’t lead generation.
Marketing tactics are things you learn in order to do lead generation.
I tell my favorite story of this here in my video mini-course on Beating Zillow: The Step-By-Step Course To Winning Clients.
But basically, this agent was active on social media and on the first page of Google. But not generating leads.
…why?
He was doing the marketing tactics. But not the lead generation tactics. We gave him a LeadSites and the next week…his incoming leads tripled. Why?
Because he started implementing lead capture technology on top of the marketing he was already doing.
Below are some of my favorite Real Estate Lead Generation methods that usenewer tech to get the leads.
Let’s dive into it… | https://medium.com/@easyagentpro/if-you-build-this-your-real-estate-leads-will-come-78a1acea2d47 | ['Tyler Zey'] | 2017-07-20 18:38:39.788000+00:00 | ['Real Estate', 'Real Estate Investments', 'Real Estate Agent', 'Online Marketing'] |
Tessellations: A Curated Lesson of Free Resources | Tessellations: A Curated Lesson of Free Resources
An easy way to explore the fun side of math with your kids.
Image by author, tesselation credit: OpenClipart-Vectors 27424 Source: Pixabay
This blog post is designed as a lesson, you can follow the links and use them directly with your kids to teach about tessellations. I placed the article links at the top because I did not find any video’s that adequately covered what a tessellation is, so make sure you start at the top. I read through articles, watched videos, and made sure links to printables worked before choosing the best of what I could find to share with you. I have also tried to limit resources to a reasonable number. (Nothing bothers me more giant lists that need intense whittling down before entering the realm of usefulness.)
Read About Tessellations
Math Salamander Tessellations
Cool Math Tessellations
Some of the explanation in the following link is a repeat of what was covered in the previous two links, however, there is a link at the bottom, Tessellation Artist, that takes you to a free program where your student can draw their own freehand tessellations. You can skip to the second link if your child understands the concepts and just wants to explore the drawing program.
Math is Fun Tessellation
Tessellation Artist
Look at Tessellations
You can click on any of these animal pictures to pull up a graphic of the image in a tessellation.
Animal Tessellation Art
Biography of M.C. Escher, an artist who was fascinated with tessellations.
The Mathematical Art of M.C. Escher
Print, Color, & Draw Tessellations
Super Teacher Worksheets Tessellations
Chose a Coloring Page
Draw a Tessellation on Tracing Paper
A video lesson for drawing a chameleon tessellation
A video for drawing a tessellation (requires basic drawing skills, although the concept could be used with younger kids to make geometric tessellations):
Draw a Chameleon Tessellation
Print your own tessellations, (for serious artists)
If you have an art student you may want to watch this video, it is an interesting way you can make print tessellations. It does require some specific supplies but is fascinating to watch even if you decide not to do the project. It will cost about $45.00 to get started, but if you have a budding artist who wants to try it, most of these supplies can be reused. (Supplies she mentions are linked below for your convenience. No affiliate links.)
Print Tessellation Art
If you found this helpful and would like to see more curated lessons, please leave a comment and let me know. | https://medium.com/the-homeschool-nook/tessellations-a-curated-lesson-of-free-resources-a7a559912244 | ['Marla Szwast'] | 2019-11-10 16:01:57.179000+00:00 | ['Homeschooling', 'Mathematics', 'Learning', 'Education', 'Art'] |
Ethical Bias In AI-Based Security Systems: The Big Data Disconnect | It’s a question that has surfaced at the discussion tables of conferences and social chats everywhere-“Can machines turn on humans?”. It’s a question that often accompanies scenes and visuals from movies like the Terminator. But what we know and what we’ve seen from the use of AI in big data is that certain uncertainties and biases have to be considered when designing systems for larger scales with more complex environments.
Image ref: http://www.fullai.org/ethical-issues-ai-top-mind-data-scientists/
What is it that machines feel? What is it that makes them behave the way they are other than the code that’s inserted into their mainframe? Do Isaac Asimov’s three laws still hold ground today in defining the standards for how machines should behave in a convoluted environment? The answers to these questions lie in the way we choose to define the rules of the game and how the machine responds to sudden changes.
Ethical biases are a special zone of uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence studies that concerns the trinkets and levers that pull machines to behave in ways that may seem strange or even detrimental at times. With the rise of autonomous vehicles and AI-driven production methods set to take over the world, an unanswered question demands an answer once again. What do we do about the machines?
Introduction To Biases
Biases and variances from a data perspective are linked to the proximity of the measured values from the actual values. Variance, in this case, is a measure of how far the measured values differ from each other and biases refer to how much the measured values differ from the actual values. In a highly specific case of models with great accuracies, both variance and bias would be small. This may, however, reflect how poorly the model will perform with new data. Nevertheless, having a low bias and variance is difficult to achieve and is the bane of data analysts everywhere. Biases are particularly more difficult to treat for use cases that involve simple decision making where simple binary computations aren’t enough.
One is tempted to ask, why is it that biases find their way into the system? And if a machine fails to decide at a critical point no worse than humans, then why are they used in the first place? To answer these questions, one has to look at the general methodology of how models are built in the big data services realm.
Data is first collected and cleaned from actuators and sensors that provide raw numbers for analysts to work on. These values then undergo a preprocessing step where they are normalized, standardized or converted to a form where dimensions and units are removed. Once the data is converted into a suitable tabular or comma-separated format, it is inserted into a network of layers or functional equations. If the model uses a series of hidden layers, rest assured they will have an activation function that will introduce a bias every step of the way.
However, biases can also enter the system through the many pitfalls of collection methods. Maybe the data wasn’t balanced towards a certain group or class of outputs, maybe the data was incomplete, erroneous or maybe there wasn’t any data, to begin with. As the datasets grow larger and larger with more incomplete records, the possibility of the system filling those gaps with some predefined values is certain. This results in another kind of assumptive bias.
The Black Box Conundrum
Many scholars would also argue that numbers may not mean the same thing without proper context. In the controversial book titled-‘The Bell Curve’ for example, the claim made by the author about IQ variations among racial groups was challenged with the notion of environmental constraints and differences. But if a human can arrive at such resolutions, how long would it take a machine to remove such judgemental lapses in its logic?
Chances are minimal. If the machine has been fed with erroneous or faulty data, it will output faulty values. The problem arises from the ambiguity of how the AI model is built. These are usually black box models that exist as data sinks and sources with no explanation of what goes inside. To the user, such black-box models cannot be interrogated or questioned as to how it arrives at a result. Furthermore, there are additional problems to be tackled with result variations. Due to a lack of understanding of how the black box operates, analysts may arrive at different results even with the same inputs. Such variations may not make a huge difference for values where precision isn’t key, but the data realm is seldom so generous. Industrial manufacturers, for example, would be at a loss if AI systems failed to predict highly specific parameters such as pH, temperature or pressure to large points. However, when the objective is to provide answers to problems like loan compatibility, criminal recidivism or even applicability for college admissions, AI’s lack of crisp values comes at a disadvantage. The onus is however on AI enthusiasts to tackle the issue from another angle.
Put, the methods and the rules of the interferences between layers must be resolved to interpret what every line of code and coefficient represents. The black-boxes thus have to be uprooted and dissected to know what makes the machines tick, which is easier said than done. Taking a look at even the simplest of neural network AI is enough to show how complicated such systems are original. Nodes and layers all stack up with individual weights that interact with the weights of other layers.
It may look like a magnificent deal to the trained eye, but it leaves little interpretation for understanding the machines. Can it be simply due to the difference in language levels of humans and machines? Can there be a way to break down the logic of machine languages in a format that the layman can understand?
Types of Biases
Covering back the history of biases in data analysis, there can be several biases that are introduced as a result of improper techniques or predefined biases in the entity responsible for the analysis. Misclassification and presumptive biases can be produced from models that are well-positioned towards balanced results because of certain inclinations and interests of the programmer.
It’s an all too common mistake that certain marketing analysts make when dealing with leads. Collection software provides great data on people who have converted and those who haven’t. Instead of focusing on models that focus on both classes of people, most may be tempted to build models just for the unconverted leads. In doing so, they end up blinding themselves to the richness of available data for those that have become customers.
Another issue that plagues AI models is the inability to properly classify or misclassify data that culminates into a disaster for analysts. In the production industry, such errors fall under the Type I and Type II category-the former being when a classification is made for a record which doesn’t belong and the latter being when it fails to classify which does belong. From the context of the production lot, quality control engineers are quick to stamp the accuracy of goods by testing only a small portion of them. It saves time as well as money. But it can be the perfect environment for such hypothetical biases to occur.
Another similar example has been observed in image detection software where neural networks scan through broken portions of pictures to reconstruct logical shapes. There can be multiple problems caused by the similarity in the orientation of the objects in images that can cause the model to give out strikingly contentious results. Current age Convolutional Neural Networks are capable of factoring such intricacies but require large amounts of testing and training data for reasonable results.
Certain biases are a consequence of the lack of proper data being available were using complex models unwarranted and even unnecessary. It is a commonly held belief that certain models and neural network programming should only be applied to datasets once they reach a statistically significant number of records. This also means that algorithms have to be designed to check the quality of data on a timely basis reiteratively.
Fighting AI With AI
Is the solution to the problem with AI biases hidden within AI itself? Researchers believe that improving the tuning methods by which analysts collect and demarcate information is important and should take into account that not all information is necessary.
That being said, there should be an increased emphasis in removing and eradicating inputs and values that skew the models in completely untoward places. Data auditing is another means by which biases can be checked and removed well in time. This method like any standard auditing procedure involves a thorough cleanup and checkup of the processed data as well as the raw input data. Auditors track changes and note down possible improvements that can be made to the data as well as ensuring that the data has complete transparency to all stakeholders.
Specialized XAI models have been in question as well that can be put to the question table under the right circumstances. These models involve a much detailed parametric model development where every step and change is recorded, allowing analysts to pinpoint likely issues and trigger instances.
AI has also become a frontier for validating the accuracy and confusion matrices of models instead of relying on simpler tools like ROC curves and AUC plots. These models look at performing repeated quality checks before the deployment of the dataset and attempt to cover the data overall classes, regardless of distribution or shape. The nature of such pretesting is made more difficult with datasets where differences in units and ranges vary significantly over the inputs. Likewise, for media-related data, the time taken to break down and condense content to numeric formats can still lead to biases.
However, thanks to a new slew of changes in fundamentals for data transparency and third-party checks, companies are at least acknowledging that something is going wrong. New explainer loops are being inserted between the models as well that intend to accentuate the black boxes that fill most AI models. These are again driven by AI models that are fine-tuned systematically to look for inconsistencies and errors.
A Few Case Examples In AI Ethical Failures
Data analysts would be familiar with the concepts of false negatives and false positives. These discrepancies in identifying outputs can result in special cases of errors with detrimental effects on people. A false negative put is when the system incorrectly recognizes a positive class as negative. Similarly, a false positive occurs when a negative class is incorrectly recognised to be positive.
The severity of such false cases can be better understood in the context of actual big data studies. In the famous case of CHD(coronary heart disease) being modeled using logistic regression, confusion matrices for the false positives and false negatives yielded large numbers, despite yielding a high accuracy. To the average person, an accurate model may seem like the only important ‘make or break’ check. But even in the early days of data analysis, it was clear that such models would fall flat and even misdiagnose new patients.
The trade-off was made by collecting more data streams and cleaning the columns to induce better data normalization. A step that is becoming the staple for the industry these days.
Uber’s autonomous vehicles suffering crashes in testing phases aren’t the only red flags that industry professionals are concerned about. These fears extend to other spheres such as identification and machine perception as well. Tech giant Amazon came under the scrutiny of the media after its model had learned to develop what the media called a ‘gender bias’ towards women. In a shocking case of applicant bias(seen previously with applicants in tech companies), the models generated negative compliance for the applied job higher for women than men. Problems at the other end of the spectrum have been observed in tech giants like Apple, where the consumer hyped FaceID, allowed different users to access locked phones. One may argue that the models used to identify facial cues for detection might be generating similar results even for different people.
It was only a matter of time that engineers would stick to ironing out faults and conclude that there were assumptive biases produced from questionable inputs. AI’s big leap in the medical world has been set back quite a notch due to the failure in integrating ethical values; values which would have replaced nurses and staff on the go. This is mainly dealt with by construing all the possible number of case examples where a machine can properly replace a human and take the very same decisions. Although philosophy majors may argue that even humans don’t operate under a set of guidelines. There are various schools of ethics- Kantian, egalitarian, utilitarian and so on. How these schools of thought conform to various ethical conundrums is left to the person and his/her interests.
In the famous trolley case, a person’s inclinations to pull or not pull the lever dictated purely by the ethical framework in which the person operates. The question of accountability becomes fuzzy when machines take the place of the decision-maker.
Final Words-How To Make A More Ethical?
The eternal question of where we draw our tolerance of those systems leads the line for including machines in our day to day activities. AI has been the building block for life-saving and supporting frameworks such as transportation, predictive studies, financial investments, security, communication, and production. It has seeped into all significant aspects of human life without raising many nay-sayers.
The line is drawn when AI fails to embed the very philosophies that the humans who created it operate under. We are far ahead from the days of Yevgeny Zamyatin and Alan Turing when machines were regarded to be impartial. To breathe a new life in machines by teaching AI to be ethical is a challenge that drops to the fundamental question of what it means to be ‘human’?
We now know that to construct a perfect ethical framework, AI has to be stripped down to its bare essentials and needs to be driven a context abled approach that emphasizes on the quality of the results. As with the fundamentals of diversity in the workplace, the steps are simple:-
Keep a close watch on the data.
Keep it varied but normalized.
Have a team monitor the preprocessing steps from time to time.
Eradicate exclusions of any form in the output.
Remove junk values that may be erroneous or useless to the model.
Refine, audit, share and recollect results, incorporating them into the model.
Eliminate interactions, data silos and always have sanity checks for what the objective ultimately is.
Knockdown data silos and teach the AI to think rather than modeling it to think.
Keep the Johari window of awareness in check. Cover unknown knowns and known unknowns. As for the unknown unknowns, such biases will always remain, unfortunately.
Originally Posted on Cuelogic Blog. | https://medium.com/cuelogic-technologies/ethical-bias-in-ai-based-security-systems-the-big-data-disconnect-a4e4c806f349 | ['Harsh Binani'] | 2019-09-27 11:59:51.857000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Big Data Services India', 'Data Security', 'Big Data Analytics'] |
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CARSAREAS | https://medium.com/@piyushgujral21/hyundai-creta-2020-35c7a8841761 | [] | 2020-12-17 12:27:15.405000+00:00 | ['News', 'Hyundai', 'Latest News', 'Cars', 'Automobile'] |
Europe starts Covid-19 vaccination as new virus strain spreads | Europe starts Covid-19 vaccination as new virus strain spreads
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A 78-year-old French former cleaning lady, a 96-year-old Spaniard in a care home and a 29-year-old Italian nurse became some of the first people in the EU to receive the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine against coronavirus, as a new, more infectious strain of the virus spreads across the bloc. In co-ordinated actions on Sunday, countries including France, Germany, Italy and Spain began vaccinating older, at-risk people and frontline medical and care staff, while warning that in the immediate future restrictions were likely to be tightened rather than relaxed. France launched its vaccination programme on Sunday morning with elderly patients and medical staff in Sevran near Paris — the first to receive the injection was Mauricette, a 78-year-old retired cleaning lady — to be followed by a geriatric ward in Dijon in Burgundy in the afternoon. Others vaccinated on Sunday included Araceli Rosario Hidalgo, a 96-year-old in a care home in Guadalajara, who became the first to receive the injection in Spain, and Claudia Alivernini, a Rome-based nurse, the first person in Italy to receive the jab. Araceli Rosario Hidalgo, a 96-year-old in a care home in Guadalajara, became the first person to receive the injection in Spain © Pepe Zamora/POOL/AFP/Getty Images In Germany, Edith Kwoizalla, a 101-year old woman, had already been vaccinated on Saturday in the state of Saxony-Anhalt — leading the national health ministry to complain that the regional authorities’ decision to start the jabs a day early undermined the co-ordinated EU rollout. The vaccination campaign started after the EU’s medicine regulator approved the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, the first Covid-19 shot to get the green light, on Monday. UK and the US regulators have also authorised the vaccine and begun its rollout this month. The EU has ordered 300m doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine — enough for 150m people, as two doses are required for each person, as well as hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines yet to be approved, including those made by AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Johnson & Johnson, CureVac, and Moderna. “If you had told me six months ago that it would happen this fast, I wouldn’t have believed it,” Olivier Véran, French health minister, was quoted as saying in Le Journal du Dimanche. But he also warned the French government could not rule out a third national lockdown to slow down infections and called on people not to celebrate New Year’s Eve. German authorities issued similar warnings, calling on citizens to refrain from the tradition of setting off fireworks to avoid large gatherings in the street and jamming up hospitals with injuries. France, like Germany and Italy, has already detected a case of the new, highly transmissible variant of coronavirus that has become widespread in parts of southern England and has led several countries to restrict or ban travel with the UK. Spain on Saturday said it had identified four cases, all of them people who had arrived from Britain. The new variant has also been detected in other countries including Israel, where prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided on a third nationwide lockdown starting on Sunday evening. Israeli residents will be restricted to within a kilometre of their homes, but schools up to fourth grade and after the tenth grade will remain open. There is no definitive evidence yet that the new vaccines offer protection against the new variant. But experts maintain it is highly likely to do so, since the part of the virus that the jabs target, the so-called spike protein, is likely to not have changed. However, scientists have also cautioned that vaccination campaigns and lockdowns are likely to inflict “evolutionary pressure” on the virus in the long run, meaning tweaks to highly efficacious vaccines will still be needed. Health authorities have already reckoned that vaccination campaigns are likely to be necessary yearly to offer lasting protection against future outbreaks. There also remain questions about how many citizens will ultimately accept vaccination. France is among the most sceptical countries in the world about vaccines. In a 2018 study, one in three disagreed that vaccines were safe, the highest proportion of any country. In Germany, according to a YouGov poll, about two-thirds of people are willing to take the vaccine, while about 19 per cent are against a vaccination, and another 16 per cent are undecided. Of those who said they were willing to be vaccinated, 33 per cent said they would take the vaccine after waiting to see the impact on those first vaccinated. But Jens Spahn, health minister, trumpeted the vaccine as a national achievement. “The vaccine was developed by BioNTech, a German company,” he said. “This vaccine, made in Germany, means hope for us and for the world.” Additional reporting by Donato Paolo Mancini, Davide Ghiglione in Rome and Mehul Srivastava in Tel Aviv
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | https://medium.com/@fionacowsix/europe-starts-covid-19-vaccination-as-new-virus-strain-spreads-1997271a0a83 | [] | 2020-12-27 23:15:43.877000+00:00 | ['Europe', 'Startse', 'Covid 19', 'Virus', 'Vaccination'] |
Developing a growth mindset | The 5 tips also called Amal Totkay to have a growth mindset are, self talk — get out of your comfort zone — create new habits — ask people help — fake it till you make it. These are very reflective practices that one can opt in their routine without great labor. If you start implementing either 1 or 2, in small daily decisions, you will notice the change in your living style. Just deny your usual practice and question yourself, why don’t I do it the other way today?
We use only certain parts of our brain and then they become our muscle memory. There’s a method stated in The Readers’ Digest to become smarter and it urges you to do things opposite. Change your environment, brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand, place that photo album at a different angle, change the furniture setting etc. Similarly, when you get out of your comfort zone, when you will try to create new habits, and most of all, think positively, your brain will rewire and bring positive changes in your life.
What you choose to focus on will grow
The tip I would like to practice most is to get out of my comfort zone. While doing this, I will constantly be practicing positive self-motivation — let me remind you that Pep talks have always been a dear friend to introverts, I will be faking my confidence, as well as I’ll be asking the right people for help.
Amal Academy has already brought me on my active feet. Gradually, the sessions and projects are instilling in us the skills that are helping us to develop and rewire our brain. From thinking out-of-the-box, brainstorming, speaking up, to getting out of our comfort zone, both literally and figuratively, I feel like I’ve already left it far behind.
Still, “we’ve got a long way to go..” but keep practicing and we’ll be standing in the good category — of a growth mindset. So, best of luck! | https://medium.com/@aiman-nasir/developing-a-growth-mindset-6ff5e88d59f5 | ['Aiman Nasir'] | 2020-12-25 22:44:48.193000+00:00 | ['Growth Mindset', 'Everyday Challenge', 'Practice', 'Positivity'] |
Are You Real or Bogus? | When one’s core essence is not nourished and is in fact repudiated and put in exile, we desperately try to manufacture and grasp onto what is considered acceptable so as to feel adequate and ‘normal’. The fear of being real is accompanied by the fear of being marginalized. So we lie to ourselves, not even knowing we are living a lie as we are not even certain as to what we feel. We pretend and feign indifference to fit in. To plod on.
That is pretty much how I lived my life, until I embarked on a process of reclaiming my true self. It was the push of despair and the pull of hope that finally ignited the pursuit of self. Getting a place to live, a job (actually three) enrolling in college and starting therapy were critical steps. If I was to have a ‘self’ to even save I had to be willing to responsibly engage in life and learn the proverbial ropes. I needed to take radical risks to heal and discover who I was. This was an especially grueling undertaking at first.
I could barely allow for my therapist to help me formulate a cohesive narrative of my life. A chronological assessment of one’s history and memories is a trajectory to uncovering one’s constitution and character.By examining our experiences and our responses we begin to identify patterns and feelings, exhume trapped rage and grief, detect preferences, reveal strengths, weaknesses, and longings. Initially my therapist’s urging to tell my story resulted in anxious performing. I didn’t know how to receive his care.
Slowly I approached my suffering and allowed my therapist in. I allowed for the mirroring I never got and I learned who I was and who I aspired to be beyond the superficial.
My personal identity with all the trappings evolves over time, but what is closer to the core of my essence is inviolate and immutable. That unique me that consists of my humanity, my intellect, my essence is the guiding force behind who who I am.
That is the self that knows what I want to be loved for, what my worth is, my insecurities, how I feel, what my values are and what my litany of preferences are. To live in that place and own those truths irregardless of trends, what is popular and what will set me apart, is what authenticity is. Having a core self I am now able to gauge how to use my discernment and sense of discrimination to weed out those who are bogus and those who are coming from a genuine place.
Exhuming my real self unearthed an invaluable treasure. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/are-you-real-or-bogus-2755a3d2fc4c | ['Rev. Sheri Heller'] | 2020-01-13 13:21:01.282000+00:00 | ['Identity', 'Mental Health', 'Self', 'Self Improvement', 'Authenticity'] |
4 Kinds of Wholesale Channels for Fashion Clothing Stores | The most difficult part of opening a fashion clothing store is the sourcing supplies and wholesale channels. Only solving the problem of wholesale channels of clothing can clothing retailers continue to grow their businesses. Hoping you can benefit from the following 4 ways of wholesale channels for fashion clothing stores.
There are many problems in operating a fashion clothing store, especially in 2020. If the retailer wants to make money simply by selling the goods, please don’t touch the clothing. The current clothing retail business requires systematic operations.
From the fashion clothing store positioning, address selection, contact with wholesale suppliers, decoration, display, recruitment of employees, management system, etc., every part is very particular and import. Only in-depth operations can make you make enough profits today. Is it difficult to open a fashion clothing store that earns $500,000 a year? It’s not difficult, but you have to do every step well.
In fact, the most difficult problem is the wholesale channels of clothing. Especially when the fashion clothing store is on the right track and needs to continue purchasing, It is necessary to gradually consider constructing your own supply chain and measuring time and cost.
Wholesale in FashionTIY
Where to find foreign trade wholesale channels? Where to find brand wholesale channels? The wholesale market is too expensive to get goods, and it is not profitable. Where to find the wholesale channels of the factory price? I always fly to China and India to wholesale the goods. I am so tired and sometimes there are too many problems. Is there a better solution? Only by solving the problem of the wholesale channel can clothing retailers continue to grow business, open more clothing branches, or combine online and offline expansion.
Wholesale From Local Clothing Wholesale Markets
This is the most common wholesale channel, clothing retailers can go to the shops of the clothing wholesale market to choose their favorite style. Please note that when determining the purchase of a large amount of clothing here, clothing retailers must first consider the acceptance of consumers in their own fashion clothing stores, which mainly include:
Will your customers like these clothing styles?
Can your customers accept the corresponding clothing price?
Do you have enough profit space?
Clothing retailers need to have strong bargaining power to purchase goods in the clothing wholesale market. The larger the clothing wholesale market is, the more categories available, and the cheaper the price.
The popularity of clothing and the size of profit margins should be the core factors clothing retailers consider.
Wholesale From The Factory
Factory purchase is a very competitive and common wholesale channel. You can get a lower wholesale price when you purchase from the factory, but the MOQ of many factories usually requires higher that increasing the business risk. For example, there is a clothing factory that provides wholesale services, but if the MOQ of the clothing retailer is lower than 500 or 100, the factory will usually ignore you.
Wholesale from the factory often means that you need to have greater sales ability and higher communication costs. For example, if your clothing wholesale supplier is a Chinese factory, it means that you may need to fly to China multiple times for specific communication.
Wholesale in FashionTIY
Wholesale From The Online Wholesale Market
This is a very popular wholesale channel in recent years with the development of the Internet B2B market.
Online wholesale not only saves a lot of time and energy for clothing retailers but also saves purchase costs with lower wholesale prices.
FashionTIY as a B2B online wholesale market is also increasingly popular with global clothing wholesalers and retailers. Compared with other online wholesale markets, FashionTIY has the following advantages:
50000+ Not Repeating Styles & Daily Update
FashionTIY provides the newest styles and fashion trends at reasonable wholesale prices to clothing retailers. A weekly update of season and trending styles will refresh your clothing range and keep your customers coming back for more.
Almost No MOQ limit & Support Dropshipping
Unlike other wholesale platforms, clothing of FashionTIY does not have an MOQ limit and support drop shipping. In addition, clothing retailers can also mix batches one order, which can not only reduce your inventory pressure but also benefit capital turnover.
The Price Decreases As The Purchase Volume Increases
Flexible wholesale quantity and price range. The more wholesale quantity, the lower the corresponding wholesale price, so that helps save more purchase costs for you.
Wholesale in FashionTIY
VIP Membership & Discount Make More Profit For You
The VIP Membership in FashionTIY is free absolutely. Join VIP Membership to enjoy exclusive coupons monthly and priority customer service. Bring more business profits to your purchasing journey in FashionTIY.
Provides Customized Service
FashionTIY provides an exclusive customized service plan, especially Small Order Customize to provide clothing retailers with designated production and processing services, such as Tag Customization, Pattern Printing, LOGO Printing, etc. Which can help clothing retailers achieve low-cost brand expansion and meet your personalized needs.
Provides 30-Days Free After-Sales Service
FashionTIY provides 30-days free after-sales service for all the orders (Starting with the date of the signed off the order from the logistics company). Make your wholesale on FashionTIY more easy and safe.
Looking For Special Wholesale Channels
For example, if clothing retailers have relatives or friends in factories or in China, they can help you to wholesale some items that do not have in the domestic market or some items at lower prices.
However, because this condition is too strict, most clothing retailers may not be able to achieve it. | https://medium.com/@fashiontiy-wholesale/4-kinds-of-wholesale-channels-for-fashion-clothing-stores-24a7cc2836d3 | ['Fashiontiy', 'Online Wholesale Market'] | 2020-08-13 06:07:58.974000+00:00 | ['Fashiontiy', 'Clothing', 'Coupon', 'Wholesale', 'Wholesaler'] |
ReferenceError: window is not defined | Import domino ()// As the name might suggest, domino's goal is to provide a DOM in Node.
when using the ts-mxgraph wrapper for mxgraph, the headless chromium from the server doesn't get a browser window and that's where the below patch can rescue.
const win = domino.createWindow(template);
create a dummy global window and other stuffs as you need from the below list.
global['window'] = win;
global['document'] = win.document;
global['DOMTokenList'] = win.DOMTokenList;
global['Node'] = win.Node;
global['Text'] = win.Text;
global['HTMLElement'] = win.HTMLElement;
global['navigator'] = win.navigator;
Now the below code should work
import {mxgraphFactory} from 'ts-mxgraph';
const mx = mxgraphFactory({
mxBasePath: 'mxgraph',
mxLoadResources: false,
mxLoadStylesheets: false,
}); | https://medium.com/@debenderprasad/referenceerror-window-is-not-defined-e8739344b759 | ['Debender Prasad'] | 2020-11-02 09:48:39.817000+00:00 | ['Nodejs', 'Typescript', 'Mxgraph', 'Server Side Rendering', 'Expressjs'] |
Rush | Rush
I don’t know about you guys but I constantly struggle with feeling like I’m always in a rush. A rush to achieve my goals, a rush to meet my queen and have kids, a rush to make money, a rush to finish a project. I don’t know how it happened. Part social media seeing all the fake shit of people living fake lives in fake houses posing with cars they rented for the day and part me thinking when I was young that I’d be married with kids, successful, rich, and happy by 23. I’m 26 by the way and I am none of those things.. kidding I am happy actually 🤢 It’s so weird admitting that but that conversation is for another time. Yall know that cliche saying about how its not about the destination its about the journey? Well it’s true! I’m thankful to have learned that at a young-ish age. This past year and a half I’ve been really just looking at life with a sense of appreciation. Everything that I have been through has made me the person I am today. I have perspective. I have learned to appreciate the adversity and the shortcomings and the unexpected turns. Honestly life would be lame as hell if everything went as planned. Without sadness you dont get that utter euphoric happiness. It’s about balance. Good with the bad, positive with the negative. So there’s no need to rush. What’s meant to be will be. You do the work, with positive energy and intention, you get the reps, you go back, analyze, become more self aware and shit will come around. Trust me. I know mine will. I can feel it. I have the vision. I’m working on myself. I’m in no hurry and while I do believe that I still have to remind myself every day. Navigating through life takes work. Being happy and healthy takes work. But that’s the fun part. It’s supposed to be fun and whoever told us that the work and the effort is just a means to an end, just the necessary shit you have to do to succeed and then once you’re there you’re good, whoever told us that lied. You’re never “there”. You hit goals and keep going. I’ve never heard anyone say I made my first million then quit or I won my first Grammy and felt like I was done or I won my first championship and was satisfied. Those truly elite truly successful people hit a goal and say “What’s next?” I used to think there was a destination. That I’d reach a moment, take a deep breathe, exhale, and be like “oof now I can relax”. That feeling never came for me. Maybe I never quite hit the exact goals I set out for myself but I’ve been steady checking things off my list. I honestly don’t think that feeling comes for certain people. Let me know if I’m wrong. I think we’re all chasing that unrealistic feeling of “It’ll all be worth it in the end” when in reality it’s already worth it. If you’re happy it’s worth it. The money, the houses, the cars, it’ll come, but if you’re not enjoying the process, enjoying the grind, the end result will never be enough to make it worth it.
— — — — —
Affirmation:
I am stepping into a period where I allow myself to grow and expand while breaking the cycle of self-limitation. | https://medium.com/@jaseaustyn16/rush-8482232376fe | ['The Black John Doe'] | 2021-02-26 18:58:55.970000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Self Growth', 'Journey'] |
Top 7 Innovative Adaptations of Multifamily Amenities Due to COVID | Being an owner and operator of thousands of multifamily doors, I can tell you that multifamily has always been a competitive space, and with the impact of the pandemic the heat has certainly been turned up. My company, Blue Lake Capital, focuses on Class B properties in Texas, Florida, and Georgia and our go-to strategy is what’s known as value-add. This means we secure the properties and identify steps we can implement to drive up the overall profitability of the investment by either increasing income, reducing expenses, or both. Now, an obvious key to this is, of course, tenants and occupancy.
One unique challenge for attracting tenants is amenities, and these are now even more important, as COVID has significantly increased the number of people working remotely and spending more time in their homes than ever before. With the impact of COVID some amenities, which earlier in the year were considered innovative and a powerful value-add for tenants, have been forced to adapt. What were these leading amenities and how have they now adapted to the impacts of COVID and social distancing?
Here are the top 7 innovative adaptations of multifamily amenities due to COVID:
7. High-speed Broadband Internet
Due to the pandemic, access to high-speed broadband internet is a top demand and expectation of tenants. The need for reliable internet services, rather for remote work or remote schooling, is now more critical than ever before. There have been many reports of the lack of reliable internet access causing tremendous difficulties for those in rural communities, to the point that this is now escalating to a legislative level. In turn, this drives tenants to re-locate, even in the middle of a pandemic. Prior to COVID, this amenity was a luxury. Now, it’s an absolute demand.
6. Dedicated Workspaces — Nooks
While shared working spaces became increasingly popular in 2019 and into 2020, COVID shifted the trend. Pre-COVID shared workspaces were all the rage; however, post-COVID, spaces like this now represent too great a risk. Instead, one of the features more and more tenants are attracted to are “nooks”, which can be used as dedicated workplaces within their homes. Being that an increasing number of people are now, and for the foreseeable future, working remotely, nooks are becoming a coveted feature in apartment layouts.
5. Extensive Outdoor Amenities
When evaluating our newest acquisition seen above, one major differentiator that caught our attention was the outdoor amenities. It is no longer enough to have a pool and believe that will ensure a successful multifamily investment. Prior to COVID, a pool and clubhouse were common amenities used to enhance a property. Post-COIVD, most pools and clubhouses are now closed to ensure social distancing is enforced. However, tenants still desire and crave options to get out of their apartments and break the monotony of the pandemic lifestyle. Offering tenants large green spaces that include walking trails, high-quality fitness obstacle courses, seating areas, grills, and even a soccer field and bocce ball court are increasingly valuable amenities. They not only provide safer, outdoor spaces that reinforce social distancing, but also attract a stronger tenant base more likely to remain for a longer term.
