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Who are top 10 Highest Paid Actors of Bollywood? | Here is another article in our Bollywood and showbiz series. I am back with another top list of top 10 highest paid actors of Bollywood.
Keep reading to know about the top 10 highest paid actors of Bollywood. Indian cinema is one of the most popular film industry in the whole world. As per 2017 Indian cinema was the largest film industry as per films output. It is one of the emerging industries in the world.
Indian movies gross very high on the leaderboard but less than American industry. In short, Indian films are grossing a good amount of profit and money.
As the films are cashing out such good profits, so the actors also demand high amount from the film producers and directors. So, some Bollywood actors are among the world’s richest actors as per 2017 ranking. We will not discuss the net-worths of Bollywood actors but their demands for the films. Here is a list of top 10 highest paid Bollywood actors as per 2018’s report.
1. Shah Rukh Khan
Shah Rukh Khan.
Shah Rukh Khan always remains on the top, he also earned the King of Bollywood title and called as King Khan. He comes on the no. 1 in out highest paid Bollywood actors list.
Annual Earnings: $38 million
2. Salman Khan
Salman Khan
Salman Khan comes on the no. 2 in our highest paid Bollywood actors list. His latest movie Race 3 was not much super hit but grossed much higher on the box office.
Annual Earnings: $37 million
3. Akshay Kumar
Akshay Kumar
The third actor of Bollywood who is on the #3 in our top 10 highest paid Bollywood actors list is Akshar Kumar. He is one of the Bollywood actors who has filmed much amount of films. And the songs of his latest hit film Gold was also very popular on the internet, people were able to find music of movies on sites like mp3vista.
Annual Earnings: $35.5 million
4. Aamir Khan
Aamir Khan
His last movie was very super hit, Secret Superstar and earned about $154 million on box office. I think I don’t need to tell you what made him such a high paid superstar actor. He is on the #4 in our top 10 highest paid Bollywood actors list. You can find his films on popular sites like Netflix, Youtube etc.
Annual Earnings: $12.5 million
5. Hrithik Roshan
Hrithik Roshan
Hrithik Roshan finds a place for himself in the Top 5. His 2016 release Mohenjo Daro tanked at the box office but his 2017 film Kaabil fared much better. The film passed the coveted Rs 100-crore mark in just 11 days.
Annual Earnings: $11.5 millions
6. Deepika Padukone
Depika Padukone
She is on #6 in our top 10 list.
Annual Earnings: $11 million
7. Ranveer Singh
Ranveer Singh is also a high paid actor of Bollywood, his latest movie Padmaavat was a hit movie. He also earns his money from commercials.
Annual Earnings: $10 million
8. Priyanka Chopra
Priyanka Chopra
A global icon, Priyanka Chopra manages to find a place for her in the list, thanks to her American TV series Quantico. Now she has also signed a Bollywood film opposite Farhan Akhtar.
Annual Earnings: $10 million
9. Amitabh Bachchan
Amitabh Bachan
The 74-year-old stellar actor definitely deserves to be in the list. He’s the oldest member in the coveted list. He is #9 in out list.
Annual Earnings: $9 million
10. Ranbir Kapoor
Ranbir Kapoor
The list dates back to 2017. In 2018, Ranbir Kapoor’s place in the list is expected to move upwards owing to the massive success of his last venture Sanju. The actor has already signed a number of films even before Sanju had release in theatres. It seems like the coming few years have a lot in store for the junior Kapoor.
Annual Earnings: $8.5 million
This information is gathered from all over the internet, a little uncertainty might be possible. The credit goes to: Google, WikiPedia, Quora and IndiaTVnews. | https://medium.com/@envysoul/who-are-top-10-highest-paid-actors-of-bollywood-fcea06c5894a | ['Sahil', 'Story Teller'] | 2019-12-24 18:14:15.314000+00:00 | ['Bollywood', 'Actors', 'Hollywood', 'Showbiz', 'News'] |
Creating a webpage for Cruella De Vil: Fetching to the JSON server | Inside a DOMContentLoaded event listener, I declared the variables for my classes and ids: ‘like-btn’, ‘comment-form’, ‘ul’, “list” globally.
For the like button, I wanted to create a way for the user to interact with the page while still being able to stay on theme. Going back to our index.html, I used querySelector and getElementByID as a way to get the class for each of my declared variables. Then I made two main event listeners, one for the element id “like-btn” and one for the element id “comment-form”; identified here as “button” and “list” respectively.
Like Button
For the like button, I created an event listener that is attached to the “button” variable. Inside the event listener, I then created an ordered list item variable (“li”) and declared globally that “i = 0”. I then added the onclick event for when the user clicked the button, they are able to see how many people liked hating puppies. The reset button was added because I refused to have sprawling lists without clean-up.
Comment Section
For the comment section, I created an event listener that is attached to the “list” variable. Inside the event listener, I then created an ordered list item variable (“li”), added preventDefault, and created a delete button. For the delete button, I appended it to the “li” so the user could delete their comment.
Counter, Add button and Reset for Counter
It wouldn’t be a Cruella De Vil website without a little math right? I added a counter variable, along with an add button to increase the counter number and a reset button to restart the count. | https://medium.com/@villanuevajonathan606/creating-a-webpage-for-cruella-de-vil-fetching-to-the-json-server-4839e746613 | ['Jonathan Villanueva'] | 2021-06-18 01:04:52.945000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Website Design', 'Flatiron School', 'Tech'] |
A Complete Guide about Blockchain Implementation | If you have not started to experiment with the blockchain, it simply means you are behind the technology curve. Our comprehensive and step-by-step guide on blockchain implementation will help you understand the best practices to apply blockchain in your business use case.
Size of the blockchain technology market worldwide from 2016 to 2021 (in billion U.S. dollars)
Image Source: Statista
Many organizations are experimenting with blockchain technology due to its potential to bring trust and transparency within any business ecosystem. PwC surveyed 600 global executives and found that 84% of organizations are getting engaged with the blockchain, while only 15% of them have a blockchain project in progress.
Steve Davies, a Global Blockchain Leader at PwC and Author of “Blockchain is Here. What’s your Next Move?”, said that blockchain projects have been stalling for various reasons. The barriers to blockchain implementation are uncertain in how blockchain will be regulated legally and how will it bring trust among a number of users.
However, Davies said that you could not sit back and wait; you should be experimenting with it as its effect is going to be intense.
Gartner also forecasted that the blockchain is going to generate over $3 trillion by 2030 in business value. It means that the one-fifth of global economic infrastructure will run on blockchain-based solutions by that time in the future.
You need the right strategy that could allow businesses to implement blockchain projects without coming to a halt.
We shall explain the step-by-step blockchain implementation strategy to overcome any uncertainties in blockchain projects.
Here’s a Step-by-Step Guide to a Blockchain Implementation Strategy
Understand what a Blockchain is
Blockchain technology allows records of information to be stored in blocks which are linked to each other via a cryptographic mechanism to build a distributed ledger. Anyone who has access can share or verify the ledger without requiring the expensive third-party verification.
Each block has a cryptographic signature that is linked to the previous block in a way that it makes the blockchain tamper-proof once all the blocks are created.
Blockchain can be permissioned, placing restrictions on what stakeholders can view and update and also, it can be permissionless, allowing anyone to view or update anything on the network.
We have explained the blockchain in brief above because we recommend you should first understand what is blockchain before you plan to implement it in your business.
If your business use case requires blockchain or not
When you decide to develop a blockchain solution, figure out what problems it can solve and if it is the way to solve them or not.
To analyze if you require a blockchain solution or not, you need to understand the entire process inside out. You need to find the bottlenecks in the current business process and once identified, try to examine how blockchain can resolve them.
Consider the following questions before you think about blockchain implementation across your business operations:
Does your business case require data update from multiple parties?
Do intermediaries add complexity to your business case?
Do multiple parties exchange data?
Do transactions interact?
Does your use case require verification?
Are business interactions time-sensitive?
If you answered “Yes” to four out of six questions, it represents that blockchain could be a great solution to enhance your business efficiency.
Select the right blockchain platform
Since a variety of blockchain solutions exist, you have to ensure you choose the right blockchain type for your use case.
Here is the comparison of best blockchain platforms used by companies for building blockchain based applications | https://medium.com/hackernoon/a-complete-guide-about-blockchain-implementation-6b0ccf9d4dd | [] | 2019-07-13 10:11:20.697000+00:00 | ['Blockchain Technology', 'Blockchain Development', 'Blockchain Startup', 'Blockchain', 'Blockchain Application'] |
Assumptions of Regression Analysis for Every Researcher | Assumptions of Regression Analysis for Every Researcher
Photo by Rob Necciai on Unsplash
Simple Linear Regression is one of the foundations of machine learning modelling. It is the very first algorithm that you learn in your journey towards becoming a data scientist. What is the one thing that makes simple linear regression special? Well, there are five!
There are five regression assumptions. You must know all of them and consider them before performing any type of regression analysis. To begin with, let us look at the old school textbook definition of linear regression.
‘A linear regression is a statistical method of determining a linear approximation of a causal relationship between two or more variables.’
In short, you can predict a dependent variable based on single or more independent variables. The regression equation helps you do this. If we take Y as the dependent variable and X as the independent variable, the dependent variable Y is a function of the independent variable X. This is mathematically expressed as:
Y = β0 + β1X1 + ε
Where,
Y is a variable subject to prediction
β0 is the estimate of the regression constant; the intercept
β1 is the estimate of beta one multiplied by X1
β1 quantifies the effect of independent X on the dependent Y
X1 is the sample data; predictor variable
Ε is the difference between the observed and the predicted values
With the following equation above, you can predict the value of Y due to a change in the value of X. So far; the above information is sufficient to understand the importance of the five assumptions.
Now, let’s get straight to the point.
Linearity
As the name suggests, the first assumption is nothing but a linearity check; the regression equation should be linear in function. Each independent variable X is multiplied by its respective coefficient β1 and summed up to predict the value of the Y variable.
So how do you determine linearity? The easiest method is to take a single independent variable such as X1 and create a scatter plot for the same against the Y variable. If the data points form a trend line that resembles a pattern, the regression model is applicable.
If the data points do not form a trend line or resemble a non-linear, curvy pattern, linear regression is not suitable. If the relation is non-linear, you need to treat your raw data accordingly before building a regression model.
No Endogeneity
In statistics, endogeneity translates to a situation where the independent X variable exhibits some correlation to the error variable. This problem is commonly referred to as the Omitted Variable Bias. It is introduced to your regression model when you fail to include a relevant variable. Let us look at this step by step:
In a regression equation, each independent X variable explains Y; expressing the correlation Y is also explained by the omitted variable; expressing the correlation This leads to a situation in which the omitted variable becomes correlated to independent X But you as a researcher forgets to include this relevant variable in your model Therefore, the error ends up being correlated to everything else
Still, confused? Let us understand this better with the help of an example.
Mumbai is one of the densest cities on the planet. There is an absolute scarcity of open spaces. Due to this, real estate prices have sky-rocketed over the past few years. Imagine if you had to predict the price of a newly built building apartment in Mumbai based on size; square feet. The common assumption is that the bigger the apartment, the higher the price. So, you decide to build your regression model only to realize that the smaller the houses’ size, the higher the price.
How is this possible? How is big real estate cheaper than smaller apartments of a newly constructed building? On further investigation, you observe that all of Mumbai was in the sample. At the same time, the building apartment was located in South Bombay, one of the most expensive and highly demanded real estate destinations. Here, we have omitted South Bombay as the exact location for the change in the price of the apartment. Now that you take South Bombay as a different variable in your sample, your regression model will fall into the right trajectory; larger apartment prices are more expensive outside South Bombay.
From the above example, we can clearly understand that an incorrect conclusion of a variable can often lead to biased and counter-intuitive estimates.
Normality and Homoscedasticity
Let’s divide the above into two separate parts for better understanding. Normality refers to a normal distribution. It is required to make inferences on the population based on a sample. We usually assume a normal distribution for most of the cases, courtesy of the Central Limit Theorem.
Homoscedasticity means to have equal variance. What does this imply? It means that the error terms must have equal variance, one with the other. Can there be a dataset that has unequal variance? Of course! It is termed heteroscedastic data. Long story short, you need to consider normality and homoscedasticity for your regression model.
No Autocorrelation
Also known as no serial correlation, you need to have data that is assumed to be uncorrelated. Here, it means a product-moment correlation coefficient. You can relax this assumption only if you are working on time series data! How to detect autocorrelation? The simplest method is to plot the residuals of your regression model and visually look for patterns. If there are no patterns, then there is no autocorrelation.
No Multicollinearity
As the name suggests, we need data that exhibits minimum or nil multicollinearity. When two or more independent variables have a high correlation, it is known as multicollinearity. Multicollinear variables can add to your regression model’s error and will lead to incorrect estimates and p-value. You should drop them in the first instance!
How do you fix multicollinearity? This first method is to drop one of the two variables in the first instance. The second method is to take an average of the two; since they are highly correlated, they will have similar weightage.
In Conclusion
Remember, a regression model is as good as the assumptions considered by you, the researcher. Do not perform regression analysis if your model fails to adhere to any of the five assumptions mentioned in this article. | https://medium.com/@kasham1991/assumptions-of-regression-analysis-for-every-data-scientist-94505616fb4a | ['Karan Sharma'] | 2021-03-19 06:11:34.557000+00:00 | ['Regression Data Analysis', 'Data Science', 'Linear Regression', 'Regression Modeling', 'Statistics'] |
The Secret Core of NFT Gaming Future | There have always been significant milestones in the world of gaming and computer generated reality. Pivotal moments have forever changed the way people play games and interact — the introduction of arcade machines, the PLATO network system, the LAN party, and now, NFTs, which use blockchain technology to uniquely identify digital objects and enable verification of their authenticity and rarity. The gaming industry is beginning to use NFTs as in-game assets, reimagining what it means to earn or own an in-game item.
This is only the beginning. NFTs will affect how we work, live, play games, and earn a living. The mission of Star Atlas is to ensure that this epochal shift first and foremost empowers the people.
NFTs as in-game assets
In late 2017, the game Cryptokitties shocked the world with its success. Cryptokitties was one of the earliest examples of NFTs used in the context of a collectible game item. The most expensive collectible cat ever sold in the game was valued at $117,000, which just goes to show the potential of decentralized gaming.
In the four years that have followed, several other products have sprung up that go even farther and there is almost no genre that isn’t being explored for integrating decentralized assets.
Decentralized gaming provides gamers what they truly need — the Star Atlas economy is based on principles of transparency, fairness, and immutability, eliminating the possibility of fraud and allowing players to start earning in-game rather than spending, exchanging their time and effort for tangible and potentially life-changing benefits. NFT items can be traded inside or outside the game ecosystem and staked or lent/borrowed with rewards.
No more “lost” assets
For traditional console, online, and mobile games, gamers were essentially money-makers, purchasing in-game assets to generate profit for the game company and its shareholders. If a gamer’s account got stolen, disabled, or even if the user just became bored and switched to another game, the money they spent was essentially gone. Now, however, there is an NFT-based alternative that will turn the traditional world upside down.
By using NFTs for in-game items, players wholly own and control what they buy, earn, or craft. In addition to proving your asset is really “rare,” in-game assets as NFTs mean that these items can be purchased, sold, or traded, potentially enabling assets to be moved beyond their original utility or purpose. The biggest benefit that NFT game assets bring is that they allow players to retain the value (and money) that they put into these items in the first place.
NFT in-game mechanics
Once you’ve got an NFT asset, now what? In Star Atlas, there are several options you have with your NFT. For example, let’s say it’s one of the spaceships dropping as part of the Rebirth meta-poster Loot Box Rewards on August 31, 2021. You can trade your ship for other items, sell it for the upcoming ATLAS token, the metaverse’s cryptocurrency, either within the Star Atlas Marketplace or peer-to-peer. You can even take it to a third-party NFT marketplace and trade it there.
The secret at the very core of Star Atlas is its fully integrated Serum decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol that allows users to freely manage all of their assets and trade them. With nearly instant settlement times and virtually zero operating costs, there isn’t a better fit for scaling the economy. As NFT asset trading proliferates, the reach of the Galactic Marketplace will expand exponentially with its metaverse, creating value both for users as well as the projects.
Anything can be an NFT — skins, outfits, visual enhancements, weapons, land, maps, names and much more. One exciting benefit of this arrangement is that NFT game assets may expand beyond the use they were initially created for and take on an entirely new life within the metaverse. For example, what if you could use a Pearce X4 space bike as a key that enabled you to start any racer model of a self-driving vehicle parked on your street? In that case, the value of that NFT would go up if you wanted to sell it or trade it on an exchange due to its broader usability.
As more use cases are revealed going forward, it’s only a matter of time before a broad adoption of the decentralized blockchain-based marketplace model will attract enough people to create a thriving metaverse economy that will rival the one in the purely physical world. | https://medium.com/star-atlas/the-secret-core-of-nft-gaming-future-934f768e74ff | ['Star Atlas'] | 2021-08-18 23:18:13.423000+00:00 | ['Gaming', 'Nft Collectibles', 'Mmo', 'Playtoearn', 'Nft'] |
Webs donde encontrar group buys e interests checks de keycaps, switches, cajas y más | 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://ilogeek.es/group-buys-e-interests-checks-teclados-mecanicos-custom-53f391bb5afb | ['Jorge Sánchez'] | 2020-10-21 18:43:16.903000+00:00 | ['Español', 'Teclado Mecánico'] |
Above All Else Show the Data | – Edward Tufte (1983)
Data visualization expert Edward Tufte’s Five Laws of Data-Ink:
1. Above all else show the data.
2. Maximize the data-ink ratio
3. Erase non-data-ink.
4. Erase redundant data-ink.
5. Revise and edit.
Plotly has drawn much inspiration from Tufte’s techniques. We apply them in this post.
______________________
Motivated by Lukasz Piwek’s “Tufte in R,” we decided to do a little Tufte-transcribing. The graphs below are meant to add some interactivity to Piwek’s original post which “replicates excellent visualization practices developed by Edward Tufte.”
These interactive graphs were made using Plotly’s web app. To securely share graphs and data within a team and make interactive dashboards, sign up for a Plotly Professional plan or contact us about Plotly On-Premise.
1. Minimal Line Plot
The goal of this type of graph, according to Tufte, is to keep the non-data ink to a minimum — “the data-ink ratio should be equal to 1 minus the proportion of graphic that can be erased without loss of data-information.”
2. Range-Frame Plot
Instead of conventional axes, Tufte uses so-called “range frames.” Range frame plots have axis lines drawn only over the range of the data points.
3. Dot-Dash Plot
Dot-dash plots are scatter plots with tick marks representing the marginal distribution of the data.
4. Minimal Boxplot
This boxplot uses as little non-data ink as possible — existing ink is used to represent as much new information as possible. This is easy to accomplish in Plotly, where, instead of using graph-clogging annotations, a simple hover reveals the minimum, lower quartile, median, upper quartile, and maximum values.
5. Minimal Barchart
This Tufte-inspired barchart illustrates the theme that much can be erased without compromising the data — including grid and axes lines.
6. Sparklines
According to Tufte:
“A sparkline is a small, intense, simple, word-sized graphic with typographic resolution. Sparklines mean that graphics are no longer cartoonish special occasions with captions and boxes, but rather sparkline graphics can be everywhere a word or number can be: embedded in a sentence, table, headline, map, spreadsheet, graphic.”
Plotly’s modern take on the sparkline promotes utility through interactivity.
7. March on Moscow
Charles Minard’s 1869 graph of Napoleon’s 1812 march on Moscow shows the dwindling size of the army. Tufte says that it is probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn.
The broad line on top represents the army’s size on the march from Poland to Moscow. The thin dark line below represents the army’s size on the retreat. The width of the lines represents the army size, which started over 400,000 strong and dwindled to 10,000. The bottom lines are temperature and time scales, and the overall plot shows distance travelled.
Below is our modern version. Moscow is represented by the switch in the middle. The blue line shows temperature along the y-axis on the right. The bottom x-axes show dates and distance. We can also use a custom date format. Hover your mouse reveal data. This interactivity is brought to you by D3.js, the graphing library Plotly uses. Click and drag to zoom.
If you liked this post, please consider sharing. If you’d like to learn how to make these graphs, visit our website or check out our tutorials. We have tutorials that show you how to make and embed graphs in your website, blog, or apps. To learn more about how companies are using Plotly Enterprise across different industries, see our customer stories. | https://medium.com/plotly/above-all-else-show-the-data-1b8bbf05c2ae | [] | 2016-04-26 10:45:11.586000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Graphs', 'Data'] |
The New AVIF Image Format — A Blessing in Disguise for Website Owners and End-Users | The new AVIF image format is the latest offering in the field of web design. Let me elucidate how this ingenious image format can become a blessing for website owners and end-users with the support from an image CDN.
I see the internet as a Pandora’s box that consists of a variety of audio-visual content. There exists a material fit for everyone’s preferences on the web. Until now, our technological era witnessed the dominance of formats like JPG and PNG. But with the arrival of AVIF, the scenario might change very soon.
This write-up particularly focuses on the advent of the new AVIF image format and its quest to be the next big thing in the universe of image compression.
Formats like WebP were introduced sometime ago to replace JPG and PNG. However, the new lightweight AVIF image format is starting to give a tough competition to the ruling image formats.
In the subsequent sections, I explain what AVIF is, how it is better than other formats, its pros and cons, and finally, how an image CDN comes to its rescue.
What is the New AVIF Image Format?
‘AVIF’ is an image format that compresses the images while giving out the same image quality. It is a better alternative to traditional formats like WebP, JPEG or PNG.
It uses the same HEIF container as in iOS’s camera that uses HEIC format. Moreover, at full resolution, AVIF supports 10 and 12 bit color compared to WebP that only has 8 bit color depth.
When displaying an image, AVIF takes the least amount of bits/pixel compared to other image formats. Here is a graph from Netflix comparison blog to corroborate the above statement:
Moreover, as per CTRL, AVIF can compress images to 50% of the size compared to JPG and still maintain better image quality.
AVIF’s Multi-Faceted Benefits
For Website Owners
Popularity of AVIFs image support is increasing in browsers. Firefox has already started work to add this image format.
The AVIF has greater compression efficiency than its contemporaries, so you can build websites with images that load faster.
The AVIF format can work well with fluctuating data connectivity therefore, even with slow mobile connections such as the 2G, it gives impressive results.
Google, Netflix, Microsoft, Amazon, and other major players have strong backing for AVIF image format.
For End Users
Consumers get the benefit of high-quality images with faster load time and less data consumption.
Downloading visual content with an unstable internet connection or even lesser bandwidth would be possible.
Drawbacks
The decoding speed of AVIF is slower than its counterparts.
The only browser that supports AVIF is Chrome which means if the website owner uses an AVIF image then only users on chrome can see it.
This is where you can take advantage of ImageEngine. If the web-browser supports AVIF, then ImageEngine would automatically convert it into AVIF or else it gets converted to other supported formats like JPEG or WebP.
Image CDN
An Image CDN is a global network of cloud-based servers that tailors the image as per the user’s device, at the same time decreasing the image payload.
If you want to make the optimum use of AVIF image format, then an image CDN is the best option to consider.
The image CDN can evaluate the requesting device to see if it is a good candidate for AVIF. If it is, then it will automatically cover and deliver an AVIF image. If not, the image CDN will select the most efficient file format alternative.
The latency of an image transmission can be reduced dramatically by using an image CDN, such as ImageEngine. This makes it easier to deliver the photos even quicker across the web.
Compared to the traditional CDNs, an image CDN does not require many Points of Presence (POPs) all over the globe. It is a cheaper method of delivering high quality images to the users with the help of cloud-based servers.
A traditional CDN sends the same original size images to every device. Whereas an image CDN converts the original images to dynamic content and can optimize it in various ways.
Of image CDNs, ImageEngine’s prowess to automatically convert any format to AVIF is what makes it different from other traditional CDNs. This is done only for the browsers that support AVIF (real time). Therefore, if you plan to use AVIF format, ImageEngine is one of the best options for optimum results.
Use a Image CDN for best AVIF Results
We have already learned that AVIF is yet to replace JPG format as it still requires support from many browsers.
AVIF is a very promising image format and might soon be very popular. But on account of limited browser support, you wouldn’t want your website to display empty sections or error-codes on such browsers.
Using an image CDN like ImageEngine provides a solution to this dilemma. It automatically checks the user’s device image quality capabilities and then optimizes your website’s images with the best alternative.
As a result, image CDNs like ImageEngine can help you to reduce the image payload by almost 80%.
Soon AVIF may outrun the good old JPEG but the good news is that you can immediately start using it with the help of Image CDN. | https://medium.com/imageengine/the-new-avif-image-format-a-blessing-in-disguise-for-website-owners-and-end-users-3e1c15c575f9 | ['Jon Arne S.'] | 2020-11-18 08:44:59.348000+00:00 | ['Image Processing', 'Avif', 'Cdn Providers', 'Image Cdn', 'Web Development'] |
Three Lessons That Taught Me How to Be Professional By Being Personal | Three Lessons That Taught Me How to Be Professional By Being Personal Braison Follow Oct 1, 2020 · 4 min read
Photo by ayahya09 via Unsplash
After finishing my Master of Architecture in May of 2019, I never thought I’d face so much uncertainty near the end of the first full year of my career. The global COVID-19 pandemic brought significant challenges to the economy and the architectural profession, and working from home has allowed me more free time (and alone time) to reflect on the first year of my career — a year that has been thought provoking in ways I didn’t anticipate.
Wether you’re several years into your career and find my advice reminiscent of your own experiences (if you don’t, laugh with me not at me), or a student looking forward to professional life following graduation, understand that a dose of optimism paired with each of the lessons is paramount to help you realize your goals.
1. Relatable Is More Desirable than Professional
I launched into my role by speaking with loaded jargon in the office and blasting out wordy, exceedingly professional emails. I began to notice that other staff members and even consultants outside of our firm weren’t using the ultra professional “mumbo jumbo” I thought was commonplace in the office. I observed that I needed to reevaluate my communication methods. Personality wise, I’m not a corporate machine by any means, and I figured that no one enjoys initiating a conversation with the robot intern in the corner cubicle. This took some soul-searching because I didn’t know how to reconcile my casual voice with my professional voice. This is probably because I felt as though I needed to constantly demonstrate my competence being a member of several marginalized communities — I’m a young professional, a black man, and a gay man.
Ultimately, it was exhausting being a corporate machine all the time, so I decided to present my true self and see what would happen. I found that my overall delivery wasn’t much different, however I felt comfortable in my own shoes again. Conversation with others felt more natural. A willingness to engage others emerged from a newfound confidence. I had these conversational superpowers all along, but I had finally tapped into to my potential simply by being Braison.
2. Adapting Is More Productive than Analyzing
In architecture school, I would frequently to compare myself with others. There is a universal routine in architecture school where students display their graphic work on a classroom wall for professors to critique in front of the entire class. I mistakenly carried this mindset into the office when I began working at a large architecture firm. I immediately recognized that there were more people to compare myself to with — a lot more than the 43 other students in my graduating class.
I was in a role entitled Designer I in which my fundamental responsibilities were to learn the project delivery process and provide support to projects. Its almost like a long-term apprenticeship — it is an extremely common entry level role in the architecture profession. Nonetheless, I would sit at my desk during the workday and create aggressive mental timelines outlining when I would achieve an advanced role. I didn’t (and still don’t) know what direction I’d like to take my career — I could be a designer, technical expert, project manager, or a sustainability specialist to name a few roles. These thoughts limited the effort I could have granted myself to explore the work I had right in front of me in my current role. Moreover, the opportunity to advance my understanding of my current role was lost in premature introspection.
3. Persistence Is More Valuable than Proficiency
I appropriated the phrase, “short term sacrifice, long term reward” for use as my professional mantra when I began my role. Fresh out of school, I was driven by the desire to quickly pay off student loans and save up for a townhome in a few years. In retrospect, the phrase created a negative attitude towards my role at work. It perpetuated a continuous feeling that the work I was doing was outright drudgery when it wasn’t. I still valued persistence having made it through seven years of architecture school, but I didn’t understand why this phrase because a source of internal conflict until I had a conversation with one of my mentors. During our conversation, I identified the key to understanding how the pace of my career relates to the grand scheme of my personal and professional goals.
The reward doesn’t lie in the advancement of my role, but in the value of my latent potential and network of career-allies.
I ultimately overcame the preoccupation with understanding how my competence could be improved. I shifted my focus towards understanding how the wisdom I acquire in my role can add value to my career while building on the connections with friends, mentors, and colleagues. It was the open conversations I experienced with these individuals that provided me insight into my own method of thought — not the long nights after work spent studying for my Architectural Registration Exams.
As I’ve learned to trust in myself, I’ve allowed myself to trust in others — I believe that authentic human connection will always remain the guiding force in my professional life. | https://medium.com/swlh/three-lessons-that-taught-me-how-to-be-professional-by-being-personal-70c8696cb5fc | [] | 2020-10-01 09:20:49.516000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Business', 'Freelancing', 'Lifestyle', 'Productivity'] |
The Big Disruption | To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] From: Gary Truman ([email protected]) +freespeech@ +libertarians@ +anarchists@ tico — your email is the kind of sentiment that is dragging this company to an early grave and sending our engineers to galt. you’re ready to shoot anyone for expressing anything that might possibly be construed as offensive. is that how the internet (or anahata) was built? NO!! the internet was entirely built on offensive content, porn, conspiracy theories, spam, and gambling. don’t kill what made our company great. don’t kill free speech. don’t kill pete or safaris.
The thread continued for hundreds of messages, cutting across racism, poverty, travel tips, sales IQs, and various engineering grosseries, but frequently returning to the issue of bare feet — the battle line falling clearly between sales and engineering. Sales currently seemed to have the upper hand, if only because they woke up earlier. The engineers’ ranks wouldn’t fill out until noon. This gave sales the chance to pile on the anti-engineer vitriol, with little more than a whimper in response.
Arsyen heard Jonas stirring to his right and turned to discover his co-worker sniffling as he read the same email thread on his computer. Jonas lowered himself in his chair and stretched his legs toward the wall, where his shoes sat unoccupied. Using his toes, he dragged the shoes toward his chair.
“I wasn’t made to wear shoes,” Jonas whimpered. The boil on his nose sizzled under his tears.
Arsyen felt a sudden flash of pity for Jonas. Even a boy genius needed to know what it was to run in the fields, to wear shoes — or not wear them — to do as he wished. Instead, Jonas had been forced to work in America at age fourteen, doomed to live as a preteen among a bunch of adults who could drink, date, and surf the internet without parental controls.
Arsyen turned his fingers to the keyboard and began to release the poetry that filled his head: a story of injustice, of choices, of freedom, and Pyrrhian military history. But after five minutes, he hit the table with his fist. His English simply could not capture the words that came so naturally in his native tongue. He deleted his message and started again, settling on something much simpler.
To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] , [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] From: Arsyen Aimo ([email protected]) Subject: Re: On the subject of engineers’ shoelessness Sales team suck. - Arsyen
“Hooray Arsyen!” Jonas cheered, throwing his shoes across the room.
A few minutes later, Arsyen received an email from Roni.
“Awesome response. You’re a real Anahati now! And congrats — the team’s just spoken. You’ve made it past the first week!”
A few minutes later, someone from the HR team appeared next to Arsyen’s desk to hand him his permanent badge.
Arsyen floated through the rest of the day. He walked taller down the corridors and lingered crossing the lawn, flicking his new white badge as he walked, no longer afraid of any passing engineer. He even tried his hand at firing a red badge–carrying newbie, which was even more delightful than he had anticipated.
At home that night, Arsyen cradled the badge in his hand and spoke to it of handmaidens and orphans and all the wonderful things he would one day do for his country. And also which video games he would buy.
Above the profile photo, Arsyen drew a pointy crown on his head in thick black marker.
It was just like being a real prince again.
Gregor Guntlag moved across his office in efficient strides, enjoying the precise cadence of his combat boots thumping against the floor. From crew cut to coccyx, his spine descended in a long, straight line that leaned forward, diagonal to the floor, as though in constant battle with gravity.
At the moment, however, Gregor’s problem was less physics than numbers. Ugly, unsettling numbers. While few people on the Anahata campus knew of its existence, Gregor’s top-secret Project Y was the only endeavor that now mattered at the company. Everything else was an afterthought; a blip in the company’s glorious ten-year history. Were the project to fail, it would mean the end of Anahata. A victory, on the other hand, would ensure the success of Anahata, the web, and all things good for decades to come. It would be Gregor’s finest achievement, the greatest project to which he had ever put his name. He could not allow it to fail.
Yet by the numbers, it was failing, and not for any of the predictable reasons that often plagued brilliant Anahata ideas — an inability to find willing commercial partners, or criticism that Anahata was violating some silly law. Such problems, governed as they were by ignorance and reactionaries, were far outside Gregor’s control. In fact, his current inability to limit these kinds of interference was one of the main reasons Gregor found Project Y so exhilarating. If it succeeded, he would be able to protect his engineers from the ignorant masses, letting them build and create their dreams unencumbered. There would be no more defections to Galt, no more debates in the media about Anahata’s relevance. Project Y would definitively establish Anahata as the most innovative company in the world, ever.
Gregor often found himself wondering what would have become of him had Anahata or Project Y existed in his early days as an engineer, when he first landed on the shores of Baltimore, fresh from the University of Liechtenstein, his head filled with ideas for space elevators and floating castles.
His first major undertaking tackled the many lies and inaccuracies on the internet by using software that automatically corrected inaccurate opinions, comments, and blog posts. But the service never found any mainstream appeal — as one venture capitalist told him, “The internet wasn’t built for facts.”
Next, he embarked on a project to replace the planet’s slavery cages (or zoos, as they were also known) with robotic animal sanctuaries. After four years of working out of his one-room apartment in San Diego, surviving on little more than instant noodles and bananas, Gregor was forced to admit defeat.
But it was there in San Diego, standing next to a dumpster, ready to trash his metal monkey parts, that he met Bobby Bonilo. The future Anahata founder tossed him a quarter, thinking Gregor was homeless. But then Bobby saw the wires sprouting from the monkey’s tail in Gregor’s hand, took in the faded computing slogan on his T-shirt, and in a split second seemed to understand all of Gregor’s dreams — and their crushing defeat at the cruel hand of pragmatism.
Bobby had been the first to recognize Gregor’s genius. “Humans cling to the past. They will work tirelessly to destroy the most important advances of society,” he had said. “As a visionary, you must know that your ideas are ahead of their time. They must only come to light when the world is ready for them — or when you have too much power to be stopped.”
Project Y was just that — beyond its time, beyond any earthly concept of innovation. By that measure alone it would have failed in a normal environment. But Anahata now had what Gregor then lacked: boundless capital, a deep pool of engineering talent, and the power of a large country. Moreover, there was no public opinion standing in the way of Y. Its secrecy had been closely guarded, and Gregor was determined to keep its existence quiet until it was too late to be stopped.
Instead, the hurdle Gregor now found before him was a far more potent nemesis: the devil himself, Niels Smeardon, breathing fire and online advertising in the path of Gregor’s engineering team.
Niels was the reason two Project Y product managers had come to Gregor’s office that afternoon.
“For the past week, we’ve literally been twiddling our thumbs,” one said. “Every step we take is blocked by sales. We go left, there they are. We go right, there they are.”
“And why can’t you dart around them?” said Gregor, annoyed by the metaphor and his part in it.
“For example, we’re ready to run a simulation of Y at Shanley Field. But sales has the field all booked up for the next six weeks with various internal conferences — ”
“Motivational Go! Fight! Sell! conferences. Conferences…with Powerpoint,” spat the other product manager.
“Also, we need to be able to turn off advertising in one part of the world to free up some servers for Y testing. It would just be a low-volume region that we’d turn off, like Eastern Africa, but sales refuses. I was told it was escalated to Niels and he stopped the whole thing, saying the entire world deserves to benefit from Anahata advertising and that under no condition should Eastern Africa not receive our glorious ads for even a single day.”
Gregor snorted. He looked out onto the field below his office, where a group of sales employees were playing rugby. These were the men who sold Anahata’s internet ads — pithy phrases and punchy slogans advertising cruise ships and cancer treatments. They believed in dress shirts and strip clubs and golf and triathlons. He was sure he could see Niels among them, dressed in one of his shiny custom jerseys, kicking up mud clods simply to remind the earth of his dominance.
“I will fix the Niels problem,” said Gregor, steadying his voice and watching Niels’ spiky blond hair attack the sky as he ran down the field. The two product managers would never have guessed that Gregor’s body was raging inside, his blood cells taking up arms, their spears pricking the subcutaneous layer of his skin, ready to fight.
“Anything else?” he asked, turning to the two men.
“Things are still very quiet in the rest of the engineering community. The distractions have worked really well.”
Gregor nodded. When planning Project Y, he and Bobby had devised a list of “distractions” — projects like Social Car and Genie — that if leaked would capture internal, public, and media attention and let the Y engineers continue to work in secrecy on the company’s big bet.
“Go back to work, and don’t worry about this anymore.”
The duo left smiling.
Gregor remained by the window, watching the field. To any other observer, Niels might have seemed the ultimate captain, rallying his team to the win, throwing slaps and high-fives. But it was all an act. Niels was a man willing to knock down anyone who got in his way. Gregor had kept Project Y a secret from him for this very reason. Niels would destroy it for the very fact that it was Gregor’s baby. And if Niels succeeded in sabotaging Y, it would be the end of everything.