4. Recording Booth
Similar to shared workspaces, one feature that more prominent multifamily properties offered pre-COVID was recording studios. Now, with the impact of the pandemic forcing many families to work remotely, this amenity is increasingly popular. Residents can reserve the space, with sanitation in between sessions, that provides tenants a creative outlet for recordings of business or school presentations, podcast episodes, or even in developing their musical abilities while safely remaining socially distanced and having a quiet space.
3. Community Arts — Crafts
Along these same lines, some multifamily properties pre-COIVD offered community spaces to promote common connections and hobbies. Post-COVID these designated spaces are generally no longer open to ensure social distancing. The Post-COVID adjustment is to provide DIY projects to pre-registered tenants at their doorsteps, and then guide them through the craft projects through live-steamed instruction. This helps to promote community building and connection while keeping tenants safe, and simultaneously elevates the offering of the multifamily property in comparison to competitors.
2. Pet-Friendly Community
Pre-COVID, offering a pet-friendly community was a decision some properties pursed, and others did not. However, post-COVID pet sales have soared. This creates a significant opportunity for owners to recognize a new trending demand for tenants, that when seized, can significantly increase income with pet deposits and monthly pet rent fees. The tradeoff for tenants is having the convenience of large outdoor spaces for their pets with additional perks like a dog-park and dog washing station.
1. Grab & Go Kiosks
Convenience is more important than ever, especially considering many people are now implementing social distancing and hesitant to leave their homes for casual errands. Pre-COVID onsite vendors like coffee shops and small cafes were popular. Post-COVID, these options have adapted to grab & go kiosks. The added benefit is giving tenant’s convenience while implementing increased safety measure for social distancing and minimize traffic flow in and out of the property for deliveries.
With a little creativity, multifamily properties can continue to thrive, add-value, and remain competitive even during a pandemic. Like any challenge, the ability to adapt is key, and being innovative in these measures will help ensure your tenants and investments remain resilient.
Want to Invest with Ellie?
If you are interested in learning more about passively investing in apartment buildings, click here to schedule a call with Ellie Perlman.
Want to Become a Syndicator Yourself?
It’s one thing to start a business, and an entirely different challenge to make it truly sustainable. If you are interested in building out your own multifamily syndication business, and scaling it, click here to learn about Ellie’s mentoring program.
About the Author
Ellie is the founder of Blue Lake Capital, a real estate company specialized in multifamily investing throughout the United States. At Blue Lake Capital, Ellie helps investors grow their wealth and achieve double-digit returns by investing alongside her in exclusive multifamily deals they usually don’t have access to.
Ellie is the host of REady2Scale , a podcast that focuses on the “APS” of real estate: Asset, Process, and Strategy. Each episode discusses how investors can scale their real estate portfolio and/or businesses.
She started her career as a commercial real estate lawyer, leading real estate transactions for one of Israel’s leading development companies. Later, as a property manager for Israel’s largest energy company, she oversaw properties worth over $100MM. Additionally, Ellie is an experienced entrepreneur who helped build and scale companies by improving their business operations.
Ellie holds a Masters in Law from Bar-Ilan University in Israel and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.
You can read more about Blue Lake Capital at www.bluelake-capital.com and learn more about Ellie at www.ellieperlman.com.
Sources:
https://www.cbre.us/-/media/cbre/countryunitedstates/us-research/major-reports/2019/multifamily-innovation-watch/cbre_streetsense_mfinnovationwatch_amenities.pdf
https://www.rewardsgenius.com/blog/four-trends-coming-to-the-rental-housing-industry-in-2020/
https://www.updater.com/blog/high-end-apartment-amenities
https://www.vendingmarketwatch.com/micro-market/news/21142008/impulsify-brings-micro-markets-to-apartment-buildings | https://medium.com/@ellie-16308/top-7-innovative-adaptations-of-multifamily-amenities-due-to-covid-e97f05f781e1 | ['Ellie Perlman'] | 2020-11-23 15:45:40.900000+00:00 | ['Passive Income', 'Real Estate News', 'Real Estate Investments', 'Multifamily', 'Investors'] |
What really happens in a design interview in the video games industry | The Frontliner
If your application sparks any interest, you’ll first receive an email from what I’m going to playfully call a Frontliner. The Frontliner can be anyone from a recruiter, a producer, hiring manager or even the Art Director themselves. To be blunt, their job is to vet if you’re crazy, a liar or generally unviable to work with at a very early stage. The Frontliner will also ask you questions that orbit around your career, your past and your comfort-level(s).
Although the conversation will be sedate, the Frontliner may ask you the most hot-seat question of the entire process: what’s your salary range? Salary negotiations are monumental conversations in and of themselves, but in lieu of the answer you should definitely have an answer. Uncomfortable assigning yourself a dollar-value? Start with the wise words of a former coworker of mine: they’re all made-up numbers.
You may have signed an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) at this point, likely because the game you’ll be working on if it’s still under wraps. The Frontliner will be the first one to lift the veil and tell you what the game is. If you didn’t sign an NDA, the Frontliner will, in very oblique terms, clarify if this is an opportunity you really want, or if you should do some light calisthenics for a graceful bow-out.
Real Questions Said By Real Frontliners during Interviews
So tell us a little about your career history
Are you comfortable / have you ever made UI UX Designs on the _________ platform / SKU?
Are you comfortable within the _________ genre?
Are you familiar with our Company’s games and history?
Have you ever worked with a team remotely before?
Are you familiar with any implementation tools like Flash, Animate CC, Unity or Unreal?
What made you want to work with our Company?
What’s your salary range / expectations?
What’s your hourly rate?
What’s your per-diem rate? (I was caught so flat-footed the first time I heard this question, I threw out some stupefying Dr. Evil-esque price-quote and lost the gig instantly)
This is only a remote contract for now, will you be willing to relocate once “everything blows over”? (they are absolutely not hiring remotely if they’re asking this at all)
— If you’re Junior or making the jump, expect these questions as well | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/what-really-happens-in-a-design-interview-in-the-video-games-industry-ba8fdf52c31f | ['John', 'Thewingless'] | 2020-11-25 22:40:01.116000+00:00 | ['Game Design', 'Design', 'UX', 'UI', 'Interview'] |
What Is Life? | What Is Life?
A poem
Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash
Life
What is Life?
It is neither flesh
nor skin
It does not run
nor does it swim
It lies not in a book
nor in the mind
Life just is
It does not yearn to have a name
It did not ask to be surveyed
under a microscope
under a pen
It is happy to just be
It knows itself
and lacks no more
Life flows
and doesn’t flow
Words cannot encompass it
Beyond walls, Life
spreads its wings up high
It flies
and doesn’t fly
What is life? the child asked
To which, Life laughed
and the child laughed with it. | https://medium.com/spiritual-tree/what-is-life-8bab582eb249 | ['Ioana Andrei'] | 2020-12-31 13:03:04.119000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Poetry', 'Life', 'Love', 'Poem'] |
Tips to Pass HGV training Test | Interested in becoming a professional driver? You’ll need to pass the HGV test before you can get a job driving Lorries and buses — and that isn’t always as simple as it sounds. Fortunately, there are a few ways to ensure that you do well on the test (and of course, good luck when you get there!)
So now you will go through HGV driver academy to pass HGV theory and practical test. For HGV exam one needs a lot of hard work to pass the exam. Practical test lasts from 1 and 1/2 hours for practical test are confident while driving the vehicle, do not get nervous. In case don’t stress out for your HGV theory and practical test today we will discuss a few tips to pass HGV theory and practical test.
Be aware of the format of the theory test
Practice at home
Get admission in a good HGV institute
Have a good sleep the night before your HGV practical test
Try to avoid carrying a mobile phone on the day of your driving test
Conclusion
Passing HGV exams needs lots of effort and time so make sure to follow the above tips so that you can pass your HGV licence test on the first go. HGV Apprenticeship is a must for every driver to pass the exam and get a licence so that they can drive professionally carrying HGV licence while driving on road. With a mixture of good training and your polished driving skills, you are set to clear the test and acquire your HGV licence in no time.
For More Details:
https://specialisedtrainingservices.blogspot.com/2019/11/tips-to-pass-hgv-training-test.html | https://medium.com/@marietran43/tips-to-pass-hgv-training-test-a3b658fb17fb | ['Marie Tran'] | 2019-11-21 12:54:18.391000+00:00 | ['Certification', 'Hgv Apprenticeship', 'Driver Academy'] |
Dash App: Experiment with the Best Multi-Armed Bandit Algorithms. | My interest in revenues optimization has been growing ever since I joined the world of Online Advertising. What an interesting challenge to optimize a given situation considering the complexity of its environment. We might want to improve a specific metric, say, a conversion rate, but maybe the client whose performance proves best is likely to update his prices in the near future. We might not want to make too quick a decision when impermanence is the only thing we can predict for certain. From a business perspective, it is very important to bear that in mind and balance the options so profitability is maintained in the long run.
Apart from that, I am always on the lookout for new learning content that can help me grow as a Data Scientist. A few weeks ago, I took a course on Udemy called Bayesian Machine Learning in Python: A/B Testing. The course covers traditional A/B Testing as well as some Reinforcement Learning techniques such as Epsilon Greedy, Optimistic Initial Values, UCB1 and Thompson Sampling.
Internet is already filled with many articles that take a deep dive on this topic. I have tried to make it original and built my own Dash app that lets you invest some amount in USD and see which algorithm is the most profitable. Before that, I have attempted to explain in my own words what I understand from those concepts. If at least one person finds this useful, it will be a success.
I built a Docker image for my app. Please feel free to access it via Docker Hub following the instructions on my Github.
What is the problem?
A one-armed bandit refers to one slot machine wherein you insert a coin, pull a lever and get an immediate reward. The Casino designs the machines in such a way so that it ends up winning in the long run. A Multi-Armed bandit problem entails several such machines. An agent must choose the machines in a way that maximizes the cumulative gain after a given set of trials.
A/B Tests are one common approach to go about it. An experiment runs for a predefined period of time. We identify the best option using some statistical tools and then play the winner for the rest of the decided period.
Do you see the problem here?
This means that we would have to waste part of the trials on the least profitable machines before we can reach a conclusion on the best one to play. It is not ideal. We would want to exploit the data we collect along the way and not waste valuable trials. Another approach would consists in exploiting the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE). At each trial, the agent plays the machine having the highest MLE at the time irrespective of the confidence in the estimation and the data collected. A Greedy approach. It is not ideal either as it fails to collect a sufficient amount of data to make an unbiased decision.
We refer to this famous trade-off as:
The Exploration Exploitation Dilemma.
Luckily, some algorithms attempt to solve this problem.
Let’s go over a few of them.
Algo 1: Epsilon Greedy
One alternative to the Greedy approach is to allow some exploration. We call the exploration rate Epsilon (Ɛ). Imagine Ɛ=10%. This means that in 10% of the time we select an option at random (exploration) whereas in the rest of the time, we select the best option at the time — highest MLE (exploitation).
Although the approach gives some margin for exploration, it is not ideal either. The algorithm is “flawed” by design. It will never stop to explore even if it identifies an option that seems to outperform the others. Its expected cumulative return will be lower than what some other algorithms can achieve.
Algo 2: Optimistic Initial Values
This approach resembles the Greedy approach we first mentioned. However, instead of starting at a zero estimate and then updating up to the true reward probabilities, it starts at some high value and then decreases down the true reward probabilities.
It allows for some exploration at an early stage until it identifies the best option. Then it plays that option with little, if any, exploration at later stages. This will depend on how close are the true reward probabilities to each other.
This algorithm performs quite well in that it keeps exploring until the actual data indicates otherwise. On the contrary, the Greedy algorithm exploits right from the start and we might be missing out on valuable data as a result.
Algo 3: UCB1
The UCB1 approach aims to convert a set of average rewards into a set of decision values (DV). It takes into account how many times we played the options in addition to their MLE. Then, for each trial, we play the option having the best DV.
UCB1 Algorithm: Decision Value (DV) Formula
Given the design of the formula, it seems that if we play one machine fewer times compared to the others, we will be more likely to play it at a later stage. This is because N is at the numerator and ni is at the denominator. As the number of total plays increases, if the number of machine plays does not increase, the machine DV will increase, hence the increase in the likelihood of being chosen next.
The DV takes into account the level of uncertainty around a certain estimate.
By the look of it, it could be interesting to try less picked options (a1 blue or a2 red) as opposed to a3 green — highest MLE. Indeed, our confidence around those options is not strong enough yet to make the decision to only play a3. Those have a potential to perform that we need to investigate further.
Algo 4: Thompson Sampling
Contrary to all previous approaches, Thompson Sampling does not update previous estimates. Instead, it updates the distribution around the reward probability. It then samples from it to decide what action to carry out next.
In our binary outcome scenario, we use the Beta Distribution where alpha (α) stands for the number of successes and beta (β) stands for the number of failures. You might have recognized the Bernoulli distribution that is a special case of the Binomial distribution where only a single trial is performed. Here, the outcome is twofold, either a win (α) or a loss (β).
In Bayesian Inference, the Beta distribution is the conjugate prior probability distribution for the Bernoulli distribution. It builds upon the number of successes and failures to model the distribution around the win rate.
In our example, our initial state (red) with α = 1 (1 success) and β = 1 (1 failure), the distribution is uniform. We have no idea what the probability of success is. After a few trials (blue), we collected 4 successes and 6 failures, the distribution centers around a mean reward of 0.4 (40%) — 4 / (4 + 6). Now, we have some idea about the probability of success, however, the distribution still has fat tails, which tells us that we are not so sure about that 40% yet. Finally, after many trials, we collected 90 successes and 60 failures, the distribution centers around a mean reward of 60% with thinner tails, which indicates that we are quite confident about the reward probability of that machine. We are more likely to sample a reward probability close to 60% although it still allows for some exploration around that mean.
That model provides some level of confidence to the reward probability. And this confidence increases as we collect more samples.
Ok, interesting all this technical jargon but when do we get to the fun part?
How do they compare?
Let’s imagine you go to the Casino tonight and you want to bet, say, 100$ and have some 20 minutes to spare before you go have dinner with your friends.
We consider that the number of trials equals the amount invested. We will play for 100 trials in our scenario. Also, we consider that the amount you bet at each trial increases as you progress in your trials: $1 at first trial, 2$ at second trial etc. We bet more as we get more confident in our choices. Why do we do that? Theoretically, our algorithm should learn quickly and in so doing make more money to bet along the way. Performing the experiment that way allows us to penalize poor learners more significantly.
The results that I present here are averaged over 100 repetitions. We define the performance as the cumulative win rate divided by the maximum win rate amongst all machines. The machines Slot A, Slot B and Slot C have true win rates or reward probabilities of 25%, 50% and 75% respectively. As an example, if an algorithm reaches a cumulative win rate of 72% after finishing the 100 trials, its performance is 72% / 75% = 96%.
What should be your strategy so you can pay for your friends dinner? :)
Clearly, three algorithms come on top: Thompson Sampling, Optimistic Initial Values and UCB1. They learn quicker and have, in that particular case, an average cumulative performance of 92%, 88% and 85% respectively.
The violin plots also support that insight. As a matter of fact, we can see that although Epsilon Greedy may perform well in some occasions with a median performance of 79% and 50% of the repetitions in the performance range of 65%-88%, it is no match for Thompson Sampling where 75% of the repetitions have a performance greater than 88%.
Optimistic Initial Values and UCB1 have similar performances with medians of 90% and 84% respectively although the former tends to perform slightly better in that specific experiment. This may depend on factors such as the slot machine win rates, the number of trials, the number of repetitions and how close are the win rates to each other.
Now how can we maximize our gains?
For each trial, we bet an amount, if we win, we get that amount doubled and if we lose, that amount invested goes to the Casino’s pocket and we keep playing with the rest of the money until we finish our trials.
The total gains shown below do not include your initial 100$.
Once again, this proves that Thompson Sampling yields the best results followed by a small margin by Optimistic Initial Values.
Trying the app a few times will give you some intuition as to how each algorithm perform over 100 repetitions. I strongly recommend it.
Conclusion
Although the performances may vary with context, one seems to be more consistent with repetitions. As you remember, Thompson Sampling maps the uncertainty around the reward probability. Every time, it gets closer to the true probabilities of the options at our disposal.
Epsilon Greedy can perform well but is limited by design. It keeps exploring during the whole period. This does not prove efficient in a stationary environment where reward probabilities do not change in time.
Though, it could come handy in situations where they do change in time. A web site gets lots of traffic every day. The behavior of users may be very varying depending on the content. They may favor one Ad today and favor a completely different one the next day, let alone the next hour.
It could be interesting to analyze the performances of those algorithms in a non-stationary environment and see if other approaches may best fit.
Maybe a subject to consider for another article…
Thanks for reading ! | https://medium.com/datacated/dash-app-experiment-with-the-best-multi-armed-bandit-algorithms-6474af8124da | ['Quentin Bracq'] | 2021-05-14 18:43:02.733000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Docker', 'Reinforcement Learning', 'Python', 'Dash'] |
5 MANTRAS TO START AN ANALYTICS REVOLUTION | 5 MANTRAS TO START AN ANALYTICS REVOLUTION Alteryx Follow Mar 27 · 7 min read
You’re amazing and you get it.
You’ve solved challenges using every data source imaginable. You’ve unleashed the answers that helped your team take action, and you’re sharing outcomes to make everyone more successful and productive. Truly — you’ve rocked it from zero to analytics hero!
But how do you turn this spark into a full-fledged analytics revolution? How do you change the mindsets and daily practices of analysts and data gurus across your company to empower every team to deliver better, faster, game-changing results?
Here are five mantras to repeat while you kick-start your analytics revolution and build a sustainable, high-performing analytics culture.
WHAT TYPE OF CULTURE ARE YOU LOOKING TO GROW?
Building out a solid analytic culture is not just about finding the right questions to ask, but understanding your data landscape to know whether you have the data and the expertise to prioritize those questions — before trying to solve the problem with analytic technology.
In fact, before you even take the first step on the journey to analytic transformation, there’s a fork in the road and an early decision to make: What kind of traveler are you looking to be?
With analytics, there are (broadly) two ways to change your world.
First, you can take a process that you work with today and try to improve it by making it faster, cheaper, or more efficient. Author Stephen Covey of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People would call this “Sharpen the Saw.” We’re taking an existing business process and using analytics technology to refine the underlying steps. A nip-and-tuck spreadsheet removal here, a self-service analytics application there, and success! We’ve taken a six-hour-weekly, manual slug-a-thon with your data down to 20 seconds of automated bliss! You’ve won your day back! Rejoice!
With Covey’s method, you’re helping your best people tackle their problems head-on and freeing their days to work on more valuable activities. Just imagine what a team of analysts could achieve if all that manual spreadsheet munging was history.
Covey’s culture is all about winning. It’s about getting rapid, measurable change to existing processes and then banking the winnings to invest in new projects. Winning analytics teams quickly evolve to high-performing units that thrive on the buzz of victory, and this feeling is contagious!
You’ll find yourself quickly surrounded with new recruits as you scale this approach across your company, so use the tips in the rest of this article to manage that growth.
Second, we have the alternative path: disruptive transformation. Don’t worry, this isn’t the dark side. But it does involve shaking up the status quo and fundamentally changing much of what your company considers “normal.”
Disruptive transformation often looks to parts of your business where people make decisions: a bank loan approval here, a next best offer there, and so on.
Analytics (especially advanced analytics) can make a huge impact by automatically driving business actions that lead to faster and more competitive outcomes.
In fact, prescriptive analytics are enormously valuable — a successful deployment of analytics against a critical business process can often produce gains that pay for entire analytics divisions in a single release.
Remember — disruptive transformation isn’t better than saw-sharpening — your path is dependent on where you want to end up.
Before you start down any analytics path, remember to ask yourself what you’re trying to build and then assemble your teams with those skills in mind. Modern analytics has everything you need to play the supporting role whichever direction you choose.
ANALYTIC CULTURE REQUIRES TIMING
It’s not just about choosing the right path — a great analytic culture also needs a sense of timing. You need to know where you are in the journey in order to make the right move.
If you’re just embarking on your journey with self-service analytics, then you need to focus on answering those all-important business questions and learning how to get from data to insights in a fast, easy, and repeatable way.
Your journey continues as you start to use these same analytics to not only confirm what’s happening in your business, but to start to make models of what might happen next: forecasts, predictions, simulations. This isn’t for the purpose of idle speculation; it’s a means of empowering your analysts to take competitive action.
Eventually, companies like yours reach that tipping point when analytics needs to jump from beyond a single user, a single desktop, or a single team, and there needs to be a way to take insights and actions and share those outcomes more widely.
The discipline that comes from walking this path is really what we call analytic culture — to get analytics powering your entire business.
But it’s not a one-off. You’ll find that successful analytics leaders will find themselves right back at the start with a new project, technology, or department and will need to begin the journey afresh — learning new practices each time.
ANALYTIC LITERACY MEANS DISCOVERY, ENABLEMENT, ENLIGHTENMENT, AND BUILDING BRIDGES
W. Edwards Deming, the famous statistician, once said, “Without data you’re just another person with an opinion,” and I’d agree. One of the main reasons companies need an analytic culture is to step away from random gut feelings and the opinions of the HiPPO, aka the highest-paid person in the room.
But data-driven opinions? Developing analytic literacy is the best approach to developing stronger insights with your most valuable resource: data.
A huge enabler for analytic literacy is the widespread access of governed and trusted company-wide data, along with technology that makes it easy to discover what’s available from databases, local files, reports, dashboards, and workflows.
Enable anyone who wants to learn by running office hours — fixed times every week, where you show that your experts are there to answer anything that’s on your community’s mind. Identify missing skills or connections and build out coaching plans for those that want to improve, and use certification as a way of assessing improvement as your rock star analysts walk the path.
A mixture of core skills, collaboration, and curiosity leads to much bigger impacts for your company.
Call out where your analytics tribal knowledge has led to a breakthrough and celebrate your analytic champions — inspire everyone on your teams to become THIS good!
Finally, build bridges wherever you go: subject matter experts, data scientists, and especially IT. You want everyone with you on this journey.
HARNESS SOFT AND HARD SKILLS TO FIND BALANCE IN YOUR ANALYTICS CULTURE
As you build a culture of analytics, you’ll be dealing with new data and new technologies, but you won’t be successful if you don’t understand the people who are on the journey with you.
People don’t neatly fall into boxes for classification, which means that you’ll need to deal with a spectrum of different behaviors if you want your analytics teams to truly perform.
Personalities range from highly empathic and compassionate to results-driven and focused on hard skills.
People are complex in how they take actions too — for some it’s all about having conversations at the water cooler or understanding how people feel, whereas for others, it’s about letting the mathematics do the talking in complex machine-learning models.
Finally, there are the analytic outcomes themselves, which range from pure intuition and educated guesses to a reliance on models and algorithms.
Your analytic culture needs to be a balance of these extremes. Too much weight on the softer side and you risk building a hit-or-miss analytic culture that won’t deliver sustainable results. Too much weight on the hard side and you risk building a complex house of cards that’s equally unsustainable (unless perhaps you’re Google or Facebook who can afford those Silicon Valley salaries!).
The middle ground: a balance towards curiosity, blending code-free, approachable analytics with code-friendly building blocks, and working towards actionable insights helps generate both team satisfaction and sustainable analytic performance.
GETTING ANALYTICS ACROSS THE LINE
Remember how we talked earlier about how a strong analytic culture gets addicted to winning? You “win” at analytics by getting your model, your report, your actionable insights, into the hands of your audience, be they other employees, customers, or even other applications. Without that delivery, you’re not giving your team’s credit for their hard work behind the scenes.
Getting analytics over the line and making it actionable is often the hardest barrier for teams to cross — according to Rexer analytics, data scientists report that only 13% of their models ever get deployed, but the problem can be just as serious for analysts in the line-of-business.
Building an analytics team that’s obsessed with winning means that you’re looking to deploy early and often — crossing the last mile of analytics often doesn’t need perfection, but every release should produce new value and remove waste from your business processes.
With analysts, there’s waste every time they run a manual process that could be automated. Most spreadsheet power users spend north of 28 hours a week in that tool — nine of which are simply reworking sheets and macros to fit new incoming data every single week.
Most spreadsheet power users spend north of 28 hours a week in that tool — nine of which are simply reworking sheets and macros to fit new incoming data every single week.
To remove the waste and make that work widely accessible, consider wrapping the process into an analytic app and letting users self-serve without needing to call you everyday for a newly-cut report.
For data scientists and IT? Take an R or Python model into production without having to recode in other languages such as Java or C++. Get a model operational and serving real-time results inside your business applications, products, or services.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Deploy often. Validate requirements. Fail fast. Get feedback. Rinse and repeat these mantras. The relationship between a data-driven organization and a corporate culture of analytics is strong. Keep this core loop alive and create a winning analytics culture.
This blog was originally posted here: https://www.alteryx.com/input/repeat-after-me-5-mantras-to-start-an-analytics-revolution | https://medium.com/input-by-alteryx/5-mantras-to-start-an-analytics-revolution-559366695ee5 | [] | 2020-04-02 19:47:08.144000+00:00 | ['Big Data', 'Alteryx', 'Analytics', 'Data', 'Data Science'] |
I choose both: on binary thinking, equality and the acceptance of our own dualities | The most useful advice I was given was to replace my “or”s with “and”s
Daniel Lièvano for Fine Acts
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” Walt Whitman
The most useful advice I was given was to replace my “or”s with “and”s. In an exercise to accept my multitudes, I followed the advice and learned that I did not have to fit into one definition, it was freeing.
Binary or hierarchical ways of thinking pervade politics (conservative vs. liberal, right vs. left), gender (male vs. female), knowledge (logical vs. emotional), and even our own definitions of ourselves (happy vs. sad, successful vs. unsuccessful, etc.), though many don’t identify with these categories. This has direct consequences on who gets to have rights and who doesn’t.
My mission today is to explore and reflect together on binarism and perhaps reframe the way we look at it and integrate it.
What is binary thinking?
A binary way of thinking labels and values opposing characteristics as good or bad, right or wrong.
In the society we are currently in—a Western-centric and patriarchal one— binary thinking has the effect of “privileging a particular epistemology” in this case one that is Western, patriarchal “and based on rationality and logic, over ways of thinking and knowing” says Rebecca Shamash in her paper From Good vs. Evil to rational vs. emotional: a discussion of binaries of knowledge and thought.
table borrowed from Rebecca Shamash
In her research, she argues that whilst race, gender, and class may seem diverse, they are part of a narrative that categorizes them, she calls it “The Binary.”
She is not wrong, society is based on inferior and superior ways of thinking, we see this on a daily basis. A very blatant example is access to equal pay being dependent on your race or gender.
The damaging effects are, obviously, for those labelled in the former category. If the desire is to have a more equal and wholesome society, dividing people into categories makes this task unlikely. Acceptance of binarisms is non-violent by nature, whilst hierarchical binarism is.
Feminism and binary thinking
I was introduced to the concept of binaries through feminism, when I came across the theme of gender inclusivity. Nonbinary gender is a spectrum that doesn’t identify with either male or female gender.
The introduction of pronouns and recognition that gender is not binary is an integral part of fourth-wave feminism as is the defense and inclusion of LGBTQ+ community in public discourse.
Recently I watched a YouTube program called Middle Ground, where people of different “life views” sit together and talk about a theme. One episode hosts feminists and “non-feminists” as they try to grapple with statements such as “Male privilege is real.” What struck me the most in this video was when one of the “non-feminists,” said the following words to make an argument as to what would convince him to join the feminist movement:
“There doesn’t seem to be a clear centre and a clear desire, people call themselves feminists for all sorts of reasons.” He continues, “if feminists can make a concise push towards an issue, together, I would be willing to join.”
Right in front of me was a blatant example of how a view opposing feminism is often binary, and frankly in this case quite limited. Imagine if we spoke the same way about human rights activism, how would that look?
Renee Magritte
Equality of the sexes can only be achieved if we reject hierarchies. The manifesto Feminism for the 99% presents a similar argument, stating that the mainstream feminism, or “white feminism” as labelled by some, does not take into account the experience of women of different races, class and sexual orientations: essentially, it has a binary narrative.
In order to truly dismantle societal structures, we must also approach knowledge and thinking in a radically different way.
Personal and political
An essential part of my personal healing and growth has been to accept my own multitudes, the more I did this the more I noticed how this paralleled the work that so many feminists have done.
Audre Lorde and bell hooks for example, through their experience as Black women in a patriarchal society, recognized that feminism needed to also be anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and anti-classist. This is truer today than ever, as the fourth wave of feminism sees its multitudes in action. Everything is connected.
But why is binary thinking so pervasive? Somehow, “there is this idea that in order to gain equal footing, the other side needs to be emasculated or dropped down” says Minna Salami in her book Sensuous Knowledge. How many of you have seen the infamous poster at the women’s march explaining that society is not like a pie? It is a testament to the importance that hierarchies play in our approach to knowledge.
There is power in accepting and observing dualities, we often don’t realise that. Accepting that two (or more) opposite things can coexist in a constant state of impermanence is very hard in a society where we need to “fit in.”
People want single truths, they want one ideal to follow, they want consistency, they want black or white, or grey. This search for one right road, one definition of ourselves and others, one right or wrong argument often creates frustration and inconclusiveness.
It is about time we start thinking in multitudes and reject binarism in all its senses, from speaking about human rights, climate change, to speaking about our own feelings. We are multitudinous beings, thinking in either/or has limited our perception of the possibilities that exist, of the changes we can make.
Also, accepting dualities is non-violent by nature, it makes us listen to each other more, we stop having senseless conversations based on criticising the other for being “inconsistent” and instead focus on our differences and find a bridge. People focus more on the important message of activists rather than scrutinize their every inconsistency or mistake. It brings people together rather than set them apart.
Photo Credit: Virginia Vigliar
Nonbinarism is a way of life, an approach to knowledge, it is integral to every aspect of our life that is tainted with patriarchalism. It involves indigenous women, tribalism, ancestral bonds, women and men, and LGBTQI+, it is for trans rights, it rejects hierarchical structures of power and strives for commonalities, it accepts differences and observes flaws, then integrates them.
I once stated that humans are imperfect by nature, but I want to retract that statement today. Having researched multitudes, I have realised that what we call imperfections are actually things that push us away from The Binary, and are the things that make us perfect.
Try replacing your “or” with “and” and see what happens. | https://thetilt.org/i-choose-both-on-binary-thinking-equality-and-the-acceptance-of-our-own-dualities-57fee740ae9a | ['Virginia Vigliar'] | 2020-12-16 10:59:40.073000+00:00 | ['Equality', 'Nonbinary', 'Narrative', 'Feminism'] |
Global Development Sector, We See Through Your ‘Evolution’. | Global Development Sector, We See Through Your ‘Evolution’.
The composition and culture of leadership within the global development space does not live up to its purported values. Existing leadership normalises whiteness and upholds white supremacy culture. Standards crafted by white people are categorised as being the right or ‘professional’ way to do things within the global development sector.
The white experience is considered to be superior, the most trustworthy and the guaranteed answer to success. This contrasts starkly to the Black, Indigenous and person of color (BIPOC) experience or perspective, which is often undervalued, deemed problematic and is challenged rather than being wholeheartedly accepted and centred in the global development sector. In this space, BIPOC staff are disproportionately forced to observe leadership rather than directly hold it.
We must change the global development sector’s ineffectual commitment to ending systemic racism. Organisations cannot claim to advance racial equity if the makeup of their leadership boards are majority white and the culture across their organisation seeks to preserve and aggrandise white supremacy and white leadership. Existing culture places too much entitlement, trust and power in the hands of white people. Achieving racial equity in a space where power is preserved to be in the hands of white leadership and a collective white lens is both difficult and artificial. Any outcome achieved in a context like this, would only result in Fake Equity rather than Racial Equity.
The recent scandals within white women-led ‘feminist’ organisations is a direct example of the preservation of white privilege and oppression of BIPOC staff and communities.
We are looking at you Nobel Women’s Initiative:
In August 2020, 5 BIPOC staff members and 2 core consultants issued a collective resignation to the Nobel Women’s Initiative, a women’s rights and global peace organisation founded by 5 Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. The former staff and consultants felt their voices within this organisation had been diminished and that the organisation was failing to uphold its values on transparency, equity and inclusivity. They had asked for profound organisational change but were met with a statement full of platitudes and inaction. Since the departure of staff, an external review was launched to investigate the rationale behind their resignation. Sound familiar? This is because it is.
The Nobel Women’s Initiative, based in Ottawa, is the third major women’s rights organisation to announce reviews of working practices in the past two months. The International Women’s Health Coalition, in addition to Women Deliver, have also launched investigations into allegations of racism, bullying and discrimination.
We are Talking to You Women Deliver:
BIPOC employees of global advocacy organisation Women Deliver have bravely spoken out on social media against the toxic culture within their workplace, the long standing harassment and discrimination they have had to face, and the continuous underestimation of their talent despite their sweat, tears and dedication to the organisation. Former BIPOC employees have revealed how they were bullied by senior management, including the former CEO of Women Deliver, Katja Iversen.
In response to the allegations of racism, an external investigation was launched in June 2020. The purpose was to investigate whether racism and harassment had occurred at Women Deliver. When the findings of the investigation were published in October 2020, they (to put it mildly) were disappointing. The investigation lacked any sense of transparency and did not provide justice for Women Deliver staff who had experienced abuse. The report published used weak justifications that absolved all leadership of accountability. Presently, many junior- and mid-level staff have faced overwhelming pressure to take on additional responsibilities and participate in newly created diversity, equity, and inclusion working groups and task forces, without any additional compensation for their work or support from the board and senior leadership. For a more detailed analysis of the investigation, read this letter to leadership from Women Deliver for Change, a group of Women Deliver staff anonymously advocating for change within the organisation.
But that’s not all. This month Women Deliver announced that due to the challenging financial environment, it would lay off staff members in order to ‘evolve’. While it is unclear how the organisation will choose which staff will be let go (transparency is not their strong suit…), the timing of this announcement, only three weeks after it pledged to include all staff in its work to become an anti-racist organisation, is beyond suspect. It’s also absurd that financial justifications are being used for layoffs. During the investigation, former CEO Katja Iversen took a leave of absence, during which it was revealed that she was paid 84,000 USD for her 4-month leave of absence, and then resigned in October 2020, from which she likely received a hefty severance. Focusing blame on junior staff and seeking to silence or remove staff from the organisation, is not evolution. This does not lead to positive outcomes or progress- but rather aims to maintain white supremacy and deliberately retain power and influence in the hands of a majority white senior staff.
We also take issue with Women Deliver’s former CEO Katja Iverson, who stepped down following the investigation. During her resignation, a statement was released on both the Women Deliver website and Katja’s personal Twitter account. Katja announced that she “decided to relinquish her post and step back to let someone from one of the many communities [they] work for and lead”. As noted in this Twitter thread: the term ‘relinquish’ means to give over possession or control of power. The usage of the term ‘relinquishing’ here is problematic, as it implies that she has given up power over something she believes she bears natural ownership to. Her response supports and bolsters the white supremacy culture framework not only within the organisation, but the global development sector at large.
As a multi-million dollar non profit organisation, we expect better from Women Deliver. This scandal reveals more than ever: The importance to harness, meaningfully centre and value the lived and learned experience of BIPOC staff. The universal approach to leadership has favoured white supremacy culture, conduct and action. Upholding white supremacy within your leadership, does not enable you to move towards racial equity. Failing to hand power to BIPOC staff, failure to actively listen and understand BIPOC needs and experiences, hinders racial equity. Leadership positions must be representative- they must visibly uproot white supremacy culture, thinking and practices.
It must also be noted that representation at leadership or Board level is not the end but the start. It is not enough to have one BIPOC member of staff or leader managing race equity movements across organisations by themselves. If a few members of staff or one individual is granted responsibility for race equity thinking and practice, this yet again enables white leaders to absolve accountability, preserve privilege and seek to defer power in certain circumstances. Meaningful racial equity work starts with challenging traditional power dynamics, power sharing, providing BIPOC staff the platforms to provide expertise and providing BIPOC staff a strong network of support for the increasing physical and emotional labour they are undertaking. If leadership’s answer to growing concerns of racism is to lay off staff or defer power, thinking and hard work to junior staff members, this does not seek to challenge or change white supremacy culture. | https://medium.com/we-need-to-talk-reckonings-in-the-international/global-development-sector-we-see-through-your-evolution-45cce0f41978 | ['The Racial Equity Index'] | 2020-11-25 11:09:36.404000+00:00 | ['Racial Justice', 'Global Development', 'Racial Equity', 'Women Deliver', 'International Development'] |
Happy 30th Birthday! | Last night we celebrated our son’s 30th birthday at a wild and hilarious Onesies Party – outside! in Onesies! on a freezing Melbourne Winter’s night!
“7pm – late” the invitation said and it was certainly every bit of that. The stump of the old grapefruit tree was kept blazing through the night while a bizarre gathering of animals and other creatures chatted about old times and – even more bizarrely discussed the wicked problems holding society in its claws. The bonfire under the stars, the conversation pit around the copper fireplace on the deck, the fridges – portable and fixed, the constantly changing food choices and eclectic music videos were only condiments for the main course: friends and family from 30 years of life coming together in one place to honour one person. It was wonderful to be part of it all.
This morning I thought back to my 30th Birthday. How different that was!
Five months earlier I had made a massive shift from the rural foothills of Melbourne, where I was a cook in an Anglican Summer Semester on a live-in campus, to living alone in a tiny workers cottage a stone’s throw from Toorak Road in the upmarket urban culture of South Yarra. I now worked as a Finance Broker’s PA in a 2-man partnership that was in serious trouble. On the morning of my birthday one partner and I waited for the other to go golfing as was his typical behaviour. As soon as he left we set to packing exactly half of the partnership into boxes – right down to counting the stationery and postage stamps – and moving it and us to a tiny cottage in South Melbourne. The files that we took were only those of ‘our’ side of the partnership. It was dark by the time we had set up the new office and the power was not yet connected. We were exhausted from the intrigue and adrenaline rush that had by now left us spent. As we sat on the floor by the light of his torch, we shared what was left of the sandwiches I had bought for lunch. “It’s my birthday,” I said. “How old?” “My Thirtieth.” “Happy birthday, Lynne. And thanks for today.” We ate on in silence then stood up stiffly and, without another word, made our respective ways home, each to lonely rentals. Tomorrow would be another day and my big birthday had slipped through to the keeper. | https://medium.com/a-home-for-randomness/happy-30th-birthday-4481fdb412ca | ['Lynne Wintergerst'] | 2018-06-04 01:06:04.871000+00:00 | ['Culture Change', 'Happy Birthday', 'Lonely'] |
Infrastructure As Code: How you can use ARM-templates and Policies to control your Azure environment | What's needed for this demo:
An Editor, such as Visual Studio Code
Access to an Azure subscription
We will be writing some code, so a code editor is necessary. This can be any tool you see fit, such as Atom or Notepad++. Visual Studio Code is a good choice regardless, due to some extensions that will help us along. This extension is recommended:
Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Tools — Provided by Microsoft
The extension makes Editing and creating ARM-templates easier by providing a language server and snippets.
For actually testing what is showcased here access to an Azure environment is needed. Microsoft offers free Azure accounts for students here.
Let's get to it
I have created a Github repo here for this article, in which the files used in this demo are stored. There is not anything fancy there, but it might be useful to have the actual files at hand while following along.
A good starting point is looking at an already existing template. Let's start by looking at creating a resource group.
When creating a resource in azure a template for automation can be downloaded
A template can be downloaded for most resources in Azure, even for already existing ones. Using new resources will be the tidiest for this demo since no post-deployment configuration has been done(Which can also be done with templates). Following the “Download a template for automation” link will show the template code inline, also giving the option to download it. The preferred option is to download the files and open them in an editor, in this case, VSCode:
Essential parts of a template
The three most important building blocks of an ARM template have been highlighted. Let's look at the resources block (blue) first.
Resources
Resources in Azure Templates are what is to be created.
These elements are somewhat self-explanatory. Firstly the “type”-property declares what kind of resource is to be deployed. “Microsoft.Resources” means it is a Microsoft-provided resource of the grouping “Resources”, and “/resourceGroups” means that a Resource Group is being created.
If a Virtual Machine were to be created instead, the property would look like this:
"type": "Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines"
Notice that “Microsoft.Resources” is replaced with “Microsoft.Compute”.
One thing to note is that one can easily create multiple resources in one template, in most cases it can be as easy as adding a block enclosed in curly brackets (these guys: {}) and separated with a comma. Just like this excerpt:
Parameters
Now, for the parameters block (red). Parameters are for handling the input to be used within the template, such as which location to deploy the Resource Group into.
Note that the parameters themselves are referred to with “[parameters(‘parameterName’)]” at the corresponding properties.
Parameter-files
The parameter-values can be hardcoded directly into the templates JSON-file, but the better approach is to include a separate parameters.json file for this:
a parameters.json file
By using separate parameter-files one can deploy resources just by updating them instead of updating the main template.json file. This promotes reuse and efficiency and allows for better integration with CI/CD.
Say we need another VM, but we need to deploy it to another resource group. We could reuse the template by only changing the necessary parameters.
Variables
The variables (green) are for containing complicated expressions to be used through the template. No variables are used in this demo, but a common use case is to generate a unique ID for a resource, based on the parameters supplied. Like this very simple example:
"variables": { "storageName": "uniqueString(resourceGroup().id)" },
Similar to how the parameters are referenced later, the variables are referenced like this: “name”: “[variables(‘storageName’)]”
Deploying a template
To recap, there is at this point two separate files:
A template.json file that contains the template for what is being created.
A parameters.json file that contains parameters to be used in the template.
The product of these two files will be a Resouce Group with the following properties:
rgName: LearningByDoing
rgLocation: norwayeast
the tag CostCenter: Oslo
To deploy a template either Azure CLI, Azure Powershell, or The Azure Portal can be used. Here is how to do it with PowerShell.
Install Azure Powershell:
Install-Module -Name Az -AllowClobber -Scope CurrentUser
2. Sign in to Azure
Connect-AzAccount
3. When authentication is done, deploy the template and parameter-file with this command:
New-AzSubscriptionDeployment -Location <location> -TemplateFile <path-to-template> -TemplateParameterFile <path-to-parameter-file>
The previous command is for deploying to the Subscription-scope and is useful for resource groups or other resources that are not contained in a resource group. For deploying inside of a resource group, use the following command instead:
New-AzResourceGroupDeployment -ResourceGroupName <resource-group-name> -TemplateFile <path-to-template>
For this part of the demo, the command would look like this:
New-AzSubscriptionDeployment -Location northeurope -TemplateFile .\template.json -TemplateParameterFile .\parameters.json
After deploying
After the template has been deployed via the tool of your choice, the deployment can be tracked through the deployments tab whichever scope the deployment is made to, in this case, a Resource Group.
the deployment named “template” succeeded
Luckily, the Resource Group “LearningByDoing” was deployed correctly!
The resource group “LearningByDoing” was deployed with the tag: CostCenter: Oslo
To top things off — A Policy
To administer the new resource group one may wish to use Azure Policies to restrict what can and cannot be done inside of it. For this demo, let's say it should be mandatory to set the tag “CostCenter: Oslo” on all resources, so costs can be administered easier.
These policies also use a JSON-file format:
An azure policy that requires a tag to be set on resources.
And this allows for the creation of custom definitions if need be.
The use-case mentioned happens to be a prebuilt definition in Azure. This demo will utilize this definition. For deploying this, another template (policyTemplate.json) and parameter-file (policyParameterFile.json) is created:
policyTemplate.json will assign a built-in policy
policyParameterFile.json supplies the parameters. PolicyDefinitionID is the ID of the policy we want to assign
Note that the policyDefinitionID parameter is for specifying the policy definition that is to be assigned. The ID in this example is for the built-in policy as previously mentioned. One needs to have the ID beforehand or we can get the ID with a function.
The creation of policyTemplate.json doesn't differ much from the first template showed, but a key difference is that the parameters- part of the resources block is an object here. | https://medium.com/sopra-steria-norge/use-azure-policies-and-arm-templates-to-control-your-azure-environment-4c1896908064 | ['Emil Antoni Brasø'] | 2020-12-15 08:03:33.077000+00:00 | ['Entry Level', 'Iac', 'Azure Policies', 'Arm Templates', 'Azure'] |
REST API: Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface | What is REST API?
Let's think of real-life situations then an apt example would be, a library. The library has a bookshelf (database), a librarian(the rest API), and the members(client). this is how the library works, when the client makes a request, the rest API identifies it and then figures out what data needs to be gathered and send it to the client.
Types of request — GET — to get a data
- PUT/PATCH — to make changes in an exiting data
- POST — to update a data
- DELETE — to delete a data
Def: — Representational State Transfer(REST) refers to a group of software architecture design constraints that bring about efficient, reliable, and scalable systems.
So REST isn’t a specific technology but rather is a design methodology that produces consistent outputs and predictable behavior by receiving a set of standard methods called VERBS and returning standardized data typically JSON or XML called resource. | https://medium.com/@ktsreehari/rest-api-representational-state-transfer-application-programming-interface-16ccd4fa44a9 | ['Sreehari Nambiar Kt'] | 2020-11-13 19:10:24.421000+00:00 | ['API', 'Request', 'Rest Api', 'Definition'] |
The “Why” of Cloud-Native: Goals and Benefits | Kyle Brown and Kim Clark
Note: This is part 5 of five-part series. For the first article in the series, start here or jump to Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
In our past articles, we’ve established “what” cloud native refers to and even “how” cloud native works. However, there’s a bigger, more fundamental question we haven’t addressed. Why should anyone care? Given the background from the previous two articles, we can now explore the “why” and look at the benefits of cloud native, starting at a high level of what it means to the business, then dropping down to what it means on the ground.
Benefits of a cloud native approach
Business perspective on goals and benefits
Let’s face it, IT fads come and go. Many business teams try to stay above those fads and let the IT folks go their own way — after all the choice of an application server or language runtime usually doesn’t have much bearing on the way the business operates. What makes cloud native any different? Why should the business support a move to cloud native? In order to understand that, we need to start from a point of view taking into account three key things nearly all businesses must focus on to be successful: growth, risk mitigation and cost reduction. We would argue that building applications with a cloud native approach has the potential to provide benefits in all of these categories.
Market growth
Market growth is all about capturing new customers and keeping their interest. In order to win new customers and retain the interest of customers that are marginal, you have to be able to bring good, new ideas to market faster than your competition. Factors such as the adoption of lean methods and the streamlining of the path to production through pipeline automation enable teams to bring business ideas to production more quickly. This enables a reduced time to market, helping IT to move at the speed of the business in bringing out new features. However, new features will not, by themselves, ensure market growth. You have to be able to winnow out those new features that have a negative effect on customer retention and customer acquisition and allow those to die, while keeping those new features that have a positive effect on those two measures. The real key is to ensure innovation readiness; letting the business boldly and rapidly bring disruptive ideas to life in order to capture new market niches ahead of the competition, while at the same time putting in place measurements that allow you to determine empirically which ideas were good, and which ideas were not good.
Risk mitigation
New features are not everything a business needs, however. If a business could just forge ahead by constantly delighting its customers with new, awesome features, then we would have an easier job. The reality is more complex and difficult, but no less important. Customers need to trust your business. This is, of course, most visible in highly regulated industries such as financial services or healthcare, but relevant to every business. The solutions you provide need to have an appropriate degree of resilience and security to ensure that customers can be sure you’ll be there when they need you, and they can trust you with their money, their data, or their lives.
As we covered in a previous article, well written cloud native solutions make use of abstraction to decouple themselves from the underlying physical infrastructure, offering implicit resilience. Furthermore, they also follow a zero trust model for their components, since they must assume portable deployment into any cloud environment. However, the more we are concerned with risk, the more likely we are to put up barriers to making changes, which works against our need for market growth. It is here that cloud native can help in risk mitigation by providing highly automated and consistent ways to put things into production, reducing the fear of change through deployment confidence.
However, a cloud native approach doesn’t magically reduce risk on its own. Techniques like feature flags and canary testing can enable the business to do things that they might previously have rejected as being too risky, but that requires close cooperation with the business in order for those techniques to become valuable to the business. We must work with the business to update how they measure and control risk so that it is compatible with the methods and processes being introduced.
Cost reduction
No business can ignore cost. It doesn’t matter how big your market share is, or how much your customers trust you, if you can’t control costs, you can’t count on reliable profits. Businesses are run by people (at least today!) and people cost money. We need to ensure we can get the best from the smallest number of them, and this is all the more true of those with the deepest skills. The platforms on which cloud native solutions are built should aim to standardize and, wherever possible, automate the day-to-day tasks of building, deploying and managing software. This makes for optimized high value staff who can focus on directly adding value to the business rather than getting bogged down with day-to-day operations. Of course, those platforms and their underlying infrastructure need to be paid for too. Fortunately, cloud native solutions are designed to use only the resources they need, so you should take advantage of elastic cost models provided by the platform to enable you to take advantage of that cost efficiency.
IT perspective on goals and benefits
To this point, our discussion has been a bit high-level in terms of how cloud native impacts the business. In order for the business to comprehend the benefits of cloud native, we have to translate the IT benefits we have discussed into corresponding business benefits. We’ll next show how each of the key business benefit areas above map to our earlier cloud native ingredients.
Agility and productivity (Market growth)
Every business wants more features from IT — they also want them faster, and they want them to more accurately reflect what they need. How does cloud native help with that?
Faster delivery of components
Delivery acceleration is of the most commonly stated goals for a cloud native approach and pulls together three core aspects: cloud platforms, agile methods and microservices. Cloud platforms, through aspects such as elastic provisioning and component orchestration, enable us to focus on building business functionality by automating and simplifying most of the day-to-day operations work. By reducing toil, they allow teams to focus on higher-value work. Agile methods should enable us to shorten the distance between requirements and implementation and improve alignment with business goals. That means that less rework is required, and bad ideas are discovered and corrected more quickly. Design approaches such as microservices enable us to deliver functionality incrementally, with fewer dependencies, and thereby more rapidly.
Autonomous teams with freedom to innovate
An intentional consequence of fine-grained and discrete components is that it offers more autonomy to the teams creating them. As long as the key rules of decoupling we earlier described are followed, the components can be treated largely as a “black box” by the receiving platform. While cross-team collaboration and common practices should be encouraged, teams are free to, for example, use whatever language runtimes and frameworks are most productive for their needs. This freedom to innovate allows teams to “think out of the box” and deliver solutions to the business not only more quickly, but also to deliver solutions that are more innovative in terms of the business. A key aspect of this autonomy is that the business must be part of each autonomous team. The notions of a Product Owner and Sponsor Users are critical to building not only productive, but innovative teams.
Responsive to changing business conditions
Earlier, we talked about how the ability to not only innovate, but to determine if an innovation is valuable through concrete and empirical measurements were important in order to make a team ready to move at the speed of the business. A critical aspect of this is the ability of the business and IT to work together through Hypothesis driven development. Simply put, Hypothesis Driven Development is phrasing business ideas as scientific hypotheses that can be either proven or dis-proven. Cloud native development only brings benefit to the business if the business is engaged throughout the development cycle.
A primary form of engagement is through A/B testing — if you put a measurement in place, such as the percentage of abandoned carts, or the percentage of customers that click “buy” after browsing, then you can compare different ideas empirically. You can direct some of your customers to a new approach featuring a new idea, and others to the existing approach, and then compare the difference in the measurement between the two over time. The key here is that this requires the business to think in terms of measurable differences. Much as a scientific hypothesis isn’t a hypothesis if it cannot be dis-proven, the same applies to a business hypotheses. The business has to be able to help determine a quantifiable measure by which two different ideas or approaches can be compared. That means that they have to be involved throughout the process in helping determine not only what ideas should be tested, but how they should be tested, and what the definition of success means. Cloud native is well suited to enabling this responsive behavior. It is an essential part of agile methodology, and furthermore the use of fine grained, well-decoupled components makes it safer to add new functionality without disturbing what’s already there. Furthermore, generic mechanisms such as a service mesh can be used to selectively route requests across the ideas being tested, as well as simplify the collection of data for hypothesis assessment.
Resilience and scalability (Risk mitigation)
Cloud platforms, and especially containers, inherit a number of abstractions from their underlying infrastructure. This enables common and lower risk approaches to non-functional requirements such as availability, robustness, performance and security. Some key examples are:
Fine-grained elastic scalability and resilience
A well written cloud native solution is built with fine-grained, lightweight components with minimized state. This enables the cloud platform to inherently provide robustness and scalability by rapid replication and disposal of components as required. Thanks to containerization, this can be provided in a standardized way, resulting in significant operational simplification. Furthermore, the ability for container orchestration platforms to distribute container instances across multiple physical servers, over multiple regions, further increases the level of resilience possible.
Consistent environments and reversible deployments
For the agility and productivity discussed in the earlier section to become a reality, we need to be able to confidently deliver new code into environments, safely re-route traffic, and indeed reverse those deployments with minimal pain if necessary. Ideally, cloud native code should be delivered in immutable images containing all dependencies, and including complete, declarative deployment instructions. This ensures the deployment process and artifacts are identical on all environments, which eliminates the risk of environment drift. Furthermore, features of the cloud platform such as routers and service meshes enable the code to be canary tested (passing a small amount of load through the new code) before full rollout. This also simplifies rolling back a release, as we can simply revert to the images and deployment instructions of the previous release. This simplicity is important to the business, as it gives them assurance that changes can be quickly and safely reversed if the outcome is not what was expected.
Continuous adoption of software runtimes
Agile methods dictate that the path to production must be as automated as possible in terms of build, test and deployment. Often termed continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) these pipelines are typically triggered as a result of changes to the source code. However, since a declarative deployment is also code, a change to the version of an underlying runtime can also trigger a new build/test cycle — an example of “GitOps”. Assuming sufficient confidence in our automated tests, this should enable us to keep underlying runtime versions much more current than most applications do today, ensuring not only that we can capitalize on the latest features but also that we are not at risk from known security vulnerabilities. Again, this should be valuable to the business in that it reduces the fiduciary risk of the loss of customer data or assets.
Optimization and efficiency (Cost reduction)
Cloud based computing enables us to pool resources: hardware, software, and indeed people too. By sharing these resources across applications, across domains in the organization, and even across organizations. we have the opportunity to reduce operational cost. Cloud native ensures applications are written to gain the most from those optimizations.
Consistent skills on the underlying platform
Underlying the obvious characteristics of containers — lightweight scalable components — there is a much greater gem. Perhaps their greatest benefit over the long term is in operational consistency. Using exactly the same skills to build, deploy, provide high availability, scale, monitor, diagnose, and secure regardless of the runtimes within a set of orchestrated containers is a huge leap forward. At a minimum, this means transferable, common skill sets across previously siloed parts of the IT landscape. At best, the opportunities for automation of operations should result in a reduction in the number of people required to run a given infrastructure, and an increase in its reliability. However, since these technologies are new, there is a steep learning curve that individuals, and companies must go through before these benefits become a reality.
Optimized infrastructure usage and licensing
Arguably the most fundamental definition of “cloud” is abstraction from the underlying physical infrastructure. Virtual machines gave us the first level of indirection, in that we were no longer tied to specific hardware within a physical machine. Containers, if coupled with cloud native ingredients such as minimal state, immutable deployment, etc. take us much further. Cloud native enables us to invisibly distribute components across many machines in multiple data centers, providing greater opportunities for economies of scale. Software licensing of course needs to rise to this challenge with new models and potentially more sophisticated and dynamic metering.
Rapid self-provisioning of resources and capabilities
Self-provisioning is one of the key promises of cloud, enabling rapid requisition of virtual compute, memory, storage, networking and more. Container platforms further abstract this by allowing declarative requests for resources at the point of deployment, and setting policies for how these change at runtime based on load. Whole new environments can be created with a single click, and segregated from other environments through software defined networking. To make the most of all this, applications need to be written differently. Applications need to be stateless, disposable, fine grained, and indeed, all of the things we have discussed in this series.
Conclusion
Cloud native, just like most significant changes in approach, requires a level of commitment in order to achieve your goals. As we have seen, that requires many separate ingredients to be in place. For many, perhaps most, organizations it may be impossible to get all of those ingredients in place from the start, so the key to success is prioritization.
By selecting the benefits that are most important to you, we hope our series can help you to prioritize which of the cloud native ingredients you should focus on maturing first. | https://medium.com/swlh/the-why-of-cloud-native-goals-and-benefits-5c559a4e73a5 | ['Kyle Gene Brown'] | 2020-12-21 22:00:08.063000+00:00 | ['Market Growth', 'Agile', 'Business Development', 'Risk Mitigation', 'Cloud Native'] |
The Art of Living: Attending to Needs | The Art of Living: Attending to Needs
A Modern Reading of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching: Sections 7–13
What is the meaning of life? Why is this important? How do you live your life to make it more meaningful? The Art of Living provides timeless answers to these eternal questions including new perspectives on the world, people and their behaviours; practical tools for avoiding and handling conflicts, and, actionable advice on how to lead effectively and make a difference. “This is powerful, this is for practical people struggling with business goals, lacking time with family, feeling they climb wrong ladders, feeling stressed.” (All parts)
7. Attending to People’s Needs
Lao Tzu
The world is eternal since it exists for others.
Therefore, skilled leaders
withdraw from contention,
yet find themselves in front;
acts selflessly,
yet find themselves taken care of.
Attending to people’s needs fulfils your own.
Ames & Hall
[Skilled leaders] in emulation of the natural processes are impartial and inclusive. […] It is because [skilled leaders] take nature as their mentor that their persons are preserved and all of their needs are satisfied.
8. Be Like Water
Lao Tzu
The highest effectiveness is like water.
It is because water benefits everything without contending
yet dwells in loathed places
that it almost reaches ultimate purpose.
Live in a suitable place;
keep your heart and mind deep;
treat others properly;
stand by your word;
lead effectively;
serve capably;
act with timing.
Act without contention
in accordance with ultimate purpose
to avoid blame.
Ames & Hall
The highest [effectiveness] is a combination of the degree of benefit something bestows and the inclusiveness of such beneficence. The intensity and expansiveness of water is an appropriate analogy for such efficacy since it gives the gift of life without discrimination, and flows everywhere disdaining nothing. […] The greatest obstacle to optimising relationships is coercion. If a healthy relationship is mutually accommodating, then the introduction of coercion, in which one party overwrites the importance of the other, entails a diminution of the creative possibilities of both […] Forced redefinition is humiliation. […] Relationships are invariably hierarchical. But hierarchy is only pernicious when it is compromised by coercion. The family as an institution is hierarchical, but appropriate patterns of deference can allow members of the family to have both dignity and parity in their relationships.
9. Accomplish and Withdraw
Lao Tzu
Rather than fill to the brim, stop in time:
keep on pounding and the sharpness will be gone soon;
treasures are hard to guard;
riches and pride bring calamity;
Ultimate purpose is to accomplish and withdraw.
Ames & Hall
The human experience can be maximised only by coordinating its activities with the workings of the natural environment and the propensity of circumstances. These human activities should be modelled upon the cyclical patterns of nature in which one season gives way to the next, orchestrating the full range of natural forces — sun, soil, air, moisture — to collaborate in producing a thriving environment and an abundant harvest.
10. Like a Baby
Lao Tzu
Can you balance your energies
and embrace them
without separation?
Can you control
your breath gently,
like a baby?
Can you cleanse
your mysterious mirror
until it is without spots?
Can you love people
and lead
without coercion?
Can you open and close
the gates to the world
in accord with people?
Can you view clearly
the four directions
using unprincipled knowledge?
Give life and nurture:
give life without possessing;
nurture without coercion;
this is ultimate effectiveness.
Ames & Hall
It is the thorough integration of the physical and spiritual aspects of our experience in the concentration of our [energies] that enables us to maximise our potency and invigorate our minds.
11. Emptiness Brings Usefulness
Lao Tzu
Thirty spokes form a wheel;
its usefulness comes from emptiness.
Clay forms a pot;
its usefulness comes from emptiness.
Windows and doors cut out make a room;
its usefulness comes from emptiness.
Therefore, something brings value,
emptiness brings usefulness.
12. Belly Over Eyes
Lao Tzu
Five colours blind the eye;
five tones deafen the ear;
five flavours destroy the tongue;
hunting and riding upset both heart and mind;
exotic goods hinder progress.
Therefore, leaders
take care of the belly instead of the eyes
choose one, reject the other.
Ames & Hall
Prevent the inner focus of vital energy from being overwhelmed by outer distractions.
13. Beyond Yourself
Lao Tzu
Favour and disgrace are like fear.
Honour and distress are like the self.
What does this mean?
Favour debases us:
afraid when we get it;
afraid when we lose it.
The self embodies distress:
no self, no distress.
Respect the world as your self:
the world can be in your trust.
Love the world as your self:
the world can be in your custody.
Ames & Hall
If we attend to each and every one of our responsibilities with the same care that we invest in our own persons, we can be entrusted with anything, including ruling the world. […] Treat all things with equal seriousness and respect, and our own person will be taken care of as a matter of course.
The Art of Living: All Parts
Contents: A very short summary of each part
Introduction: How to make life more meaningful
Glossary: Explanation of key terms
Acknowledgements: Standing on the shoulders of giants
Sources: Where to learn more | https://medium.com/an-idea/the-art-of-living-attending-to-peoples-needs-4abfddebafea | ['Erik Schön'] | 2020-12-31 14:38:38.886000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Poetry', 'Strategy', 'Philosophy', 'Leadership'] |
Words, The Strongest Stimuli… | 50 WORDS
Words, The Strongest Stimuli…
Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash
“I need to eat, my favorite food” He texted.
“Will you deliver it now? Warm and Juicy?”
His words, arousing. The perfect stimulus, even from a distance.
My body responded, spontaneously.
Feeling warm moisture pooling, I replied,
“It is ready for you to devour, am on my way to deliver” | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/words-the-strongest-stimuli-9215651961b0 | ['Wistful Writer'] | 2020-12-25 12:59:41.742000+00:00 | ['This Happened To Me', 'Words', 'Stimulus', '50 Words', 'The Bad Influence'] |
10 Lessons I’ve Learned That No Scale Could Measure | 10 Lessons I’ve Learned That No Scale Could Measure
Gaining 50 pounds taught me about my body, myself, and the world
Photo by Jennifer Enujiugha from Pexels
In recovering from my marred relationship with food, health, and my body, I was faced with the choice between life and death (quite literally); as the incredible poet Blythe Baird says: “If you aren’t recovering, you are dying.” So in my journey to life, in choosing recovery from my broken relationship with myself, weight gain was inevitable.
To my past self, who was intoxicated by diet culture, this was a thing to be feared. But in this journey I have gained so much more than a beautiful, healthy body… here are the ten lessons I learned that no scale can measure:
1. It really doesn’t have to be this hard.
The dieting, the over-exercising, the self-hatred, the constant criticism: it all seems unfortunately essential to maintain this false sense of security that society prescribes to avoid fatness. But in truth, I found my greatest sense of security in abundance of food and joy.
2. Nobody cares!
While harsh, this perspective is also incredibly liberating. The world is so absorbed in its own presentation that you — and everyone else — are simply background blur in 7 billion world-views focused on the self. Find freedom in this release from an obligation to the world.
3. And the people who do probably don’t share your values.
There will always be people who superficially “care”; those fatphobic, transphobic, homophobic, humanphobic people will opinionate on how they think you should live your experience in your body.
“Don’t listen to criticism from someone you wouldn’t seek advice from.” — Melissa Bolton
Thankfully, these people do not share your values, and you can be confident that you are an accepting, embracing, living soul.
Graphic created by Fattitude
4. The scale is given more weight than it carries
What is that obscure number, really? It is almost funny to consider how fallible the construct of weight stigma is. The scale is a magnet. It’s number is a measure of gravity acting on a being. And still, numbers are no more perfect: they are abstract symbols assigned relatively to inanimate quantities. It is almost laughable that our society has centered such a grave importance on the scale.
5. Food is not just medicine
Food is adventure; it is experience. Food is not only meant to be had, but it is intended to be enjoyed. We have been blessed with so many incredible flavors (salted caramel chocolate anyone?), and we owe to our bodies these wonderful pleasures.
6. There is a difference between living to eat and eating to live.
If the universal purpose were to be indentured to foods, where would our world be? Food is here to serve us, and there is so much more to life than worshipping what we eat.
7. The body is incredibly intelligent.
The initial stages of my journey to healing (aka: gaining weight) were laden with fear and distrust for my own body (what a terrible feeling that is). I distrusted my hunger and fullness, whom I were certain would betray me. But, as I learned my body, I discovered how incredibly knowing it is. Our bodies are designed to work for us in a shape and size only they are intelligent enough to know.
8. Health exists at every size.
And how incredibly intelligent our bodies are to advance so far beyond the societal stigmas against fat. Our bodies know that fat is so good and that fatness IS NATURAL! These incredible machines are so innately kind to the diversity that they know we can and will encompass.
9. Beauty is not pain.
While society might tell us that thinness and dieting is the path to fulfillment, there is nothing beautiful about self-torture. There is nothing beautiful about the voice in your head constantly telling you that you are not enough. Beauty is abundance. Beauty is being free of the chains of your inner critic. To be beautiful is to take up the space that you are meant to take up, unapologetically.
10. The most uncomfortable experiences are the most rewarding.
As difficult as it was to live in a cesspool of self-hatred, it was a comfortable habit to maintain. Eating out of love for my body was uncomfortable. Feeling my body was uncomfortable.
Being okay with myself was uncomfortable. But nothing ever changes in the comfort zone. | https://medium.com/fattitude/10-lessons-ive-learned-that-no-scale-could-measure-a7b1e72e4376 | ["Katie O'Malley"] | 2020-12-29 23:33:23.128000+00:00 | ['Fat Positive', 'Weight', 'Body', 'Recovery', 'Body Positive'] |
It was abuse | It was abuse
Accepting it is so hard. I don’t want to be part of this group or label. I tell myself it’s something else. I tell myself the stories I was told and made to feel. You ungrateful bitch, your fucking pathetic, your an easy women. How did I take this type of language and behavior. Why didn’t I speak up. Why couldn’t I just leave through the open doors.
I stayed for 2 and a half years. And I still have him in my life. Still talk to him and think of ways somethings might work. I dream of the home we had and plans or creating a garden then. I miss my Nala, the Great Dane. And I miss his company and sharing my day.