The problem was that Gregor had no power over Niels. They were equals, if not in brain power, then at least according to Anahata’s organizational chart. Only Bobby could tell Niels what to do. And while Gregor and Bobby dreamed up the idea for Project Y together, the founder had since taken a step back, tasking Gregor with making it a reality. This would have been fine were it not for the fact that Bobby seemed to have a weird affection for Niels, never suggesting that he really liked the guy, but also taking care to protect him from Gregor. He had even heard that Bobby and Niels occasionally did yoga together.
Gregor paced his office, Niels’ gravelly voice and sales aphorisms trailing behind him: “With courage comes determination.” “Leadership is knowing when to lead.” “Those who win are those who win.” He caught sight again of Niels on the field, this time tripping an oncoming opponent, the stunned player falling to the ground. Niels was halfway down the field before the man could even lift his face from the dirt.
Gregor needed Bobby’s help to get past Niels for good. It wasn’t simply a matter of getting a server or access to the field. Gregor needed Niels out of the picture, completely won over to the idea of Y, or contained so that he couldn’t thwart it.
He opened his messenger service. Bobby had said he would be busy much of the day at a colonics retreat but in fact seemed to be online.
Gregor: We need to talk about Y. It’s behind schedule. There are roadblocks. Bobby: You should come to colonics retreat. Good for removing roadblocks. Gregor: These are sales roadblocks. Bobby: Flush out roadblocks. Gregor: Do I have your permission to do whatever it takes? Bobby: Small things cloud the big ideas, threaten rain. At retreat now. Can’t talk.
Bobby’s online indicator switched off.
Gregor sighed and leaned back in his chair. He stared out the window for a long time without moving, the sky above him clouding with dark thoughts.
The four leaders of Gregor’s “distractions” projects were all longtime Anahatis. Any one of them could be trusted to help recruit the army of engineers Bobby had requested.
Which is how Gregor ended up in one of the company parking lots, the key to a driverless car in his hand. Nose upturned, he held the car key several inches away from his body. He believed keys were an outdated method of accessing one’s property, which was why he had an engineering team working on a simple identification solution that would require just a small incision in an individual’s pinky.
Gregor unlocked the door and settled into the front seat.
An unfamiliar beep boop beep came from the dashboard, and five red lights flashed in the center console as the Social Car software booted up. Soon, the dashboard glowed Hal-like in the early light of evening.
“Welcome to Social Car,” a female voice said. The dashboard flashed again, and Gregor was presented with a series of options on a large screen in the center console:
I want to meet… - man [specify age] - woman [specify age] - programmer [specify which languages] - designer - venture capitalist - engineers - other
Why would he want to meet someone?
“Other,” Gregor muttered.
Two faces, numbered “1” and “2,” popped up on the screen. Gregor didn’t recognize them but assumed they were the pictures of Social Car team members.
“Number 1,” he said.
“Sven Svensson is a quarter-mile away,” the voice said. “Shall I read you his profile?”
Gregor had no interest in getting to know his employees. The better he knew them, the harder it was to eventually fire them.
“Just drive me to Technology Way.”
“Driving to Technology Way,” the woman’s voice confirmed.
After yielding to two other cars, Anahata’s driverless car made its way out of the parking lot.
“There are three people near you now,” the voice said as the car turned on to Processor Street.
Gregor’s eyes flicked to the dashboard. Now a third, more familiar face stared back at him. He recognized Roni Herman, the team lead. Roni was a bit past his prime, already in his early thirties, but still a well-liked figure on campus. In reviewing the distraction projects and their leaders that morning, Gregor had thought Roni could be an interesting candidate to join the Project Y team.
“Take me to Roni Herman.”
The software beeped its assent, and a few minutes later, Gregor’s car pulled alongside Roni’s.
“Speak to Roni,” Gregor said. The dashboard beeped and a moment later confirmed that Roni had accepted the communication.
“Hello, Gregor, hello!” Roni’s eager, nasal voice filled Gregor’s car. “How do you like Pad Thai?”
“What?” Gregor never ate Thai food. He didn’t like the feeling of spice running through his body, raising his body temperature.
“You know, Pad…Thai,” Roni repeated. Gregor glanced over at Roni’s car, which was keeping perfect pace with his own. Roni climbed into the back of his car, searching for something. A moment later, he put a piece of paper against the window. On it was written in big black letters: “PAD THAI=SOCIAL CAR CODE NAME.”
“What would happen if I were to pull you off Social Car?” Gregor asked.
Roni didn’t answer immediately. Although Gregor refused to make eye contact, he imagined Roni was panicking, afraid he was about to be kicked off his project. Although Gregor volunteered at a community garden, gave millions each year to humanitarian crisis organizations, and voted only for socialists, he did like to cause a bit of microsuffering now and then. He felt it kept the engineers on their toes.
“Oh, well, you know, I don’t know how things would go if I came off it,” said Roni, the panic painted across his face in bold pinkish strokes. “I’ve really led the team from the start and — ”
Gregor frowned. In a company where sales strutted with their chins to the clouds, Gregor preferred the men who slouched. Roni could at least display a bit of faux humility.
“Slow down,” Gregor told his car. He’d ditch Roni and go talk to the Genie team lead instead.
But Roni’s car slowed to keep pace with Gregor’s.
“Pretty great, right?” Roni said. “That’s the speed-detection system we built this week. You can try to slow down, but my car will slow with yours so we can keep chatting. We’ve still got some bugs to work out, but I’m confident we’ll launch before the end of the quarter.”
What?!
The end of the quarter was far too soon for a Social Car launch. Gregor needed all of his distractions running up until Project Y was ready. He couldn’t kill this project — it was too well known and popular on campus — but he certainly couldn’t let it launch anytime soon. He needed to slow it down — like by removing Roni from Social Car and making him his Y evangelist. Gregor inhaled deeply.
“Have you heard of Project Y?” he asked.
Roni gasped. “I’ve heard…things, you know, but not all the details.”
“It’s our best shot at building the world’s greatest company. And the most important thing right now is for us to have strong leaders. People who can motivate others. People who can help articulate a vision.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Gregor saw Roni bouncing in his seat. “At many times during my career I’ve shown leadership and created visions and — ”
“Your vision isn’t required,” Gregor said. “What you’ll need to do is spread the word, win people over, recruit new team members — and eventually spread the project to all of Anahata’s engineers.”
“I organize the quarterly hackathon,” Roni said. “We now have 2,000 Anahata engineers around the world who code the entire weekend over a livestream feed in exchange for beer.”
“That’s what we’re looking for,” Gregor said. “It’s a big job. It’s historic. I need you to move over to Building 1 ASAP.”
“Building 1? Oh, yes! I won’t let you down!”
Gregor gave a small nod from his car.
“Oh, oh, one thing,” Roni said. “What do you want me to do about Pad Thai? Will you find a new leader for it?”
“I’ll find someone new. Don’t tell anyone where you are going or what you are working on.”
“I’ll get going right away!” Roni waved as his car turned and sped back toward campus. Soon he disappeared from Gregor’s dashboard altogether.
“Take me to Innovation Drive,” Gregor told his car.
As the car reversed course, Gregor contemplated how best to hinder Social Car. Putting a new technical lead on the project would undoubtedly slow it down. But he needed to throw a real wrench in the works, not simply lose a few weeks’ time as someone new got up to speed.
Gregor continued to wrestle with the problem as his car made its way down El Camino Real, a street that stretched the length of Silicon Valley in an endless loop of Mexican restaurants (Casa Fiesta, Casa Grande, Casa Lupe), energy-efficient cars, and boxy computer stores. Gregor found the relentless monotony and disinterested aesthetics pleasing.
The car passed under a billboard for Mr. Fixit, a local computer-repair service. Gregor glanced up at the tongue-in-cheek, 1950s-style image of a desperate housewife ripping her hair out as a confident Mr. Fixit repaired her computer and saved the day.
Gregor rolled down the window and craned his neck to see the ad. He ordered his car to do a U-turn. The car drove past the sign again, and then once more.
By the time he passed the sign for the third time, Gregor had the answer to his problem.
“Take me back to Anahata,” he said, “and drop me off at the lobby.”
The next morning, Gregor found himself in a place he rarely visited: the campus security control room, in Building 28. Row after row of TV screens circled the room; below them, men in matching purple polo shirts manned a dashboard of flashing red lights.
It appeared high-tech, but the reality was more panopticon of the banal. On one screen, a sales employee pulled his Porsche into the Anahata parking lot, straightening his tie in the reflection of the car window. Above him, two women did yoga on the lawn. On another screen, an aerial shot captured cubicle after cubicle of workers staring at their computers.
The cameras recorded this routine and hundreds like it each day. It was a wonder that they could even keep their lenses open on alert given how mind-numbingly boring Anahata’s security scene was, particularly during the night shift. In the wee hours of morning, nothing went into Anahata and nothing came out — minus the occasional nocturnal engineer. Otherwise the place was locked down with the tightest security in the Valley. There hadn’t been an attempted theft in more than five years.
But that morning, there had been a break-in at Building 1 — the highest-security spot on Anahata’s campus — prompting Gregor to dash out of the management meeting and make a beeline for the security office.
Footage from three a.m. showed a man dressed entirely in black sneaking across the Building 1 parking lot, hovering on tiptoe like a thuggish ballerina. He jumped behind a tree, rolled through the grass, and ended up at the building’s side entrance, where he pulled out an Anahata badge that had likely been swiped from a negligent engineer.
The man again raised the stolen badge to the access control reader, and for a second, the camera caught a shot of his face. He was Caucasian but looked more like a zebra, with black zigzags painted across his face.
Inside, he went past the molecular lab, the welding shop, the hard-hat zone, and the physical and intangible infrastructure teams, and then stopped in front of another office.
The man darted his flashlight around the room, splashing the walls with light. It was difficult to make out what he was doing, but from the shadows it seemed he had stopped in front of a desk and was pulling something out of his bag. The flashlight swung again. Suddenly, the scene was illuminated: The man was plugging a computer into a wall outlet.
“Galt!” Gregor gasped. This was nothing less than corporate espionage. The thief was going to plant something — maybe surveillance equipment or tampered data — then use it to gain access to all of Anahata’s network.
Then the thief sat down and put his feet up on the desk.
“Wait…what is he doing?” asked Gregor, crouching to put himself at eye level with the screen.
“Sir, after watching this many times, I’ve come to the conclusion that he is picking his nose,” said one of the guards, freezing the tape for a moment to show the faint outline of a finger moving toward the man’s face.
“What?” Gregor drew even closer, his face now just inches from the screen. He signaled to the guard to continue the footage.
The thief jumped up from the chair and turned off his flashlight. Within thirty seconds, he had crept out the back exit, barrel-rolled across the parking lot, unlocked a car, and driven off. One of the guards rewound the footage and froze it on the last full shot of the man’s face, little more than a black-and-white blur.
Although the security team had already watched the tape thirty times that morning, their collective adrenaline rose as they watched Gregor’s face for a reaction. They hadn’t seen this much excitement since an engineer’s pet boa had gotten loose on campus the previous month.
“Whose badge did he use to break in?” Gregor said finally.
The security head double-checked a pad of paper on the desk. “Someone named Roni Herman, who works in Building 7. As of yesterday, Roni Herman’s badge was cleared for access to Building 1. The perpetrator was probably tracking Roni the whole time, somehow got hold of his badge, and then got access to both buildings. This was probably the result of months of tracking and shadowing his movements. Should we call the police?”
Gregor stared at the face frozen on the screen, a black zigzag casting a lightning bolt from the man’s forehead to his neck. “Idiot,” he muttered, staring at Roni’s face on the screen.
Gregor stood.
“Idiots,” he said loudly, looking at the security team. “There is no need to call anyone.”
He turned on his heel and clomped out the door.
The security team looked at each other and shrugged.
“Man, I will never understand engineers,” said one, shaking his head before switching his attention to the cameras trained on the well-endowed girls in the customer support department.
Niels began each day with a run. The Northern California air was just crisp enough to feel clean and pure, and the occasional headwind produced a surmountable challenge — the kind of easy and achievable goal-setting that Niels liked for warming up to his workday. He followed his workout with a long shower, the rainforest setting gently splattering purified water on his head while a speaker piped in a soothing recording of a woman’s voice appraising each inch of his body.
Your muscles are so big.
Your abs are very flat.
Your Adam’s apple is prominent but tasteful.
But that morning, Niels could focus only on Gregor Guntlag. The overly German German had hated him since day one and seemed intent on turning Bobby against him.
Bobby and Gregor were both nutjobs as far as Niels was concerned, but he was used to working with crazies. Fifteen years of working in the Valley and he had never worked for a CEO or founder who wasn’t a sociopath or narcissist. They thought the world’s problems existed in part to keep them intellectually stimulated, and that all those problems — malaria, corruption, congressional deadlock, death, you name it — could be solved by technologists. Their lack of focus was confused for genius. One moment they would be asking the entire company to dramatically change course, and the next moment they’d be giving equal attention to the color of the lampshades in the lobby. And despite their staunch atheism, they all believed their success was somehow mythically predestined.
It was an absurd worldview, but one that Niels admired for its selfishness. Managing and manipulating these egomaniacs was an art he felt he had perfected.
With persistence and patience, Niels had worked on Bobby for six years, helping him understand that Anahata needed money to be successful and that Niels was the best lever he had to produce it in large quantities. As a result, Bobby generally left him alone. Gregor, on the other hand, had been less susceptible to Niels’ charm. He did everything he could to sabotage Niels, always playing the contrarian in any management meeting and sending out his engineering lackeys to turn off a sales production task here and there. It was nothing sufficiently significant to warrant an outcry to Bobby, but just enough to annoy Niels and make clear that Gregor and his foot soldiers were behind the job.
So Niels was surprised by the peace offering that had appeared the previous night in the form of a blue chat bubble on his phone — a chat message asking Gregor to come over to “work things out and bury the hatchet.”
It was a shocking olive branch from Anahata’s head engineer, and in retrospect, Niels realized he should have taken a screenshot of their exchange. Unfortunately, since Anahata chats were not stored (the result of Gregor and Bobby’s joint paranoia about government surveillance), this historic exchange of civilities would have no record.
After an evening spent trying to discern Gregor’s motives, Niels had finally replied that, yes, of course he’d be happy to talk. But the whole thing smelled fishy. Perhaps Gregor wanted something that belonged to sales. If that was the case, it meant that Niels had already achieved Master Negotiator Rule #1: Always have the upper hand. (Viewing even the most casual encounters as an opportunity for personal gain was key to Niel’s life philosophy. An ex-girlfriend had once accused him of dealing with their relationship like a business negotiation. Niels said he didn’t understand how she could possibly think that anything in life was not a negotiation. He came away triumphant, although the woman did break up with him shortly thereafter.)
Niels was confident he could work the meeting to his advantage. In fact, this could be the opening he needed to get Gregor to agree to put ads on Moodify bracelets.
In any other company, the management team would have salivated over the Moodify bracelets, with one billion dollars in projected profit in the first year alone. But not Gregor Guntlag, whose perennial argument against anything Niels wanted was that it wouldn’t be good for Anahata users. Niels believed that not giving people advertisements was bad. If they didn’t know something existed, how could they know they needed it? Only advertising could tell people what they needed to need.
Typically, Bobby hadn’t even listened to the discussion. He caught just the tail end of Gregor’s rebuttal and seemed to defer the decision indefinitely with a wave of his hands. If you asked Niels, Bobby gave his head engineer far too much rope. Gregor was holding the company back from billions of additional revenue. And what did he do to make up for it? As far as Niels could tell, Gregor was simply there to execute Bobby’s big ideas. All of Gregor’s own projects had been massive failures. He was good at implementation but had no vision of his own.
Niels stepped out of the shower and surveyed himself in the bathroom mirror. He was forty-two but didn’t show a single gray hair or wrinkle. By almost any measure, he was the picture of excellence in aging. He gave a quick, indulgent flex of his muscle and a flash of bleached teeth. He remembered that the Anahata employee he banged a few weeks back had commented on his nice smile. He racked his brain for a split second, trying to remember her name. She was that sexy hippie receptionist who kept asking him for career advice as he tried to take her clothes off. Janine. Jane. Jennie. It didn’t matter. It was probably a bit stupid to hit on someone who worked at Anahata, but he wasn’t going to worry about it. He always could have her fired if things got uncomfortable. So far, he hadn’t even run into her on campus.
Niels threw on his favorite Prada slacks — the ones he wore to close a deal — and finished getting dressed for work. He took a final look in the mirror and flashed his teeth. Never underestimate the power of a killer grin.
Master Negotiator Rule #36: Arriving a few minutes late to a meeting communicates dominance. You will wait for me. Punctuality is for the meek.
And so, despite having changed his outfit three times — should he go business casual? slouchy engineer? weekend triathlete? — then having spent two hours circling Gregor’s neighborhood, Niels made sure not to appear at Gregor’s doorstep even a minute early.
Three minutes after the appointed time, Niels arrived at the address and did a double take. He checked the house number again: 414 Tuscany Drive. This was it.
Before him was an immense silver gate — the kind of gate that only the truly rich, and truly paranoid, possessed.
Niels pushed a button on the intercom. Someone picked up, but instead of a “hello” there was simply a buzzing sound, followed by the slow opening of the gate, revealing a long driveway abutted by row after row of towering pines.
On some level, it made sense to Niels that Gregor would live in the wealthiest neighborhood in Atherton, itself the wealthiest city in the Valley. He was, after all, one of the earliest employees at Anahata and had made billions of dollars when the company went public. But Gregor was also the man who wore faded decades-old shirts every day, ate the same bland lentils at every lunch, and drove a beat-up Jeep to work. Niels had assumed he’d eschew a fancy house and live in austerity in a small condo in crime-ridden East Palo Alto, or perhaps an inconspicuous cottage in the slightly smelly, middle-class part of Mountain View. Anything but the estate that was emerging before Niels’ eyes — a sprawling mansion the style of which Niels could only describe as nouveau-chateau, and whose inhabitants Niels would ordinarily assume to be a transplanted Texas blonde and her bejeweled poodle.
The house was ostentation at its American best, its climbing spires and ornate Mediterranean palacio flourishes the odd manifestation of new money’s dream of old Europe. At the end of the driveway was a large marble fountain — six white swans spouting water onto a central lily pad. Rising up behind the fountain was a large marble staircase that led to the front door. Two long, peach-colored wings branched out from the entrance, each ending in a tall, Rapunzel-like tower.
Gregor was waiting for him at the top of the marble steps, dressed in his typical uniform of white T-shirt, khaki pants, and combat boots. In his hand he held two beers, one of which was immediately thrust at Niels, as if Gregor was following a textbook instruction on how to relate to American men. The beer was warm, likely pulled from the pantry just minutes before. Even if this was all just a plot to get something out of him, at least the guy was making an effort. And in any case, it was kind of fun to witness Gregor’s visible discomfort in his role as host.