So this isn’t A victory story or one that says how to save yourself. It’s my story of accepting it was abuse and how I’m learning to feel myself again. | https://medium.com/@elviac11/it-was-abuse-94117b09c7f7 | ['Elvia S'] | 2020-12-26 18:59:08.387000+00:00 | ['Awakening', 'Courage', 'Healing', 'Abuse', 'Self Love'] |
Good leaders take ownership of everything in their world | Last week, yet another political fight started in Belgium. You can read all about it here http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20180719_03624520. But if you don’t speak Dutch or don’t have a subscription to that newspaper, let me summarize it for you: The Minister of Justice blamed the Minister of Migration that he made a mistake in sending back an Albanian criminal to his homeland, as he could’ve known that he was still awaiting trial in Belgium. I have no intention of discussing politics here, and I don’t care whose side you are on. But think about it for a while. It’s one Minister personally blaming another Minister in his own government for a mistake that could’ve been prevented. If you know Belgian politics a bit, this pattern has been going on since this government got started.
This is a perfect example of failed leadership, and not taking ownership of a situation. There are two kinds of leaders: those who relentlessly strive to reach the team’s objectives and those who are only focused on scoring goals for themselves. Let me tell you, the Minister of Justice scored a goal there. Because the Minister of Migration indeed could’ve known it was a criminal and he shouldn’t have sent him back. It was a clear mistake, and the Minster of Justice capitalised on that. Nevermind that it was an own-goal, against his own coalition. That’s just a detail. The important thing is that the Minister scored. What will happen now? There will be more fences between Justice and Migration, and more bureaucracy and sign-offs to ensure that the blame-game can continue. This will result in an even slower government, and nobody benefits.
What should a real leader do in this situation? Realise that it was a systemic failure that such a big criminal got away, and take ownership of the problem. That is the ONLY way to improve the situation and make sure this doesn’t happen again. He should sit together with the department of Migration and ask the 5 WHYs. Google that if you haven’t heard of it. He should propose different ways of working in HIS OWN department that decreases the likelihood of failures like this. He should propose new laws that will keep a criminal like that behind bars until trial. Why was he free in the first place?
This is also true in software development. Although, we don’t often let high-profile criminals escape, we do make plenty of errors. And you can always look outside for reasons:
The technology choice made earlier by the architects was not right
We didn’t get the data in the format we expected from the DBAs
Infra didn’t give us the access we needed
The project leader didn’t give us the time we need for the task at hand
The operations people didn’t deploy our code as we specified
With an attitude like that, you will never deliver projects successfully. Instead, you have to think about what you could’ve done differently:
I didn’t challenge the technology choice clear enough or I was afraid to ask for help when I didn’t really understand the technology.
I didn’t sit together often enough with the DBAs to make sure their data maps with what we need
I should’ve involved infra from the start of the project. I should’ve known they have a lot on their plate, and they can’t drop everything the moment I walk in.
I should’ve more clearly communicated the technical complexities and risks of the task at hand to the project leader
I should’ve introduced the concept of devops months ago in order to guarantee smooth deployments.
Just like in the politics example above, this is the ONLY way to improve a situation and make sure it doesn’t happen again. As a prime example of a good leader, watch this awe-inspiring example from Jocko Willink:
Don’t be like the current Belgian Government. Be like Jocko Willink. :-) And if something bad happens? Good! Because it’s an opportunity to learn. | https://medium.com/datamindedbe/good-leaders-take-ownership-of-everything-in-their-world-276813116e60 | ['Kris Peeters'] | 2018-07-22 20:23:16.655000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Leadership', 'Jocko Willink'] |
Balance of Power | Balance of Power
The Invisible Woman (author’s photo)
“Truth fails not,” a man once said
(Though honors soon went to his head).
As men grow older, truth grows hard,
Replaced by money and regard
Till, petrified with work long past,
Each falls to mumbling at the last,
While still believing that his voice
Is clear and strong. What is his choice?
A woman, now, as she finds age
Is freer than her early stage
Of loving man and bearing much
Of love’s hard labor, care and such–
She finds at last her mind’s own strength
And turns it to her art at length:
Invisible, she earned her hour
To strengthen her creative power. | https://medium.com/resistance-poetry/balance-of-power-baaee6504e73 | ['Jane Woodman'] | 2020-12-22 19:51:16.041000+00:00 | ['Resistance Poetry', 'Women', 'Voices', 'Power', 'Aging'] |
Software Development Life Cycle | Let us explore the various stages involved in a typical Software Development Process.
There are 6 stages involved:
Requirements phase Analysis phase Design phase Development phase Testing phase Deployment & Maintenance phase
Gathering Requirements
This is the most important phase in the SDLC. In this phase, the technical and business team involved in the project gather complete information about the requirements from the customers. It is critical to not make any assumptions about requirements. Practice active listening and document every elicitation activity.
It involves various activities as follows:
1. Requirements Elicitation
The developers and stakeholders meet ; the latter are inquired concerning their needs and wants regarding the software product.
2. Requirements Analysis
Requirements are identified and conflicts with the stakeholders are solved. Various written and graphical tools such as user stories and UML are used.
3. Requirements Specification
Requirements are documented in a formal artifact called a Requirements Specification (RS) which is officially approved only after validation. For eg. Software Requirements Specification (SRS).
4. Requirements Validation
This process involves checking that the documented requirements and models are consistent and meet the stakeholder’s needs. Only if the final draft passes this validation process, the RS becomes official.
5. Requirements Management
It involves managing all the activities pertaining to the gathered requirements, supervising as the system is developed and being adaptive to the changing requirements.
Requirements engineering is crucial for success of software products. | https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/software-development-life-cycle-cde7f069d5f3 | ['Vaidhyanathan S M'] | 2020-11-22 03:37:31.196000+00:00 | ['Sdlc', 'Software Engineering', 'Software Development'] |
“I hate myself”: The Parasite of Self-Hatred | Original article written by Dr. Samar Habib at https://conscioused.org/wiki/i-hate-myself/
Everyone has a Parasite living inside their brain. And mine was running the show.
Standing in front of a mirror in my parents’ home, aged 30, single and shamefully broke, I slapped myself in the face as hard as I could. How could you be so stupid? And again, slap! You’re so stupid! And again, and again, and again, and again, until I couldn’t take the pain anymore.
You’re such an idiot. I hate you. I hate you so much. How could you be so weak? How could you be so stupid?
And out of the silence came one last slap to sear the pain in a ripe, red seal.
Rewind back a couple of years: one of the courses I was teaching at a local university was about sexuality, it caused controversy and I got hated on big time. Later that year I was assaulted. I held on for another two semesters before, on an impulse, I resigned.
Ever since that moment, a voice in my head kept hating me for throwing away everything I worked so hard for. For not being strong enough to weather through.
The rumination was never-ending and the Parasite was eating me alive, day and night. The only way to escape the incessant negative thinking was to sleep. And I slept most of the time. When awake, I was paralyzed by fear and anxiety — I didn’t answer calls, go anywhere or see anyone. Even sunlight felt hostile to the skin. Everything hurt.
According to the Toltec Tradition, everyone has a Parasite just like this. She might be domesticated and not giving too much trouble, but all it takes is one mistake, and she’ll spare no expense ravaging your soul. In times of trouble these Toltec Parasites can become inflamed, and when they do, they take over our inner worlds.
You’ll know your Toltec Parasite is inflamed when you find yourself stuck in a repetitive thought-loop and the unstoppable rumination debilitates you. The anxiety triggered by the looping thoughts forces you to stay in ruts longer than you need to, prevents you from taking action, and sows seeds of self-doubt, puncturing holes in your self-esteem.
Man, I wish I knew back then what I know now. But there were no shortcuts to figuring out what to do with my inflamed Parasite. I can’t say I have it all sorted out, but I have learned some valuable lessons to keep my rumination in check.
Lesson 1: Realize that it’s no big deal
I sink in my mattress, overwhelmed with depression and both the inability and unwillingness to do anything. I don’t realize that I am doing something by listening to Tibetan Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron. That doesn’t seem productive to me. I think of it as just a way to shrink from my responsibilities. And my Parasite lets me know it.
You’re a loser! You’re finished. Die already. Why are you even still here?
I hate you.
Nobody cares about you.
You don’t deserve to live.
Kill yourself while you still can.
That last one is especially weird. Hurry! Senility is only 60 years away! But I guess no one said your inner critic had to be logical.
Pema Chodron makes me realize that nothing is permanent. From her I learn that impermanence is one of the Buddhist precepts.
Can you imagine the relief I feel the moment she reminds me that circumstances, feelings, preferences, environments, desires, and everything under the sun are all impermanent? Nothing lasts forever, everything is ever-changing, Pema says. The teaching sinks into my chest like the good medicine it is.
I relax into my pain. I stop resisting, knowing it’s not forever. Relaxing into pain is like gliding a hot knife through butter. Relaxing into pain is the first few moments of getting into a warm bath. Something heavy and awful releases its hold on me. And as I relax into my pain I take to heart the words of the Beatles song: “There will be an answer, let it be.”
The first rule of Parasite is not to resist Parasite. Let it be.
Lesson 2: Separate Self From Toltec Parasite
You know when someone says they’re “in two minds” about something? It’s because one part of their personality is saying one thing, and the other is saying something else. So, like with me, one part of me thinks I dodged a bullet (probably literally) leaving that job, and another part is bitch-slapping me for quitting.
So one day I decide to start talking to my Parasite. By isolating her as a part and having a conversation with her, I expose her to the other parts of me that are logical and playful. I take the venom out of her sting, slowly, over time. I play the long game. Patient and persevering, like the tortoise from Aesop’s fable.
Take for example the time I was invited to Turkey to give lectures there. My Parasite finds a way to rain on my parade. Your research is world-famous, but there isn’t a single university with balls big enough to hire you, she says.
“Well, if you’re not going to let us do anything other than lie in bed all day, I’m going to listen to more Pema when I get home,” I say to her.
“Shut up, you’re a loser anyway,” she shoots back.
“Get lost.”
“I see your ‘Get lost,’ and I raise you ‘’Forget everyone and everything”. “I don’t want to play!” Parasite exclaims. “I want to stay angry, abrasive and mean.”
Then she falls silent.
Just like with any bully, it helps if you can prepare your responses in advance. Hypnotherapist Marisa Peer teaches her clients to say this to the mean people in their lives: “thank you for sharing that.” It shuts them down, and shuts them up, she says.
I’m standing in line at the Virgin Airlines check-in counter, minding my business and she hits me with I hate you! Just like that, spontaneously.
I hate you. You’re a loser. Kill yourself while you still can.
Every word sends a venomous shiver down my spine.
You’re worthless. Nobody cares about you. They screwed you out of house and home and you let them. Handed them what they wanted on a silver platter.
“Is that so? Please, tell me more.” I surrender to the fact of my experience. I can’t fight it anymore. I’m exhausted. I let her tear me up. And yet a strange thing happens as I surrender. She stops.
The Parasite notices I’ve shifted gears, so she adapts.
My sister, feeling sorry for me, asks me to join her for a vacation after my trip in Turkey finishes. That’s how you know people love you. They still want to hang out with you even when you’re a lava lamp of misery and a tesla coil of emotional electrocution.
The Tesla Coil of Emotional Electrocution
On a train from London to Paris and completely unexpectedly, my Parasite flares up: What now, Einstein? Seriously, what are we going to do with all that time we still have to live? You can’t kill yourself; it’s too selfish and you’re too much of a chicken to do it. Besides, you’d probably mess it up, anyway.
To be perfectly honest, she’s right. I don’t see suicide as an option. I don’t kill spiders or cockroaches, how could I bring myself to kill an entire human being? It’s impossible. But there is an insidious taunting going on. She’s subtly pointing out my incompetence. Even in suicide, I’d fail.
Then it hits me. What if I could play with the voice of my inner Parasite? What if I could raise her pitch so she starts to sound like Chip or Dale from the Chipmunks? What if I imagine her as shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
I am now waiting eagerly, silently for her to come on. She’s onto me. She lays low for the rest of the trip. The more I lay in wait for my rumination to start, the more it subsides.
Lesson 3: Identify with the Listener Not The Part
Over time, I start to see that the Parasite is a part of me, and that I am the whole. I start to ask the question who am I? It’s actually a special type of meditation taught by a Hindu mystic named Ramana Maharshi. I would close my eyes and ask who am I? and wait for the answer. All thinking would come to a stop and what I’m left with is who I am.
In the ancient spiritual traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism we are divine beings. Likewise for Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. of the Native American Toltec Tradition. He’s the first one to teach about about The Parasite. We are not our thoughts, we are the witness to our thoughts, he says.
This witness is cosmic consciousness. It is everywhere. It is never born, never dies, always was and always will be. That’s who I am.
This new realization transforms my relationship to my life and the people who venture into it. I don’t go to bed resenting villains or cursing enemies. I don’t thirst for revenge at some theoretical point in the future. I understand that we are all precious and that our actions don’t define our divinity.
If you don’t want to get into spirituality then consider this idea from communication and listening expert, Julian Treasure, instead:
You are not the inner voice. You are the one listening.
You have no idea how much that inner shift has saved my life. I did it in meditation by separating my awareness from my mind, but that seems a little abstract, so here’s a more fun exercise to try out:
Go to a busy place but where you would still feel safe. Close your eyes and focus on the sounds around you.
Pick a single sound, a nearby chirping perhaps, the overall noise of the crowd, the wind, whatever. Focus on nothing but the sound. When I do this exercise, I focus so much on the sound I have the experience of disappearing. I no longer have biographical thoughts. Thoughts about who and where and what and when I am cease. I’m just receiving the sound. I am the sound. There’s nothing else. Just sound. No judgment. No self. No chance for me to beat-up or uplift myself.
I practice this listening meditation whenever I need reminding that I’m not the voice. I’m the listener. When the voice begins to overwhelm, I know that I can take the position of the listener, rather than identify with what the voice is saying. The more you practice this, the better you’re able to disengage from the distress. It’s like a muscle. The more you practice, the better you get.
Ideally and at all times, I want to be able to know that I’m the listener, not the voice.
Try it. Go to a busy place. Set a timer if you have to. Close your eyes. Become the sound.
Lesson 4: Investigate the Origin of the Part…
Continue reading at https://conscioused.org/wiki/toltec-parasite/ | https://medium.com/the-post-grad-survival-guide/the-parasite-295c5b392122 | [] | 2019-04-16 06:02:53.647000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Personal Development', 'Life Lessons', 'Inspiration', 'Psychology'] |
The Great Enablers | Chapter 4: The power of choice
By Enrica Porcari, WFP Chief Information Officer and Director of Technology, and Dominik Heinrich, Director of Innovation and Knowledge Management
PLUS School Menus offers an easy-to-use menu optimization software to calculate and select the most cost-effective and diverse meals for students worldwide. The result not only meets the nutritional requirements but simultaneously ensures menu diversity with respect to local eating habits. Photo: WFP/Raul Saenz
WFP is the largest humanitarian organization in the world fighting hunger. Many of the people we serve depend on our assistance in order to survive — but saving lives is only the first step; we also need to feed hopes and dreams, changing lives in the process.
Innovation and technology are two of the keys to unlocking an essential aspect in the development and growth of the people we serve: the power of choice.
Choice is what makes us humans feel a sense of freedom and ownership over our own destinies. When a person has different options, a whole world opens up to them. That person feels empowered and validated and now has a voice which, in the moment of choosing, is heard.
Take Bangladesh, where WFP gives choice to 500,000 people in Cox’s Bazar using blockchain. Receiving assistance from multiple humanitarian agencies through a single card, they can choose how to spend their entitlements, selecting from a wide variety of products at the world’s largest refugee camp.
Another example is the access people in Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Honduras and the Dominican Republic now have to life-saving information in times of COVID-19. Chatbots give them the choice to contact WFP from any place at any time, and receive an answer to their questions in their own language through a technology called Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Chatbots serve to provide timely information on WFP programmes, COVID-19 measures and additional health-related tips such as breastfeeding and nutrition Chatbots are currently being deployed in Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Honduras and Dominican Republic. Photo: WFP/Francesca Caldari
But choice comes in many shapes and sizes, and when it comes to delivering assistance, WFP knows that one size doesn’t fit all. Necessities change between the people we serve according to many factors like their nationality, context, condition, age, etc. For instance, the same school feeding programmes that help 388 million children around the globe would now have the potential to be enabled through PLUS School Menus, a menu optimization software that calculates and selects the most cost-effective and diverse meals for children, while respecting local eating habits.
WFP brings choice not only to those it serves, but also to itself and to fellow humanitarian and development organizations by innovating technical solutions that allow it to bring more meaningful assistance, leaving no one behind. Because to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030, we need to work with everything we have, not only to save lives, but to offer the choice of a better future.
More information on the themes explored in this series is available in a new WFP platform, which not only offers a glimpse of some of the innovation and technology behind the scenes of a 2020 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, but also suggests practical ways that companies, entrepreneurs and individuals can work with us to achieve even more. Visit wfp.org/enablers. | https://medium.com/@wfpinnovation/the-great-enablers-12e3a46963a9 | ['Wfp Innovation Accelerator'] | 2021-01-15 11:17:45.645000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Humanitarian', 'Innovation', 'Empowerment', 'Choices'] |
What We Did About The Boy Who Was Hurting Us | When our daughter Josephine was in kindergarten, she was having trouble with another girl, one she liked a lot, but who often rebuffed her and said cruel things. There were many tearful car rides home. I tried to help her, but it was her friend Katrina who hit on the perfect thing.
Josephine: “She’s mean to me.”
Katrina: “She’s mean to me too. When she’s mean to me I don’t play with her. When she’s nice to me I do play with her.”
To this day, nearly two decades later, our family still refers to this dialog as a sort of relationship philosophy touchstone.
A few years back, there was a five-year-old boy in class named “Jerry” who had been diagnosed with sensory integration issues, the kind that caused him to at least once a day hurt classmates by pouncing on, hitting, or biting them. He was not “being mean” and it was not done in anger, but rather as an act of pure, uncensored impulse. A few times, I asked “Why?” and Jerry replied, “I don’t know,” an answer I believed.
One day, after several weeks of this, four boys sat at our snack table discussing their troubled friend.
“He’s a bad guy.”
“He hits me.”
“I’m not going to play with him.”
One boy made an effort to defend Jerry, saying, “He never hurt me,” but he was in the minority.
As I listened, it became clear that the boys were leading up to taking matters into their own hands. They were agreeing to not play with him. They were going to shun Jerry. Naturally, they didn’t know the word, it was not something they were taught, it was simply a rational response to feeling unsafe: avoid what was hurting them, in this case a boy with impulse control issues. Of course, I’m the adult, I’m responsible for the physical and emotional well-being of all the kids, and as much as I understood the children’s logic, I couldn’t let this happen. I went home that day in a kind of despair, as I did for weeks thereafter.
Shunning is as ancient as humanity. In all traditional hunter-gatherer societies, in most agricultural ones, and in every religion with which I’m familiar, shunning is the ultimate “consequence” for repeated anti-social behavior. Even in our industrialized society one could argue that imprisonment and the death penalty are forms of shunning.
In this case, the wisdom of Katrina that had served my own child so well was at odds with our community’s responsibility for the emotional and social well-being of one of its members, a boy who could be a good playmate, but who also, regularly and almost at random it seemed, would become overwhelmed to the point of hurting the rest of us.
Normally, my instinct is to rely on natural consequences, and shunning, after all, is a natural consequence, but it doesn’t take too much imagination to know that letting matters run their course would result in a kind of cruelty that would do little more than to make a young, confused child even more confused. On the other hand, children were going home with bite marks, bruises, and some had even begun to cower whenever Jerry came near them.
We’re a cooperative preschool, which means that parents work in the classroom with me as assistant teachers, so the situation was apparent to all of us. To their credit, the parents remained mostly compassionate about this boy even as they worried that their own child would be the next victim of his impulses. My best idea was to either shadow Jerry myself or to assign another adult the duty: to stick with him, especially during moments of transition or when the intensity of our play began to ramp up, and hope to catch him, physically if necessary, before any damage was done either to the other children or to Jerry’s reputation.
During one crucial parent meeting as we discussed what to do, emotions rising, I began to think that we were headed for our school’s ultimate shunning: asking Jerry’s family to leave the school. It wasn’t a solution I supported, but at the same time, I would have understood it had the parents, the owners of our school, made that decision. But when the notion was floated, voices rose up in objection, with several families declaring that if we asked this boy to leave, their family would leave as well. To my relief, we were not going to shun him. It was a decision that unified us around figuring this out, even if we weren’t really sure what to do.
Jerry’s family was working with an OT, an occupational therapist, and they were already doing everything they knew how. We continued our shadowing regime during class, but the big breakthrough was that parents talked to their kids at home about this boy, his challenges, and how they were now our challenges because he was a member of our community. They talked to their children about the boy’s impulses, about how he often couldn’t help himself, about how he didn’t mean any harm, even when he caused it. Families began to invite him to play dates after school and on weekends. I wasn’t privy to most of this and I imagine each family approached it somewhat differently, but in a matter of weeks, things began to change. Kids were, of course, still being pounced on, hit, and bitten, but not quite so often due to our calm, systematic adult vigilance. When it did happen, however, the children were much more philosophical about it, even sometimes shrugging it off when they would have otherwise raised hell, saying things like, “That’s what Jerry does.”
One day, a couple months into our experiment, one of the boys who had been a frequent victim and had previously labeled Jerry a “bad guy” was sitting on a bench with friends. Jerry shambled up and asked, “Can I sit here?” to which the boy replied, “Sure . . . If you don’t hurt me.” And quite earnestly, Jerry answered, “I won’t hurt you.”
It was such a powerful moment for me. It seemed that Jerry’s friends had, indeed, taken matters into their own hands. Over the course of the following weeks, I heard the kids standing up for themselves without putting Jerry down, saying calmly, “Just don’t hurt me, okay?” “Don’t bite me,” and “You can play, but I don’t want you to jump on me.” Each time, Jerry replied sincerely, “I won’t,” and most of the time, with this promise made, he didn’t.
Then a week came when Jerry and his family took a week off for a vacation. As a teacher, I experienced it as a relief, almost a vacation for myself in that I didn’t have to spend my days on high alert. I was not looking forward to Jerry’s return the following Monday, but when he walked through the gate to our playground, a cry went up from the children, “Jerry’s back!” and they swarmed him with hugs. I’d never seen him look so happy.
I don’t know if we solved anything or if we even handled in the “right” way, but we did manage to find a balance that didn’t require shunning and I’m proud of all of us for that.
(If you want to read more from Teacher Tom, you’ll find it at Teacher Tom’s Blog.) | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/what-we-did-about-the-boy-who-was-hurting-us-71f899d54d67 | ['Teacher Tom'] | 2020-03-05 04:20:47.582000+00:00 | ['Sensory Processing', 'Preschool', 'Community', 'Education', 'Parenting'] |
Pass data or events from a parent component to a child component in both functional and class components. | Pass data or events from a parent component to a child component in both functional and class components. Manish Mandal Follow May 11 · 3 min read
I still remember the day when I gave an interview in one of the reputed MNC in India. In the first round, the interviewer was a lady and she has asked me at least 50 questions from React, HTML, and CSS. I gave most of the answers correct and selected for the next round. In the next round, there was a guy who took my interview. First, he asked me to rate my skill out of 5 in React HTML and CSS. I gave 4 to HTML 4 to CSS and 2 to React😅. And you know what happened next he started asking me the question only from React 😁. Ok coming to the point he asked me a simple basic question of React. How to pass an event from a parent component to the child component without using any external library. And I didn’t know that answer 😞. But now I know 🙃. So here is a clear explanation of how to pass data or events from child component to parent component in different ways.
First Method — Functional child component to Parent functional component
Create a child component and put the below code inside that component.
import React from "react"; export default function Child({data, onChildClick}) {
return (
<div className="child">
<button onClick={onChildClick}>{data}</button>
</div>
);
}
here we have created a child function and inside that, we are creating a simple button whose text data and onclick event will be coming from the parent component. we have passed data and onChildClick props as an object argument to the child function.
2. Now we will import the child component to our parent component.
import Child from './Child'
3. Then inside your parent function create another function to run our desire event and pass the child component to return.
import React from "react";
import "./styles.css";
import Child from './Child' export default function Parent() {
function clickAlert(){
alert("I am working")
}
return (
<div className="App">
<Child data="Click here" onChildClick={clickAlert} />
</div>
);
}
here you can see that we have passed Click here as data and onChildClick event from parent to the child. Now when we click on the button it will run our clickAlert function which will basically alert “I am working”.
Here is the live example | https://medium.com/how-to-react/pass-data-or-event-from-a-child-component-to-parent-component-in-both-functional-and-class-ae2f8b7ccda2 | ['Manish Mandal'] | 2020-08-08 07:15:42.575000+00:00 | ['React Native', 'Components', 'React', 'Reactjs'] |
OHF Weekly: Finding Gratitude in 2020 | OHF Weekly: Finding Gratitude in 2020
Volume 2 Number 41
Photo by Karolina Badzmierowska on Unsplash
Thanksgiving 2020 has certainly been unlike any other we’ve seen before. With the various challenges we’ve suffered through during the last eight months, it’s easy to enter the holiday season with a sense of dread and anxiety. We hope this week’s gathering of memories and musings will help you buoy your spirits and recalibrate — if not rejuvenate — your perspective about the state of your union and the world at large. Remember, one’s outlook on life, much like the proverbial glass of water, depends on how you look at it.
This week’s writers — Meister Käßner, Brian Kean, Tre L. Loadholt, Leah Olson, Sylvia Wohlfarth, and I— composed our works specifically with you in mind. So grab that slice of pie and a mug coffee, and dive into some soothing and enlightening reads!
New This Week
“Celebrating Thanksgiving in a Fractured Land” by Meister Käßner
A Diverse Flock of Turkeys. Photo by Mikkel Bergmann on Unsplash
Thanksgiving is especially challenging in 2020. The surging pandemic, bitter partisan and racial divides, and collective mourning for the 250,000 victims of Covid-19 have dampened moods and soured appetites. Large family feasts have been canceled or are preceding despite official warnings and significant risk. Yet gratitude is most resonant in hard times. Practicing thankfulness despite intense grief and soul searching is a step towards healing. As we reflect on past challenges and halting steps towards justice, we can begin to mend the brokenness in ourselves, our communities, and the nation.
Despite myriad school pageants and Charlie Brown specials, the encounter with the Wampanoag in 1621 was marked by fear and great tragedy. The early Pilgrims thanked God for surviving the first year in a “howling wilderness.” Because half of their party had died, they were grateful to be alive. The Wampanoags were still reeling from the scourges of smallpox, measles, and plague that began devastating their communities even before the Pilgrims arrived.
For Indigenous people throughout the country, Thanksgiving is a stark reminder of loss and suffering. European aggression and rampant epidemics wiped out over eighty percent of their population and left them unable to defend their land. Most early Thanksgivings were declared to celebrate colonial victories over local tribes, not the development of trust and community with them. Honoring the experiences of all groups is an important step toward truth, justice, and reconciliation. (continued at Medium.com) | https://medium.com/our-human-family/ohf-weekly-finding-gratitude-in-2020-72579828330a | ['Our Human Family'] | 2020-11-27 08:52:56.151000+00:00 | ['OHF Weekly', 'Gratitude', 'Humanity', 'Equality', 'Growth'] |
When The Decision Needs To Be Made For Our Mental Health | For ten years a man of God controlled, manipulated, and spiritually abused me. This isn’t a victim post. I want to bring this up to make a point. It has taken me six years to sort through the damage that was done and I anticipate it taking several more to truly understand how he skewed my view of God and church, but one point has stood out more than all others.
This man made himself my personal holy spirit. He spent a great deal of time trying to control me to ensure I was living right. What he was really concerned with was that I did what he and the little church wanted. There was nothing wrong in what they wanted me to do, it was just that they wanted to control me, and serve as my judge and jury in order to get me to do it. It was that they spoke for God and pronounced judgement on every aspect of my life all the while missing a major point.
I wasn’t physically or mentally healthy and they didn’t care. They only cared that I was showing up to groups on time and participating. If I said the right words I was the right person. It didn’t matter what the truth was. It didn’t matter that I was hurt and broken. It was that situation that gave them the opportunity to creep in.
I will FOREVER be thankful that life led me to an utter breakdown. I will forever be thankful that I ended up suicidal, severely depressed, anxiety ridden, and an utter mess. If that hadn’t have happened I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to question everything about my life and find new answers. It was a gift. I sought help. I got it and have been in a state of healing ever since.
As I got help and started getting better I discovered people who cared. I realized that when my mom had kept telling me I was strong my whole life that what I really was, was tolerant. I am an extremely tolerant person and have spent my entire life putting up with stuff. Like emotional and spiritual abuse. The moment I realized this I realized the real evilness of what that man had done. For in his desire to control and ensure I was holy he completely overlooked the fact that I was physically and mentally unhealthy. I was not caring for myself in simple ways and continued to put myself in situations that were mentally damaging to me.
So while you cared about my eternal destination you didn’t care that I was having health problems due to stress, I ate poorly, I thought so little of myself I didn’t want to get naked in front of my husband. My priorities were off and as we poured all our money into our kids we neglected our dental health. Thank God we took the kids to California on vacation, but forget getting our teeth fixed. They were more important. The toll that kind of self neglect had on us was detrimental to our view of ourselves, to our relationship, and to our mental stability. He didn’t give a rip that I wasn’t a healthy person as long as I showed up to church and praised God.
Joanne Lipman notes in a recent Wall Street Journal article that company executives are noticing that their employees need time off for mental health reasons. Companies are starting to consider creating days off for everyone so that they can take a break without worrying about leaving work. It’s an extra holiday. In our current environment people need time to prioritize their mental health and some employers are helping employees do that by giving them guilt free time off.
Certain health problems can arise that prevent us from being able to be all and from consistently multi-tasking and it is then we may seek help. As long as we can keep working 24/7, manage our family, and make everyone happy we often limp along as if nothing is going on. It can work for a really long time or until the bottom falls out. When it does we begin to take our health seriously and consider how to get it back.
Lipman notes in her article that work is constantly staring at us in the face and it’s easy to fall into a pattern where that is all we do. I think that is what masked my instability for so many years. I was so focused on work and raising kids that I got used to neglecting myself. I was so used to neglecting myself that I didn’t notice when others did too. It took having a break down before I would begin to realize the extent to which I had neglected my mental and physical health.
A few weeks ago my older daughter, who is healing from a divorce, said she wasn’t up to working out. She knew she should, but work was so stressful, COVID was hitting their office, things were in chaos, and she was completely drained. I asked her what was best for her mental health? Is it a time to persevere and head to the gym, or is it a night where she needs quiet, a hot bath, a good book, to turn off her phone, and to enjoy a calm night? Her mental health is as important as her physical health and I encouraged her to ensure she maintained a balance of both.
If I could go back before the spiritual abuse started, before I started having kids, and before I got married I would tell my younger self to remember that what God made was good and that which is good needs taken care of. That I am worth the time, effort, and cost it takes to maintain my health. That nothing should happen to keep me from considering my physical and mental health and that no one has a right, despite how good they make that right seem, to manipulate and control me to get their way. Following a deity would not include pleasing a man.
The decision to take care of ourselves starts in the quiet moments of our lives. Where we make seemingly harmless decisions to work more and ignore opportunities to maintain a healthy mind and room to heal.
As a young mother I decided things like sleep, eating right, and self-care weren’t as important as my children. It was at that moment that I made a decision to put off caring for myself and put on self-neglect. Doing that kept me from being the great wife, parent, and employee I wanted to be. We can’t be everything to everyone if we neglect ourselves. If this isn’t the year to consider what is best for our mental health when is?
Marcy Pedersen | https://medium.com/common-place-notebook/when-the-decision-needs-to-be-made-for-our-mental-health-3636e6651a1e | ['Marcy Pedersen'] | 2020-12-06 01:30:30.387000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Love Yourself', 'Self Care', 'Self Love', 'Self'] |
Meross Smart WiFi Plug review: This simplistic indoor smart plug is too rough around the edges to recommend | Meross Smart WiFi Plug review: This simplistic indoor smart plug is too rough around the edges to recommend Precious Dec 24, 2020·3 min read
In my recent review, I found Meross’ outdoor Wi-Fi smart plug to be an affordable and quite capable addition to your smart home. The indoor version of that plug, however, leaves much to be desired.
Mentioned in this article Meross Outdoor Smart Plug (model MSS620B US) See it The two devices are relatively similar in function on paper. They both support a wide range of third-party smart home hubs, including HomeKit, Alexa, Google Assistant, SmartThings, and IFTTT. The interior model of the plug is fairly wide (4.5 inches across), but that’s out of necessity, as it offers two three-prong outlets, with a 10-amp maximum load rating per outlet. The plugs are independently operable, both via the hardware buttons situated in between the two outlets and via the app on your mobile device.
This review is part of TechHive’s coverage of the best smart plugs, where you’ll find reviews of competing products, plus a buyer’s guide to the features you should consider when shopping for this type of product.iOS users who attempt to set up this Wi-Fi plug (2.4GHz only) in Meross’ mobile app are quickly diverted to the iOS Home app and HomeKit to complete the process. (A sizeable HomeKit sticker appears on the top of the plug, perhaps not the most elegant placement.) I had no trouble with setup, and after a quick minute I was able to assign the plugs to rooms, scenes, and automation schedules, and could manually turn each outlet on or off with a quick swipe.