If the garish exterior of Gregor’s palace had thrown Niels’ preconceptions, the interior only reaffirmed them. Once inside, Niels could see nothing in the house beyond white walls and a single overhead light in each room. The few windows in existence were so high up from the floor that they reminded Niels of a cathedral…or a prison. There was no artwork, no photographs, no sign of a woman, pet, plant, or any possible sign of life.
“You’re not one for decorating, are you?” said Niels, turning to Gregor with a smile designed to communicate friendliness.
“I like simplicity,” Gregor said. “I don’t really like…things.” The word lingered in the air between them.
“Except for an enormous house,” Niels smirked.
“I only bought a large house so as to have a strong fortress in the event of an anthropogenic risk,” Gregor replied.
“An anthropo-what?”
“Hostile artificial intelligence, nuclear holocaust, fossil energy exhaustion, the collapse of everything.”
“Ha ha…oh…”
Niels stifled his laugh; Gregor wasn’t kidding. The engineer’s face was as smooth as his walls, giving up nothing. He seemed to be staring at an imaginary spot just past Niels’ shoulder, avoiding eye contact.
“You like wine,” Gregor said.
“I do.”
“Fischer said you took him on a wine tasting in Napa a few years ago.”
“I didn’t know you liked wine,” Niels said. “I would’ve invited you along.”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Gregor said. “And if you had, I would have said no. We aren’t friends.”
Niels coughed. Being a salesman, he wasn’t used to such direct displays of honesty.
Gregor’s eyes briefly flicked away from the wall, settling on Niels’ shoulders. “Do you want to see my wine cellar?”
Gregor led him down a white hall and through a massive, empty kitchen, at the far end of which was a wide, floor-to-ceiling steel door. Gregor pushed a button, and the door slowly slid into the wall, revealing a flight of stairs leading into darkness. In the seconds before their descent, Niels recalled an article he once read in a tech magazine, in which a successful Valley engineer kept a dungeon underneath his home, holding secret orgies while his nuclear family, clothed in matching pastel cottons, lived happily and unknowingly in the rooms upstairs.
But when Gregor turned on the lights, the illuminated space below revealed nothing more than a simple wine cellar, with row after row of bottle racks, and in the center, two chairs and a wooden table. Atop the table was a decanter filled with wine, and next to it, an empty bottle.
Instead of a toast, Gregor spent thirty minutes detailing each wine purchase in length: how much it had cost, what was said about the vintage, and when he was planning to open a particular bottle. He had built an elaborate wine management system that scanned the bottle’s label, then input each detail — including age, composition, and position in the wine cellar — into an algorithm that determined the ideal “drink date.” When the date approached, Gregor was sent a notification at two-week, one-week, day-of, and then hourly intervals, alerting him of the impending deadline.
“One time I received a notification while on a course of antibiotics,” said Gregor, leaning in just slightly and lowering his voice. “I had this bottle I needed to drink and was worried it was going to go bad. I had to save it until I was well again. It was very upsetting.”
“You don’t have to drink the bottle right that very same day. It’s not like milk.”
“But then I would get no benefit from such a complex system,” Gregor said.
He grabbed the bottle of wine from the wooden table and passed it to Niels, who let out a low whistle of appreciation. It was a Chateau Margaux — the holy grail of red wine. Niels couldn’t help but grin. He was going to crush his enemy at the negotiating table while trying one of the world’s most highly regarded wines.
Niels believed that learning to appreciate wine was an apprenticeship akin to golf — at first difficult to acquire, but then indispensable for business and generally agreeable as a pastime. And he had, in fact, come to love the taste of it. Chateau Margaux was a real bragging right, and he had never held its deep ruby on his tongue.
Niels sat down on an uncomfortable wooden chair. One of the spindles was split in the middle, and the raw edge pushed into his spine. He suspected Gregor had never been inside a home furnishings store in his life, that he didn’t see the inconsistency in offering up one of the world’s most expensive wines in such a dank and uncomfortable setting. For all his engineering brilliance, Gregor would never even have made it past the sales team’s entry-level “Hospitality & Negotiation” training course.
Gregor poured the wine from the decanter and handed a glass to Niels. The men studied the wine and took in the aroma, each eying the other over his glass.
But the deep tones of the Chateau Margaux transformed them. Niels loosened his tie, Gregor slouched just slightly in his chair. It was an exceptional wine. And after they took their first sip, Niels had the sudden realization that this was the first nondisagreeable experience the two had shared since Niels joined Anahata six years earlier. Gregor even tried to offer a slight smile, pushing it onto his face as though it were a heavy wooden beam. But at least he was trying.
Niels did not say a word — Master Negotiator Rule #33: Approach silence like a battlefield. He who speaks first shows his hand.
Niels sipped his wine slowly but decisively. He imagined his Adam’s apple bulging then receding, like a heaving warrior ready to break through enemy lines. A warrior with rippling abs and a weathered loincloth that barely covered his forceful manhood. He could crush this wine glass with just a slight clenching of his fingers. It would shatter at his feet, taking with it all of Gregor’s dreams and —
“Do you read any philosophy?” Gregor asked.
“Not really,” Niels said. “I mean, college, but that was a long time ago.”
“I thought so,” said Gregor.
Niels wanted to tell Gregor that he had graduated summa cum laude in economics from Yale, that he had been a Rhodes scholar, that he had won a Cambridge debate on the virtues of Adam Smith — but he held back. It was best to let the conversation advance smoothly toward the negotiation point.
“For centuries,” Gregor began, “people have tried to create the perfect society. To achieve what we see flickering on Plato’s cave. To transpose the ideal on our reality.”
Niels imagined Gregor sitting on his white couch, within his white walls, reading Greek philosophers after a hard day’s work.
“Many people have tried to create a community of like-minded individuals, with the aim of a peaceful and collaborative rule — a utopia, if you will. You may recall the Rappites…?”
Niels didn’t.
“Or the Oneida community.”
Again, Niels drew a blank.
“In any case,” Gregor said, “all of these attempts ultimately failed.”
“We weren’t made to live on communes,” Niels shrugged. “People are fundamentally selfish.”
“Or…perhaps it’s just a few bad seeds.”
“A few bad seeds are enough to ruin the crop.”
“Yes, Niels!” exclaimed Gregor, his chair rocking underneath him, a flush of pink invading his face. “That’s why we get rid of the bad seeds!”
Gregor took a deep breath, and the color was sucked back into his body. He coughed, then continued.
“We know how to do it. We know how to build the perfect society.”
“On campus?”
Gregor leaned forward in his chair, putting his hand awkwardly on Niels’ shoulder. In a sharp whisper, his eyes blazing, “Niels, we’re going to the moon!”
It took Niels a few seconds to realize what he had just heard. He moved to speak, but Gregor’s hand stopped him, his words spilling over his palm and rushing at Niels.
“We’ve figured out how to build the perfect society — and from all angles, from actual technical infrastructure to the societal structure. We’ve figured it all out!”
The Master Negotiator faltered and a laugh escaped from him, rudely punctuating Gregor’s plan. Niels couldn’t help himself — with just one simple, absurd phrase, six years of intimidation had evaporated. Gregor wasn’t anyone to be afraid of. He was simply insane. And that was surely to Niels’ advantage, though he knew one had to proceed carefully with crazy people. They could be unpredictable.
“Slow down,” Niels said. “Are you joking with me?”
“We have been working on the project for a year,” Gregor said. “Fifty engineers working in secret in Building 1. We’re building a colony on the moon.”
“You mean you have a spaceship and everything? How are you dealing with gravity? Wait, never mind, don’t answer that. What I mean is, since when did Anahata get into the business of humankind?”
“Anahata has always only ever been about humankind. Everything we do is done for — “
“Yeah, yeah, I know, everything we do is to improve humankind. But I mean, a society, Gregor. There are no synergies with our current business. How do you know how to construct a society?”
“Actually, a society is a lot like software. You build it on solid principles, then you iterate. Then you solutionize, and you iterate again.”
“What makes you think you can solve what centuries of wise men have failed to do?”
“Because we have something they don’t have,” Gregor said. He pushed his chair closer, and Niels couldn’t help but lean forward. The broken wooden spindle leaned with him, pushing into his back. But he did not move to swat it away; his eyes were locked on Gregor, their faces almost touching.
“Algorithms,” Gregor whispered.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Niels snorted. “These are humans we’re talking about, not robots. You can’t predict and control human behavior with algorithms.”
“That is an emotional reaction to what is a very logical project. And, yes, an algorithm could have predicted that you would respond that way. Even irrational behavior is rational when seen as a larger grouping of patterns. And as you can imagine, this project is built on patterns of success. Project Y, we call it. It will save Anahata — and, as a result, humankind.”
Niels shook his head. He had come to ask Gregor to slap some silly ads on a dumb bracelet; Gregor was telling him they were going to build a moon colony. If Gregor wasn’t crazy, then Niels was stupid for asking for so little in return.
“Let me get this straight. We’re wasting tons of company money for a totally altruistic endeavor? There’s not a single business purpose in all of this?”
“Obviously there’s a business purpose,” Gregor said. “That’s where it all started.”
Niels smirked — now they were speaking his language. The company always talked about saving the world, and sometimes really did believe in it, but Bobby always made sure there was a monetization element involved — and that Niels was in charge of ensuring the project’s economic success.
“Tell me more,” said Niels, leaning back in his uncomfortable chair.
“Project Y is fundamentally about protecting our employees and our company from outside threats,” Gregor said.
“So this is about beating Galt.”
“And any future Galt. We have the world’s best engineers, and if we lose them, we lose everything. But if we build them a utopia, they will never have any reason to leave.”
“Don’t you think the company’s already done a pretty good job of building a worker’s paradise?” Niels said. “If anything, we’ve made all these engineers into self-entitled, smoothie-guzzling cult members who will never have any reason to leave. Where else could they have job titles like ‘Evangelist,’ ‘Security Warrior,’ ‘Protector of All Things Internet,’ and ‘Debuggenator’?”
Gregor shook his head. “It isn’t enough anymore. Free food, massages, and light-saber aerobics were revolutionary when we first started the company. But nowadays, every startup has them. The smaller companies can offer faster career mobility, wider remit, and most important, by dint of being small and under the radar, they can innovate wildly through illegality. Just think — when was the last time we were able to get away with selling a user’s private data or violate someone’s copyright? Those golden days are gone. We simply can’t compete. And Galt knows it. Everyone knows it.”
Niels couldn’t disagree. Galt was a real threat, particularly in the Valley, where the average shelf life of even the most successful tech companies was just a decade or two. Anahata was already ten years old. Practically ancient.
“So, if you build a colony on the moon…”
“The better way to state it is, if we build an isolated utopia — which just happens to be on the moon — then we will secure the future of this company. No more Galt headhunters. No more Galt stealing our great ideas.”
“And you’ll just lock the employees up there on the moon? Give them a one-way ticket?”
“Imagine — a planet full of geniuses!”
Niels shook his head. “Surely there are easier ways to do this. What about raising employees’ salaries or giving them longer vacations? Going to the moon seems extreme. I see no value add to the company.”
“Value add?” Gregor sneered. “Your statement is not made true by its redundancy. There is indeed value. It’s only by tackling what seems impossible that you can ensure no one else will do it. Galt can compete with bigger salaries and fancy perks, but they won’t be able to compete with a moon colony. Plus, we’re building a utopia that no engineer will ever want to leave. We’ll be unstoppable! All other utopian societies have failed — it’s a big problem that no one’s solved. It’s a huge opportunity for us.”
“Or the sign that we will fail like all the others,” Niels sighed. A moon colony was crazy even by Anahata standards.
“Our utopia will be different. We’ve spent several months analyzing the best combinations of political thought, philosophy, and technological advances necessary to achieve a better society. We’ve also looked at societal failures through the centuries — Rome, Byzantium, and so forth. What was consistent throughout was a lack of individual purpose. As a society progresses, it becomes more specialized, and while its citizens become ever more dependent on each other, they have no relationship with the tasks they perform. They are cogs in a wheel they never wanted to build.”
Niels remembered late-night pot-filled conversations in college that sounded a lot like this. He fiddled again with the wooden spindle digging into his back. When the first ad appeared on Moodify, he’d send Gregor a new chair as a snide gift. Nothing was more insulting to a rich man than to send him a better version of what he already owned.
“We will take the best sampling of society and give people roles that fit their skills,” Gregor continued. “The man born to be a mechanical engineer will be a mechanical engineer. He who cooks well will be a cook. There will be no anomie — I guess you don’t know the philosopher Émile Durkheim? But in any case, every man will have his place. Every man will work together, for himself and for the greater good of the group.”
Niels put one hand behind his back and began to twist at the base of the wooden spindle, trying to wrench it free from the chair. It wouldn’t budge no matter how hard he tried. He could feel the sweat forming amateurish circles under his expensive shirt.
“This goddamn chair — “
He looked up and saw Gregor studying him, expressionless.
“I mean,” Niels said, “how are you going to transport all of mankind to the moon?”
“Oh no,” Gregor said. “That would just be bringing along the bad seeds and all their earthly problems. There is a full selection process. The bulk of the group will be engineers, of course, as they perform very well across every factor we’ve determined necessary for success. You see, we have calculated a target percentage for every category of person and skill type that we need in order to have a high societal success rate.”
“Argh!” growled Niels, the spindle behaving even more egregiously than before, pushing on his spine, scratching at his well-buffed skin. Such a crappy chair had no place in his existence. He worked way too hard and earned too much money to have to sit in chairs like this.
He scooted to the edge of his chair, but the spindle followed him, digging into him, pushing him forward and downward as though he were Gregor’s supplicant. Unacceptable!
Niels leaped to his feet.
“Sit. Please,” said Gregor, leaning across and pulling the the spindle out of Niels’ chair in one single, swift movement.
“As you may have guessed,” said Gregor, laying the spindle next to the bottle of wine, “sales employees won’t be as likely to be admitted to the moon colony given the high bar, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a shot. If you help us, I can even imagine we’d raise the percentage of acceptance for the sales employees. Provided, of course, that they pass the necessary tests.”
Niels snatched the spindle from the table and pointed it at Gregor. He thought the move looked intimidating, menacing even. But then he glanced down and realized he looked more like an orchestra conductor. He threw the spindle to the ground.
“You always get so upset when I speak in a factual manner about the sales team’s IQ,” Gregor continued. “But you should listen objectively to this plan, because there’s a part that you’re going to love.”
Gregor paused, then drew out his words. “I…will…let…you…monetize.”
Niels eyebrows shot upward in genuine surprise.
“Monetize the moon? You’ll let me do that?”
“Yes.”
“But…you never let me monetize,” said Niels, sitting down. “What’s the catch?”
“I’ll let you export the moon minerals,” Gregor said. “You and your team will go down there and pull them out and — ”
“Minerals!” roared Niels, rocketing out of his chair. “My team sells internet advertising, Gregor, not minerals! Internet advertising!”
“Well, before they can sell the minerals, they need to get them out of the ground, so the selling part is sort of a moot point at this stage.”
“You want my sales team to become miners?”
Gregor looked puzzled. “Oh, I hadn’t really thought they would be the miners. But now that you suggest it, it’s not a bad idea. The skill sets do overlap, I suppose. The ‘core competencies,’ as you call them, are the same — dirt digging, rubbing elbows with worms, hunting for gold — ”
“Gregor!”
“One thing,” said Gregor, holding up his hand. “I don’t want you to get too excited. We can’t export minerals right away. It really doesn’t become economical until we build the space elevator, and that’s not on the roadmap until late next year.”
“Space elevator?!? You are going to sink this company!”
Niels knew it was time. He jumped onto his chair and stomped his feet. He waved his arms in the air again, willing his face redder and redder, sputtering a few expletives to express his outrage at Gregor’s ridiculous plan. While not all business meetings required such theatrics, almost one hundred percent of Niels’ negotiations involved either throwing a pen or stomping away from the table. He found it was often the best way to force a rapprochement from his opponent.
“Sit down,” said Gregor, pouring them both more wine. “You have nothing to be concerned about. Project Y is highly economical. By retaining our best engineers and protecting our most secret projects, we save hundreds of millions of dollars each year. And that’s before even calculating the potential upside from building the world’s first functioning utopia. Ultimately, we think this could generate tens of billions of dollars of new revenue.”
Niels slowly lowered his arms, but he wasn’t sure what to do with them. Feigned outrage was a tried-and-true technique — why hadn’t it worked this time? Just the previous week, Niels had used the same approach on the CEO of the world’s largest advertising firm, and in a matter of minutes the guy agreed to make his own car a surface for real-time Anahata ads.
He decided to continue standing on the chair. Niels threw his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest, then clenched his fists to make his biceps pop.
“So you’re going to put a whole bunch of male engineers alone on a planet, huh? Sounds to me like this will last up until you have your first system downtime and your engineers are no longer able to stream porn from Earth.”
Gregor said nothing for a few seconds, as if it took him a moment to understand.
“Oh,” he finally said. “No, we’ve thought of that already. There will be women.”
“I mean real women, not robots and avatar women. Or holograms,” said Niels, referring to the recent Anahata prom, for which Bobby had commissioned Japanese nurse holograms to accompany dateless engineers.
Gregor waved him away, but Niels wasn’t sure whether he was ignoring him or missing Niels’ swipe entirely.
“Our engineers have found ways to solve all of the many dangers that could befall a young society — famine, natural disaster, war. You think they can’t solve the simple problem of women? History has shown that if you give an engineer a problem, he usually can solve it. Again, that’s why our society will primarily be made up of engineers.”
“Most of your engineers can barely dress themselves,” sniffed Niels, staring down at Gregor from atop the chair. “Besides, I heard what happened last year at your winter retreat — hardly the outcome one would expect from superior beings.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Gregor, but the hint of a grimace suggested otherwise.
As part of a team-building exercise, Anahata had put its engineers into teams for a virtual trek through the Amazon. Along the way, the engineers were met with various obstacles — wild animals, tree loggers, and angry environmentalists.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Niels said. “Your engineering teams abandoned sick and injured teammates just so that they could make it out of the Amazon first. A bunch of the employees got fed to anacondas.”
“We didn’t use real snakes,” Gregor protested.
“They left their teammates to die.”
“Only in a virtual world!” Gregor’s face burst in splotches of red.
“Your moon colony is a virtual world!”
A few seconds passed, then Gregor spoke.
“I agree it would have been good of our engineers to save their colleagues. But at least their motivation was pure — to escape the jungle on behalf of Anahata. This is why they are the ultimate citizens of our new society. They will always work for its greater benefit and not be led astray by the petty distractions that affect so many other people. Distractions like…”
Gregor’s eyes flashed.
“Distractions like pots of gold.”
It was clearly a dig. But last year’s sales incentive — in which Niels had promised a pot of authentic gold doubloons to any sales team member who doubled their returns in a quarter — had proved to be a brilliant motivational technique. Anahata had tripled its profits that year thanks to a bit of luck o’ the Irish. Niels wasn’t crazy; he was shrewd. And that, he believed, was the difference between him and the man seated below him. There was no reasoning with insanity.