Christopher Null / IDG The dual outlets on the Meross MSS120HK smart plug outlets appear individually within iOS Home after just a couple of minutes of setup.
If you only want to work with the plug in the iOS Home app, this might all sound fine. But if you want to use the official Meross app (which is necessary for things like firmware updates, disabling the onboard LEDs, and connecting to voice assistants), things get a bit tricky. Meross’ protocol requires you to complete setup in iOS Home, then return to the Meross app to add the device there as well. When I went back to the Meross app, the plug was nowhere to be found, and even a factory reset—followed by running through the entire setup process again—didn’t resolve the issue.
Meross sent a two-pack for this review, which sells for about $32 on Amazon; they’re also available singly for about $19 each. Since I had two, I tried the process another two times with the second plug, again with no luck getting it to show up in the Meross app (though it also worked in iOS Home).
[ Further reading: The best smart switches and dimmers ]I spoke with the company via email about the issue, and its suggestion involved a complex series of steps including rebooting everything, logging out and back in to iCloud, and trying to reduce the number of devices on the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi channel. I tried all of this, spending another couple of days working with the plug to try to get it to show up, and just as I was about to give up, suddenly the plug appeared in the Meross app as it was supposed to.
Meross If you like the Meross Smart WiFi Plug (model MSS120HK) despite its flaws—or perhaps because you’ve learned they’ve been fixed—you can buy a two-pack at a discount over a single purchase.
The final few steps of the setup process proved to be a bit buggy—involving a configuration screen that froze—but eventually everything came through and I was able to control the plug through the Meross app and connect it to Alexa. What was the fix that finally got all of these systems to start working together? I couldn’t hazard a guess.
Meross’ indoor smart plug is a bit pricier than other generic two-outlet smart plugs on the market (some of which even include energy monitoring), but it’s less expensive than many of the bigger name brands in this spice. HomeKit support is a nice addition, but the company needs to work on smoothing out its setup process if it wants to earn a broad recommendation.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://medium.com/@preciou12043240/meross-smart-wifi-plug-review-this-simplistic-indoor-smart-plug-is-too-rough-around-the-edges-to-451fdc4a06bf | [] | 2020-12-24 01:35:04.215000+00:00 | ['Home Tech', 'Headphones', 'Mobile Accessories', 'Chromecast'] |
The Flight Attendant Who Sacrificed Her Life to Save Passengers | The Flight Attendant Who Sacrificed Her Life to Save Passengers
The story of Neerja Bhanot
Neerja Bhanot and the hijacked plane. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Neerja Bhanot was born in September 1963, in Chandigarh, India. Ever since she was little, the girl drew attention because of her beauty, and because of that, she had a brief modeling career. Following the tradition of her culture, still very young, she had to marry the man that her parents chose for her.
However, the marriage didn’t work out and she returned to her parents’ house two months after being wed. However, everything was about to change when, in 1985, she started to work as a flight attendant.
The hijacking
In 1985, Neerja Bhanot applied for a flight attendant job at Pan Am, the company decided to have an all-Indian cabin crew for its routes from Frankfurt to India. After the selection, she went to Miami for training.
On September 5, 1986, at Karachi Airport, Pakistan, four terrorists of Palestinian origin and affiliated with the Abu Nidal organization passed the security guards and prevented the plane from taking off to Frankfurt, where it would make a layover before reaching its final destination in New York.
The aircraft was carrying 380 passengers and 13 crew members. The terrorists wanted to fly to Cyprus to free Palestinian prisoners in the country. Bhanot was able to alert the cabin crew as soon as the hijackers boarded the plane, and when the plane was on the platform, the cockpit crew, comprised of the pilot, the co-pilot, and the flight engineer fled the aircraft through an upper hatch in the cabin. As the most experienced cabin crew member, Bhanot took control of the situation inside the plane.
The intention was to kill all American passengers — forty-four in total — until the requests to send the plane to Cyprus and release terrorist prisoners were granted. The kidnapping lasted almost seventeen hours.
Right at the beginning, the terrorists identified a newly naturalized Indian American passenger, took him to the plane’s door, and shot him in front of everyone — both inside and outside the aircraft. They then threw the still alive man onto the runway. He was rescued but died on the way to the hospital. Then, when the terrorists decided to kill all the American passengers, Neerja put her life at risk by selecting passports from the people but hiding those with that nationality.
This further angered the hijackers, who could not recognize which ones would be their first targets. Neerja took advantage of an oversight and handed passengers sitting near the emergency exit a magazine that had hidden instructions for opening an emergency door and inflating the escape slides.
After several hours of tension, the men opened fire and started to detonate explosives while inside the plane. Bhanot opened one of the plane’s doors, and although she could have been the first to jump and flee the aircraft, she did not and instead began to help the other passengers to escape. According to one surviving passenger, she was guiding passengers to the emergency exit. That’s when the terrorists were constantly shooting for fear of an outside attack by the police. They saw Neerja trying relentlessly to help three unaccompanied children, among others, get out and that was when they caught her by the ponytail and shot her at close range.
Of a total of forty-four American passengers, two died during the hijacking. A child on board who survived is now captain of a major airline and said that Bhanot was his inspiration and that he owes her every day of his life. She was internationally recognized as “the plane hero” and became the youngest to receive the Ashok Chakra Award, India’s most prestigious gallantry award for bravery in times of peace.
The highjackers' trial took place in 1988 – they were sentenced to death, but subsequently had their capital punishment changed to life imprisonment. However, reports indicate that the four hijackers were released in 2009 and later deported to Palestinian territories.
Zayd Safarini, the hijacking mentor, managed to be released in 2001, after years in prison in Pakistan. However, his freedom lasted for a short period of time, and he was arrested once more and sentenced to 160 years in prison.
The brave act of saving the lives of many hostages made Bahanot an unforgettable hero. She posthumously received several awards for her courage from the United States government and Pakistan’s Tamgha-e-Pakistan, an award given for showing great human kindness. | https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/the-flight-attendant-who-sacrificed-her-life-to-save-passengers-a35120599283 | [] | 2020-12-24 18:03:58.222000+00:00 | ['History', 'Life Lessons', 'Culture', 'World', 'Heroes'] |
England & Test Cricket: how to change the future | From Sports Fans TV Cricket Fan Show: a perspective, from decades of watching the game in England, on where English red ball cricket goes from here - beyond the attractive but cosmetic changes that often follow an Ashes disaster.
For English cricket fans, whether they reflect on the latest Ashes tour through numbers and data, via historic comparisons or by just how the damn thing makes them feel, England’s inability to compete with Australia has been numbingly total; the shambolic nature of the tour is evident from all angles.
It is a cricketing Mandelbrot set of failure: you can zoom in or out to any level and see the same pattern of mistake and miscalculation.
At the most detailed layer there’s the litany of failures of individual technique, then out a little and the unmistakeable sonar beep of disharmony coming from the camp: the ghost-written columns and body language during the anthems leaking the tension and fear of the players. They are not, it is safe to say, having fun.
Further out still and there’s the hand-to-face embarrassment of batters practicing on one leg whilst a congregation of coaches offer platitudes about heart and playing a natural game.
Out again and we see the organisational millstone of the tour itinerary itself, where players played no pre-Ashes cricket except occasionally against each other — akin to asking a football team to play headers and volleys in the park with their pals by way of preparation for the World Cup Finals.
But then, the widest view of all: the shape and standard of red ball cricket in England. Put simply, the red ball game in England can no longer produce a consistently winning Test team. The players who emerge and can play red ball cricket at the highest level are a bug and not a feature of the domestic game.
The usual sackings of captains, coaches, selectors and so on will therefore not make much difference. There’s a case to do some or all of these things, of course — and the one-legged batting guy can leave with my blessing — but the issues run deeper, much deeper.
Without considered change to the fundamentals of domestic red ball cricket, England will only be good again temporarily and by accident - if others have a dip and there’s a coincident crop of naturally good English red ball players.
This might never happen. Or it will be so fleeting that it is no real solution at all, just a temporary uptick momentarily masking a long, long decline.
I believe there are three changes that can be made relatively quickly. They will make a difference — but they are predicated on a deeper change that is arguably less palatable and much harder to implement.
We’ll get to that, but first….
Change one: higher stakes county championship matches
The English domestic game was the proverbial lobster in the pan, soaking away its aches and pains in the enticing bath of white ball excitement. Inexorably, over time, the white ball game warmed up until, penny dropping, our alarmed red friend could barely be seen beneath the bubbling froth of The Hundred. What started as comfortable treading water in the warm brine of bigger crowds (and their wallets) suddenly became a frantic drowning-not-waving.
The red ball game in England has been pushed to the margins of the summer. The reasons why are for a whole other article, but this must be reversed; county championship games must run throughout the cricket season.
But there is no use pretending April fixtures replaced with August ones would itself be much of a fix: county cricket has allowed itself and its standards to drift too far away from Test cricket, and that must be addressed too.
Domestic to Test cricket should be a natural progression; a qualification that prepares you to go on to the next level. At present county cricket is handing out Eleven Pluses then thrusting people onto degree programmes. The odd prodigy will swim whilst most mortals sink.
So: what to do? A three-division county championship. Six teams per division with annual promotion and relegation. That’s ten four-day games per county season. 40 days required in the schedule.
Why not two divisions? Because with three there’s little mid table mediocrity with nothing to play for, making virtually all matches meaningful right throughout the season. Ten matches — up to twenty innings — is plenty. Average over 50 and you might get to 1,000 runs.
But it not so many chances to bat or bowl that it feels like a treadmill. Each innings will have to count — and that sounds like a big step towards preparation for Test cricket to me. The divisional nature should also, over time, concentrate the best players and sides into the top division, which should provide the core group from whom Test sides are selected (without, of course, being blindly absolutist about it). Again, concentrating the best without it becoming a closed shop should drive up standards.
A ten-match season would also allow for Test matches to be scheduled between rounds of county games. This will of course mean the county championship isn’t directly competing with Tests for attention but, more importantly, means Test players play for their counties throughout the season.
This will increase the quality of the county game as the best domestic players, including the world class ones, could play all summer. Recognisable names would also add further interest to the county schedule — though a deficit of interest is not one of county games’ current problems.
Alongside these structural changes I’d suggest two amends to squads: firstly, fixed squads of 16 or 17 players for each county — though I’d be open to the possibility that it could be resubmitted after the first five rounds of matches.
I’d also limit each county to two overseas players in their squads at any one time. We must stop this nonsense of internationals dropping in for one or two games and then flitting away again. No-one should take a Harlem Globetrotters approach to fielding ringers. It does nothing for the integrity of the competition and must be to the detriment of the players they replace.
Taken together, English cricket would need to find something like 75 days every summer for red ball cricket. Or, spread a game a week across 15–17 weeks. There’s time to do that. The best players would play in each of those weeks in matches with something to play for.
Change two: embrace the Lions
English cricket suffers from many things, but it doesn’t suffer from a lack of potential Test players. The county game produces players, even if many find the gap to Tests too hard to bridge. So, let’s use the Lions to help do so. If we can run Tests so they do not clash with championship matches, then we can similarly run a Lions series each summer too.
One benefit England has is the heart of the season does not clash with any other major Test nation’s summer (no offence Ireland), meaning there would undoubtedly be takers to send an ‘A’ tour each year. England could also do its bit to support associate nations drive towards Test status too, with red ball matches against Scotland, the Netherlands and others.
This should all be supplemented with as much effort going into scheduling Lions tours — meaningful ones — every year too.
This seems like an absolute open goal for English cricket. A more serious approach to the Lions would add a mezzanine between the county game and Test cricket.
The standard of other nations ‘A’ teams would be variable, of course — but then so are the Test sides. A domestic Lions series would also allow players to play together where they hadn’t before, giving players the domestic ‘call up’ experience too so they learn how to handle the ‘playing against one week, playing alongside the next’ feeling. Coaches would also get a closer look — I just can’t see any downsides.
Change three: early development programmes for red ball spin, pace and batting
England do run a series of development programme, but these tend to be for players already plying their county trade. That seems too late to me, and such players would be better off given Lions experience.
I would advocate for a set of three pre-professional — so genuinely emerging talent — development programmes. These would take annual cohorts of promising players, provide them with top class coaching and opportunities in exchange for performance targets and guaranteed central contracts for everyone who makes it out the other side.
I’d have one for spinners. Let’s get them specialist coaching before they turn up in a county dressing room (and probably don’t get specialist coaching). Let’s get them opportunities to play in Asia and Australia. Let’s get them thinking about the different modes a spinner must have to be successful in Test cricket.
Then for pace. And I don’t mean seam and swing. I mean 140kph-plus stock ball pace. Get them before the April green tops get them. A key part of this programme would be biomechanics; understanding their bodies and fitness needs — as would getting used to a Kookaburra ball and bowling in different conditions. But, whatever and however: bowling fast.
Finally, a batting scheme to develop top three batters. Play long, play straight. Concentration and mental toughness. We don’t want cookie cutter technique, but we do need to develop sound technique and the right attitude. The batters who will take more pleasure in seeing out a maiden when times are tough than scooping their first ball for six.
The few batters per generation who can get to the top with funky approaches on the strength of their supernatural hand-eye coordination will get to the top anyway. This scheme is not for them, the Messi-type, it’s for the Ronaldo: the player who will hone skills and work harder than anyone else.
If we took six players per year into each programme, from the first completed cohort we’d have eighteen players who had received a heap of investment and hopefully developed into very promising players. Extend that investment by giving them central contracts for two years and allow the counties to select them through a draft, with bottom of division 3 getting first pick.
Not everyone would work out, of course, but it would be a structured approach to developing top three batters, out-and-out quicks and rounded spinners into county squads where they would have to sink or swim on their own merits, gaining the vital part of their game coaching cannot provide: out in the middle experience.
For this to really work, though, it will have to look beyond the playing fields of Millfield and Manchester Grammar School. It will have to plug into club cricket around the country. Invest the effort into finding the best talent wherever they play. Make the talent identification programme the most professional and comprehensive in the world. If football can find players from the concrete cages of South London, so cricket can find young players in clubs in Cornwall, the Lancashire leagues or wherever.
Deeper change: you might not like this.
This would all work if there was no white ball cricket. Finding 17 weeks to play red ball cricket between May and September would be a doddle.
But there is white ball cricket.
For fundamental changes to make any difference, English cricket is going to have to embrace a de facto split into two codes. It can do this in a managed way, or it can see it forced on it in the long run.
A two-code approach would allow for matches to be scheduled at the same time. The county championship could carry on through the Hundred. The Blast could run during Test matches.
The wrench, certainly in the beginning, would be the players. Although there are plenty of players who are effectively white ball or red ball only players there are a number — often the most talented — who play both. I don’t think this is sustainable anymore, not in England at least.
So, we’re looking at a near future where the likes of a Stokes or a Wood must choose between the two codes. A Malan and even a Root. That’s undeniably hard, and maybe the very best will be able to negotiate their way through both over the next few years as a temporary state of affairs until the new reality beds in. Maybe that’s the fairest approach for current internationals.
But if we accept that the long and short forms of the game require the same basic skills but applied in very different ways then it becomes a natural evolution of the game to have wholly separate red- and white-ball players.
And if we accept that then we have more flexibility with the calendar and we can restore the county championship to the centre of the picture every summer without contorting ourselves to fit different formats into too few days.
This keeps lots of what people seem to value
This model retains counties and with it their supporters and deep histories; both or which can feel seriously underappreciated today. Retaining counties means retaining eighteen centres of first class cricket across England and Wales; it retains festival out grounds and second XIs and the rivalries of decades.
For the white ball game too, players and supporters can get on with enjoying it without the nagging feeling they’re somehow letting cricket down. New types of batting, fielding and bowling can be enjoyed for what they are — in the context they belong — without the fear they’ll somehow infect and warp the game’s DNA.
The white ball specialist player will be able to be a 12 month a year franchise player if they wish, with no more balancing IPL franchise demands with early April county matches. They will be able to make a lot of money, so the rewards for sticking with the red ball game will have to match too.
Yeah: money. There are undoubtedly some underlying economics to work through: where the money comes from and where it goes. Can the ECB and the counties find a way to make this work? Who can tell, but everyone should, surely, get something out of this arrangement: counties get to continue to play both codes for their members to enjoy (and, increasingly, watch online), the ECB keeps the Hundred and stops being seen as the enemy of the Test format. It really could be the best of both — if we can ensure the right amounts of money get to the right places and both codes remain attractive to players.
In the beginning, this will be tough. But as new generations of players come through so English cricket, by leaning into the situation, will be able to embrace the whole game in all its forms and all its history and future.
These suggestions are presented as a contribution to the debate rather than as an all-encompassing solution. That’s not our style on the Cricket Fan Show.
There are other things too — notably the type of pitches we play on, and also following recent comments , the type of coaching professional players get — that I know less about in detail but can see need to be part of the picture. So please see our suggestions as something to add to.
Steve presents the Sports Fans TV Cricket Fan Show each week on YouTube, Twitch and as a podcast on all the usual places, including Spotify.
Steve is usually joined by Tony for cricket chat all year round; the guys have been watching cricket for a serious number of decades between them and bring thoughts and opinions on the game in all forms. | https://medium.com/@sftv-cricket-steve/england-test-cricket-how-to-change-the-future-7f7f94faa088 | ['Steve Borley'] | 2021-12-30 18:41:36.141000+00:00 | ['Cricket', 'Cricket News', 'Sports'] |
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Follow | https://medium.com/investbot-hk/agent-quant%E4%B8%80%E9%80%B1-%E4%BA%94%E7%AA%AE%E6%9C%88%E6%B8%AF%E8%82%A1%E6%A0%B8%E7%88%86%E5%BC%8F%E4%B8%8B%E8%B7%8C-%E5%85%AD%E7%B5%95%E6%9C%88%E9%82%84%E6%9C%89%E4%B8%80%E7%B7%9A%E7%94%9F%E6%A9%9F-vol-21-6%E6%9C%883-7%E6%97%A5-e8b7fdd51563 | ['Investbot App'] | 2019-06-02 08:43:17.077000+00:00 | ['交易', '香港', 'Algorithms', '港股', '投資'] |
BLOCKCHAIN DEVELOPMENT TEAM: HOW TO HANDPICK AN EFFICIENT CREW | Blockchain-based solutions are one of the most fruitful software development niches at the moment. The noticeable thing is, everything related to the creation of decentralized networks is relevantly new to developers, so not everyone is able to show their best in the work on such projects just yet.
In particular, you might have come across a deficiency of potential employees in this field. In the decentralization aspect, a developer is required to build software with the increased security demands — something many aren’t used to do. On the other hand, sufficient expertise is well paid for. Let’s figure out in which directions to look, searching for specialists that will do an integral work on your decentralized project.
What You Need to Know Before the Start
The blockchain development can be subdivided into two general types for different business demands and capabilities: ‘coins’ — for businesses that need a system that would securely accumulate investments for the development of projects; and ‘security’ — for establishments that require secure data storage, transfer, and other manipulative means.
The first type implies the creation of solutions similar in nature to the Initial Coin Offer (ICO). Basically, the created platform generates tokens (the value of which is assigned by developers) that can be sold or charged to investors to then be used for the acquisition of products or services of the invested project. The blockchain technology is required here to transfer the investor cryptocurrency to the company account and, then, transfer exchanged tokens back to investor accounts.
As for the second type, in this case, blockchain is used for the safe data transfer (particular use cases of this type of blockchain are supply chain solutions as well as many private business implementations).
Based on these input data here’s what you have to expect from the future candidate:
Confident expert knowledge of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies: Ethereum, HyperLedger, Hashgraph and others;
Programming skills in languages involved in blockchain APIs — Python, Java, Golang, C, C++, C#, Ruby, PHP, and Node;
Understanding of mobile development tech like Kotlin for Java;
Experience of working with Solidity and Clojure;
An out-of-the-box way of thinking for understanding blockchain logic.
Now let’s get down to describing what techniques to use and advices to follow to pick up an effective blockchain development team.
Tips on How to Handpick an Effective Crew
Be Creative About Your Job Offer
Developers with really impressive CVs and solid experience in developing blockchain for business get dozens of work offers a week. You will have to stand out among other employers and convince your potential recruits to choose YOU. A position description plays a very important role here. Be creative, try to interest, intrigue people with your words. Don’t just describe standard working conditions, no matter how beneficial they are.
Alternatively, you can find blockchain team working as registered IT company — they are usually well-prepared and are ready to take on the job of any complexity.
Opt For Active Search
It wouldn’t be enough to just post a job offer on the online advertisement board and wait for a moment candidates come snowballing you with their CV’s. Conduct an active search for developers currently looking for a job. The most productive way to find fitting employees, as practice shows, is a search by word of mouth — live recommendations and contact usually provide more chances to find a qualified expert. Or, as we’ve already mentioned, you can save your time and effort and turn to a blockchain company.
Pay Attention To Experience
An experience of work with the technologies, your project is going to be based on, is the best advantage a candidate for your developer position can have. Nevertheless, if you’re planning on working with a team of freelancers, it would also be crucial paying attention to such qualities as a sense of duty, responsibility, and integrity (even if you get a support of a service similar to escrow, you can never be sure that a member of your remote team won’t delay their work as they see fit).
In turn, you can get a 100% guarantee of developer competence only if you decide to hire blockchain team from a specialized IT company — members of which are thoroughly selected and checked by all needed criteria when initially employed.
Ask For Feedback
Considering a candidate, make sure to find out about their previous working position and professional experience or a portfolio if we’re talking about hiring an IT company. With this information, you’ll be able to indicate how well they performed in the past and why they left their previous positions (or were fired) at all.
Go Offline
Meetups, conventions, and other themed live gatherings and events are a great place to extend your target audience. Interested TAs are frequently looking for developers and new like-minded professional contacts. Blockchain community is pretty social and one shouldn’t miss out on what’s going on in the real world in the aspect of blockchain topic to really stay up to things. Plus, it’s a great user acquisition source, as we’ve already mentioned. Make sure to try and visit themed events where potential customers can conveniently be found as much as possible.
Choose The Right One
The demand for blockchain developers is quite high on the market. We’d recommend paying most attention to those candidates that:
understand what blockchain is in essence and know about different ways of implementing it;
are ready to self-learn;
know about the practical ways to use blockchain-based solutions;
stay in tune with the latest IT trends and, particularly, know which technologies are most popular and advanced for the creation of blockchain-based solutions;
possess at least basic practical skills in the field of decentralized networks development;
know how to optimize code and conduct refactoring;
are able to achieve an optimal level of user experience and clearly realize respective criteria;
are ready to work in a team;
are knowledgeable in the legal side of the implementation of blockchain-based products (in many countries, this question is regulated by the government; this is a widespread tendency, especially after the GDPR policies update).
Team for an ICO: best practices
An average volume of work related to the development of products based on blockchain and the launch of an ICO requires you to hire blockchain development team consisting of:
1 frontend developer
1–2 fullstack/blockchain developers
1 UX designer
1 QA tester
1 business analyst
1 marketing specialist
You can try to personally hire blockchain company with the help of dedicated online user feedback services providing a whole database of positively reviewed potential candidates to choose from.
Let’s also drop a few lines about methodologies and their implementation for blockchain projects development to help you better organize workflow within a team.
What methodology to choose and use for blockchain development
Many developers still prefer using an outdated Waterfall methodology in the construction of software. This approach is unlikely to bring you much good in the case of the blockchain-based software development. Even traditional Agile teams dedicate a few weeks to each development cycle isn’t always able to adapt their product to rapidly evolving blockchain technologies. You may see where the disadvantage is — Waterfall requires subsequent phases of requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing, integration, and support to place.
Here’s where another, less traditional approach comes to the rescue. It’s called Lean and it implies the implementation of all processes by the build-measure-learn scheme. According to Lean, you improve things providing the long-term use for a customer and cut everything useful in the short-term perspective on each stage of development. This is a great way to increase your project profit, make it more competitive, and exclude any outdated technologies or approaches.
As for Agile, the incompatibility of this approach with blockchain is best described in this article.
The Bottom Line
Everything described above also reflects our own principles of selecting a blockchain team. We care for our customers and that’s why we strive to find the best professionals with the best service pricing for you. Do you want to become our partner as well? We’ll be pleased to make a new acquaintance and cooperate! | https://medium.com/unicsoft/blockchain-development-team-how-to-handpick-an-efficient-crew-2d377a1e6846 | ['Aleksey Zavgorodniy'] | 2018-11-15 16:01:02.337000+00:00 | ['Blockchain Development', 'Software', 'Blockchain', 'Software Development', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
What’s Left to Say About Maps?. Tackling the sticky questions about… | Our third Fireside Chat is all about maps. We tackle the sticky questions about best practices, when to break the “rules” of cartography, and let our panelists debate the merits of proportional symbols compared to choropleths. Not sure what those words mean? That’s fine; if you’ve been consuming maps in the news lately, we promise this session will be just as fun and exciting for you. After an initial discussion among the panel, we opened the floor for questions from viewers.
Panelists include:
Kenneth Field—Principal cartographic product engineer at ESRI
Madison Draper—Designer at Mapbox
Elijah Meeks—Chief visualization officer at Noteable
Moderated by Alberto Cairo
Subscribe to the DVS YouTube channel here. | https://medium.com/nightingale/whats-left-to-say-about-maps-dvs-fireside-chat-d66c9e5d2539 | ['Data Visualization Society Team'] | 2020-06-25 15:25:45.490000+00:00 | ['Maps', 'GIS', 'Data Visualization', 'Mapping', 'Design'] |
Anon Inu Rug Pull was Disrupted | Anon Inu — AINU is fully back to business
Anon Inu — $AINU rug pull was disrupted by the project CMO (Joe) who stood up against his boss (a fake Anonymous hacktivist) to protect AINU investors.
For the record, “a CMO (chief marketing officer) is a C-level corporate executive responsible for activities in an organization that have to do with creating, communicating, and delivering offerings that have value for customers, clients, or business partners”. That’s exactly what Joe was doing, Joe was acting in that spirit — “delivering value to AINU holders” UNTIL he found out that his boss has other plans against the very community that Joe is trying to enrich with a true anonymous mindset.
In nutshell, after Joe revolts against the rug pull, he burned his serviced earned AINU tokens in washing his hands totally from the rug pull before stepping down and walk away — a clean man.
But not so fast said one AINU token holder who out of disbelief that an anonymous could do such a thing to fellow anonymous, she researched everything possible and went after Joe for further facts verifications but that ends up in-persuading Joe to return to the project in anticipation that Joe has all it takes to revive the project for the community since the owner no longer has control or power over the project because AINU smart contract ownership was publicly renounced.
So it was never intended to be owned or controlled by anyone just like Bitcoin but make no mistake, the owner might not have renounced ownership in the true spirit of Satoshi Nakomoto — I think he was simply playing “Mayer Amschel Rothschild” — the founder of the famous Rothschild banking dynasty who said: “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” So by being in possession of one wallet that holds 75% of AINU’s total supply (though locked till July 2022), he cared not about the ownership, the community can have that for all he cares.
But as the spirit of Anonymous would have it for AINU holders, Joe didn't return to the community with facts and experience alone, he returned with the AINU smart-contract “Seed Phrase” to completely salvage $AINU back to the community from the malicious Anon Inu formal boss (including the locked 75% of the total supply).
At this point, AINU holders must be socializing on moonlight singing Kumbayah?
Well, it depends who you ask, crypto communities are full of average minds these days, many won’t even bother doing their own research which is vital to an investor’s bottom line especially in the crypto space, as a result: the majority of the 18,000 AINU holders are yet aware that AINU’s dark days are over — following the return of Joe — now the CEO of Anon Inu – AINU by community choice.
In FUD oriented industry, you can imagine what crypto copycats media have people believing — some call it “the shortest rug pull in history”, undermining the fact that someone actually stood up and disrupt what was meant to be a progressive rug pull that would have destroyed many lives. Had this occurred in the traditional market Joe would have been all over the top news media around the world and perhaps a Nobel Peace Prize down the road. The point is, media choose to focus on the greedy act of one powerless idiot painting the picture of a scam project while ignoring the fact that Anon Inu — AINU is a community-driven project that deserves its fair stand in the marketplace without the unjustified scam tag.
Some of you have been briefed and some updated. Every community member is worth updating. Please spread this far and wide to reach all Anon Inu — AINU community members. | https://medium.com/@c-okenwa/anon-inu-rug-pull-was-disrupted-7dc872f253e5 | ['Chikwendu C Okenwa'] | 2021-09-06 18:22:22.678000+00:00 | ['Ainu', 'Scam', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Rugpull', 'Anonymous'] |
A COMPLETE GUIDE TO CREATING AWESOME BUSINESS TO CONSUMER EMAIL MARKETING | Email marketing has long been the most effective way to reach your customers in today’s digital world. It is in fact the most valuable channel in the entire digital landscape, in terms of both inbound and outbound growth, because it provides an efficient channel to build relationships with your customers. Since many people use email less than they should, it is the channel you must target when you are looking into building your business.
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The most effective way to market goods or services is to communicate with potential customers through emails. These emails are most likely to be read, replied to, forwarded, and most importantly, remembered. Business to consumer email marketing is an important form of marketing that can help grow your business.
Email marketing has long been the most effective way to reach your customers in today’s digital world. It is in fact the most valuable channel in the entire digital landscape, in terms of both inbound and outbound growth, because it provides an efficient channel to build relationships with your customers. Since many people use email less than they should, it is the channel you must target when you are looking into building your business.
If you’ve ever tried to get your business noticed online, you’ve probably run into the same problem that Mark commented on in this article. You wanted to get your message out there, but you didn’t know how to get it done. And the funny thing is, the experts don’t either. This article covers everything you need to know to create an email marketing campaign that can be relied on to get results.
Email marketing has become a major tool for businesses to generate leads and sales, whether they do it themselves or outsource the details to a service provider. This guide will show you how to build your email marketing into your business and show you how to use it to create leads and sales.
Every business that wants to reach the most people possible needs to be able to be responsive to their customers’ needs. Other than email marketing, the way to do that is by creating a blog. A blog can be a great way to educate your customers on their needs and can help them make the decision to buy from your business.
Most customers don’t really care about the annoying spam messages that seem to reach their inboxes daily. They just want to know they’re getting some value. If you’re not getting that, then you’re missing out on some of the most incredible customers that you can have. To get them, you just need to send some amazing emails. But how do you create awesome emails so your customers will love opening them? This complete guide will show you how to do just that.
Email marketing is a powerful business tool that can increase revenue for your business, and it’s easy to get started. Once you’ve put together a plan for your email marketing strategy, you’ll want to start collecting email addresses of people who’d like to hear from you. And you’ll want to do it in a way that will give you more traffic and lead to more sales. This guide will show you how.
Creating an email marketing campaign is tough when you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s even harder when you don’t know how to make your email marketing campaign successful. If you’re in this situation, I’m here to help. I’ve created this comprehensive guide to teach you how to create an email marketing campaign that will give you the best chance of successfully engaging with your readers, and converting them into paying customers.
Email marketing is one of the most powerful strategies to create leads for your business. Unfortunately, most marketers don’t understand the depth of the email marketing strategy, so they often fail to achieve their goal. To help you create an effective email marketing strategy, this post will show you how to prospect for leads, how to create an effective email marketing strategy, and how to target your leads.
I’ve been working in the email marketing space for years and have found that the best way to build a list of subscribers is with email marketing. The email marketing industry is changing rapidly and the tactics we use to build businesses offline and online are becoming more and more similar. Email marketing is one of the most powerful and undervalued marketing tools in the world, and I want to help you understand this space and how to put it to work for your business.
E-mail marketing is the single best way to reach out to your customers, and yet many small business owners struggle to find success with it. This guide will equip you with the tools you need to start reaping the benefits of transactional email marketing. | https://medium.com/@ganesh007/a-complete-guide-to-creating-awesome-business-to-consumer-email-marketing-86a477825422 | [] | 2021-11-23 05:38:37.571000+00:00 | ['Online Marketing', 'Digital Marketing', 'Email Marketing', 'Internet Marketing', 'Email'] |
It doesn’t, the slight atypicality in a couple of areas of the brain vis-a-vis other same-sex… | It doesn’t, the slight atypicality in a couple of areas of the brain vis-a-vis other same-sex attracted* men of their sex, cross-sex hormones, surgeries, donning gendered clothing, a self-evaluation of being woman-like all result in a group with the same pattern of sexual offending, the same overwhelming advantage in sports, who are as attractive to lesbians…as are other males. To *you*, your gender identity/affinity with prototypical feminine things matters more than your body, and you want to be free of sex-based expectations and live like a woman socially (requiring others to play along). That’s all well and good.
But it doesn’t mean gender identity trumps sex. If research showed transwomen are the same physicality and behaviour-wise (deeper things than liking tea parties as a toddler or putting on a dress like Harry Styles or not putting on a dress like a butch lesbian), then that would be a different matter.
Protect these prepubescent kids who without your indoctrination, research shows will almost all** grow out of being transgender and into gay teens? From what — reality?
*confounding factor
**some won’t, and are free to seek out surgery as adults that will make them look more like the opposite sex even though you keep reiterating sex isn’t as important as gender. Try being a little girl about to be raped or mutilated, invoking male “gender” won’t help you. You disregard women’s experiences when you say the grounds for their oppression doesn’t matter. It’s a vile and entitled and dismissive view. I’m a woman because I’m an adult female human. There’s more to me than being a woman, but there’s not more to being a woman than biology, socialisation, and lived experience that has only minimal overlap with the transwoman experience. To be classified as a woman you only need to be an adult female human. It’s a simple definition, even if it inconveniences you.
Be happy about the rights you have, and stop being jealous of the rights and protections accorded to people on the basis of something you don’t have/are not affected by. | https://medium.com/@angelavolkov/it-doesnt-the-slight-atypicality-in-a-couple-of-areas-of-the-brain-vis-a-vis-other-same-sex-98a6ebd76a6b | ['Angela Volkov'] | 2020-12-18 22:45:27.621000+00:00 | ['Womens Rights', 'Feminism', 'Gender Identity'] |
How to Create the Best Color Palette for Your Product’s UI | Summary: Like fonts and illustrations, colors impart a tone and emotional balance that affects how your users perceive your brand. This blog covers simple tips and tricks to choose attractive color combinations for your next UI design. Keep reading to find ways of creating the best color palette and engaging product UI.
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about Nike? A Black Tick, right? Same with Coca-Cola, beautiful, Red-colored typography. Isn’t it? That’s how people remember brands, by their logos and the colors associated with it.
Being a UI/UX or Web Designer, you must pay detailed attention while choosing colors for your product’s visual design. It strongly affects the user’s perception of the quality of the product. You do not have to be overdramatic with the designs.
Here are some key pointers to keep in mind while designing a new UI:
User Demographics
Where and How You Will Use The Product
Company’s Branding Guidelines
How to Pick the Right Colors for Your Product’s UI?
Define your product objectives before starting the color selection.
Study the target audience and understand their expectations.
Discover their likes, dislikes, and specific color preferences.
Conduct a competitor analysis to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the competitors within your market. It will help you with the techniques of making your product notable and unique.
Pay attention to the contrast of the product’s visual elements while combining different colors from the palette.
Ensure the preciseness of your colors and design in different resolutions and devices before the final product launch.
Tips and Tricks for Picking the Best Color Scheme
Selecting Primary and Secondary Palettes: Everything Revolves Around This.
Most of the colors don’t evoke hyper-specific emotions; instead, users tend to perceive a color based on their:
Personal taste, life experiences, cultural considerations, and various other factors!
Primary Colorsare the ones that you will use everywhere for your product/app. Several enterprises use more than one basic primary color that reflects their core values.
Tip:
Use a minimal palette.
Stick to a smaller number of colors that the user can take at once.
Secondary and Tertiary Colorsare often optional. It depends purely on the product requirements. But if required, then go for the colors that best differentiate your product. Secondary colors add vividness to the visual design.
Color Saturation: For Grabbing Quick and More Attention
For thought intensive and complicated tasks, you must go for less saturated colors,whereas for a feature having only one primary function, go for stronger colors.
Tip:
Avoid using highly saturated colors together.
Use contrasting yellow to give your product a more friendly feeling.
to give your product a more friendly feeling. Choose shades of gray to avoid eye strain.
60–30–10 Rule: For Creating the ‘Perfect Balance.’
This rule includes 60% of your dominant color, 30% for your secondary color, and 10% for accent color depicting a more transparent product UI.
It is an evergreen formula as it creates a sense of balance, hierarchy, and rhythm. It enables the users to move comfortably from one focal to another.
Creating a Palette
Other than the traditional ways, there are three simple methods to find the perfect palette color scheme. Have a look:
Selecting Matching Colors: Triad, Shades, and Adjacent
Tip:
For the best experience, try your designs on various devices, screens, and OS to check performance and flexibility.
Top 12 UI tools for Creating Amazing Color Palettes
Paletton
Materialpalette
Colourlovers
Coolors
Dribble Color
Khroma
BrandColors
Adobe Color CC
ColorDrop
COPASO
ColorMind
Colordot
Wrapping Up
Above mentioned color palette tools with insightful tips and tricks are a must for every UI/ UX designer. Implementing them in your designing skills will help you create a compelling visual design.
Are you looking for a design studio that can create a uniquely designed UI for your next project? Trust Pixians; we are your true companion. At Pixians, we create impactful, outstanding, and award-winning design solutions to drive efficiency, productivity, and elevate revenue. Contact us to get started with your creative journey. Happy Branding! | https://medium.com/pixians-design-studio/how-to-create-the-best-color-palette-for-your-products-ui-211566b42fd5 | [] | 2020-12-17 04:47:32.846000+00:00 | ['Ui Ux Design', 'UI Design', 'Ui Ux', 'UI', 'Colors'] |
What is the new UK Covid strain all about and why are scientists worried? | [I am a UK-based infectious disease epidemiologist with specialism in new and emerging infections, and write regular “explainer” posts about the pandemic, of which this is the latest. There’s currently a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding swirling about the internet regarding COVID-19 — so please do remember to check someone’s credentials if they are posting about it. You can find my CV on LinkedIn (Georgia Ladbury). Usual disclaimer that I am writing in a personal capacity and my views don’t necessarily reflect those of my employer]
It’s taken me a while to write about this one because it’s Christmas week and there’s much to do and kids under my feet and also, evidence about the new variant is coming out so thick and fast that as soon as I had time to write something, what I knew was already out of date.
Soooo, here goes, and heavily caveated that whatever I wrote today will likely be old news and potentially inaccurate in a few days’ (hours’?) time! Also expect typos as I’ve had no time to proofread what with the mince pies that need baking etc.
**WHAT IS THE NEW STRAIN AND HOW DID IT ARISE?
Mutation sounds a scary thing, but actually it’s something that viruses do all the time. When they replicate within cells, they must copy their genetic code (RNA), and in doing so they quite often make mistakes — as you would if you were copying out lines from a text, for example — you’d expect to make a few typos. Mutations are basically those typos, and the new lines of “text” are new strains. Many of those mutations make no difference whatsoever to what the viral strain’s RNA ultimately codes for (these are called “synonymous” mutations). Others (non-synonymous mutations or deletions) make a difference in what the virus codes for, but even then, only a subset of these will potentially go on to give a new virus strain a competitive advantage over the others that are in existence.
SARS-CoV2 (the virus that causes Covid) has mutated many times since it arrived on the scene, with thousands of strains in circulation over the course of the pandemic. Mutation is to be expected, particularly in areas of high prevalence where there is a lot of virus about. However, while it’s not unusual to see new strains, this new UK strain everyone is talking about, known as B.1.1.7. , or VUI202012/01 (first Variant Under Investigation in December 2020), or VOC202012/01 (Variant Of Concern) (I know, I know, not exactly names that trip off the tongue, unfortunately) *is* unusual in that it carries so many mutations at once — 23, in fact — although only 17 of these result in changes in what the B.1.1.7. strain codes for (the other six are “synonymous”).
It’s unusual to see so many mutations all at once in one strain. We don’t know for certain how it came about, but the leading hypothesis is that some poor individual was chronically infected with SARS-CoV2 for a long time, their immune system kept trying to eliminate it, and in response, the virus in their body kept ducking and diving from these immune responses, eventually resulting in this strain that has so many mutations. Yep, you read that right: the virus strain that has cancelled Christmas is thought to have originated in *one* person — and if that isn’t a lesson in how we all as individuals can play a role in how this pandemic pans out, then I don’t know what is.
**WHAT MAKES SCIENTISTS THINK B.1.1.7 IS MORE TRANSMISSIBLE?
There is no smoking gun yet that proves beyond reasonable doubt that this new strain is more transmissible, but there is sufficient data that scientists strongly suspect that it is. That evidence comes from various different sources:
(1) Genomic — several of the mutations that the strain carries have been experimentally or epidemiologically associated with potentially causing higher transmission in past strains — and we don’t yet know what effect having all of these mutations in combination might be
(2) Epidemiological — the strain has rapidly a stonking first place in terms of which strains are mostly circulating in London and the South East. While it can be difficult to what degree this is due by a biological difference in the virus’ behaviour, versus how much it could have been precipitated by human behaviour (e.g did the strain get lucky by finding itself at a a few super-spreading events in Kent pubs and get a nice head start on other strains that way?), the fact that the it spread very rapidly in London and the South East even during the lockdown2, despite rates falling elsewhere, together with data that suggest behaviours in this region weren’t markedly different from behaviours seen elsewhere, make the case for the former explanation stronger.
(3) Virological — it seems that the PCR tests for people infected with this strain may have lower “cycle thresholds” (“ct”s) than for those infected with other strains. A lower ct is an indication that you are shedding more virus (because the PCR machine doesn’t need to cycle through as many rounds before it shows up as positive).
So there is a bunch of evidence that means that, if B.1.1.7. were a criminal, you’d definitely arrest it on suspicion of being more transmissible, and remand it in custody without bail while you collect the evidence that would be needed to convict it beyond reasonable doubt. And that is exactly what scientists are doing right now- collecting that evidence, growing the virus in cells and in animal models, looking back closely at the genomic and epidemiological data over the past few weeks to learn more about how this virus has spread and who it has infected, in order that we can understand more the mechanisms and the extent of any increased transmissibility. For now the data are sparse, but they are enough to act, and certainly enough to urge huge caution from the public so that it doesn’t get horribly ahead of us before we understand it better.
*WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS OF THE NEW STRAIN?
*…on severity?
Evidence is being collected, but to date it looks as though the strain does not cause more severe illness than other strains. You’re more likely to catch it, but as an individual you’d expect the illness it causes to be largely the same.
*…on population spread, hospitalisations and deaths?
Unfortunately, even though we think that the severity is no worse, the fact that we suspect it’s more transmissible would mean faster spread and a concomitant increase in hospitalisations and deaths, simply because more people are likely to catch it. Remember the idea of “flattening the curve” to prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed? A more transmissible strain would do the exact OPPOSITE of that, and potentially put a lot of extra pressure on the health system.
There’s a lot of talk about how the strain might be more transmissible in children, but at the moment that is largely speculation and not backed up by hard and fast evidence. Again, scientists are working hard to provide that evidence. Until that exists it’s difficult to say whether the emergence of this strain should change our approach to education provision — although early modelling data released last night do suggest that it may not be possible to bring the pandemic under control under Tier 4 if schools remain open. We will know more over the coming days.
*…on vaccines?
Some of the mutations are in the region of RNA that codes for the spike protein of the virus, which is the bit of the virus that the vaccines have been developed to target. However, the vaccinologists seem quite confident at this stage that these shouldn’t have much of an impact on the vaccines, as they have been made to recognise various bits of the spike protein (it’s a bit like, if I had a different nose supplanted onto my face, you’d still be able to recognise me from my eyes, ears, mouth, hair — every other bit of my face). However, if it turns out that the vaccines do work less effectively against this strain, it’s feasible to tweak them so they suit the new strain better; it would just take a few weeks.
So vaccines are still expected to work at an individual level. However, because spread would be expected to be faster and higher, we would need a higher proportion of the population to be vaccinated and faster before we could effectively ease the pressures on the health service and bring the pandemic under control. So the challenges just stepped up a notch.
*…reinfection?
Again, a bit of an open question. Does the new strain mean that it can evade protection by immune responses in people who have been infected before? This remains to be seen; however, similar to vaccine immunity, the fact that the immune response garners a variety of antibodies targeting the virus, hopefully not. Again, scientists will be working hard to set up surveillance systems and studies to answer that question in coming weeks and months, but as yet there’s no definitive answer.
*…treatment?
Possibly some of the antibody treatments we have developed for severe cases of infection may no longer work. But other ones likely will. Again…we need more evidence before we have hard and fast answers on this one.
*SHEESH! THAT ALL SOUNDS AWFUL! THROW ME A BONE! WHAT’S THE GOOD NEWS???
There are various bits of good news:
(1) We have *really* good genomic surveillance
The sequencing data and surveillance of emerging viral strains that we do in the UK really *is* “world-beating”. COG-UK, the consortium that co-ordinates the surveillance, has contributed to 43% of the dataset of all of the known strains of SARS-CoV2 that circulate in the world — that’s not because we have loads more strains circulating in the UK, it’s because we have really good capacity to detect them. It’s entirely possible that highly transmissible strains are emerging elsewhere in the world, and countries simply don’t know about them because they don’t do the sequencing. So, odd though it seems, it’s a good thing that we’ve picked up this new strain. Knowledge is power. Knowledge leads to understanding which leads to being able to make an informed and targeted response to these developments.
(2) Scientists are working on it!
Precisely because we’ve identified this strain early, scientists are now busy working on all these questions raised above. We will get more evidence, we will get more answers. It’s all in train. It’s just a question of sitting with the uncertainty for a bit and being patient — and goodness knows we’ve all learned how to do that this year.
(3) The control measures you already know about it should work!
Limit your contacts. Hands — face — space. Meet outdoors and if you can’t, ventilate.
There is no known reason why this new variant would be able to evade these measures. My advice to you is, even if you’re not living in Tier 4, act as though you are. Step up your level of vigilance and caution — especially tomorrow if you’re intending to see people from other households. Remember how I said we need to remand B1.1.7. in custody while we gather more evidence? The way to do that is to prevent it from spreading around. And that is up to us.
So to sum up:
Hands — Face — Space — Outdoors/ventilate — Limit your contacts.
And patience. | https://medium.com/@georgialadbury/what-is-the-new-uk-covid-strain-and-why-are-scientists-worried-f21c99b95531 | ['Georgia Ladbury'] | 2020-12-24 15:31:19.952000+00:00 | ['Covid 19'] |
Are To-Do Lists Hindering Your Productivity? | I’ve gone over this before where task lists are important. However, they need to be reaching towards an overall goal. If you’re finding yourself creating long to-do lists and not tasks that reach a goal, you’re not productive, just busy.
Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash
Setting goals is easy. Reaching them is hard and takes work. There is a saying that goes on and says, “Being busy is hard. Being successful is hard. Choose your hard.” Or something along those lines. It also says quite a few other things in that vein, but you get the point.
Tasks are things that we set for ourselves every day; this is something we all know because we all do them. To-do lists, the bane of our existence, something that has to exist to make sure that we get everything done. But is it just a list of things-to-do daily, or is it a list of things to do that will move you towards an overarching goal?
For example, let's say that you want to improve your words per day count by 50% over the next quarter (this is one of my goals for this upcoming quarter). That’s your overarching goal and something that you can’t necessarily control. Usually, goals with numbers aren’t something that you can completely control, and that’s why it’s a goal.
Projects come next, breaking down those goals into smaller hills from that mountain. I want to improve my writing? Okay — every day, I will sit down and dedicate the hours of 5 am — 9 am to writing, researching, and doing whatever needs to be done to reach that goal.
Then we break these projects down into tasks. Here are our lists—tasks comprising smaller molehills that move us towards that project and the project towards the goal. A task for this would be to write for medium 3–4 times a week, write for clients 3–4 times a week to meet deadlines, and write in my book as much as possible.
Photo by The Creative Exchange on Unsplash
To-do lists that aren’t focused and are more geared towards just being busy (say with household chores) are great, and they need to be done; however, that said, these are more lists that are on the side and in the peripheral of your priorities and your dream life. Folding laundry will not improve your ideal life and get you to that desired outcome of improving your writing game if that’s your goal.
When focusing on goals, projects, and tasks, we need to consider realistic time frames. Setting a goal for yourself to say, earn 5k a month over the next quarter, is a lofty goal for most. So setting maybe goals such as earning 1k/3k/5k as a good/great/fantastic is an excellent way to reach for them. That way, you can strive to meet that 5k goal, but if you fall short, you’ve still met a goal that matters to you, and you see it as an achievement.
Another goal for me is to, in this next quarter, to finish and publish my book. I don’t expect to make money off of it in the first quarter, and that's a goal that I’m saving for the second quarter. So for right now, it’s not a focus, not a worry, and one less thing on my plate to look at, focusing only on the next 90 days. Breaking this down into smaller pieces was hard for me to do with many ideas in mind, goals, projects, and tasks, but some soul searching and a bit of research honed them down and gave me perspective.
I also sat down and realistically plotted out my time. I took a calendar, a suggestion from a recent course I took and marked off all days in the year that I wouldn’t be writing or working on anything at all. That meant all weekends were off the board, as those are reserved for chores and spending time with my husband. Then there was marking off time for my day job, marking off birthdays, holidays, and any other days that I thought I might not be writing.
That left me with 180 days out of the year to write. 180 days. That doesn’t seem like a lot when you’re looking at the fact that there are 365 in a year. But when you look at hours per week and realistically plan, it gives you a good perspective of just what you can reach for and achieve without becoming overwhelmed.
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
This is where tasks can hinder you if you’re not careful. Putting too many tasks on your list, or becoming distracted at the moment by things such as emails coming in one by one, social media, or other distractions, will take you away from focusing on your goal. Therefore I write from 5 am-9 am in the mornings as my family isn’t awake yet, and I have quiet time to sit, focus, and write.
My task lists consist of goal-oriented tasks and a few personal tasks, but mostly, goal-oriented tasks are the ones I focus on so that each quarter I’ve reached at least one out of the 2–3 that I’ve set for myself.
If you’re creating busy lists and not outcome goal related task lists, it’s probably a good idea to sit down, download, or buy a goal planner and fill it out. You may feel silly at first, but these will usually make you really think about what your goals are, and you’ll likely do a bit of soul searching.
Either way, tasks are a great way to get things done, as long as you’re on track to get things done in a meaningful way with intentional outcomes in mind. | https://medium.com/@parquetk/are-to-do-lists-hindering-your-productivity-16cf311ea28a | ['Karen Parquet'] | 2020-12-21 12:53:15.241000+00:00 | ['To Do List', 'Goals', 'Time Management', 'Projects', 'Productivity'] |
¿Qué son las Criptomonedas? | Splitting time between my original home in rural Minnesota & my second home, Guatemala | Director of Education with CoinYou.co, a Crypto Learning Community
Follow | https://medium.com/coinyou/qu%C3%A9-son-las-criptomonedas-699b730721d | ['Molly Malone'] | 2019-02-10 14:55:52.474000+00:00 | ['Dinero', 'Criptomonedas', 'Espanol', 'Español', 'Bitcoin'] |
Babylon America | The saddest, the most desolate, part is the end of argument. We all stopped really arguing long ago and have been only shouting and exhorting and deriding for years now. Some of us moved to places we thought were more exciting and interesting, found friends who reminded us of ourselves. Some of us discovered social media and got in touch with people we’d forgotten about. We all discovered key fobs, smart phones, online shopping, streaming entertainment, search engines, instant results. There’s less pushback the way we live now. Practically, and also in the things we think. We don’t have to wait for things, and we don’t live around so many people who disagree with us anymore. That’s why we moved to the city or moved to the country or stayed right where we were — to avoid all the aggravation. I mean, there are still aggravating people around, but they’re more likely to be your alcoholic sister-in-law, your racist uncle, the ditsy guy selling crystals and geodes next to the Indian restaurant. They’re people who for one reason or another couldn’t get into their proper circle. They’re the leftovers. And with these people you don’t have conversations so much as you just have encounters. The arguments, when they happen, are stupid. If you start arguing with someone like this, it’s not really arguing, because the person you’re talking to is more or less deranged. If I still lived in rural Michigan (which we moved away from when I was eight), I would be regarded as the pathetic lone liberal. Everyone would know I was just using politics to make up for some rather obvious personal inadequacy. What I’m saying is, whether we live in Los Angeles or Duluth, a lot of us don’t have a friend or even an acquaintance anymore with whom we disagree who we do not also think of as somehow dysfunctional or irrelevant.
I think that’s how we’ve gotten to the point that we no longer even know what it means to argue. You say something, the other person disagrees, you tell them why it’s so, they tell you what’s wrong with what you’re saying. We don’t argue this way anymore. Now someone says something, you tell them they’re just repeating something they heard on TV. Which isn’t arguing with them, it’s just dealing with them. As the racist or alcoholic or old hippie they are.
This is how societies go to war or become failed states. People wake up one morning and realize there is nothing, absolutely nothing, they have to say to those who disagree with them.
When was the last time you changed your mind? About something, I mean, other than whether to order the fries or the salad? When was the last time you thought something, and decided, after talking about it with a friend and then thinking it over some more, that you might not have been quite right about it? Nobody changes their mind anymore.
You change your mind, you’re a pussy. This is where we are now.
Maybe we never did change our mind much about things that mattered to us, actually. They matter to us, of course, because they matter. Our mind isn’t going to change easily about something that matters to us. But something, something, is different. Because it used to be that if someone voted different from us, we’d think they were wrong, but we wouldn’t think they were the enemy. We’d still have them over for the summer barbecue. If someone didn’t go to the same church, or even if they didn’t go to church, we’d still . . . wave.
We can’t wave to each other because we don’t live next to each other anymore.
Whose fault is this? I don’t know. I moved to San Francisco because I thought it was a cool place, and I don’t plan on moving back to rural Michigan, where I spent my early childhood, any time soon. I’d just be some kind of missionary to conservatives there, anyway. I’d be the nutcase.
Our lives are so different — so utterly, utterly, utterly different — that there’s hardly a word we can say anymore that the other person will follow. It’s like one of us is speaking Polish and the other’s speaking Urdu. We don’t have the most basic basics on which to agree.
Part of it’s because we’re living in a time where the difference between entertainment and information is hopelessly muddied. It’s always been a problem, of course — I mean, a big part of politics is just the art of confusing those two things — but we’re at a point now where there really appears to be no way out. Here’s a long example . . .
In 1972, Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency in order not to be impeached. He’d been caught lying about a plan to play some dirty tricks on the Democrats. No one had been impeached since 1868. Impeachment was such a big deal, that it was somehow less humiliating to give up being the President of the United States than to be impeached.
24 years later, Bill Clinton was impeached. He’d lied about an affair he had with an intern. It was very hard to stomach for Democrats, given the number of affairs people knew were going on in Congress in any given year. In fact, Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House who was leading the impeachment, was having an affair. (So was Dennis Hastert, the next Speaker, except with boys). Clinton didn’t resign, though. He decided it would be worth it for the country to judge the Republicans’ hypocrisy, and he turned out to be right. After impeaching him, the Republicans lost control of the House in 1998. People liked Bill Clinton, thought he was running the country just fine. It didn’t matter to them — much — that he wasn’t a model husband. The Republicans were hypocrites.
This is where entertainment comes in. First of all, though I agree the Republicans were calculating hypocrites, I don’t know in hindsight how I feel about Bill Clinton’s refusal to resign. He was right to point out the hypocrisy. But he established a depressing precedent: no longer would a marital affair be a deal breaker for a politician. And that’s kind of depressing. Because there’s a difference between a moral failing being common, and it not being shameful.
I don’t know what was worse — Newt Gingrich playing hardball politics, which politicians have done all the way through this country’s history — or Bill Clinton calling his bluff and taking no political heat for it. They were both master entertainers.
What we have now—for another fifty days, anyway—is closer to what I’d call a monster entertainer. He’s easily the most corrupt President in U.S. history. He tried to get a foreign country to take out his political opponent. And then, after almost a quarter million people had died in a pandemic he seemed to do everything he could to ignore—with the economy predictably in shambles—he was almost re-elected. Almost half the electorate still voted for him! Why did that almost happen?
The pandemic is horrific. But this election is what’s keeping me awake at night. That almost half the nation had had four years of this guy, and then thought . . . yeah, but he’s going to get abortion illegal again.
I have had periods of depression over the years, which I’ve been patiently coaxed out of by the occasional competent therapist. With the help of a little medication, the best of them will convince me that the world is not the bleak place which, in the night’s darkest hours, I’ve imagined it to be. That it’s possible that midnight despair is not some kind of “looking through the veil” at the true nature of the world. But . . .
Almost half the country voted for a fascist. Again.
Does this mean that every other person I meet in America is either stupid or immoral? This is the crap that races through my head at two in the morning. And I ask myself, how did a depressive liberal feel in — don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we’re living in Nazi Germany — but . . . in Nazi Germany? How did Germany become Nazi Germany? Well, I’ll tell you one thing that had to be true: every other person you’d meet on the street those days had no problem with the Nazis. You’d have to be constantly questioning yourself about basic human nature. Midnight would be the worst.
I keep being haunted by this idea that suddenly you can’t prove anything to someone. I know everyone’s saying this, that facts don’t matter anymore, etc., but it’s true . . . you can’t point to the sun and get a Republican to agree that it’s daytime. It’s hilarious or annoying when it’s your drunk uncle. It’s terrifying when it’s half the country. If you’re reading this right now, and you voted for Trump, how do I prove to you that he lost the election fair and square? Is there anything that would prove this? Because even Fox News says he lost. But instead of taking the word of this right wing entertainment news channel that’s been their go-to gospel for 25 years, there are people deciding instead that obviously Fox News has gone soft! Fox News is pointing to the sun, and people are moving to One America.
This isn’t how a party or an ideology behaves. This is how a cult behaves.
Who am I writing this to, anyway? Family? Friends? Is it just a journal entry? Am I trying to change someone’s mind? Ask myself questions? I don’t know. I think I’m in mourning. Because the Biden election notwithstanding, the U.S. is very unwell, and it’s not just COVID.
There are reasons countries elect authoritarians. It isn’t like the guy just waves a magic wand and hypnotizes everybody. Countries get susceptible. Things start changing that people aren’t used to. Lots of people lose their jobs. There’s a big gap between haves and have-nots. Competitive nations start to prosper. There’s always (always always) some influx of foreigners that explains everything. Things start to churn.
Remember “the marketplace of ideas”? This is where everyone says whatever they want, there’s lots of argument, and through all that bickering, the best ideas — i.e., the truth — rises to the top. Lies will always be exposed eventually, and rot away. This is the basic defense of free speech and the First Amendment. I’ve been a big free speech fan my whole life. I’ve always believed that there is no better way to keep the truth in people’s faces.
The last few years have changed my perspective a little. I’m reluctant. I still believe in free speech. But I’m observing the sun. Donald Trump, to begin with, has never heard of a “marketplace of ideas.” He’s never had an idea in his head. To be honest, though, a lot of us — maybe most of us? — don’t have a lot of ideas in our heads. And mostly, the ones we have we don’t examine very closely, because we’re too busy with life, which is nothing to be ashamed of, frankly. We don’t go around with our friends debating the merits of a parliamentary versus a presidential democracy, or a federalist versus a unitary government, or how evil can exist in a world created by a loving God. This is because we, unlike John Stuart Mill, are not geeks. We argue about sports and cars and bread recipes, like all free peoples. The occasional time we wander into the weeds of abstract argument, it’s like that Onion article, “Man Who Understands 8% of Obamacare Vigorously Defends It from Man Who Understands 5%.”
This is where I fall on free speech at the moment . . . People should not be condemned for thinking what they think. And they shouldn’t be condemned for saying what they think. But the loudest people — the politicians, the news shows, the columnists and radio hosts — need to be held to account for lying. You have a big megaphone, spreading rumor as fact, and you — not the country — ought to suffer the consequences.
I’m not optimistic. I don’t see this happening any time soon. 80% of Republicans saying they believe the vote was illegitimate? No. I still see the country burning down. There’s a great detective show on Netflix called Babylon Berlin. It’s like the movie Cabaret on steroids. The last days of the Weimar Republic, and this gumshoe with an opioid habit is tracking down a murder in the movie industry. Amazing series. And depressing as hell. Because you know what’s coming. Hitler is coming.
Countries don’t just whimsically give authoritarians power. They have to need a Savior first. Then, once they’re desperate enough, facts suddenly are not as important as solutions. In Germany, a popular “fact” after World War I was the stab-in-the-back myth. It was Germany’s version of Stop the Steal. The story went that the country wasn’t really losing the war, but a bunch of Jews and Socialists took over and got them to surrender anyway. Gave away the store. It was a myth, and logically disprovable, but for a humiliated people who were in a lot of economic pain, it was a powerful story. The problem with lies is that disproving them isn’t enough. They stick around like a fart in church. You can’t ignore them. And if you live in a small town that’s losing jobs, and you’ve lost yours, and every day you’re seeing people rioting in the big cities, you’re hearing women refer to their “wives,” you’re seeing city councils voting to abolish the police(!), men in dresses being elected to Congress . . . It doesn’t matter why these things are really happening, or whether they’re bad or good or indifferent, or what other news you are not seeing—what you remember is that Donald Trump, the only politician who ever talked like you, said they would steal the election. And now Joe Biden the closet socialist is President.
Like a fart in church.
I’m not optimistic, as I said. Because the best solution, people who think differently talking to each other every day, is not going to happen. Not any time soon. I’m not moving back to Michigan, or to Idaho or Alabama. You’re not moving to San Francisco or New York City or Philadelphia. Without me moving there or you moving here, we’re not going to see each other often enough to take each other seriously, to treat each other with respect.
But it’s more complicated. Because that makes it sound like there would be two sides from which people can find some common ground. Which is true and not. If I lived around more Walmart greeters and furloughed factory workers and people who rode ATVs, I’d have their lives in front of me and be more understanding. I’d learn things. That would do me good. I’d probably understand a little better why some new things are hard to get used to; that some ideas that really are good and necessary may still have an immediate downside for a neighbor of mine. I’d probably be a little less quick to judge a person’s not-woke-enough vocabulary.
That’s all stuff a liberal moving to a small town would have to learn. But the small town would still be largely Republican, which is to say, largely people who voted for Trump, and believed the election was stolen. And what do you do about that? Because politically, there’s no longer a way to find common ground between Democrats and Republicans. There really is nothing any legitimate political party can find in common with a cult. Until some rational chunk of Republicans breaks off to form a legitimate conservative movement, whatever that would look like, we are dealing right now with this: the Democratic Party, and a personality cult. To the degree there are any principles other than devotion to the Savior, they are 1) White people are persecuted, 2) Christians are persecuted, 3) large numbers of immigrants are dangerous, 4) racial minorities don’t know how good they’ve got it, and 5) power given to the Democratic Party is never legitimate.
This is pretty much exactly where Germany was just before Hitler showed up.
And this, frankly, is why I have so little hope right now. | https://medium.com/@robvizvalley/babylon-america-1ee128e2a775 | ['Rob Ehle'] | 2020-12-04 03:55:13.036000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Media Criticism', 'Election 2020', 'Trumpism'] |
Let’s Pause for Poetry | Let’s Pause for Poetry
Some recent favorites…
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Since I’m going to a poetry reading tonight on Zoom with the Alameda Island Poets, it’s the perfect day to share some of my recent creations…Enjoy!
It Must be the Heart-Shaped Face
Who loves barn owls? And what a photo!
Ever do that love-hate dance with the image in the mirror?
Another great image with a bittersweet story…
How to order and eat the Park Street Bridge.
We need water, we are water, let’s honor water! | https://medium.com/humor-authenticity-magic/lets-pause-for-poetry-e67630114bec | ['Marilyn Flower'] | 2020-12-02 18:37:10.115000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Humor', 'Self', 'Fall', 'Poetry'] |
Readers Share Their Last ‘Normal’ Moments Before the Bay Shut Down | A year ago, our lives changed in small ways and major ways when the pandemic became real to us and the Bay Area shut down. But before it did, in those first couple months of 2020, we were living our old “normal lives” — going to birthday parties, dancing at weddings, riding public transit, going to the office, and getting schwasted with friends at a bar.
In honor of the one-year anniversary of shelter in place, we asked readers to scroll back through their Google Photos and iPhones and send in pictures of their last “normal” moments, as well as share how it feels to look back at that time and how much has changed.
Here’s what they sent.
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World travel for a birthday celebration
This time last year my partner flew in from London for my birthday. We mostly stopped by various iconic sights of the city and drank every fancy coffee we could find, but at some point we wandered into the Sandbox, a VR game venue near my office. We played a zombie game that I was not prepared for; the designers had a field day watching our playthrough. He’d been hanging out with me for about two weeks by then, and by the end of that weekend we were worried he wouldn’t be able to get home due to travel restrictions.
—Aubrie Johnson
Working from coffee shops
“There seems to be a common theme in that I was always in coffee shops doing work. I don’t even remember the last time I spent hours at a cafe finishing assignments or procrastinating on work by people watching. There is something about having people around you in a coworking-type setting with a cup of coffee that brought me comfort. Looking back now, I miss it a lot. I underestimated how much I needed those moments to get away and get a sense of human connection.”
—Aida Agayeva
Karaoke, all night
Dragon Gate Lounge, Oakland, February 2020
I was yelling my lungs out at karaoke and unintentionally matching the wall with my outfit. My friends and I still talk about how this was our last real social gathering before shelter in place, and we lament that karaoke will probably be one of the last activities to return after the pandemic.
—Margot Seeto
‘Hamilton’ or bust
A year ago today, I attended what would be the final showing of Hamilton at the Orpheum. It was a matinee that was technically allowed to go on less than an hour after Mayor Breed halted city events of 1,000 people or more. Just me and 1,000 folks with a median age of about 65. I’ll never forget how anxious the actors were as they attempted to perform a historical piece in the middle of a seismic moment. Over those four hours, everything outside of the theater started to get pretty real. I don’t have a photo of anything but my look of terror on the BART ride home.
— Emily Larsen
Eating at a restaurant
One week before San Francisco’s shelter in place, I was enjoying a meal at Louis’, gazing out its panoramic windows, and admiring the incredible view, unaware that my first visit to the cliffside restaurant would also be my last. In that moment, though, with a burger in hand and the Sutro Baths in sight, all was well. I do wish I could go back.
—Joey Yee
Moving in together
I was moving in with my boyfriend — the first partner I have ever lived with. We had no idea that our little honeymoon cove was about to become a nuclear bunker. I look back on these photos and see how happy I am. I have no idea how much things are about to change. Lockdown was announced for our county that following Wednesday, I think. I’m happy to say we’re doing pretty good, in a time when many relationships are being severely exposure tested. We have learned a lot about patience, communication, and boundaries. But I wonder how different our relationship would be if today, right after these photos were taken, we weren’t effectively locked up together; if our relationship could have proceeded like “normal”; if we were the people we came home to each night, instead of cellmates who never left each other’s side.