“What do you want from me,” Niels asked, throwing his hands up. He was no longer certain of his next move. Should he come down from the chair? Or maybe it was best to speak to Bobby directly, though that also carried risks.
“Stop blocking my teams from testing on Shanley Field,” Gregor said. “Free up the servers in Eastern Africa. Basically, get out of our way. In exchange, I will give you full transparency into our plans and eventual access to the moon minerals.”
“No, I don’t like this,” Niels said. “It’s not right for Anahata. And what will the rest of the world think when they find out? Our shareholders will freak out and the stock price will tank.”
“It doesn’t matter. By the time they find out, we’ll be gone. On the moon. And once we’re there and things are up and running, it will be easy to prove that the model works.”
Niels sighed and shook his head. He was used to arguing over dollars in well-lit restaurants, not debating with a psychopath in his wine dungeon. It was time to play the Bobby card.
“I think we need to talk about this — seriously talk about this at a very, very long management meeting.”
Gregor’s face tightened. “There is nothing to talk about. Bobby agreed to this a long time ago.”
“Then Bobby’s going to need to come talk to me if he wants those servers in Africa. I’m not going to let you thwart the part of the company that makes all the money and funds your crazy ideas.”
Niels got down from the chair and took a step toward the stairs.
“Wait! We’re not done!” Gregor yelped.
Niels suppressed a grin. Clearly, all was not lost. He counted to five in his head, and slowly, slowly turned toward his prey.
“Maybe there is a way…”
“I’m sure we can find a compromise,” said Gregor, the slight tremble in his voice confirming Niels’ hunch.
Gregor was afraid Niels would turn Bobby against him. It never ceased to amaze him the things grown men feared. Niels feared no one.
“I want ads on Moodify,” Niels said.
Gregor’s face scrunched into a sour ball, then unfolded into a scowl before disappearing underneath his skin. A second later, it was as if his face had never hosted any expression at all.
“Listen,” said Niels, “you let me put ads on Moodify and I’ll support you one hundred percent in the moon colony project. Shanley Field, servers in Africa — I’ll even give you a few sales guys who can wash your engineers’ laundry on the moon.”
Niels held out his hand, but Gregor made no move toward him. For a minute, the two men stared at each other without moving.
“Putting ads on Moodify bracelets is bad for our users,” Gregor said.
Niels shrugged. “Okay, I’ll just discuss this with Bobby tomorrow and — ”
“Wait,” said Gregor, jumping out of his seat and moving quickly toward Niels. “There is something I have to show you.”
Gregor took a few slow steps backwards toward the stairs, as if his gaze could freeze Niels in place. He then turned and bounded up the steps, letting the door slide gently behind him.
Down below, Niels crossed his arms and yawned loudly.
But once Gregor was gone, Niels began to rub his temples. Why hadn’t he just gone into banking instead? Greedy capitalists were so much easier to negotiate with than engineers.
Five miles away, Arsyen Aimo was also thinking about money — namely, that thanks to his huge new salary, he was once again on the winning side of capitalism and ready to upgrade his entire life.
Part of that upgrade definitely involved getting a new girlfriend — preferably an American one with excellent teeth.
Of course, he already had a girlfriend, Natia, though that had happened somewhat by accident.
A year earlier, he had signed up to an online dating site as “Rick,” a blond surfer from Santa Cruz. Rick resembled an underwear model, with a chiseled body, defined jawline, and a strong nose echoing Arsyen’s own good looks.
The first woman he met was Natia — herself masking as a Romanian grad student at Berkeley. Between her confusion of Los Angeles as a Northern Californian city and Arsyen’s own English mistakes, they quickly called each other’s bluff and soon were speaking to each other in Pyrrhian.
They struck up a fast virtual friendship — not more than that initially, as they were both too practical to imagine dating someone thousands of miles away. Arsyen took pains to conceal his true identity. From his experience, once a Pyrrhian woman knew she was in the presence of an Aimo, all hopes of reasonable conversation dissolved in a puddle of sighs. Instead, he told her about living in America, about drive-through pharmacies and the endless array of flavored sparkling water, and the importance of sanitation engineers like Arsyen, who fixed the various clogs, stains, and crumbs that could slow the infrastructure of a fast-moving startup.
She in turn wrote to him about her life in Poodlekek, Pyrrhia’s capital. Natia worked as a switchboard operator for the national telecommunications firm, a graying dinosaur that was slowly moving Pyrrhia into the 1980s. She belonged to a political philosophy group, which met weekly to discuss why Marxism failed and whether man could subvert machine in a post-capitalist society. Arsyen found her little intellectual forays rather cute. There would be no need for political philosophy once royal reign was restored, but why discourage Natia from stretching her feminine brain in the meantime?
She was particularly passionate in her dislike of General (now President) Korpeko — the source of the Aimo family’s undoing. He was a “despot,” she wrote, “hell-bent on pushing sports and false achievements instead of encouraging the true prosperity of the nation.”
Among her many gripes was Korpeko’s obsession with the little-known sport of curling. He believed it was Pyrrhia’s ticket to international fame — sufficiently obscure as to ensure little competition from wealthier countries. Korpeko had replaced all the bike lanes and gutters along main roads with curling courts, and no vacations or trips outside the country were allowed during the first week of February, now known as Pyrrhian Curling Week. Arsyen’s stomach tightened each time he imagined Korpeko’s curling lanes snaking across Pyrrhia’s unmarred hills.
“It sounds nothing like the rich cultural life that once flourished under the royal family,” Arsyen wrote to Natia, thinking of the literary salons and long afternoon croquet matches his family hosted at their summer palace for the Pyrrhian elite. The king had generously ensured that vivid accounts of the affairs were published in all of the country’s newspapers so literate citizens could vicariously enjoy the experience.
“Do you remember the photos of them playing croquet atop their verdant courts?” Arsyen asked. “It was far more dignified.”
“Yes, I suppose if you consider hitting a ball a more civilized activity than rolling a puck,” Natia replied.
Natia’s lack of appreciation for croquet was one of the many shortcomings Arsyen had been forced to tolerate as a lowly janitor. Another was the mole on her cheek — it was just a little too big for his liking; he often found himself covering it up with his thumb whenever they did video chat.
Luckily, product managers didn’t have to put up with such defects. When product managers discovered problems, they fixed them. And that’s exactly what Arsyen planned to do.
With a fat new paycheck now coming his way, Arsyen was better equipped to find himself a beautiful American girl — someone like that hippie receptionist, Jennie. Then, when the time was right, he would return to Pyrrhia bronzed and wealthy, with his beautiful queen and her good orthodontics on display. Natia and the other women of Pyrrhia would weep at what they had lost, only able to take comfort in the possibility of becoming one of Arsyen’s bathing maidens.
So it was decided: Natia was out. The only question was whether to write her a breakup email now or first play his video game.
Arsyen opted for the video game. And there he was, a half-hour later, stuck on his couch, glued to his screen, when the phone rang.
It was the chief strategist with the Throne Reclamation Committee (the TRC).
“Have you heard the news? A train went off Golden Bridge and fell into the lake.”
“Mmmhmm,” said Arsyen, drawing his sword and piercing the heart of a castle guard. “It was probably a drunk conductor. Our trains are flawless.”
The national rail service had been one of the great Aimo accomplishments — christened by his father as “locomotives of progress and prosperity.” The king even had a toy train replica built to travel over their palace moat and directly into Arsyen’s bedroom. He wondered if that train was still there — particularly the first-class carriage, outfitted with miniature foodstuffs. As a teenager, Arsyen often threw the train’s gold-plated bison fries at his manservant Sklartar when the old man wasn’t moving fast enough.
“They say you could hear the screams of the children as the train flew through the air,” the strategist said, “that the flames moved across the sky like a rocket.”
“Huh,” said Arsyen, his thumb pumping up and down on the console button as he sliced through the head of one of the king’s henchmen. Tragedies often befell poor nations. There wasn’t much point in getting worked up over a handful of dead bodies.
The felled henchman rose, holding his head in his hands. He was coming back for more. As Arsyen pumped the console with his thumbs, the phone fell from his ear. No matter, if the news was that important, he was sure to hear from the TRC again. Nothing was going to interrupt his game. He had made it through his grueling first week at Anahata and deserved some downtime.
Arsyen glanced at his email on his way to the bathroom a few minutes later and saw that Natia had written. She too was obsessed with the train accident. She claimed the government had stopped any media from reporting the event, fearful that the news could put a damper on its bid to host the International Curling Championships the following year. Government workers had already begun repairing the bridge, and no effort was being made to dredge up the train. Meanwhile, the police were arresting anyone they believed was spreading rumors. All internet services were blocked in the capital, and Natia had been forced to travel outside the province to get to any café with open access. “If they find out I am here, they will arrest me, or worse!” She wrote. “Help us get the word out about what happened. Hundreds are dead!”
Arsyen had assumed the TRC had been talking about ten people. Hundreds of people elevated the train wreck to a national disaster — the kind of thing worthy of a future king’s attention.
“What would a king do…?” Arsyen wondered aloud, imagining himself laying his healing hands upon thousands of maimed Pyrrhians, their bodies draped in rags — rags he would eventually replace with velvet robes! — as they lay prostrate before him. They shielded their eyes from his divine light, and chanted his name to the ground below them. King Arsyen. King Arsyen.
He shook himself back to reality. His dream was still far off. Whatever happened in Pyrrhia now would certainly be repeated in a year’s time, with a new set of mothers rolled out to despair over the loss of their children at the hands of Korpeko’s corrupt and negligent government. He needed to be patient and let these minor catastrophes accumulate. At the point of ten train wrecks, the time might finally be right for a royal coup.
But in the meantime, Arsyen could at least give a nudge toward revolution and have some quick fun with Korpeko. If working in technology had taught him anything, it’s that the internet loves a troll.
While working at Galt, Arsyen had learned about GaltPages — a popular tool that aggregated everything people had to say on all the different Galt apps. He even half-started his own GaltPage a few months earlier to promote his Aimo Air Freshener — a custom pink mixture he invented out of cleaning supplies so he could cover up the persistent stench of body odor that permeated the Galt meeting rooms. Its cotton candy scent would one day make Arsyen millions — provided he could figure out how to keep it from combusting.
He hadn’t gotten very far with his page back then, but Galt seemed to have made its product easier to use since he last tried. He could easily repurpose his early work to suit Natia’s social justice needs — the fluffy pink plume of cotton candy in the page’s background no longer suggesting a sweet scent but rather an artsy take on a nuclear holocaust. And, Arsyen told himself, there was a potential bonus to be had in all of this: If enough people were interested in what he posted about Poodlekek, he could collect their contact info and sell them his air freshener once all the furor died down.
Arsyen had worked in the Valley long enough to know that the key to social media was virality, not sincerity. So he renamed the page “Justice for Poodlekek” and posted Natia’s text about the accident, calling for action. He then posted the link to Justice for Poodlekek in the comment section of every Pyrrhian blog and newspaper article he could find and wrote a review of Korpeko’s government on the restaurant review site Help! Then he added pictures of Golden Bridge to his Photomatic account, using the retro and futuristic filters, as well as a bleaker one with a sprinkling of decapitated bodies.
Arsyen leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. It was an awfully nice thing he had just done for Natia, and it would hopefully assuage her disappointment when he broke up with her in favor of dating Jennie.
He returned to his video game and quickly forgot about the page. But a while later, passing by his computer on the way to the kitchen, he saw that the previously blank comment section of Justice for Poodlekek now hosted a long list of responses. The view count was already in the thousands and climbing with each minute. Arsyen did a double take: People seemed to really be upset by this train thing. And not just the train, but about Korpeko and his government as well.
The street light has been out for two weeks. Why is there no bison milk on Mondays?
Arsyen squealed with delight. His people seemed so unhappy! He hit the refresh button again and again, each new complaint augmenting his euphoria.
Korpeko will drag our country into further poverty! I hate curling!
Arsyen couldn’t resist posting a comment under a fake name.
This never would have happened when the Aimos were in power!
Someone replied immediately.
That’s true. King Aimo would’ve made us play croquet until our fingers fell off.
Arsyen laughed. That had indeed happened to a few unlucky peasants who had trespassed on the royal croquet court.
As the minutes passed, complaints about bison milk were replaced by complaints about potholes, potholes by accusations of corruption, corruption by torture.
Arsyen did a small jig before his computer, then paused — first to check out his flexed biceps reflected on his computer screen, and then to update his page with a new message.
My people, we must take action!!
Of course, Arsyen knew President Korpeko would put it all down. That’s how it happened in Pyrrhia and the rest of the poor world. People protested and waved hand-painted signs, and then, if they weren’t disappeared by the government, they trudged back to work on Monday.
But Arsyen’s well-meaning but rather stupid Pyrrhian subjects couldn’t see that far ahead. Instead, the misery of Pyrrhia wrote itself across the Justice for Poodlekek page. The decay of the streets, the decay of the nation, the decay of everything, really, but the country’s gleaming curling lanes. The page’s followers swelled into the thousands within minutes. Soon they were asking about the creator of Justice for Poodlekek, calling on him to lead them forward.
It was terrible timing. He still had six levels to go in his video game.
“Men of action take action,” Arsyen said to himself, repeating a poster he had seen outside one of Anahata’s sales buildings.
He composed a short note to Natia:
My dear Natia, I have made a GaltPage to help you spread the word. Also, I am sorry but I think we will have to break up because I am not going to be able to come to Pyrrhia anytime soon.
Arsyen paused. What if Natia showed up one day in California without that unfortunate mole and wanted to sleep with him?
He began to type again.
Let me know if you ever come to California. Keep in touch!
Then he left the house to go grab a burrito. He needed some fuel to keep him going if he was going to conquer the six-headed henchman later that night.
Whatever Gregor Guntlag was trying to prove, Niels was determined to ignore it. He would meet Gregor’s final, desperate plea for cooperation with the same dismissal with which Gregor had treated Niels’ chair-jumping antics.
Niels pictured Gregor lugging the mysterious proof of his superior world order down the stairs, his combat boots thudding against the wooden steps, then stomping to the table. What did he want to show Niels? A philosophy book? A line of code? A diorama? Regardless, Niels’ expression would remain placid, unmoved, mouth silent in Guntlagian style until Gregor’s desperation grew to the point where Niels would only need to repeat three words: “Ads on Moodify.” Maybe he would even agree to let Niels put ads on employee T-shirts and the meeting-room chairs.
When had Gregor left exactly? Half an hour earlier? An hour? It was starting to seem like an awfully long time to leave someone waiting in a basement.
It was obvious what Gregor was trying to do. He had locked Niels in the cellar in order to assert his dominance and put Niels on edge. But these kinds of mind tricks and one-upmanship were old hat for a Master Negotiator. After all, Niels was the man who had challenged a quadriplegic music executive to a game of rugby; the man who hid E. coli in an opponent’s entree so he could pitch him on a business proposition as the other lay prostrate before the toilet for six hours. This wine cellar act was amateurish.
That said, why would a grown man lock a work colleague in his basement? Was that something Germans found funny? Or maybe Gregor was in fact Austrian. The Austrians were famous for their appreciation of basements. For a split second, Niels’ body tensed as he imagined Gregor descending the stairs in a pair of leather pants.
Niels closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again. He couldn’t help but respect his opponent for planting these seeds of doubt. Five minutes passed, then ten. Niels felt splinters from the chair making inroads into the back of his arms. Shapes emerged from the shadows, then receded. Another twenty minutes passed.
Niels knew he shouldn’t panic, but the shadows, the quiet, the unpredictability of his opponent all began to cloud his confidence. The longer he sat and paced and sat and paced, the more Niels became convinced that the taciturn Teuton was planning to leave him there all night, returning only once confident that he had broken the Master Negotiator.
Niels needed to plot his escape. From his shirt pocket, he pulled out the pen and pad of paper that he always carried with him. In a world of internet intangibles, Niels found reassurance in last-century items.
His high-level plan of attack was fairly easy to map. First, Niels needed to get himself out of the basement, and second, he needed to stop Gregor’s moon colony plan. (Third, he needed to destroy Gregor, though that was a longer-term goal that would require a separate strategy and PowerPoint deck.)
The question, of course, was how to go about these things. Niels considered the obvious — he could call another member of the management team. But as soon as Fischer, HR Paul, or Old Al showed up, Gregor would have some story ready and they would all have a good chuckle over Niels’ paranoia. Word would get out around Anahata, and even his own team would eventually find out about his panicked call for help. Exhilarated by the scent of weakness, the salesmen would circle him like the killer sharks he had trained them to be. It would be the end of him.
Instead, Niels sketched a mountain. At the base, he wrote, “Me.” At the summit, he wrote “FREEDOM.” Then he paused, realizing that he had failed to capture the full complexity of the situation. So he drew a second mountain next to the first. Now he had a mountain range. At the base of that second mountain, Niels wrote, “Gregor announces Moon Colony Plan.” At the top, he wrote, “I DESTROY the Moon Colony Plan!!!”
After a few minutes, and a few trees and shrubs added to his drawing for good measure, Niels had the entire route mapped, from base camp to summit. He was ready to go. He leaped out of his chair and did fifty jumping jacks, followed by one hundred situps, enjoying the rush of blood through his body. Niels would save Anahata from the worst decision it could ever make, and possibly even get Gregor fired in the process.
The first step was simple. He would ring Bobby and suggest that he pick Niels up at Gregor’s house for a midnight yoga class. Bobby was a sucker for yoga invites and had stated on numerous occasions that he wished the management team would chant together. Niels, for his part, thought yoga was the lazy man’s excuse for exercise, but like golf and wine, he saw value in its acquisition. Yoga had not only helped him meet several lonely housewives, but had also distinguished him as the only member of Bobby’s team who could execute Chaturanga Dandasana — providing a reasonable excuse for him to seed business ideas over sun salutations.
Niels pulled out his phone, selected Bobby’s number, and was soon hit by his mountain’s first boulder. There was no reception in Gregor’s basement.
He was not used to being knocked down so early in the game, but like a true sales champion, Niels rose quickly. “Only losers lose,” he whispered to himself, quoting one of the motivational posters in his office. He did five pushups with one hand, then jumped to his feet.
Niels tapped his phone’s email application and began to type:
Bobby, have just heard of a killer nighttime yoga studio in Mill Valley. Fantastic kombucha bar. I can get us in. Can you meet tonight? I’m at Gregor’s — stuck in his basement actually, funny story. Come grab me and we can head straight to the studio.
He paused. Would Bobby sense desperation? He needed to make his message appear as normal and Niels-like as possible.
Also, Gregor told me all about Project Y. Fascinating idea. I have some ideas about how we can monetize.
Niels smiled. He could feel his bed and a good night’s sleep within reach.
He pushed “send” and immediately began composing a second email, this time to HR Paul. Gregor’s insanity needed to be recorded somewhere — even if in the short-term Niels had no intention of compromising Anahata’s public reputation and Niels’ own financial stake in the company — by outing its head engineer as a psychopath.
Niels decided to attach a photo of himself in the basement. He raised his phone camera to get an angle that captured both the rows of wine bottles and the staircase leading up to a locked door. Then he hit “send” and took a swig of the Chateau Margaux — it would make for great bragging rights at next month’s HBS Successful Man Golf Tournament.
Niels opened the email application again, and his face fell. His email to Bobby hadn’t gone through. In its place was a time-out message — the data connection just wasn’t strong enough. Niels tried to send again, and then again and again, from different parts of the basement. But each time he was met with the same result.
The Master Negotiator was hit with a strong dose of reality — there was no phone connection, only a very weak data connection, and he was trapped in an Austrian psychopath’s basement.
Niels scanned the room. Aside from the bottles of wine, it was absolutely empty. The staircase led to the locked door on the first floor, but otherwise there were no windows and no way out. He couldn’t go to work. He couldn’t make money.
He couldn’t make money!
“No!!!” he screamed, kicking over one of the chairs. He bounded up the stairs and began pounding on the door. “Let me out! You can’t do this!”
Niels pounded for several minutes, but there was no answer from the other side.
Niels crumbled on the top step and was at first shocked, then horrified, then just miserable to discover that the wet feeling on his face were tears, actual man tears. His body shook, and he began to feel cold. He wanted his mother, or the ex-girlfriend he had cheated on, or even just that hippie receptionist he had slept with.
Or even God. Niels clasped his hands in prayer, unsure whether the gesture was necessary for the Almighty to hear him. Did God have to listen to him? Didn’t God love rich people?
Just in case, Niels apologized extra hard for ignoring Him the previous four decades and promised that he would be good from now on. He wouldn’t sleep with receptionists, he’d mentor inner-city entrepreneurs, and he’d teach the homeless how to code. He’d get rid of moon colonies and pop-up internet ads, and he’d fix piracy on the web once and for all. Above all, he’d be a good citizen and son and follower of whatever religion God turned out to belong to.
He looked down at the useless mobile phone in his hand. Tears had formed pathetic puddles across its surface, distorting his Flitter application, which now seemed to sprout wings from the “f” of its logo. Niels stared at it for a few seconds, watching the “f” heave under his tears, like a bird dreaming of flight.
And then it hit him. Flitter — Galt’s popular thought-sharing tool — was famous for working in the lowest-bandwidth parts of the world. They were always bragging in the press about how someone had used their tool to escape an oppressive regime. It drove Bobby crazy — he thought Anahata should have a monopoly on freedom and hope.
Niels didn’t care about any of that. In fact, he had zero interest in Galt or Flitter or in reading anyone’s thoughts other than his own. But a year earlier, he had tried to convince Galt to run Anahata’s ads on their apps and opened a Flitter account, Niels_1973, to show them he really cared about their product. But eventually the deal fell through, and other than a few half-hearted fleets about some Anahata sports matches, Niels’ account lay dormant for months. He had practically forgotten he even had it installed on his phone.
The likelihood Flitter would work in the cellar was low, but Niels had nothing to lose. He fired up Niels_1973 and, hands shaking, expressed his panic in fewer than one hundred thirty-five characters (the limit set on any Flitter message):
Help me! Trapped in basement at 13 Willow St, Atherton.
Niels hit “send,” and in a split second, the post was successfully transmitted. Niels jumped up from the step, pumping his fist in the air. “Yes!” he cheered. He sat back and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Twenty minutes passed, and there was no response — no “we’re coming,” or “hold tight, buddy!” For a moment, Niels wondered whether his message had indeed been delivered — or fleeted, as the Flitterati would say. But he could see there were millions of other live fleets coming in from the rest of the world — fleets about politicians, fleets about celebrities, fleets from companies hawking their products, and fleets from celebrities hawking those same products. Clearly someone was getting through to someone.
The problem, Niels quickly realized, was that no one was listening to him. He had only two people following his fleets: agefshgr_74 and tina_xxx. Niels didn’t even know who they were or how they had found him in the first place.
“Failure is not an option,” Niels whispered to himself, repeating the Smeardon family motto. He took a gulp of Chateau Margaux and reminded himself that the important thing was that Flitter worked. The next step was simply to make it work better for him. He needed something more eye-catching — something that would get people so excited that they would want to refleet his message to all of their friends and followers.
He quickly settled on Tech Geek, the Valley’s hottest tech gossip site. Including the @techgeek Flitter handle was his best bet to be seen by someone following their account. So Niels tried again, decades of Chateau Margaux life force moving him into a new world of confidence:
@techgeek Love your hard-hitting tech analysis. Also: Help me! I’m a prisoner of #Anahata.
Up in San Francisco, Tech Geek’s social media manager stared at the fleet from Niels_1973 and groaned. Of all the Galt apps, Flitter definitely had the most crazies. There was something about giving people just one hundred thirty-five characters to express themselves that made them even more desperate — fueled by the hope that a bite-sized thought would be small enough to penetrate the world’s scattered attention.
It wasn’t just weirdos like Niels who drove him crazy. It was the number of people who didn’t properly understand Flittiquette. They exhibited a poor use of hashtags, a tendency to refleet every compliment or inane statement made by a follower, and an inability to craft something eye-popping in one hundred thirty-five characters.
Social media was a twenty-first-century art, and a true amateur (“in the French sense,” he explained to anyone who would listen, “meaning a lover of social media”) had to spend time honing his craft. He often reflected that his title should have been Master Craftsman of Social Media. Or simply God.
Because as far as he could tell, there was no job with more prestige. Sure, he told his friends, he could take a high-paying social media job at a big corporation, but that wasn’t his style. He didn’t want to be the guy fleeting “Not feeling fresh? Try the new #Summer_douche in fresh lavender.” He had done his college senior thesis on Che Guevara’s influence on scatological pop art. He could hardly sell out to the agro-chemico-industrial complex to be their social media plaything. He was part of an #online #revolution #disrupting #everything.
That’s why he was at Tech Geek, by all accounts the heart of the universe — or, at least, his universe, and the universe of anyone who mattered to him. Tech Geek was where all things tech and Valley were beating, throbbing, iterating, de-duping, compiling, normalizing, and randomizing. As far as he saw it, if you did social media for the Valley, you were, in many ways, the Valley. In fact, he liked to think of himself as a modern-day William Randolph Hearst. The decisions he made — whether to refleet someone’s comment, post a piece of news or gossip about another company, or (shock!) ignore it altogether — these were the things that made and broke powerful men and their companies.
So it annoyed him when fools like Niels_1973 would fleet things that were clearly false, just in the hope of grabbing his attention. It was irresponsible and a waste of his time. Niels_1973 was probably the same guy who had tried to send a “tip” to Tech Geek a few months earlier that Anahata had discovered Atlantis and was refurbishing it so that Bobby Bonilo could have an underwater pleasure kingdom. Or the guy who had fleeted that Anahata was suggesting its lowest-performing employees take performance-enhancing drugs. Granted, the latter proved to be true, but the source had missed a crucial detail. Anahata was randomizing who would get the drugs so they could analyze the effectiveness of the trial — a piece of research that would be helpful for the entire scientific community. #Detailsmatter
Niels_1973: @techgeek Love your hard-hitting tech analysis. Also: Help me! I’m a prisoner of #Anahata.
He reread the fleet and shook his head. He spent several minutes contemplating the various punishments he could mete out, finally deciding to block Niels_1973 from his list altogether. It was an extreme punishment, but he couldn’t condone such outrageous, attention-seeking behavior.
Then, feeling like he had done yet another great service for the world, Tech Geek’s social media manager called it a night and made his way to bed.
It took total isolation from the outside world for Niels to discover what millions of Galt fans around the world already knew: There was no longer any point in real conversation when you could just communicate in short phrases and poop emojis.
As night gave way to morning, Niels found himself deeply focused on a handful of celebrities and their preferred hair products and was closely following the reports of a burgeoning relationship between two contestants on a popular reality TV show. His concern for smooth hair and the couple’s happiness grew stronger as he finished off the bottle of Chateau Margaux, then opened a 1787 bottle of Chateau Lafite.
Niels’ innumerable fleets about captivity, despair, and Anahata had gone unanswered despite variations in text, creative spelling, and attempts at haiku. Despite hours of nonstop fleeting, there were still no refleets by his two followers, and still no acknowledgment from Tech Geek. Nor had he gained any new followers who could potentially spread the word on his behalf.
Ever the mountaineer, Niels devised a new plan, with a new mountain range that showcased the complexity (but also the conquerability!) of his current situation. This was one of his favorite mountain-range models to use at work. It had switchbacks and a very large boulder. The point, he often told his team, was to not get distracted by the boulder and to stay focused on the switchbacks.
Flitter users were switchbacks.
No, they were boulders.
Well, whatever they were, they weren’t the point. The point was, he had been foolish to think that people on Flitter would care about him, Niels Smeardon. What they cared about was the content he himself had been sucked into — the celebrities, the gossip, the lifestyle guru tips. The trick was to make these idiots care about him through his connection to the people they worshipped. They were like lichen growing on top of the boulder. Or maybe the sign at the bottom of the mountain marking the trail. Or…
“I don’t need mountains,” Niels growled. “Mountains need ME.”
He crumpled the paper and tossed it to the ground, then immediately started fleeting again.
His first pass was a flop, despite referencing the biggest pop star on the planet — the sexy blonde singer named La Lala who was known for hitting high notes while writhing on the floor with pythons.
#OMG LaLala making new video with #Liberace! A duet with a legend!
The only reaction came from Tina_xxx, who removed herself from his list of two followers. No one else responded to his fleet.
Niels sipped some wine and took a few minutes to study the most popular tweets about La Lala. Then he tried again.
#LaLala sings at #Nashville high school, discourages #bullies. Wears pythons in school uniform. Such an #inspiration!
Niels doubted La Lala had ever been to Nashville. But no matter, within minutes, he had been refleeted. There was even a string of responses, most of them from Lala fans in Nashville asking where she had sung. Niels responded:
My friend said #EmersonHigh. She wore band aids instead of clothes!!
Within a few seconds, he had two new people following his account. He stretched his fingers and typed his next set of messages.
#LaLala wears no makeup to remind us that talent is more important than beauty. #LaLala pythons remind us that in every snake is a beating heart. #LaLala spotted at #LAX, straddling a plane. Anyone have pictures?
The popularity of Niels_1973 began to climb. The more inane his posts, the more misspellings and melodrama (driven more by inebriation than calculation), the more followers he gained. Niels felt his blood begin to pump again. He gave one of his help me! posts a go, just to see if someone would respond. But despite having amassed four thousand followers in thirty minutes, all hanging on every word he had to say about La Lala, there didn’t seem to be anyone interested in helping the man behind the fleets.
Niels scratched his head, then returned to his notepad. He drew a SWOT analysis listing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of his pop star. When he hit the “weaknesses” box, he realized his error: La Lala skewed toward a much younger audience. Was it really plausible that a pimply fourteen-year-old fan would come to his rescue?
Niels groaned. His demographic targeting had been all wrong. La Lala fans were too young. He needed serious people. People who had driver’s licenses. People who thought a bit more about the consequences of social media. People like…thirty-year-olds.
Niels flipped back to the Flitter homepage to study the most popular age-appropriate topics. What were people fleeting about on a random Monday morning? Scrolling through the list, Niels saw that most of the topics were things he knew nothing about. In addition to the perennial pop music favorites, the list included things like #bitchslap, #whatimknitting, and #blessedmoments. Niels kept scanning, moving farther and farther down the list. And then he saw it: #Poodlekek.
“Yes!”
Niels knew all about Poodlekek. It was his friend’s heavy metal band in college. He was surprised they were still together after two decades, let alone had become so popular. He remembered going to their shows at the campus coffee house, cigarette lighter waving in the air as he and his then-girlfriend sang to guitar-heavy ballads about twisted love, rocky family relationships, and starving children in Ethiopia. Their fans would likely be Niels’ age, the kind of people who would take seriously his cries for help. And Niels had plenty of interesting things he could fleet about them to get people’s attention — like the lead singer’s bad case of the Herp. Women would totally refleet that.
But first things first. He needed to build a new fan base. Niels kicked off his first Poodlekek fleet with a bit of nostalgia.
Raise your lighters for #Poodlekek
Arsyen rose from his bed, ready to conquer an American woman.
It would not be his first attempt. He had made several passes at courtship since arriving in the United States, but most women were too intimidated by his overwhelming virility.
But Jennie, the Anahata receptionist, struck Arsyen as the confident type. She shook his hand without averting her gaze and even scolded him during their campus tour when he complimented Galt. He liked a sassy lady with good teeth.
He had the day all planned out. After lunchtime, he’d surprise Jennie in the reception area and give her his Aimo Air Freshener. Then, after a bit of chitchat, he’d suggest they head to his apartment for some video games and sex. It would be the perfect first date.
The only potential hiccup was keeping his words straight. He wondered whether Sven would practice his English with him that morning.
But Arsyen had no such chance. Sven greeted him as he entered their cubicle, waving a hand bloodied by jelly doughnut. Jennie — his Jennie — was standing next to Sven.
She spotted him and smiled. “Oh, hi! How are you liking Anahata?”
Arsyen shook his head vigorously. He did not have an answer prepared for this.
But Jennie seemed to have no difficulty continuing the conversation by herself, telling Arsyen something about her feminist book club. Little of what she said registered with him. He was watching her lips move, fascinated by the way they came together and then parted as she spoke just to him. They were so different from Natia’s lips, which moved together in fits and jerks, all depending on the bandwidth of her internet connection.
Sven cleared his throat.
“Jane here was just about to tell us what she’s doing here.”
“It’s Jennie,” she said, turning to Sven. “And I’m here because I’m the new nontechnical technical lead.”
“Huh?”
“I’m your new manager,” Jennie said.
It was as if Vesuvius had exploded across the well-manicured lawns of Palo Alto. Sven’s nose twisted until the rest of his face followed in a spiral of despair. Jonas’ mouth froze in a perfect, horrified O.
Arsyen understood their reaction immediately: They were as upset as he was about having a female boss.
“This sounds like the kind of subterfuge the sales team would instigate, sending a nonengineer in here to sabotage our project,” Jonas said.
Sven jotted some lines on a piece of paper and threw it in front of Jennie. “What do you see here?”
Jennie took the paper in her hands, and Arsyen noticed that her wrists bore the remnants of a henna tattoo. She took a few seconds to study the crude drawing, which showed a graph with a diagonal line descending from the top left-hand side to the bottom right.
“Um, a descending line?” she said.
“And what’s the first thing you think of, in the context of Anahata?” Sven asked.
“I don’t know…falling profits?”
“I knew it — imposter!” he yelled, leaping to his feet.
“But I’m not from the sales team. And that was just a line — ”
“You could’ve said it was a Pareto curve, or a drop in latency, or a decrease in the number of users,” Sven said. “There were endless acceptable possibilities.”
“The possibilities were indeed infinite, in a figurative if not exact sense,” Jonas nodded.
“You had so many options, and yet what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Money. You are from sales. Out with you!” Sven’s finger pointed toward the hall, its edict winding across the floor and out the exit door, sending Jennie back to the reception area from whence she came.
Jennie glanced at Arsyen. Help! her eyes seemed to plead. It was clear she didn’t belong there — maybe she had also been trying for a janitorial position, like Arsyen, and had been mistakenly rerouted to Social Car.
“Did you come to clean?” whispered Arsyen, stepping closer. He reached into his pocket to grab the air freshener.
Jennie shot him a dirty look. “You think because I’m a woman I’m supposed to clean your cubicle?”
Jennie opened her leather fringe vest and shoved her chest at Arsyen. Feminism Happens Here, the T-shirt read.
Arsyen froze. He was not used to such forwardness in American women.
Jennie turned back to Sven and Jonas.
“Gregor Guntlag himself asked me to do this. He said I didn’t need to know how to code — just to lead. I’m a tour guide. I know how to lead people.”
Sven | https://medium.com/s/the-big-disruption/the-big-disruption-36fbed0268cf | ['Jessica Powell'] | 2019-06-19 14:03:52.831000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Marketing', 'Fiction', 'Feminism', 'Equality'] |
Journaling Prompts For Juicy June | Juicy June has arrived and it’s hard to believe that almost half a year has whizzed by. And what a year!
My heart has cried so many times at the stories I have heard and read, I’m not quite sure how this year will be presented in the history books, but it has left me both loving and not loving the human race. I’ve shaken my head in wonder and then wondered — what can I do?
I only know how to be my best self and to always work towards being my best self. And I only know how to love.
Yes, of course, I have a lot to learn about being human and to navigate this human through life, but I would like to think that I have been and am choosing faith over fear and love over hate.
A few days ago I closed my May journal and started a new month fresh with ideas and anticipation. As I look back over my lockdown months I’m (sort of) amused at what has come up.
Certainly, some old patterns have needed addressing as I have felt occasionally trapped and triggered by the silliest of things. And then there has been the utter delight of solitude and isolation. As much as anyone can be with three furry ones.
I wonder sometimes just how contrary I can be. I know that lockdown is affecting us all in so many ways. Which is why my journal and writing is once again my saviour.
I ended last months monthly journaling prompts blog with a monthly mission and there are no surprises that there is another one for this month. I love monthly missions as they keep me focused on just one area to create change. Which of course naturally flows into other areas of my life.
It will come as no surprise that I have chosen love as our mission.
What do we know about June?
In Roman mythology Juno the wife of Jupiter is the Queen of gods, so a pretty important woman. She is the goddess of marriage, childbirth, and a champion of women.
So in the theme of Juno what would you like to marry this month? Perhaps creativity with inspiration or peace with harmony, love with kindness? And in doing so what would you like to birth?
For me, it’s a book and a course. I’m completing a new Writing To Heal book and course. I’d also like to explore creativity in art some more and marry together wire and wire mesh to see what I can make. My mind is buzzing with ideas and I have a large frame waiting for something to be created within its borders. Watch this space!
Talking about space and not the James T Kirk stuff, Juno also lent her name to NASA who launched her on Aug. 5, 2011, to go on an amazing adventure to Jupiter.
In this video, scientists talk about how citizen scientists (who knew there was such a thing) have contributed to the project. I am inspired and the start of this video certainly calls out to the artist in me.
My blog got delayed because once I arrived at the NASA site, I stayed to explore. Wow!
I don’t know about you, but I would adore exploring space. Aren’t we lucky that projects like this are available for us to discover more and to be able to traipse into the furthest reaches of the galaxy from our sofas?
June brings in…
June is the sixth month, and a month for me that signals that summer is here. The two birth signs are Gemini and Cancer. Gemini always makes me think about the two sides of things and is characterised by the Twins, Castor and Pollux.