—Diana Helmuth
A carousel ride
My dad and I took my son to Tilden Park in late February to the Little Farm and the merry-go-round for the first time. It was mellow and sweet, a sunny day enjoying local adventures, and everyone is blissfully unaware of what was to come. Watching this video, the awed looked on my son’s face is precious. It makes me feel grateful we had that experience and also sad since we can’t just be with other people and kids riding the fun wave like that yet.
— Samantha Durbin
Birthday rager | https://thebolditalic.com/readers-share-their-last-normal-moments-before-the-bay-shut-down-d55ee5c1ddd6 | ['Clara Hogan'] | 2021-03-21 21:58:20.760000+00:00 | ['Bay Area', 'Shelter In Place', 'Pandemic', 'San Francisco', 'Life'] |
A Game of Words | A Game of Words
A look at how the silver-tongued characters of the hit HBO show can be analysed by the words they speak.
UPDATE AUGUST 2019: I have just published the continuation of this analysis, looking at scripts from Season 8. Check it out here once you’ve read this!
Game of Thrones is back for the final season! If you’re anything like me you will be eagerly counting down the days to each new episode and waiting on the edge of your seat to see what happens. Will Jon accept he’s the heir to the Iron Throne? Will the White Walkers win? Is Arya old enough for…that? With all the hype surrounding the show at the moment I thought it the perfect time to investigate how Data Science can be applied to everyone’s favourite TV show.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to be developing some analysis centring around Game of Thrones. Depending on how well the articles are received and how many interesting facts I can glean from the data I’ve sourced, I may end up with several articles (I might even turn this into a ‘series’ — I’m new to Medium so not fully sure what this entails) or it may only be a few. The first couple of posts at least will be based around transcripts of the first 7 seasons.
This opening article will – for now – breeze over how I actually got hold of the transcripts (I may go into more detail in future, it wasn’t straightforward!) and will dive straight in to some of my initial discoveries — many of which made me laugh because of how well they represented the characters and storylines from the show.
All the data in this post was scraped from the genius.com lyrics website, which also (surprisingly) has transcripts to every Game of Thrones episode on it. I used a couple of different scraping algorithms that I wrote myself in R. Plenty of data wrangling later, I had a transcript for every episode of Game of Thrones up until the end of season 7. I can’t speak to the ‘official’ accuracy of these but having read through several of them they seem to be pretty spot on.
If you had to guess, which character from the show is most similiar to Jon Snow?
So I now have my dataset of every word spoken by every character on the first seven seasons of the show, from Jon Snow to “Soldier #6". The first and simplest way to analyse a particular character is to see which word(s) they use most commonly. After removing all stop-words (‘a’, ‘of’, ‘the’ etc.), I had a look at what everyones favourite word was…well by ‘everyone’ I mean 16 of the biggest characters in recent seasons. There were over 400 unique characters so I had to be picky!
Below you can see the results and I think this might be my favourite table I’ve ever produced, given that it perfectly describes each character.
Overall most commonly used word for each of the selected characters, as well as relative frequency (what % of all words they speak are this particular word)
Some comments:
If you guessed Jaime in answer to the question above, the data (here) agrees with you. I think that speaks to his and Jon’s leadership qualities and selfless nature (or Jaime uses it incestuously and Jon uses it anti-White-Walkerishly).
I think if you had to describe Arya, Euron & The Hound (Sandor Clegane) in one word, you probably couldn’t do much better than that.
Tywin Lannister clearly had a significant impact on the lives of two of his three children it seems…
You can tell who has had to learn to be the most courteous/political: Littlefinger (Petyr Baelish), Varys & Sansa.
If you’re wondering why Dany’s top word is ‘take’, think about her life #goals –to ‘take’ back the iron throne. I imagine it’s a common word among all conquerors.
‘Oh’ Samwell.
If you’ve ever wondered what Yara spends all her time worrying about, just know that her second most common word was ‘brother’…
I think this goes to show that the language we speak reflects considerably upon us as individuals. Obviously this is heightened in a TV show where scripts are written specifically to portray a particular character/trait, but I think this still holds true in everyday life.
Who do you think likes the sound of their own voice?
Next up we’ll look at quantity over quality. This gives an indication of both screen time (i.e. who is considered a ‘main’ character in the TV show), but also who is the least succinct. The plot below shows, for the same 16 characters, how many words they spoke across all seasons as well as their average words per episode they appeared in.
The total number of words spoken across all 7 seasons and the average number of words per episode. Ordered by total number of words spoken.
It seems the Lannisters live by their House words (“Hear me roar”) as all three of those that are still alive top the charts for pure volume of words spoken.
After this the rest of the list is a bit unsurprising: Jon & Dany up there due to their status as main characters and Varys & Littlefinger due to their eloquent nature.
Lastly —mapping a journey with words
This final section will look at how the characters’ speech has varied across seasons 1–7. Will the data show patterns and storylines that we’ve observed in the show? The answer appears to be yes, it often does.
Below is a series of plots mapping how talkative the characters are in each season. The lines show the average number of words per episode, for each season.
As you can see I have added some annotations of interesting points where a character’s verbosity matches their storyline (note: it may be hard to see the details on the plot above, the y-axis is ‘Average Number of words per episode’ and the x-axis is Season. The captions are discussed below.).
Cersei appears to have lost her confidence after her naked walk of shame & Myrcella‘s death at the end of season 5. Although it was evidently just a rehabilitation period for her as she was back with a vengeance in season 7.
Sansa appears to have steadily grown in confidence, barring season 5, the duration of which was spent as Ramsay’s wife (not a pleasant fate).
Theon was riding high in season 2 where he featured prominently as Robb’s right-hand-man-turned-traitor and his subsequent taking Winterfell. Unfortunately it was downhill from there for poor Theon…
Below we see how a character’s vocabulary can also reflect their storyline. The table shows each character’s most commonly used word in each season.
The most commonly spoken word by each character in each season they appeared in. Again, this is not including stop-words so although it is the “most common”, some of them may only have been used a handful of times in each season. The ‘Character’ column has been highlighted for ease of interpretation.
The more eagle eyed of you will have spotted that although Arya’s most common word was ‘kill’ (see the first table in this article), it wasn’t her most common for any particular season. Evidently ‘kill’ was more of a consistent running theme throughout the whole of Arya’s story, rather than being at the forefront of her vocabulary for any one season.
I think Daenerys’ words give quite a good indication of what her story has been so far.
Ramsay in Season 4: this is an example of where an anomaly can sway the data, this one coming from a single scene in episode 2 - ‘Tansy’ is a serving girl who Ramsay hunts and kills with his dogs. During the hunt he repeatedly shouts ‘Tansy, Tansy, Tansy” which leads to it being his most commonly used word for the season.
Up next…
Hopefully you enjoyed this short piece of analysis and found it as interesting as I did! For my next post I’m going to be using the same dataset and performing some sentiment analysis to see how the characters’ emotions throughout the show can be mapped by the words they say.
I’m also going to consider developing a web app for this dataset. As I mentioned there are over 400 characters and nearly 300,000 words so I’ve barely scratched the surface here. If you’d be interested in a web app that allows you to explore and visualise this data in multiple ways then let me know and I’ll keep you updated on any relevant plans I have!
Thanks for reading, leave a comment and share with anyone you think might find this interesting! #winterhascome
P.S. I might have missed out an important character in the ‘favourite word by season’ table above…
EDIT: I have since published the second part of this analysis, view it here. | https://medium.com/data-slice/a-game-of-thrones-or-words-dabff1266780 | ['Chris Brownlie'] | 2019-08-03 10:00:18.688000+00:00 | ['Game of Thrones', 'Language', 'Data Analysis', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualization'] |
Data for Africa: Open data portals listed and reviewed | Data for Africa: Open data portals listed and reviewed
Tool Review
What open data is out there? Where do you find it and what can you do with it? We review ten South African and African open data portals.
Johannesburg Train Station From Randlords by Paul Saad (Creative Commons)
The Open Government Declaration, signed by 11 African states from 2011, states that ‘people all around the world are demanding more openness in government’. The African Development Bank says on its open data portal that “reliable data constitutes the single most convincing way of getting the people involved in what their leaders and institutions are doing.”
Open data is data that can be freely used and shared by anyone. The theory is that more open data means more transparency, and more transparency means a more accountable and better government. In Africa, some governments have committed to making their data open. But the Open Data Barometer puts African countries at the bottom of their rankings.
In many cases, the issue isn’t just openness — it’s that the data hasn’t been collected in the first place. Questions have also been raised about whether increased transparency is likely to lead to more accountability without more government commitment. As you can see from our review below, looking at what has been done so far, many of the open data portals are still difficult to navigate, especially on mobile phones which is how most people get online. As one African Union report puts it, we still need a data revolution in Africa.
So what South African and African open data is out there? How useful is it and where do you find it? This list is a work in progress. Please contribute and comment: What portals do you use or run? What portals do you “rate”? And which ones are just not worth the pixels/bandwidth? How have you used, or tried to use, open data?
Please share your experience and ideas in the comments below, directly via email to [email protected] , or join the discussions on our Facebook page.
Below you’ll find seven South African and three international open data portals: Municipal Money, Municipal Finance Data, Municipal Barometer, Wazimap, City of Cape Town Open Data Portal, South Africa National Data Portal, The NRF’s SA Data Archive, OpenAFRICA, DataBank from the WorldBank, and African Development Bank Groups’ Open Data for African portal
South Africa
1. Municipal Money
Municipal Money is National Treasury project that takes municipal finance data and makes it available to the public in an accessible way. The stated goal of the portal is to take complex and extensive spending and budget information, to crunch and reformat it (in graphical ways) so it doesn’t require an economics or statistics degree to interpret, and to let users drill down to information at the individual municipal level.
What data is there?
All the data on the portal is reported information, submitted to National Treasury by individual municipalities. Generally you can access information on an area’s audit status, income sources, cash balance, and spending (by category) including wasteful expenditure, as well as a “resources” section. This includes links to data sources such as financial reports in PDF and Excel format. Depending on which municipality you look at you may find missing information which as the site makes clear may be an indication that the municipality failed to provide data to the Treasury (which is informative in itself).
What can you do with it?
Find your municipality, or choose one of interest, to see summarised information with supporting graphs and graphical ratings (using smiley and unhappy faces, and a red, orange and green colouring key). Each metric provides the year(s) of data available, an explanation of the metric and outgoing links.
Ease of use
The site is simple and well designed, and the “traffic light” colour code aids understanding. The “Did you know” boxes and linked explanations will help orientate new data users. At the time of visiting (May 2017) the location-detection appeared to be non-functioning, but search was simple and accurate. Viewed on a low-end Android smartphone*, the site is generally mobile- friendly with only minor blips in the layout of some graph keys.
2. Municipal Finance Data
The Municipal Money tool (above) draws its raw data from this site, the Municipal Money API website. Here users can access the original datasets that Municipal Money is built on.
What data is there?
There are 12 datasets to access, including audit reports, cash flow and capital acquisition. The site promises four years of data, covering 278 municipalities.
What can you do with it?
Drill down to specific months and years, within a category or dataset, and download the raw data.
Ease of use
The interface is a lot less user-friendly, in comparison to Municipal Money, and is clearly not aimed at a “general” audience. That isn’t to say that it is a big mess (it isn’t your typical government department website) but there has been a lot less attention paid to supporting a non-expert user-experience. The site is clear and readable, but fails the mobile test with many of the dataset blocks breaking or displaying run-over text. Once you click through to the datasets themselves, it’s best to rotate your screen for landscape viewing — or, better yet, if you have access to a PC, give up and access it there.
3. Municipal Barometer
Municipal Barometer was developed by the South African Local Government Association (SALGA). It publishes economic, social and governmental performance data down to a ward level. It’s intended audiences are both general interested individuals and municipal staff who can access the information for informed planning purposes.
What data is there?
There are three “tools”: the data bank, a benchmarking tool, and reporting tool. Information in the data bank is divided by year and area, and includes demographics, financial info, access to social and basic services, and “economic growth and development”, each with their own subcategories. The data itself is largely drawn from the last available census, currently, 2011.
What can you do with it?
Once you’ve made your various selections (and you can select multiple categories), you’ll end up at a page that lets you see the data in graph or table format on screen, or download it in PDF and Excel spreadsheet formats.
Ease of use
There is a lot of clicking involved in the data bank section of the site (four steps, each with their own choices) and some users are likely to find that click-path confusing. Two steps and three submenus in I caught myself wondering “where was I going with this again?”. That means it’s a lot of work for a merely interested citizen, but a good resource for a more confident data spelunker. The mobile experience on the other hand is a complete write-off.
4. Wazimap
Wazimap was developed by Media Monitoring Africa with Code for South Africa (now OpenUp), and takes census and election data and links it to a map of South Africa. You can use the clickable map interface or search for a specific area to access the information — at a provincial, city and even ward level.
What data is there?
Wazimap incorporates census 2011 data from Stats SA and election data (national 2014 and municipal 2016) from the IEC. You’ll be able to see how votes were split between parties, as well as demographic and financial information. The census data has some quite revealing insights with metrics such as language, citizenship and the very specific and granular, like “head of household” information or household goods ownership (TV, radio, fridge, etc).
What can you do with it?
With each metric, you can click to see the data on which the graph is based (in table form) and get a handy embed link, so you can slot it into your journalistic stories or external websites as needed. This is why it’s proved such a popular tool with local journalists already.
Ease of use
The site is simple and intuitive, and the graphs simply presented. The mobile experience is smooth and clear — easy to read numbers and responsive graphs even in portrait orientation.
5. City of Cape Town Open Data Portal
In line with the city’s open data policy, to support transparency, the City of Cape Town has created an open data portal for city information.
What data is there?
There are 92 data sets and counting, including information on land administration (aerial photographs), spatial planning, health, finance, and even call centre statistics.
What can you do with it?
Browse and download images, documents and spreadsheets, or visit the “mini-sites” that are built off the back of this data.
Ease of use
The site is surprisingly active and deep, and the three lists on the front page (recently uploaded, most popular and featured sites) a pretty useful navigation “extra” (in a prompting kind of way). It’s not the most modern or attractive site ever but it is clear and “navigable”. A pleasant surprise is that it doesn’t all fall apart when accessed via mobile, despite its reliance on table-format in the data set area. But it can tend towards a bit of a “data dump”, with most data for download only, rather than viewing on the site.
6. South Africa National Data Portal
A project of the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), the South African National Data Portal is part of the country’s commitment to the Open Government Partnership — along with the principles of transparency and accountability.
What data is there?
It hosts departmental data and links to external data sources. There are 409 data sets on offer, with download links, of varying usefulness. For example, if you want to see the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry’s PDF list of South African varietal seed crops (from December 2013), then you’ve come to the right spot. Having said that, the Departments of Energy, Environmental Affairs, Higher Education and Labour have all contributed data sets.
What can you do with it?
Download a huge variety of official information from an official government source.
Ease of use
The front page presents 409 datasets grouped into ten themes, such as Human Settlements and Economy and Employment — which is great in theory. But click on any theme and you get zero datasets. This leaves you with the option of clicking the “See all 409 datasets” and browsing or searching if you know the name of the set you want. The presentation format is at least a clean and simple table, with document name, theme, file type, and uploaded date rows. The site is pretty responsive, but best viewed in landscape on a mobile.
7. The NRF’s SA Data Archive
The National Research Foundation’s South African Data Archive (SADA) proclaims to act as “a broker between a range of data providers … and the research community”, with a view to preserving info for future use and safeguarding data.
What data is there?
The site promises data sets on labour and business, political studies, social studies and surveys and censuses, but currently all the links to the data sets are broken (as are many other links on the site). We reached out to the NRF and they promised that the site was still operational, but said they were “experiencing problems with our IT”, and promised this would be “resolved soon”.
What can you do with it?
Nothing right now, but the potential for a data archive that pools the huge amount of research that falls under the NRF banner is exciting. So, fingers crossed that they can exorcise their IT demons soon.
Ease of use
Not currently available to review.
Africa
8. OpenAFRICA
openAFRICA is volunteer-drive, run by Code for Africa, and says it “aims to be largest independent repository of open data on the African continent”. It is a private, not-for-profit repository of data collated (or “liberated”) from public sources.
What data is there?
A large variety — 2544 data sets including from Western Cape dam levels, local airport locations, World Bank data, a Sustainable Development Goal baseline survey, and greenhouse gas mitigation strategy information.
What can you do with it?
Users can access and download data sets, and even upload their own to store it or make it widely accessible. They also have social sharing buttons on source pages, so you can get the word out.
Ease of use
It’s a pleasure to use on a computer, with a strong uncluttered interface. At first glance, I thought the mobile experience would be just as good. The front page is responsive, but it all falls over though once you search or browse the datasets — with none of the table text displaying.
9. DataBank from the WorldBank
A searchable repository of WorldBank data, gathered from hundreds of countries and 55 databases.
What data is there?
This is probably the world’s largest collection of comparable country-level economic and development data with 63 databases covering 264 countries**, and accessible in 1504 data series dating back 57 years. Of course, not all areas will have all years, or the same availability of metrics, but there is a tonne to peruse, including data on health, poverty, inequality, jobs, economics, governance and ease of doing business information. Its often the case that African data is a lot less current than that from other countries in the global south, an indication of the continental challenges faced by national statistical offices and other data collection agencies.
What can you do with it?
Generate charts, tables, and time-linked data, create reports, visualisations and shareable graphics from a wide variety of metrics and categories, with mapping and pivot table-like functionality added in.
Ease of use
The interface screams “serious” — wordy, with reams of blue and grey text, clickable list items, and next-to-no images (you can make your own data chats and maps once you get in that far). It promises to be tablet-friendly, but is not responsive on a regular mobile phone screen.
10. African Development Bank Groups’ Open Data for African portal
This platform hosts data from 54 African countries with a strong focus on developmental matters and socio-economic statistics.
What data is there?
Data is gathered from partners and their own sources, and is reported at country and regional levels. Clicking on a country link will open a country-specific subpage of the portal with some top-level stats, like unemployment and GDP figures. Dig into the catalogue page to find themed data, demographics, health statistics, gender splits, birth rates, and so on.
What can you do with it?
Users can see, compare, and analyse data, create visualisations, and share outputs on a wide range of data. Search for country-specific info or browse data catalogues per country.
Ease of use
The site navigation is a bit lacking, and it’s not immediately clear if there is a way to do cross-country comparisons on the site. The visualisation options though are a nice touch. The site is not mobile-responsive, but the design in clear and simple enough that if you are prepared to do a lot of zooming in and out, mobile users should still be able to get value from their visit. Best viewed on a laptop or desktop, though, if you have one.
*For mobile-friendliness assessment, the same low to mid range market Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo Plus device was used to access all of the sites.
** Yes, there are not 264 countries in the world. We suspect this number may include historical data (countries that have changed) and possibly duplicates. We have reached out for clarity and will update when/if we hear back. | https://medium.com/civictech/data-for-africa-open-data-portals-listed-and-reviewed-277b92134284 | ['Kate Thompson Davy'] | 2017-10-05 17:18:29.322000+00:00 | ['Civic Technology', 'Open Data', 'South Africa', 'Civictech', 'Features'] |
American Crisis: Premature or Prescient? | Cuomo — or at least his Comms team — made an inexplicable unforced error with the announcement that he would be spending a quiet Thanksgiving dinner with three of his four favorite girls, two of his daughters and his 89-year-old mom, Matilda. There is no doubt that Mom Matilda could have been served safely and socially distantly in one of the several dining rooms of the executive mansion. It’s a bit different than hosting 25 family members in a 2,000 square foot ranch-style house on a tree-lined street upstate.
Andrew Cuomo Flickr
But amid the predictable backlash from NYers who also want to spend Thanksgiving with their favorite girls, Cuomo — or at least his Comms team — announced that the governor would be too busy to dine with Mom Matilda after all and would be working to keep NYers safe on Thanksgiving. This self-inflicted wound amounts to a serious error in judgment from the governor’s communications team, unless of course the “controlling personality” did not allow the professionals to do their jobs. Either way, it pulls Cuomo down from the “high ground” just a bit. The people will only follow you if they perceive that you are practicing whatever it is that you are preaching.
Additionally, Cuomo has taken heat from others with middling to major platforms in the state and across the country. Fox News personality Janice Dean hasn’t let up on Cuomo since her in-laws perished in a NY nursing home in the earliest days of the pandemic. A few former employees — perhaps sensing that the moratorium on Cuomo criticism has been lifted — are painting him as a dispiriting despot who leaves team-Cuomo alums with varying levels of PTSD.
And yes, as the pandemic numbers tick up around NY, those who impatiently waited in the wings back in October are on center stage now calling American Crisis a premature pat-on-the-back; a victory lap after the first stage of a 3-stage race.
Here’s the thing though — it’s not. In fact, American Crisis is anything but. Throughout the pages of the book — Cuomo demonstrates an incredible respect for the Covid-19 virus. Having been at the epicenter of the pandemic in its earliest days, no American leader appreciates the spread, the strength, the savagery of the coronavirus quite like he does. Cuomo knew that fall and winter were coming. He was so concerned about subsequent surges of the virus that he included a 29-page “Blueprint For Going Forward” with every copy of American Crisis. In it, Cuomo transitions from daily briefing heartthrob of suburban housewives to serious and methodical practitioner — laying out the gravity of the virus as well as the game plan for combating it. Cuomo has clearly shown that he appreciates the challenges he faced in the early spring of this year, (“WE WERE AMBUSHED!” he is known to painfully profess when pressed on the impact the virus has had on his state).
Beyond that, Cuomo appreciates the new and evolving challenges he now faces — covid fatigue, the impact of colder weather on high-density residential areas, vaccine distribution with virtually no federal leadership, budget holes you can drive a truck through, and high-profile battles with MAGA NYers, relatively few though they may be.
American Crisis wasn’t a victory lap. If anything, it was a call to arms. The American people are in a war — not with each other, but with an invisible enemy.
Cuomo is a politician; he’s never pretended otherwise. Beyond election results, political success is measured in media hits, photo ops, positive news stories, and yes, even book sales. But Cuomo has been incredibly disciplined in the face of his increased profile and popularity. He refused to let calls for him to run for president or join a future Biden administration gain steam. He has been modest — downright sheepish — about his recent Emmy award. He even promoted his book with restraint. A media interview here or there; a virtual speech or event from time to time. He did not flood the airwaves, though opportunities to do so were certainly there.
The rhetoric around Cuomo doesn’t match the reality. American Crisis was prescient, not premature. NY — and the nation — should be grateful for the leadership coming out of the Empire State. In a season where the federal government has all but quit, someone has to take up the mantle. For millions, Cuomo has become that someone. | https://medium.com/discourse/american-crisis-premature-or-prescient-100043fdcf83 | ['Dr. Dion'] | 2020-12-07 15:15:02.456000+00:00 | ['Leadership', 'Andrew Cuomo', 'Politics', 'NYC', 'Coronavirus'] |
The Good Egg: Reflections & Learnings | Click here to sign up fro this daily newsletter!
Happy Wednesday! Halfway through the week and looking forward to a great weekend. Today, we’re going to talk about Step Two of “The Ultimate Annual Review” by Steve Schlafman.
Step Two: Reflections and Learnings
Answer the questions below to learn more about yourself and to determine what you want to focus on in 2021.
Success and Growth
1. What am I most proud of personally and professionally?
2. What new skills and/or habits did I develop?
3. What were the biggest obstacles I overcame?
4. How am I different?
Falling Short
1. What goals didn’t I accomplish? What got in the way?
2. What do I wish I accomplished?
3. What habits or interests held me back?
People and Relationships
1. Which relationships have been the most fulfilling?
2. Which relationships have been the most draining?
3. When did I feel most connected or most alone in relationships?
Health and Wellness
1. What activities supported or degraded my health?
2. When was I at peace, satisfied, or content?
3. When did I feel the most alert and energetic?
4. When did I feel the most tired, or in discomfort or pain?
Lessons and Themes
1. What were my top lessons learned?
2. How do you describe this year in 3–5 keywords?
3. What am I most thankful for?
Enjoy learning more about yourself!
-The Good Egg 🐣 | https://medium.com/@katherineripple/the-good-egg-reflections-learnings-1d7dff6db5c6 | ['The Good Egg'] | 2020-12-23 03:30:53.608000+00:00 | ['New Year', 'Self Improvement', 'New Years Resolutions', 'Happiness', 'Resolutions'] |
Don’t be a wuss! | Stop being such a whiny pissant! Buck up and be a man! The man your family needs you to be.
wuss — pronounced /wo͝os/
INFORMAL
noun
noun: wuss; plural noun: wusses
a weak or ineffectual person (often used as a general term of abuse).
“Afraid someone will see you wearing a mask? You’re such a wuss!”
verb
verb: wuss; 3rd person present: wusses; past tense: wussed; past participle: wussed; gerund or present participle: wussing
fail to do or complete something as a result of fear or lack of confidence.
“He’ll probably wuss out because he’s too scared to talk to her.”
I really worry about the future of men in this world, particularly this country. The things I’ve witnessed in recent months have shown me that far too many “men”, and I used that term only from a gender perspective, lack any sort of emotional maturity. They’re easily swayed by mass media and online social platforms into believing that being a defiant asshole and puffing out your chest is a trait that defines what it means to be a man.
My father always told me, “Be your own man.” He instructed me on how to follow what is right as opposed to what is popular. He also taught me how to deal with the situation at hand and either change it or accept it. Whining simply shows how weak you are. A strong man steps up to the plate. A weak man complains that the plate is even there. A strong man realizes that if a woman says “no”, then it’s either not meant to be or he’s not trying hard enough. A weak man rationalizes his rejection by calling her a stuck up bitch and whining that he cannot get any women to notice him. A strong man recognizes those less fortunate, physically or mobility challenged, or a young mother with kids simply having a rough day and assists them or makes accommodations. A weak man thinks only of himself and puffs out his chest when challenged for his off-putting behavior.
I see far too many weak men nowadays.
A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were out running some errands when we decided to stop into the local Wendy’s fast food restaurant to grab a bite to eat. Since it’s the middle of a global pandemic, you either had two choices…drive-thru or the front counter. The dining room was closed. This particular restaurant had just been remodeled and we simply wanted to see the inside so we donned our masks and headed for the front counter. We placed our order and moved back away from the counter to allow others to order and to maintain social distancing. Easy enough, right?
A large man and what appeared to be his elderly mother entered and proceeded to the front counter. The young girl at the register calmly informed the man that she wasn’t allowed to serve him if he wasn’t wearing a mask. He began to berate this kid in front of everyone, reducing her to tears and prompting others to get involved. His mother was truly embarrassed (she had a mask on). As things began to get a little ugly, I stepped forward, halving the distance between him and my wife, in support of the restaurant manager and another customer, should things come to blows. All the while thinking to myself, “all this because he’s too much of a wuss to wear a mask for five minutes while he places his order.” Having gotten a refund and been asked to leave the premises, as he walked past me, I channeled my father, gave him “the look” and said, “Seriously? Over a little tiny mask? Wuss.” He turned away but managed to flip off the entire restaurant as the door closed behind him. That was a prime example of a small weak man. His emotional maturity leading him to believe that being a defiant and whiny individual would gain him favor among the masses when in truth, the opposite usually happens. There wasn’t a single person in that scenario who was on his side, not even his elderly mother.
How do we teach our sons the difference between stoicism and being a wuss without sacrificing their values or beliefs? The first is to help him identify the difference between “values” and “beliefs” as well as how they arrive at them. Let’s use the situation at Wendy’s as our backdrop. Teach him that a strong man would realize that asking a restaurant employee, especially a kid, to allow an exception in defiance of state law, could potentially put that establishment at risk in many ways. To put them in that position in the first place is incredibly selfish. Second, we could help him realize that making a small sacrifice to be able to get the food that he wants and then be on his way is really not a big deal nor does it warrant any type of silly political statement or “whiny rights violation” protest. Third, we can help instill in him the ability to recognize the difference between core values and simply following the crowd, either online or in real life.
How could the person in the Wendy’s scenario have acted as a strong man without sacrificing his beliefs? Let’s play this out as it “should” have happened.
Our young lady at the register: “Hello sir, I’m sorry, but I’m unable to take your order unless you’re wearing a mask.”
Man: “I’m sorry, I left my mask in the car. I’ll go get it.”
OR
Man: “I’m sorry, however, my mother has a mask on. Can she order for both of us and I’ll step back?”
Girl at the register: “Sure that’ll be fine.”
Man: “Thank you. Mom? Can you place our order? I’d like a….”
The man then retreats to a safe distance and awaits his order.
Some folks in the restaurant might be slightly upset at his unwillingness to wear a mask, but his calm confident demeanor holds off all comments and his objective is achieved with minimal sacrifice. Others in the restaurant admire his courteous behavior and make a personal exception for his mistaken (or deliberate) non-compliance.
Don’t be a wuss! People, and more often, women, are not impressed with whiny defiant behaviors. Swearing in public, cussing out a cashier, rudeness, or silly brooding stares do not make you appear tough as you may think. It has the opposite effect.
A strong confident man will deal with conflict in a calm manner. He will look you in the eye and calmly explain why something is wrong or needs to be addressed. Yelling and whining will get you nowhere. Calmly stating your expectations with a confident air while maintaining your cool will nearly always yield favorable results. In the end, you’ll succeed with admiration and appreciation from others around you. That is the strength of a man… | https://medium.com/@lifelessonsfromadad/dont-be-a-wuss-dce882d60b04 | ['David Trask'] | 2020-12-10 13:02:05.494000+00:00 | ['Dads', 'Men', 'Life Lessons', 'Relationships', 'Fatherhood'] |
The right way to ride a blue wave | Like many of my fellow Americans, I have a gripe about the National Football League. But no, it’s not about NFL players kneeling during “The Star-Spangled Banner” to protest racial injustice. I respect that. I’m also perfectly okay with players taking a knee to thank God for a touchdown.
What bugs me now and has for a long time is the taunting and flaunting, the showboating and gloating after scoring or making a big tackle. The coaches of my youth considered such displays unsportsmanlike conduct. They would have benched me immediately. They made it clear to us kids that if there were anything worse than a sore loser, it was a snotty winner.
I bring this up today because tomorrow, November 6, we’re going to finish up our mid-term election voting. I am hoping to be part of a big “blue wave” that gives Democrats control of the House of Representatives, perhaps an extra Senate seat, and a slew of governorships and other state offices. I want us progressives and moderates to put the current President of the United States on notice that people of good will and hope, people who’ve always voted for a kinder and gentler America, are still a force to be reckoned with.
What I sincerely hope we won’t see, if we win, is taunting and flaunting. Celebrations? Of course. It’s been a rough two years since we last voted. But no spiteful, unsportsmanlike displays. We Democrats can’t afford to be petty or snide. We have work to do. Healing work.
It seems as if the only thing Americans agree on these days is that we are a deeply divided nation, more so than at any time since the Vietnam War era, perhaps even Civil War times. This election has been cast variously as a showdown between white Americans and non-whites, men and women, millennials and oldsters, plumbers and professors, gun lovers and tree huggers, us and them.
By and large, however, there is no us and them. There’s only us. All those labels are valid — except when they’re not. Whether we’re praying for a blue wave or a crimson tide tomorrow, we all know people — neighbors, coworkers, kinfolks — who would be there for us in time of personal crisis or need even though they didn’t vote the same as us.
While there’s no escaping the reality that the GOP has become the chosen party of avowed white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Kluxers, homophobes and misogynists, it’s also the party of not just “some good people” but millions of them. And we Democrats have to try to reach out and recruit them, not just for our party’s sake but for the sake of the country.
It’s not just conventional wisdom but a data-supported fact that after President Lyndon Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act through Congress in the mid-1960s, many white and blue-collar Democrats, especially in the South, gravitated to the Republican party. In fact, they didn’t just gravitate, they were actively courted by the GOP as part of Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy.”
But Democrats played a role in the Great Defection as well. In our zeal to right historical wrongs, we became so focused on minority rights that we largely forgot about the struggles of the working-class white Americans that had been the bedrock of the party of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
The time to start wooing those folks back is overdue. It shouldn’t be an either-or proposition. Democrats ought to have the biggest tent. The President, either by design or out of abject tone-deafness, continues to make statements and pursue policies that alienate racial and ethnic minorities. But those who would challenge him should not and cannot afford to alienate his minority. We need to promote economic opportunity and fairness for all and to work toward balancing idealistic, well-meaning policies with realistic, honest assessment. I believe this is our best hope for narrowing our national divide. The President has shown no interest in changing or compromising to make it happen. Only the progressives and moderates stand a chance.
If there is indeed a blue wave on Tuesday, let’s treat it as an opportunity to be magnanimous, understanding, more inclusive. No taunting, no flaunting, no victory dancing. We have work to do.
And if there is no blue wave, same thing. We have work to do. | https://noelholston.medium.com/the-right-way-to-ride-a-blue-wave-4aff8ab354b7 | ['Noel Holston'] | 2018-11-06 00:36:35.028000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Democrats', 'Sportsmanship', 'Blue Wave', 'America Divided'] |
Why I Stopped Saying ‘You Guys’ | Why I Stopped Saying ‘You Guys’
by TK Lawrence (he/him/his)
(TK has been a part of the HPA volunteer staff since July 2014. He is the U.S. Mid-Atlantic liaison, on the training/GLA team, and founded the Asheville HPA chapter.