Cancer is about home and family. My mum a Cancerian cares deeply about her family and is guided by her emotion and intuition. She often says that she is an artist and not of this world.
I have my moon in Cancer and I am utterly romantic which one of the reasons our June mission is about love.
Before we move on and as a complete aside, I am currently watching Orphan Black on Netflix — it’s my latest fix. In the series (without giving too much away) there are females who are clones of Leda (female) and males who are clones of Castor (male). In mythology, Leda is Castor’s mother. And one of the clones (and I won’t tell you why) keeps seeing swans and Leda was seduced by a god in the guise of a swan. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to discover the source of the writer’s inspiration — doh! Aside over…
June is a month for love
Your June mission is to bring more loving-kindness to your life.
One of the most beautiful meditations for love is the Metta Meditation. This will get your June started in a gorgeous way and enable you to focus on your heart space.
Metta Meditation
The loving-kindness or Metta meditation is a powerful and seemingly simple meditation that enables us to foster love, affection, appreciation and kindness towards ourselves, others and the world. It also helps us to practice forgiveness and to consider the boundaries that are needed to protect our kind hearts.
With this meditation, there are no expectations, it is a process to enjoy, where you let go, let love and let flow. We start with ourselves because if we cannot love ourselves, how can we love others? I am sure that you will find it healing and calming.
The way that I use it is to focus on me first. I start with me so that I reach a place of love and appreciation for me.
When I first started this practice, I was surprised that the husband I left after discovering his double life was easy to pass loving kindness on to. However, a previous partner was a little difficult and brought up some feelings of anger. I stuck at it and slowly and believe me it was slow, I eventually let go. When it came to people that I had a difficult time with, I chose to reframe. I didn’t need them in my life and go to lunch with them, but I could choose to see them through the lens of love and know that harbouring unkind feelings towards them was hurting me more. Sending love to the world is far more manageable. Although I did feel helpless because I couldn’t stop all of the cruelty and injustice that I was witness to. What I could do was to send my love out and release it to a higher power who would know where to send it.
Read through the meditation and practice in a way that works for you, always starting with you.
Get ready to Metta
Find a comfortable place to sit or lie. Close your eyes. Take some deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, with a sigh. Become aware of your body from head to toe, of your weight, and of the heaviness of your limbs. Relax. Scan your body and simply notice. Become aware of any sensations or feelings, but do not judge.
I invite you to imagine that you have roots growing from your feet into Mother Earth. See them flow all the way into the centre of the Earth where there is a pot of grounding and healing energy. Drink this energy in through your roots and into your body. You are now securely anchored into the ground. Feel yourself becoming grounded.
Breathe up and into your heart. Breathe out. Do a few rounds of this.
Directed to yourself
You begin with yourself because without loving yourself, it is difficult to love others.
Repeat this as many times as you feel you need and then move on to the next step.
Directed to someone you like/ love
When you feel you have established some stronger sense of loving-kindness for yourself, you can then expand your meditation to include others. After focusing on yourself for five or ten minutes, choose a benefactor, someone in your life who has loved and genuinely cared for you. Picture this person and carefully recite the same phrases:
Repeat this as many times as you feel you need and then move on to the next step.
After this, you can include others: Spend some time wishing well to a wider circle of friends.
Directed to the world and globally
Then gradually extend your meditation to picture and include community members, neighbours, people everywhere, animals, all beings, the whole earth.
Repeat this as many times as you feel you need and then move on to the next step.
Directed to someone who challenges you
Finally, include the difficult people in your life, even your enemies, wishing that they too may be filled with loving-kindness and peace. This will take practice. But as your heart opens, first to loved ones and friends, you will find that in the end, you won’t want to close it anymore.
Repeat this as many times as you feel you need.
That’s it, one of the most powerful meditations I know and one which will I am sure will change your life as well.
Download and print this PDF, keep it by the side of your bed and near the mirror in the bathroom and chant it at least once a day for a month.
Journaling prompts for June
Describe what love means to you?
How do you know when you are in love?
What makes you feel loved?
Spell out LOVE and make each letter form a random word. Then write a short reflective piece including these words
How can you connect to your inner wisdom on a more regular basis?
Name a thing that you love about your body and then a thing you love about your personality
What 5 acts of kindness will you do today?
Ask your body and heart to talk to you. What does it want or need?
How will I feel at the end of June when I have achieved all I desire for this month?
For more journaling prompts for the heart and creating a heart connection grab a copy of this journal on Amazon.
Love to journal? Join The Journaling Club — where you will get a monthly journaling book (PDF) and exercises to keep you motivated. This month is all about love.
Resources
https://mythopedia.com/roman-mythology/gods/juno/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor_and_Pollux https://www.astrology-zodiac-signs.com/zodiac-signs/cancer/ https://www.astrology-zodiac-signs.com/zodiac-signs/gemini/ | https://medium.com/@daledarley/journaling-prompts-for-juicy-june-97cda3e95513 | ['Dale Darley'] | 2020-06-03 08:00:02.921000+00:00 | ['Metta Meditation', 'Journaling Prompts', 'June', 'Journaling'] |
“And All the People Saw the Sounds” | Women blowing shofars at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Aug. 23, 2017. (photo credit: Women of the Wall, published online at https://bit.ly/3E2ONH3)
At some point near the beginning of the shofar service on the second day of Rosh Hashana — as Rachel recited the verses and blessings in preparation to lead the service, and as Jennie stood by her side preparing to softly but firmly call out each blast, keeping the count and keeping time — I realized that it had been over 16 years since I had last heard a man blow shofar on Rosh Hashana, and that I couldn’t remember who that man would have been, or what that was like. Memories are not indelible; the fact that they leave a mark does not mean they can’t fade, or even sometimes get erased. All that art and iconography of Jewish history of men blowing shofar — in oil paintings, inevitably bearded like the mythic cantor imagined in the pre-Musaf prayers — do I remember any of them, from my own life?
It was not always this way for me. I grew up Orthodox and in the Orthodoxy of my youth — and probably still very nearly everywhere — the idea of a woman blowing shofar for the community would have fallen somewhere between unlikely and unthinkable. I’m not even sure I ever thought about the question of its permissibility until the early 2000s when, serving as part of the leadership of an independent minyan community that was striving to be both “traditional” and “egalitarian” — what loaded words! — we were building the lineup for our first High Holidays and the question came up. By “the question came up” I mean there was a woman who wanted to blow shofar, and we needed someone to blow shofar. I suppose it is often the case that halakhic innovation follows opportunity and convenience; and here was Meg, ready and willing. Our community was a good testing ground, as it was constituted of some people for whom egalitarianism was axiomatic, and of others for whom it was a process, or a novelty, or a discovery.
As one does in such communities we embarked on a process of study on the question, learning ancient sources and modern commentaries on the mitzvah of shofar, and who was included in the obligation, and could women discharge the obligation for men, and so on, an elaborate exercise of creative searching for precedent, or perhaps justification, for the decision we wanted to undertake. (It is often this way, but rarely spoken of, that halakhic journeys are pursued on the basis of a desired known outcome.) As I look back on those sincere and rich conversations — I re-read the emails this morning — I see now in the continuous halakhic investigation into the practice of egalitarianism both beauty and tragedy: there is beauty in seeking to revise the tradition, or perhaps to discover old truths buried within it, impelled by the presence of people who obligate us to see their humanity; and there is deep tragedy in the inability, or unwillingness, to simply accept a commitment to egalitarianism, to radical human equality, as a moral fact and a moral truth and to pivot our commitments around it without the degradation involved in trying to locate that commitment in our sources. Those of us committed to halakhah and egalitarianism are ostensibly acting on behalf of the future: if we do it right by the chain of tradition in this generation, later generations will see our commitments as part of that very chain. But in the present, I increasingly find aspects of the whole process as dispiriting as they are dehumanizing; and I know that because of the privileges of my gender and upbringing, it is never me for whom the tradition has to “adapt” or “evolve.” My presence causes no gymnastics on the part of others to make room for me.
We found the answers we needed, though, and the results in the form of our master shofar blower were persuasive enough for those who might have been on the fence. And so for the 14 years that we prayed High Holiday services at our minyan — 4 while we still lived in the community, and 10 for which we drove back to Boston to be part of the congregation — Meg was coterminous for us with the shofar rite. Meg is a strong, straightforward shofar blower: the blasts are military in their precision, the tekiot-gedolot record-setting in their length, and their spiritual register throughout one that calls us to attention.
And then for these past two years we have been in backyards in Riverdale for our makeshift services, unable to travel back to our minyan and unwilling to incur the risks even if we could. Rachel blew shofar for the first time last year — the minyan was in her backyard, and she up on her porch, like the shofarot at Sinai resounding from the mountaintop — and even with experience as a French horn player, the level of expertise for a shofar novice was staggering. The sounds of her shofar are powerful, too, but they are more plaintive. I always knew the metaphors for the “shevarim,” the three ‘broken’ sounds, but I don’t remember ever quite feeling it. Rachel’s shofar sounds broke my heart, and for the past two years the shofar service has left me in tears.
I have the benefit of seeing this story unfold for me over time, in that strange way that the cyclical Jewish calendar enables us to see the past return to us every year as living memories, packing the past into the present in layers. My boys, now 15 and 13, have grown up with Meg and Rachel as the only shofar blowers they know. On that second day of Rosh Hashana, I was thinking about this and getting a little overwhelmed. My 8-year-old daughter came over to stand with me during shofar. She is the only one who still fits under my tallit, and she knows to come running back periodically from playing with her friends for the shofar-as-check-in. I thought about leaning down and telling her: “Look at these women! It is incredible! Do you know you are living at a time in Jewish history when this is possible? Do you see them as you should, these extraordinary powerful role models of ritual leadership, of religious authenticity and spiritual self-confidence? Can you believe this? See them, and maybe you can be them.”
That’s what I felt, and then I realized: why should I saddle her with the baggage I had to acquire on own journey? She will encounter the challenges of inequality in her own lifetime, I am sadly sure of that; she will be disappointed by the failures of egalitarianism in even the communities that consider a commitment to egalitarianism a badge of honor. But this moment that felt redemptive for me could just be normal for her, and not some sort of triumph over history. It could be, for our daughters and our sons, the baseline.
So instead, I leaned down, squeezed her tight, and whispered: “Listen!”
And we did. | https://medium.com/@yehudakurtzer/and-all-the-people-saw-the-sounds-bbb6bcf7f3c3 | ['Yehuda Kurtzer'] | 2021-09-09 20:47:12.156000+00:00 | ['Gender', 'Parenting', 'Shofar', 'Judaism', 'Rosh Hashanah'] |
City Girl In Ohio | grew up in the great state of New Jersey and also live in New York. Suddenly I am living in Ohio for the next four years of my college life. As most people I have met all question “Why Ohio”. Well I know I didn’t want to stay in New Jersey for a long time I did think I would end up in New York. I guess I didn’t want to be close to home. I honestly didn’t want to go to college at all. Both of my parents did not go to college so I was pressured. I said if I have to get a job I want to be a cosmetic chemist as I loved playing with makeup and that’s my art. So I did my research and stumbled upon the one and only University of Toledo. I am currently a Chemistry major and enjoying the quiet area. Even though passing cornfield on the way here did give me horror movie vibes, I a am still enjoying Ohio. My favorite part being here is the stars. Back home stars aren’t very clear, but the city lights are. Walking late at night on campus with a friend at two in the morning just looking at the stars as if they were a rare treasure. I do always get as to say coffee as well with my east coast accent. Along with a lot of questions about the Jersey Shore and what its like to have beaches or what New York City is like. I have realized that nothing is open past midnight except the taco bell which is full of college students wanting food after partying. Surprisingly their is much more to Ohio than I thought there was like shop and food that I have never heard of before, and every one looked at me like I am crazy. I do get yelled at for j-walking by my friends very often. If you have ever been to New York, you make the car waiting for you as you take your time crossing the street. I have noticed though Ohio driving is a lot of speeding and no chalant which I guess is why people actually do wait. I always say you can’t take the city out of the girl. I am still an eastcoast girl and love my Jersey Shore. | https://medium.com/@samantha.hess84/city-girl-in-ohio-2596d80dd75c | ['Sammy Hess'] | 2019-09-09 19:05:12.922000+00:00 | ['New Jersey', 'Ohio'] |
Why design systems fail, and how to make them work | For a short period of time I worked on a design system at WebNL, an agency specialised in web design, development and marketing based in the Netherlands. Our design system was aimed at improving the bridge between the design and development of the products we’re making.
In this blog I will explain how we did this, and why it didn’t work eventually. Hopefully this will prevent others from making the same mistakes we made, even though we’ve learned a lot from them.
The beginning of the journey
When I started working at WebNL, one of my first tasks was to look into the possibilities of improving the transition between design and development of web products. Traditionally this has been a process of developers ‘copying’ the mock-ups made by designers.
The designers did their work primarily in Sketch. They translated their vision of the product into static designs. The developers then wrote HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP to convert these static designs into a working product.
One of the biggest ambitions inside the company was to find a way to make this process less time consuming as the work was basically done twice.
So the first step I took was to find out more about ways in which this process of ‘copying’ could be automated. I looked into automation in Sketch and found out there were plugins that used the Sketch API for this purpose. But the plugins I found lacked reliability and I wasn’t really interested in writing my own Sketch plugin.
I looked further and discovered that Sketch had recently opened up their file system format so their files could be used in other tools. Every property of every group and layer in the design was now easily accessable outside of Sketch and I quickly realised that I could use this to translate these properties into working products automatically.
Building the first prototype
After my discovery I quickly made a proof of concept. It was a very simple prototype that could turn a Sketch file into a working website. A Sketch file is basically a zip file consisting of images and json files. The prototype translated these json files into a Javascript array so it could read all the properties stored inside the Sketch files and use it to generate a standard website.
Our developers were using a centralized file in which SCSS variables were stored. These variables controlled visual aspects of elements like colors, typography, buttons, and form elements. I took those elements and build them into a library of Sketch symbols which could be edited by designers. Designers could then use these elements as a starting point for new projects.
When the visual appearance of these symbols had been changed, I could take the Sketch file and use it to create a new file with variables. Designers could now control these elements in the final product.
/**********************
Colors
**********************/ $brand-primary: rgb(229,0,68);
$brand-secondary: rgb(172,171,171);
$brand-tertiary: rgb(0,0,0);
$brand-lightest: rgb(248,249,250);
$brand-darkest: rgb(52,58,63); $brand-success: rgb(85,184,144);
$brand-error: rgb(229,0,68);
$brand-warning: rgb(255,190,61);
$brand-info: rgb(23,162,184); $text-color: black;
There were also some drawbacks. We could only translate properties of the design into code if they had been standardised. Designers could change properties like colors, font properties, borders and shadows, which were then translated into working code. But the layers and symbols they added would not be translated.
That didn’t seem like a problem. When designers would come up with new properties or elements, developers could just write new code to extend the existing code. I also started making more complicated elements like cards and menus in a standard way to make sure designers would not have to come up with new properties or elements as much as before.
A modular approach for the symbols in our design system
My first prototype got everyone at the company excited. The standardised way things worked had the potential to speed up the workflow of designers and developers alike. While designers could use the standardised elements as templates to make a jumpstart, developers would spent less time on getting things right.
We got permission to spend 100 hours as an investment for future projects. I used these hours to make more elements, and translate them into code. A frontend developer worked alongside me to build the same elements as HTML with SCSS properties.
When we were done, we started using the design system in production. The results were still moderate in the early phase, but showed a lot of potential.
Realising we were building a design system
Ironically, when we started to work on the system we didn’t know what a design system was. We had never heard of it before until our boss introduced the term design system as an existing thing, and as a way to give the project a noticeable name.
We named our project the WebNL Design System, and I started to look into other companies that used design systems.
During this time I read about Brad Frost, a pioneer in design systems. He talked a lot about them and he was even writing a book about it. From his book I learned about atomic design systems, a concept I implemented in our design system.
Atoms, molecules, organisms, templates and pages
I also read about how Airbnb was automating the design process. They used intelligent image recognition to analyse sketches made on paper and translate them into working prototypes immediately. I showed a video of their work inside my own company and that caused people to be even more excited about the potential of design systems.
Another example from Airbnb was react-to-sketch. Airbnb uses it to generate Sketch symbols from existing React components. They can use the react components as a single source of truth like this. For us that didn’t work because we started a lot of new projects where the Sketch designs were the source of truth. So instead we tried to generate code components from existing Sketch symbols.
This difference also exposed another difficulty we had compared to other companies. They usually had a single brand, providing a single service through a few digital products. But we were making products for a wide range of brands providing even more services. So our design system had to be more flexible.
Vox Media has an excellent example of a flexible design system that can be used across brands. To me this proves the feasibility of such a design system, even when it will still makes things hard when trying to automate the workflow between design and development.
Fixing bugs in production
After the first hype about our design system, things started to head south. We used the system extensively, but never without trouble.
We decided to use the system in short sprints where products were made within one week, because that was were we needed it the most. But on several occasions, especially in the beginning, we had to solve issues during the sprints.
Instead of spending time on production we had to debug the system and produce bugfixes. Sometimes the designers had just broken things while editing the Sketch file. During those first trials I worked on getting fixes into the system and making things more enduring so designers couldn’t accidentally break things.
And it worked, the system became better and more reliable. But the system still wasn’t meeting up to expectations.
Managing expectations
Beforehand we didn’t expect that having a design system that could automate things would have us spent less time on projects. The time we saved could be spent as extra time on our projects, we reasoned. But after a while, a product manager still mentioned that we weren’t spending less time.
So not everyone was expecting the same thing from our design system. But things were also not exactly as how we expected them to be. This was because there were still a lot of bugs, not related to the design system but related to the projects. So any time left at the end of the projects would be spent on solving bugs instead of nice features.
In a way this was not what anyone had expected to happen. But I didn’t see this as a problem. We just had to make the system more efficient so more time could be freed up, and less bugs would be produced.
Error handling
Yet this wasn’t were our problems ended. Even though the system had become more reliable, the designers were still making mistakes while building their Sketch files. These mistakes didn’t result in breaking the system anymore, because I had set up error messages that could be analysed by the developers.
My idea was that these messages would cause developers and designers to talk more about problems together so they would understand each other better. But while they were indeed talking more to each other, it didn’t help them understand each other. The designers still didn’t understand the design system.
Eventually I even heard some developers who weren’t directly working with the design system talk about how it didn’t work because designers weren’t using it right. I realized that I had to spent more time explaining the system to designers and co-creating with them.
Teaching designers about design systems
I had already spent a lot of time with developers. But I hadn’t spent much time explaining the design system to designers, assuming they would intuitively know how to use it. This was a mistake.
After that realisation I spent a lot of time teaching our designers how to use the design system. I found out that they had some understanding about components, but they just weren’t used to working with nested components, naming conventions, and working with layer and text styles.