This essay is part of our series of writing from trans people for our Protego campaign, which fights for trans rights and safe spaces. If you have a story or perspective you’d like to share, email [email protected])
When I discovered I was genderfluid, I began noticing how people use language in their everyday lives. It shocked me to see how much gendered language we use without thinking about it. I started to feel awkward when someone addressed me as “miss” or when in a group, as “ladies.” Internally, silently, I told them I wasn’t a girl, wasn’t a lady. I wish they had used more gender neutral language so that I would feel included and comfortable. I hope that this guide serves to better your understanding of gendered language and how we use it, and I encourage you to think more carefully about it in the future. You never know who you might be helping simply by being more thoughtful and creative with everyday words.
Be Respectful & Examine Language
A big part of feeling welcomed, included, and safe in the trans community is the way others use language. We have all been brought up different ways, by diverse people and communities that already have a set way of speaking and thinking. It can be hard to rearrange your mind and try something different, but once you do it enough, it becomes a habit, and will feel a lot easier.
Let’s Start With Pronouns
A good general rule is never to assume you know someone’s gender and pronouns. Asking politely what pronouns someone uses is a good way to find out, and can also lead to discussions about gender. When referring to someone else, whose pronouns you don’t know, it’s always a safe bet to use “they” and “them” since those words are gender non-specific.
Talking About “They” and “Them”
We do it all the time in our daily lives without realizing it.
“Did you see that car? They didn’t use their turn signal.”
“When our server comes back, could you ask them to refill my water?”
Using “they” and “them” is a good default when we don’t know a person’s gender or pronouns. There are also people who prefer to use “they, them, their” pronouns all the time, because that best reflects their gender identity.
There are, however, people who feel uncomfortable using “they” and “them” for a single person, because we are accustomed to using those words for plural objects or people. Because of the increased visibility and understanding of the trans community, the singular use of “they” has started to become more accepted in society. If you meet someone whose pronouns are “they” and “them,” it might take a little getting used to, but remember to respect (and use) the correct pronouns, and it will roll off your tongue in no time.
More Gender Neutral Language
Let’s move on from individuals and concentrate on addressing a group of people, small or large. Using gender neutral language when addressing a group is a good way to ensure that any trans or nonbinary people also feel comfortable, included, and respected. Instead of saying “ladies and gentlemen,” you can try “everyone,” “folks,” “esteemed guests,” “colleagues,” and more. This also works for when you are making flyers, posters, invitations, and letters or e-mails. Check out the chart below for more gender neutral terms when talking about others.
Gendered terms
Alternative gender-neutral terms
Watch for Gendered Language from Others
There will be times when you will encounter someone using unnecessarily gendered slang, making jokes, or commenting about how a certain gender should “be” or “ act.”
Examples of this include:
“He hits like a girl.” “Boys shouldn’t wear dresses.” “She should man up and get over it.”
When this comes up, if it is safe and appropriate, you can make a comment about the language the person is using or politely request that they not use that term or make that joke again (and give a reason, which would likely be that it is disrespectful and/or harmful to the community). Everyone should be free to express themselves and their gender identity without fear of negative consequences, and language like the examples above only harm our society, inside and out of the trans community.
Making Mistakes
Our brains have been taught by our society to think a certain way, so making mistakes will happen. The most important thing to remember is that it’s not a big deal. If you make a mistake, make a brief apology and move on (a long apology can make things awkward or uncomfortable, and is unnecessary). With a lot of practice, we can be more aware of the language we (and others) use, and strive to use more inclusive and kind language going forward. | https://medium.com/the-harry-potter-alliance/why-i-stopped-saying-you-guys-8208daa31c60 | ['The Harry Potter Alliance'] | 2017-07-28 20:53:15.177000+00:00 | ['Transgender', 'LGBTQ', 'Activism', 'Protego', 'Pride'] |
Why Are Some Sexual Fantasies Unmentionable? | RAPE FANTASY
I know, it's twisted. In real life, it's nothing but a heinous crime, a complete violation of a woman's being and I wouldn't dream of wanting to go through that or wishing it upon anyone.
My sexual brain though, the darkest deepest corner of it which harbors all my dark deep desires, likes it, wants it. But, for sure, only in a role-play-kind-of-a-situation.
Here's how it plays out in my head, someone whom I know and trust (obviously) plays a stranger, enters my house as an intruder. He grabs me and has his way with me, ripping my clothes, feasting on my pussy. I pretend to fight back but he is too strong for me. He forces me to orgasm using his oral skills and then fucks me hard and long till I actually start enjoying it physically.
Gross, I know. But it is what it is. I have laid myself bare here. Revealing my darkest thoughts.
Maybe its coz I have watched rape porn. It is one of my favorite things to masturbate to. Always hits the spot. I know it sounds disgusting and twisted. Am I ashamed though? Probably not.
Centuries ago, when my marriage still had sex in it, I had once mentioned role-playing to my husband. He looked at me in disbelief and said I should try and meditate to clear my brain of such perverse thoughts. Ugh…I don't want to rant about that here. | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/why-are-some-sexual-fantasies-unmentionable-86da364d9672 | ['Wistful Writer'] | 2020-12-03 01:06:51.438000+00:00 | ['The Bad Influence', 'Sex', 'Sexuality', 'Fantasy', 'Thoughts'] |
Bullseye | A short story written for and inspired by Dominant Bull @38Jamie
He had been waiting for this moment since she first followed him over two years ago. There had been much banter and flirting online, leading to conversations in private messaging that led to typing dirty, sexy snippets in the hope of driving the other to orgasm — something that was achieved more often than not. Now finally, they were going to meet in person.
Video chats had assured that neither was catfishing the other, but as the man sat nursing his pint in the busy pub, he couldn’t help fearing that she wouldn’t come and he would be left with a hotel room to enjoy alone. Just as he stamped on the temptation to look at his phone for the umpteenth time, he spotted her scanning the bar for him. She was a little curvier than the carefully selected camera angles of the pics she posted on her timeline (not that he found that unattractive — quite the opposite, in fact), but it was unmistakeably her.
He raised his hand in greeting as she looked his way and her face broke into a wide smile. Had she also been having doubts that he would be there? She approached his table with her vodka and tonic and they exchanged air kisses before she sat next to him on the bench.
She was nervous about actually meeting him in person. One never does quite know if the chemistry will be the same face-to-face, but very soon they were laughing and at ease in each other’s company. His hand found its way to her leg and she found herself leaning ever closer to him and breathing his scent in.
“Shall we get out of here?” He asked as they finished their second drink.
“Absolutely!” She replied with enthusiasm as she stood and gathered her coat and bag.
The walk to the hotel was brief — a Premier Inn had been selected for price, location and the convenience of having a pub attached, yet separate from the hotel itself.
As they walked, the air between them fizzed with nervous excitement. They had yet to exchange more than air kisses and chaste touches, but the lust and desire was palpable. But once in the privacy of the hotel room, they held back. Both were a little nervous. Not of each other, but of the desire that had been building over so many months.
At length, he took a step towards her, his height meaning that he had to lift her chin to look into her eyes as he lowered his mouth to hers. What started out as a gentle brush of lips, escalated quickly to heated, deep kisses with bodies pressed against each other.
When they finally broke apart, they were both breathless with need. A firm hand on her shoulder was all it took for her to sink to her knees while he made short work of his belt and fly to be able to push his jeans down and allow his hard cock to spring free. He knew of her oral fixation and also her submissive tendencies as well as she knew that he is given more to the dominant.
Faced with a part of him she had long lusted after through pixels, she found herself salivating. She licked her lips, looking up at him and then flicked her tongue across the purple tip of his cock, relishing the gasp and how his hands came to rest in her long hair. She kept her eyes on his as her mouth engulfed him, right up until the moment his head fell back and he uttered a long, low “fuuuuuck!”
She worked his thick and veiny cock for a few minutes before he dragged her back to her feet, panting and fighting for control over his body. He wanted nothing more than to plunder her selfishly and seek the culmination of the pleasure she had so expertly stoked. But he knew self-control would bring its own reward.
With his jeans still halfway down his thighs and his cock glistening with her saliva, he backed his date against the wall and pinned her with his gaze as he trailed his hands slowly up her legs, dragging the material of her dress with him. He felt the shapely thighs with his fingers, smiling as he reached the top of her stockings and snapped her suspender strap, making her gasp at the unexpected sting against her exposed skin.
His hands ventured higher, over the brief expanse of bare skin until he encountered the lace of her knickers. One hand moved to cover her mons while his fingers pressed against the damp gusset covering her pussy. She could not help but moan quietly as he applied indirect pressure to her swollen clit. He shuffled forward again now, so that his body was resting against hers and his cock was engulfed in the bunched fabric of her dress.
His fingers pressed harder against her sex and began to rub the cotton and lace. She moaned a little louder, full of breathy anticipation and need. Her lip disappeared between her teeth and her hips moved of their own volition as he used the friction of her panties to get her off.
Her first orgasm was a slow-builder and her body made them both work for it, but when it hit and she leant heavily against the wall panting, he knew it was merely an appetizer of what else he has planned for their night together. For now, however, he was tired of denying his own need and none too gently, turned her to face the wall.
He tore her panties down far enough to reveal her to him pushed deep into her with a single, hard thrust that made them both grunt. He stayed buried deep inside her for a moment as he took her smaller hands in his and placed them on the wall, then covered them with his own. When he moved, it was with circular grinding motions of his hips and flexing of his pelvic muscles that made his cock dance inside her while his balls remained nestled against her warm skin. She flexed her own pelvic muscles in response and shuddered at the pleasure such simple movements caused inside her.
But it was not enough for either of them. A gasped “please” was all the encouragement he needed to begin stroking in and out of her tight, wet heat in earnest. The tension in the bar, the months of anticipation and the brief foreplay had all led to this moment. The moment when neither of them cared about drawing the coupling out, they simply needed to feel the other reach the pinnacle of sexual pleasure with them.
He took her hard and fast, pistoning his hips relentlessly, seemingly intent on a selfish end. Yet, he reached down the front of her body and located her throbbing clit as her moans and pants became louder. He knew he was teetering on the precipice and was determined that they should fly and fall together.
When she began a mantra of alternating between calling upon deities and cursing and begging him for more, he knew he could begin to let go. He wrapped his free arm about her waist and rested his head on her shoulder as he let his orgasmic need take control of his actions. He fucked her without finesse or control as she finally gave a guttural cry and he felt her shaking and spasming in his arms and around his cock. That was the final stimulus his balls needed to tighten and shoot their contents deep inside his lover, wrenching a deep groan from him as the white-hot pleasure coursed through his cock and up his spine.
They stood there motionless, save for the muscle spasms of climax, resting heavily against the wall. Even as he slipped from inside her and his seed began to leak and stain the tops of her stockings, they remained as they are — almost fully clothed and oblivious to all except the embrace of the other person.
The practicalities of engaging motor functions to disengage and properly disrobe were concerns for another time that could possibly be lifetimes rather than moments away. | https://medium.com/@kpasithea/bullseye-89cacacc26fa | ['Kate Pasithea'] | 2020-12-24 13:18:15.724000+00:00 | ['Hookups', 'Flash Fiction', 'Erotica'] |
Cut Along The Eggshell | 50 Words
Cut Along The Eggshell
Photo by Dennis Anderson on Unsplash
I did not want this, I thought as I avoided staring at the stirrups. I leaned back, listening to the paper crackle behind me. I have not found love. I have not had a child yet, but that yet was empty. I hated the IUD and what was coming next. | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/cut-along-the-eggshell-1ea84ec9fb55 | ['Melissa R. Mendelson'] | 2020-12-10 12:08:39.147000+00:00 | ['Microfiction', 'Women', '50 Words', 'The Bad Influence', 'Melissarmendelson'] |
Uric Acid Formula: how to get rid from uric acid In one Hour — The Weight Loss Star ⭐️ | Uric Acid Formula: how to get rid from uric acid In one Hour — The Weight Loss Star ⭐️ Nicki Andrea May 6, 2019·3 min read
The body makes uric acid by breaking down organic compounds called purine. These are either made by the body itself or we ingest them when we consume certain kinds of fish, liver, beef, and peas. Ideally, uric acid will enter the kidney and your body will get rid of it through your urine. But if you are producing an excess amount or your body can’t pass it out, uric acid can be harmful.
When uric acid doesn’t dissolve in the blood, it tends to accumulate in your joint. This is why people contract gout which is a type of arthritis. The acid crystallizes in the joints and the crystals can cause a lot of pain, swelling, and inflammation. It begins with asymptomatic hyperuricemia. There are no signs of gout at this time but it is the period in which the crystals are being formed.
The next stage is acute gout or an attack of gout. If you consume too much food or alcohol containing uric acid, you’ll experience intense pain over the next half a day. Usually it sorts itself out in a while, but there’s a high chance of gout recurring. In the time in between the attacks, there’ll always be some amount of inflammation wrecking havoc on your joints. In the worst case scenario, people develop chronic gout but this can be prevented if it is treated properly in the early stages.
You will like this pot too GRANDMA LOOSE 146 POUNDS IN 6 MONTHS DRINKING THIS HOMEMADE JUICE DAILY
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure so here are a few tips on how to manage your uric acid levels. Cucumbers serve to make a very good natural remedy because they’re alkaline in nature. Drinking the juice of cucumbers can cool your body down and help you pass out the uric acid that has accumulated. For those already suffering from gout, using a combination of cucumber, ginger, and celery ensures that your body flushes out some of the toxic substances causing the problem.
Recipe For A Cure
Ingredients:
- One Cucumber
— Two Stalks Of Celery
— A Lemon Slice
— A Small Slice Of Ginger
Steps:
Clean and slice your vegetables before putting them all together. Make sure you consume this mixture a couple of times everyday if you wish to get the best results.
There are also several dietary changes you can make to prevent the buildup of uric acid in the body. Apples, for example, are full of malic acid which can neutralize uric acid. Drinking a few teaspoons of apple cider vinegar mixed in water a couple of times a day also brings down the level of uric acid in the blood. Berries which contain anti-inflammatory substances like strawberries and blueberries and other vegetables like carrots and beetroots should be a regular part of your diet too.
And, of course, the simplest way to deal with this is by drinking lots of water. Much of the toxic substances in the body can be flushed out just by ensuring that you drink at least two liters of water every day. Take care! | https://medium.com/@nickiandrea/uric-acid-formula-how-to-get-rid-from-uric-acid-in-one-hour-the-weight-loss-star-%EF%B8%8F-d550ae3af04d | ['Nicki Andrea'] | 2019-05-07 11:24:45.361000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Uric Acid', 'Workout', 'Fitness', 'Joint Pain'] |
You abandoned me | You abandoned me
You left me
You dropped me like a pin
that you could not be bothered to find
I knew it would happen
I knew it was coming
I could have turned the tables
but then i would have questioned.
So it’s better to know, it was true
the interest you may have once had
was lost, was gone, was erased
i guess it’s too bad that mine lingers on
as a shadow that i can’t seem to shake | https://medium.com/@jaraholloway/you-abandoned-me-9f71bbe441a1 | [] | 2020-12-22 00:45:57.949000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Relationships', 'Lovesick', 'Poet', 'Love'] |
Justice is a River | The officers shifted in their seats with visible unease, the Commissioner's eyes were almost bloodshot
"I said where is the child of this Woman!"
He shouted at their OC, the Child in question was the only child of one of the Air force Chiefs, he schooled in the state owned University.
One afternoon, as he took a stroll off campus, members of the Special Anti Robbery squad, napped him and put him in their Bus, along with some other people.
Those who saw the incident, proceeded to inform his friends, who proceeded to call his mother.
She had to take a flight to the state, and when she got to the station, they denied knowing the whereabouts of her son, they said they didn’t take him and she snapped, knowing it to be untrue, she threatened fire and brimstone, she spoke about knowing the reputation of this station to be an abbatoir, and if as small as a strand of hair on her son’s head was hurt she’d rain down hell. They asked her to write a statement.
The next day, she came with officers from Bonny Camp, And threatened to take them all to the barracks if her son wasn’t produced. Their OC panicked and said that her son was at the State police HQ, He was to be charged as an armed robber.
She decided to go there and was fuming, "my son? A robber?" she met with the commissioner, introduced herself, and after an hour of bearing her threats, the commissioner asked to see the officers in camera.
"What is wrong with you! You no dey look face! Wey the boy dey now?" The OC after a bout of stuttering spilled the beans, the Boy when arrested, was told to write a statement, or rather was dictated a statement which would have held him complicit to armed robbery. The boy being a budding law student, and the only Child of an air Force commandant, refused and told them his rights, as leverage he told them his background, they behaved a tad softer to him, and asked him to run them some funds, and he’ll be Scot free, he refused! They decided to release him still, since there were also other guys arrested with him, who were also about to be framed for armed robbery, he refused to go. They asked him to mind his business, and as a reward for his outburst, he was to spend one more night in jail.
That night their ‘customer’ came, and chose one of the boys who came with the kid, for his purchase, as the chosen kid was about to be smuggled out, the rich kid awakened, and refused for them to take the boy away, in the tussle between the kid and the officers, the OC claimed there was an accidental discharge, and to salvage the situation...
The commissioner told the boys mother that her son was safe, and asked the OC to take her to where her son was.
He drove her to the Osi river, she was befuddled and couldn’t comprehend what was going on. The OC handed her a piece of paper, which told the truth about that night, and got back to his truck, he was driving off when he heard a screech, her screech, he drove off, knowing he’d never see the town again.
His officers would be the scapegoats.
The Osi river was evacuated some weeks after, and over 15 bodies were found, the SARS officers were prosecuted privately, and the matter wasn’t publicised, pressmen were denied access. The woman took her life two weeks after.
Justice is the river Osi. | https://medium.com/@probablypagliacci/justice-is-a-river-1c987a707a85 | ['Pagliacci'] | 2020-12-02 07:24:38.936000+00:00 | ['Injustice', 'Fiction', 'Police Brutality'] |
The Random Death Sentence: COVID in Prisons and Jails | COVID and Corrections: A Profile of COVID Deaths in Custody in Texas” is a report released by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.
This report documents deaths by COVID in state-run prisons and jails in Texas. It breaks down the demographics of the victims and compares the rate of deaths in custody to those of the general population.
Some of the findings of the report are deeply troubling.
Summary of Report
The report doesn’t cover federal prisons in Texas, only state and county-run facilities. Nevertheless, it documented 204 deaths among jail and prison inmates between early March 2020 and October 4, 2020. The report mentions that this is not a complete number, saying:
These numbers will likely rise as TDCJ [Texas Department of Criminal Justice] and county jails update custodial death reports. Agencies are required to report all deaths in custody within 30 days, but often amend reports much later, after an autopsy is conducted and the official cause of death is determined.
Further, the report says:
It is also extremely important to emphasize that these numbers are conservative and there is a great risk of undercounting, especially for county jail deaths. People spend much shorter periods in custody in jails compared to prisons. Because of high levels of “churn” in the jail population, it is possible that individuals contracted the virus in jail, were released, and then died on the outside. Also, some jails may have intentionally released people at risk of dying so that the death would not be recorded as a jail death. Moreover, in both prisons and jails, some people died without ever having been tested for COVID, and some died from a pre-existing medical condition worsened by COVID. Those deaths are not counted as COVID deaths. Together, these factors contribute to the difficulty in providing a complete picture of the loss of life associated with COVID behind bars in Texas. . . [T]hese numbers are conservative; the true toll of the pandemic is likely much higher.
So, the report doesn’t give a complete accounting of COVID deaths in custody, even in the facilities that it covered.
The following are some facts pulled from the report:
Men make up all jail deaths and 97% of prison deaths.
In one prison, 6% of inmates died. This is one out of every 17 inmates.
The average age of death is 64 for people in prison and 56 for people in jail.
The youngest incarcerated person who died from COVID was 28, and the oldest 85. Both were incarcerated in state prisons. Four people who died were under the age of 44.
The report explains one possible reason why 64 was the average age of death in prisons:
Because of the poorer health of people who are incarcerated, most health experts believe that their physical health more closely resembles that of a person 10 years older in the general population. In other words, people age 55 in prison have similar medical vulnerabilities to their 65-year-old peers who are not incarcerated.
More details:
80% of the people who died from COVID in jail had not been convicted of a crime — 11 out of the 14 people who died in jail were awaiting trial. They were in pretrial detention.
58% of people who died in prison from COVID (excepting those with life sentences) were eligible for parole at the time they died. Most of these people had been parole– eligible for over a year. The average amount of time those who died had been eligible for parole was 6.5 years.
21 people had served 90% or more of their sentence at the time of their death; 8% of those who died had less than a year left of their sentence; 7.5% more had between one and two years left to serve. Nearly half had served over 50% of their sentence.
Only 17% of people who died had a life sentence.
Nine people who died in prison had already been paroled and were awaiting release. The report says:
There is often a lag time between the decision to approve someone for parole release and the actual release date, as there may be a requirement for the person to participate in a program prior to actual release. However, as our forthcoming report will discuss, many of these required programs have been put on hold during the pandemic.
So, some of those who were eligible for parole may have still been in prison because these programs weren’t running.
Prisoners tested positive for COVID at a rate of 490% greater than those in the general population of Texas, and 620% greater than the national average. Prisoners died at a rate of 140% higher than those in the general population of Texas, and 115% higher than the national average.
Black prisoners died at a rate proportionate to their percentage of the population in Texas prisons. Latinos were slightly overrepresented among deaths. White people were underrepresented.
Blacks made up 33% of the prison population and 33% of the deaths. Whites made up 34% of the prison population and 30% of the deaths. Latinos made up 33% of the population and 36% of the deaths.
It should be noted here that Blacks make up only 13.4% of the population but 33% of the prison population in this study. Systemic racism, over-policing, and racial bias in the courts are contributing factors to the disproportionate number of Black people incarcerated.
Deaths from COVID in custody, therefore, ultimately affect Blacks at a higher rate than whites as a percentage of the general population.
There were also 27 staff members who died of COVID, including chaplains, a nurse practitioner, and a cannery worker.
Of those who died of COVID in prison, 73% had been convicted of “person” offenses such as assault, rape, or homicide. One in 10 had been convicted of a nonviolent drug offense; 6% had been convicted of offenses against property, such as burglary; 11% fell into the “other” category which includes, according to the report, “technical violations, DWIs, and other miscellaneous offense.”
Thoughts and suggestions
Every death from COVID in jail or prison is a tragedy. But it is especially heinous that 80% of jail deaths were among people who hadn’t been convicted of a crime.
The answer is not necessarily to release every single person who is awaiting trial. In August, Ibrahim E. Bouaichi, who was accused of rape, abduction, and other offenses but hadn’t been tried, was released due to fears of COVID. He hunted down and murdered Karla Elizabeth Dominguez, the woman who’d accused him of rape. Had he not been released from jail, Dominguez would still be alive.
Persons who are a threat to others shouldn’t be released. But those who are awaiting trial for nonviolent offenses absolutely should be.
In prisons, the 27% of prisoners who died of COVID after being convicted of nonviolent offenses were essentially given the death penalty for nonviolent crimes.
I cannot see any value in keeping nonviolent offenders locked up and at risk during a deadly epidemic.
Parole should be also be expedited for those who are eligible, especially for the elderly, disabled, and those at high risk. The elderly and disabled are at the greatest risk for COVID and are also among the least likely to commit violence upon release. They should be released for their own protection.
Releasing elderly people with life sentences, who are no longer any kind of threat to the public, should also be considered, as should making eligible for parole those with life sentences who chaplains and prison officials believe won’t re-offend.
The decision to cancel the program that prisoners were required to undergo before being released, thereby forcing paroled prisoners to stay in custody, was a deeply unfortunate decision that led to people dying.
Unless a program is absolutely vital for helping prisoners adjust to release, it should be eliminated. All barriers to releasing prisoners who are paroled need to be removed, not added to, during a pandemic.
The fact that incarcerated people are more likely to die of COVID than those who get sick in the general population indicates that medical care in prison is inadequate.
One formerly incarcerated person, Paul Singh, has written about the shocking lack of healthcare in prisons. His book should be read by everyone. It’s easy to imagine how poor medical care could add to the death toll among prisoners.
An improvement in medical care would help those who have comorbidities be less at risk of dying from COVID. Prompt transfer to hospitals might also lower the death rate.
With less crowded prisons, which would be the result of releasing nonviolent, disabled, and elderly inmates, it would be easier to prevent infections.
I hope this report will show those with the power to change prison conditions that change is needed. Serious consideration needs to take place to determine what can be done to prevent deaths from COVID among those who are incarcerated and those who work in prisons and jails. | https://medium.com/the-secular-seamless-garment/the-random-death-sentence-covid-in-prisons-and-jails-14d8d7d97de1 | ['Sarah Terzo'] | 2020-12-18 16:30:06.492000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Justice System', 'Prison', 'Incarceration', 'Prison Reform'] |
6 AI and Music APIs to Try in Your Next Project | Introduction
When we learn a new language or framework, it’s a good idea to integrate an API with it and create something really cool. This will definitely help us learn all the basic skills of that particular framework.
An API is an application programming interface that allows your product or service to communicate with other products and services without having to know how they’re implemented.
Here is a roundup of six top APIs for you to try out in your next side hustle. | https://medium.com/better-programming/6-ai-and-music-apis-to-try-in-your-next-project-fd05deed2f9c | ['Mahdhi Rezvi'] | 2020-04-08 18:10:33.499000+00:00 | ['API', 'Programming', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript'] |
The Bad Influence | Voted the Best Kisser in the Kingdom by the readers of ‘Suck My Face Gorgeous’. A man who was once described as having a canoe in his pants and the charm of a vintage recycled sweatshirt. Here’s the brilliant and often divisive best of Reuben Salsa.
The Satirical | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/jk-rowing-cant-get-enough-hot-salsa-71a462a6b36d | ['Reuben Salsa'] | 2021-03-31 02:55:54.189000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Salsa', 'The Bad Influence', 'Satire', 'Humor'] |
Burlington County looking for donations towards care packages for troops | Burlington County Freeholders announced today that they are partnering with Operation Yellow Ribbon of South Jersey and Burlington County College to sponsor a county wide collection of items for care packages for our troops stationed over seas.
“We are collecting items for our troops that will hopefully bring them a little holiday cheer and let the men and women who fight every day to protect us know that Burlington County supports and honors them,” Burlington County Freeholder Deputy Director Leah Arter said.
Items will be accepted at selected County locations during normal business hours through noon on Friday, Dec. 6. Collection boxes will be in the lobby of the engineering building at 1900 Briggs Road in Mount Laurel and all county library facilities.
Operation Yellow Ribbon of South Jersey sends over 2,300 pounds of treats and personal notes each month to our brave women and men deployed to Afghanistan.
“This is a great way for residents to get into the holiday spirit this season by showing our appreciation for our U.S. Armed Forces,” Freeholder Arter said. “We are asking residents to help us collect items and also personal, unsealed notes of thanks and encouragement.”
Adults can include an address or e-mail if they would like a possible response from our recipients. Some of the troops will respond but some do not have e-mail access, so they might not write back. Children are encouraged to create or write their own holiday cards or notes to show support to our troops, but no last names, addresses, email addresses or phone numbers can be included.
“Burlington County residents have been so supportive of our food drives and toy collections in the past and I am confident that they will whole-heartedly join us in this effort as well,” Arter said.
The following items have been requested from our troops:
• Tastykakes, cupcakes or similar snacks
• Rice Crispy treats
• Sealed packets or bagged tuna and chicken
• Gum and candy
• Breakfast bars
• Roasted peanuts, mixed nuts or dried fruit
• Potato chips in cylinder or can
• Beef jerky or Slim Jims
• Crystal Light drink mix individual packets
• Powdered drink mix
• Ground coffee or tea
• Pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds
• Baby powder and foot powder
• Baby wipes
• Visine or Saline eye drops
• Chapstick and lip balm
• Tissues
• Small hand sanitizer
• Puzzle or small crossword books
• Batteries
• Hand held electronic games
Operation Yellow Ribbon of South Jersey will also be hosting a holiday cookie and baked goods drive to send to the troops deployed in Afghanistan and supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Items will only be accepted on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the 8th Legislative District Office at 176 Route 70, Suite 13 in Medford. For more, please contact Dave Silver at [email protected].
Volunteers will pack and box all donated items to be mailed to recipients on the care package mailing list. Besides baked goods, store bought cookies and treats will also be accepted and shipped.
Please put cookies in layers in large plastic zip closed bags or in lightweight disposable containers. Containers of any type will not be returned because they will be used to ship to recipients. | https://medium.com/the-marlton-sun/burlington-county-looking-for-donations-towards-care-packages-for-troops-a262e88fe41c | [] | 2016-09-23 16:08:41.858000+00:00 | ['Families', 'Headlines', 'Burlington County', 'Burlington County College'] |
Speed up Bulk inserts to SQL db using Pandas and Python | This article gives details about:
different ways of writing data frames to database using pandas and pyodbc How to speed up the inserts to sql database using python Time taken by every method to write to database Comparing the time taken to write to databases using different methods
Method 1:
The approach here:
every row in a dataframe is converted to tupple Every record is then inserted to the table using pyodbc
params = 'DRIVER='+driver + ';SERVER='+server + ';PORT=1433;DATABASE=' + database + ';UID=' + username + ';PWD=' + password #df_op is the dataframe that needs to be written to database and test is the table name in database and col_name1, col_name2,... are the respective column names cnxn = pyodbc.connect(params)
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
for row_count in range(0, df_op.shape[0]):
chunk = df_op.iloc[row_count:row_count + 1,:].values.tolist()
tuple_of_tuples = tuple(tuple(x) for x in chunk)
cursor.executemany("insert into test" + " ([col_name1], col_name2],[col_name3],[col_name4],[col_name5],[col_name6],[col_name7],[col_name8],[col_name9],[col_name10]) values (?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?)",tuple_of_tuples)
Please find the respective rowcounts of a data frame and time taken to write to database using this method,
rows_count=[‘50’,’1000',’5000', ‘0.01M’,’0.05M’,’0.1M’,’0.2M’,’0.3M’]
time(sec)= [0.005, 0.098, 0.440, 0.903, 4.290, 8.802, 17.776, 26.982]
Method2
Now lets add cursor.fast_executemany = True to the function already used in method1. difference between method1 and method2 is highlighted
#df_op is the dataframe that needs to be written to database and test is the table name in database and col_name1, col_name2,... are the respective column names cnxn = pyodbc.connect(params)
cursor = cnxn.cursor()
cursor.fast_executemany = True
for row_count in range(0, df_op.shape[0]):
chunk = df_op.iloc[row_count:row_count + 1,:].values.tolist()
tuple_of_tuples = tuple(tuple(x) for x in chunk)
cursor.executemany("insert into test" + " ([col_name1], col_name2],[col_name3],[col_name4],[col_name5],[col_name6],[col_name7],[col_name8],[col_name9],[col_name10]) values (?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?,?)",tuple_of_tuples)
Please find the number of rows in a data frame and respective time taken to write to database using this method,
rows_count =[‘50’,’1000',’5000', ‘0.01M’,’0.05M’,’0.1M’,’0.2M’,’0.3M’]
time(sec) = [0.009, 0.179, 0.574, 1.35, 6.718, 14.949, 28.422, 42.230]
Method3:
writes dataframe df to sql using pandas ‘to_sql’ function, sql alchemy and python
db_params = urllib.parse.quote_plus(params)
engine = sqlalchemy.create_engine("mssql+pyodbc:///?odbc_connect={}".format(db_params)) #df is the dataframe; test is table name in which this dataframe is #inserted
df.to_sql(test,engine,index=False,if_exists="append",schema="dbo")
Please find the number of rows in a data frame and respective time taken to write to database using this method,
rows_count=[‘50’,’1000',’5000', ‘0.01M’,’0.05M’,’0.1M’,’0.2M’,’0.3M’]
time(sec)= [0.0230, 0.081, 0.289, 0.589, 3.105, 5.74, 11.769, 20.759]
Method4:
Now lets set cursor.fast_executemany = True using events and write to database using to_sql function.(difference between method3 and method4 is highlighted)
from sqlalchemy import event @event.listens_for(engine, "before_cursor_execute")
def receive_before_cursor_execute(
conn, cursor, statement, params, context, executemany
):
if executemany:
cursor.fast_executemany = True
df.to_sql(tbl, engine, index=False, if_exists="append", schema="dbo")
Please find the number of rows in a data frame and respective time taken to write to database using this method,
rows_count =[‘50’,’1000',’5000', ‘0.01M’,’0.05M’,’0.1M’,’0.2M’,’0.3M’]
time(sec)= [0.017, 0.015, 0.031, 0.063, 0.146, 0.344, 0.611, 0.833]
Now, lets compare the time taken by different methods to write to database for inserting dataframes with different sizes (ranging from 50 to 0.3 million records). ‘rows count’ represents number of rows written to dataframe, ‘time’ represents time taken by different methods to insert the respective nunber of rows to database
As you can see, method4 takes very less time compared to any other. Using method4, the insert speed will always be atleast 15 times faster.
References
https://github.com/mkleehammer/pyodbc/issues/547 | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/speed-up-bulk-inserts-to-sql-db-using-pandas-and-python-61707ae41990 | ['Kiran Kumar Chilla'] | 2020-07-03 00:03:12.011000+00:00 | ['Insert', 'Sqlalchemy', 'Python', 'Pyodbc', 'Data Science'] |
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