This caused them to ignore some core Sketch principles that the design system relied upon. But moreover, they also weren’t used to working with design templates.
Before the design system was created they always started out with a blank page, using ideation to create new and innovative designs. They wanted each design to be unique and incomparable to another. Even though the design system had been built upon patterns used in their previous work, they wanted to deviate from that work.
This caused headaches with developers, because they now had to do more work instead of less, complying with the whishes of designers.
The end of our Design System
We did eventually reach a point where designers understood enough about Sketch principles and design systems so they could use it without much trouble.
But by the time we reached this point, an unexpected decision was made to completely overhaul our standard codebase. There would be no central file with SCSS variables anymore, making it harder to generate SCSS variables from our Sketch files. All of the existing code components were also put out of order, they would all have to be rebuild before we could automate them again.
At the same time, Invision launched their Design Systems Manager (DSM). This was a product which had become available in beta a short while after we had made the first prototype. DSM offered an API to translate designs into SCSS variables, like we had been doing ourselves before. Now it was out of beta and could be used in production.
Even better, it offered a Sketch plugin for designers which made it easier for them to work with the components and styles used in our design system. We also decided that it would be best to switch to their API for future use, as we had found out that Sketch was continuously updating their file format, making it time-consuming to maintain generating SCSS variables ourselves.
These events finally made us decide to pull the plug on the design system. We would have to rebuild the design system in a new way to make it automated again, and we just didn’t have the time at that moment. Instead we focused on smaller improvements with Invision DSM and our new codebase.
Takeaway
I still think design systems can do a lot of good, and at WebNL we are also still working on new design systems for clients. They are just more customized now and less automated. But there are some lessons we have learned that everyone should take in mind before creating their own design system.
Manage expectations. Don’t make yourself or other people think your design system will change the world by saving you time. Instead, focus on things that are really important, like designers and developers understanding eachother.
Don’t make yourself or other people think your design system will change the world by saving you time. Instead, focus on things that are really important, like designers and developers understanding eachother. Don’t do everything at once. At the start of your journey, it can be tempting to try and make a complete design system. This won’t work as you’ll have to explain and decide upon everything you make together with other designers and developers. Instead, try to take small steps over time.
At the start of your journey, it can be tempting to try and make a complete design system. This won’t work as you’ll have to explain and decide upon everything you make together with other designers and developers. Instead, try to take small steps over time. Design for people. The biggest mistake I made is thinking that I could improve the connection between designers and developers by putting a system between them. It’s much better to actually get them in a room and have them making decisions together, even when this process takes a lot of time and effort.
I hope these lessons can help you avoid the mistakes we made during our first attempt at building a design system. Hopefully I will be able to share about our new design systems workflow in the near future. I’m also curious to know about how other people use design systems in their workflow. Leave a comment if you’d like to share your experience or if you have any questions. | https://uxdesign.cc/why-design-systems-fail-and-how-to-make-them-work-6f6d812e216d | ['Daniël De Wit'] | 2019-01-03 17:40:56.407000+00:00 | ['Development', 'Design Systems', 'Design', 'Sketch', 'UX'] |
Hammer Missions: Success Stories — Euro Drone Inspections | Overview
In this issue of Hammer Missions’s success stories, we spoke to Rik Bijl from Euro Drone Inspections, an innovative commercial drone operator based in the Netherlands, using Hammer for the past 1.5 years.
Euro Drone Inspections, are part of a major Engineering Company in the Benelux called KH Group, and provide a variety of drone services for customers in various industrial sectors, governments, construction and infrastructure. They collect very detailed images and data for their customers in a safe and reliable manner.
Their current services include remote sensing data capture, inspection services, 2D & 3D mapping services and photography & video with their drones. The data collected with drones is indispensable for project developers, developing builders, architects, civil contractors, engineering firms and governments. They use the data to process 2D and 3D models for transformation, renovation and redesign or maintenance applications. Together with KH Group’s sister company — Smart Asset Integrity Solutions, they offer a complete inspection portfolio of which our drone data collection is an essential part.
The Interview
Q. What made you enter the drone industry?
“After almost 25 years in the IT Business of which 12 years as co-founder of a midsize IT firm it was time to broaden my horizon and step into the undiscovered world of Unmanned Aviation. We were asked by a traditional inspection company, who performed inspections on scaffoldings. Inspections with drones are more safe and flexible. That was the start of Euro Drone Inspections at the end of 2014.”
Q. Could you describe the services you currently offer and to whom?
“Our slogan is: It’s not about flying It’s about collecting reliable data.
High resolution Inspection, mapping, 3D point clouds and progress beauty shots. Customers are very diverse from Multinationals in oil and gas, governmental customers and construction companies. For example : Rijkswaterstaat, is part of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management and responsible for the design, construction, management and maintenance of the main infrastructure facilities in the Netherlands.
We have thousands of unique objects in the Netherlands that need regular inspection. Drones cannot be ignored anymore and have proven clear advantages. “
Q. What drones and cameras do you currently operate?
“Every project needs its own drone that’s right for the job to be done. Also the attached payload can vary depending on the project.
Our fleet consists of the DJI Matrice 600 Pro D-RTK, DJI Matrice 210 RTK v2 , DJI Matrice 210,
Inspire 2 ProResDNG, Inspire 2, Mavic Dual Enterprise.
Cameras include Sony Alpha 7R , Sony FS7 , Zenmuse X4S , Zenmuse X5s and the 30x optical zoom Z30. We also rent other payloads as needed.
We were one of the first operators in Europe to test the Skydio S2 autonomous drone in a real test plant in Rotterdam. Very promising and in Q1 2021 we will have its successor the X2"
The operations of Euro Drone Inspections in action
Q. What’s been your most challenging drone mission?
“We were asked to inspect the remains of a parking lot that collapsed during construction, 2 weeks before opening. The parking lot consists of three stories and was only 100m away from an airport’s runway. The whole area was closed to the public and our drones provided very useful information to the investigation team. After 2 days of flying and providing the right data the first insights about the potential cause were found. We received a lot of Dutch national TV attention.”
Q. What made you choose Hammer?
“The easiness to use, the responsive team behind it and the availability of lots of missions types.
From a pilot and mission planner point of view Hammer is very straight forward and programmed with the intention to collect drone data easy and efficiently”
Q. What missions do you typically fly with Hammer?
“In our daily operations of 2d-3d mapping we use Double Grid with oblique camera angle settings , Single Grid with Nadir camera setup, Vertical Inspections and Waypoint mission used in clash detections for example”
Q. What’s the next big thing for your organisation?
“As of November 1st, we joined the KH group, a top 10 engineering firm in the Benelux with a huge number of multi-national connections in oil-gas industries and construction. Together with our sister company Smart Asset Integrity Solutions we can offer the “complete” picture in QA/QC. Static Laser scans combined with photogrammetry point clouds are used to deliver digital twins and as-build models. We are more than ready for takeoff in 2021"
Q. How do you see the drone industry evolving?
“More and more autonomous flights, if law and legislation approve. Drones will perform complex inspections, even in GPS denied area’s due to evolving techniques like Lidar, sense & avoid etc. The traditional pilot will be replaced by good planning software and autonomous drones.”
Closing Thoughts
We are grateful to Euro Drone Inspections for sharing their story and their current operations. We look forward to supporting their operations into the future with adaptive flight automation. Together we believe that safe and innovative drone operations combined with flight automation will shape the future of the commercial drone industry.
If you’d like to learn more about Hammer, please visit hammermissions.com get in touch with us at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.
- The Hammer Team | https://medium.com/hammer-news/hammer-missions-success-stories-euro-drone-inspections-601d6793f5ed | ['Hammer Missions'] | 2020-12-01 14:57:39.948000+00:00 | ['Operations', 'Inspection', 'Automation', 'Drones', 'Data'] |
Stop talking to other leftists | Photo by Korney Violin on Unsplash
Navigating 2020
Stop talking to other leftists
How anti-capitalist navel-gazing undermines progress
Far too much is made of the anti-capitalist left and how we posture or strategize regarding our pressure on establishment forces.
And not nearly enough discourse is aimed at Dem casuals despite their hand in bringing us to this point — their resistance to analyzing class conflict, their susceptibility to weaponized identity politics, their utter lack of imagination regarding what function government has in the promotion of its people’s well-being.
And less still is aimed at so-called conservatives whose political and historical ignorance is so far divorced from reality that they truly are the perfection of working class exploitation: they suffer many of the same ills as us, yet have been convinced to the point of violent rage that we, in our attempts to liberate the working class, are their enemies.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
I’m not telling you to berate these people or that discourse would consist of the finger-wagging woke-scolding bullshit we’re so good at (of which this article is not an exception). It’s easy to perceive as evil or personal failure what is really just the product of a tremendous effort to manufacture consent. In any case, the focus of our energy needs to be directed at the actual problem in America: not how the existing left is interacting with the establishment (these will always be dumpster fire lose-lose conversations because we’re hyper-focused on binary outcomes), but rather how to grow anti-capitalist sentiment itself by talking to people that don’t yet agree with us, people that haven’t even had an introduction to concepts like socialism or critical theory. In different terms, how to bring the left’s ideas toward the center of mainstream discourse.
Our ideas will remain fringe and radical only so long as we fail to promote them aggressively to the common people.
And of course, there is a space of maximum reach that is different for each of us. For instance, I don’t expect my Black trans allies to be reaching out to somebody’s racist uncle who proudly flies the Confederate flag and spends time in comment sections cheering on the death of non-violent protestors. But especially to our white allies whose circle of friends and family reaches into the All Lives Matter crowd or even Trump-supporters, I’m telling you directly that we need you to have those tough conversations on our behalf.
Photo by Roman Koester on Unsplash
Allyship is hard.
And if those conversations strike you as awkward or stressful or inviting of conflict, good. That shows how necessary they are to have. Allyship isn’t easy. It means acting as a white blood cell in the immune system of a nation ravaged by the disease of capitalist lies about meritocracy and individualism. Being a useful part of this movement is strenuous. So if you really want to help us move forward and break free, we need you to do some difficult things.
If your definition of being a good ally is believing what we believe but never manifesting this as action, one must question the value of this sort of allyship beyond the confines of your ego.
Do not rest in the privilege of inaction and convince yourself you’re a good person by merely feeling bad for us. Fuck that. Fight for the oppressed.
I do what I can with people I knew from the military. I talk to classmates from campus who’ve never been “into” this stuff. I talk to casual and apolitical family who watch The View and think the usual faces in the Democratic Party are the “good guys.” I slogged through the mud of conversations about Bernie Sanders’s platform that began with the interjection, “but he doesn’t have a chance, right?”
Art courtesy @retrainingpavlov on instagram
Some of the longest talks I had over the course of the primary were with ardent Buttigieg supporters (feel my pain). I put in time with a conservative woman who grew up never leaving her rural bubble, Fox News on 24/7, convinced socialism is bad without being able to define the term. Balanced against a great deal of self-care and many, many restful days unplugged, I trudged through the Dem establishment’s talking points, the GOP’s talking points, and the type of confidence in completely erroneous ideas one can only get from some noxious mix of the U.S. education system and heavy doses of cleverly edited, emotionally potent YouTube videos.
And while most of my friends know me for my rhetoric and the essays I compose or a speech they heard me give at a pre-COVID rally, I consider most of the work I’ve done for the movement in those spectacularly draining, unsexy conversations. Even if I don’t flip an immediate switch in someone’s mind that brings them to class consciousness. Even if it doesn’t feel immediately effective or rewarding. Even if it doesn’t come with Likes and Shares and clout™.
The path forward demands redirecting our passion and energy outward instead of inward.
I know it’s easy to talk to other leftists (even as infighting) because we have that common ground. Believe me, I’ve been there: lost in the rabbit hole of leftbook echo bubbles, debating red-faced about Noam Chomsky’s signature on an open letter, the value of Sam Harris’s opinions regarding BLM, Angela Davis’s electoral position in 2020, references to dusty texts volleyed by gatekeeping M-Ls whose entire existence seem to indicate that once you read enough theory, you actually just graduate from meaningful action entirely.
Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
But recognize this: we anti-capitalists are a growing minority whose power resides in our unity as a collective, which means we grow in power through our ability to popularize and normalize our ideas. The many ills of late-stage capitalism, healthcare as a human right, the intersectionality between profit motives and their undermining of human dignity in the world, action on climate change, the need for a robust labor movement, mutual aid, prison abolition, on and on and on. We want to help working people and we know the path to get it done. It begins, first and foremost, with extending our ideas and getting people to question toxic systemic and cultural norms. We can’t get that done if we stay in our bubbles.
We are armed with reality itself. We need to lean on that and spend more of our effort reaching out to people who aren’t yet in our tent.
This is not as difficult as it seems — many casuals are already sympathetic to the struggles of marginalized communities in a social justice context. We need only help them see the next step — the deep and undeniable connection between those issues and capitalism’s role in perpetuating them.
So, let’s get out of our bubbles. Let’s talk to people. Let’s grind away the machine of capitalism — one tough conversation at a time. | https://medium.com/the-anticapital/stop-talking-to-other-leftists-5f338e599253 | ['Michael Guevarra'] | 2020-07-28 00:01:33.848000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Echo Chamber', 'Discourse', 'Leftists', 'Allyship'] |
PolkaBridge’s INO Platform | PolkaBridge Launches Initial NFT Offering (INO) Platform
Put simply, NFTs are collectable digital assets that hold value.
As the name implies, an Initial NFT Offering, or “INO”, is based on the concept of Initial Coin Offering (ICO) but in this case involves NFTs where a set of limited edition of NFTs are offered for sale. It is a revolutionary crowdfunding approach.
What do NFT buyers and artists & art-related enterprises stand to gain from PolkaBridge’s INO platform?
Convenient, transparent and easy listing practice
Good return on investment (ROI)
Fair distribution
Liquidity provision
Interactive user interface
Avoiding gas wars and having lower fees for minting
Avoiding hoarding (one user buying too many)
Providing scarce (less circulating supply) NFTs to users
Offering one of a kind limited edition mintsDeveloping a finance market around NFTs.
The PolkaBridge INO platform shall include unique and promising NFTs including profile pictures, collectible cards, artwork, game items, digital real estate, and metaverse related offerings etc.
However, there are two requirements,
1. A user needs to stake 1000 PBR, to be eligible.
2. He or she can only make an individual of 5 NFT packages, not more.
Once the user is found eligible for the pool, pays for the NFT packages and the payment transaction is successfully confirmed on-chain, the item(s) will be minted via smart contract and sent to the user’s wallet or upon the manual claim.
The purchase would then be complete and the buyer would be able to use the NFT items for any purpose that he or she desires.
PolkaBridge’s INO platform is expected to launch at the end of November and the first project will be revealed in early December.
For More Information:
📢 Twitter: https://twitter.com/realpolkabridge
📢 Medium: https://medium.com/@polkabridge
📢 Github: https://github.com/cyclese96
📢 Telegram Channel https://t.me/polkabridge
📢 Telegram Group https://t.me/polkabridgegroup
📢 Discord https://discord.gg/G3NDrcq6GW
📢 Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/polkabridge_official
📢Website: https://polkabridge.org
📢Farming https://farm.polkabridge.org
📢Staking https://stake.polkabridge.org
📢 LaunchPad https://launchpad.polkabridge.org
📢 CoinMarketcap https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/polkabridge | https://medium.com/@danielataijenkaroijo/polkabridges-ino-platform-237aa8bd431d | [] | 2021-12-27 15:57:07.804000+00:00 | ['Polkabridge', 'Ino', 'Polkadot'] |
11 things that cost you more money than a school construction bond | Bethel voters will once again head to the polls next month to decide the fate of a $443 million school construction bond that would build three brand new schools and renovate and expand six other schools.
It goes without saying that $443 million is a lot of money, but thanks to the recent changes in how the state funds public education, local school-related taxes in 2019 will still be lower for Bethel taxpayers than they were in 2018 — even if our bond is approved.
But building schools is expensive. There’s just no getting around that. And, if the February bond passes, Bethel property owners will be footing the bill for those new and expanded schools.
The bond would cost taxpayers $1.42 per thousand dollars of assessed value. For the average single-family home in Bethel ($297,021), that would mean $35 a month, or $1.17 a day.
Asking people for their hard-earned money is never an easy decision for a school district, and our school board doesn’t approve any bonds without first thinking long and hard about how it will affect taxpayers. That said, there are many ways to spend $1.17, and spending it on the future of our children is never a bad move.
Here a just a few other ways Americans spend their money: | https://medium.com/@bethelsd/11-things-that-cost-you-more-money-than-a-school-construction-bond-997c1ea3e9f5 | ['Bethel Schools'] | 2019-01-11 16:00:20.887000+00:00 | ['Marijuana'] |
HMS President helps fight on the frontline | HMS President helps fight on the frontline
Royal Navy reservists from HMS President are on the frontline in the fight against coronavirus
Commander Adham Khalek
Adham Khalek.
In his civilian career, Adham is a Consultant in Emergency Medicine at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
When on duty he is responsible for overseeing the initial assessment, treatment, resuscitation (if necessary) and admission/discharge of all Emergency patients — along with a team of doctors, nurses, porters and other health professionals.
His job now is no different from his job normally but now with much higher levels of safety put in place — working in various levels of PPE to manage the added risks.
Cdr Adham Khalek.
“It may sound cheesy but the Royal Navy core values (commitment, courage, loyalty, respect, integrity and discipline) are exactly what is required from everyone and has been on display.”
Everyone at work in his department has pulled together recently (even more so than usual) and overcome a continuous chain of challenges in a way that is strikingly similar to the can-do attitude he has seen and experienced on operations.
But he couldn’t stop there, he has also volunteered for the COVID vaccine trial — which he has been screened for and is awaiting a response!
Father Tom Pyke
Tom Pyke, is a Parish Vicar in the Isle of Dogs and HMS President’s Chaplain. Like all Chaplains in the Royal Navy, he is affectionately known as ‘Bish’. | https://medium.com/voices-of-the-armed-forces/hms-president-helps-fight-on-the-frontline-d2d406258b0c | ['Ministry Of Defence'] | 2020-05-14 12:40:01.321000+00:00 | ['Case Study', 'Covid 19', 'Medical', 'Military', 'Coronavirus'] |
Keep Your API Keys Safe. Get those important strings out of your… | Keep Your API Keys Safe
Get those important strings out of your code and into PLIST files
Image is based on Security by Komkrit Noenpoempisut from the Noun Project
Many APIs require developers to provide an API key and/or API secret to be able to access the API.
This is both to identify the app that is accessing the API and to limit access to the API for apps that are known to the API.
Both the API key and the secret (if you have one) should be treated as a secret: Anyone who knows these can access and use the API, impersonating your app. This results in all sorts of security concerns: Depending on the type of API, an attacker might be able to access your application’s data, compromise your users’ data, and access information that is protected by the terms of service established between you and the service provider. They might also thrash the API, causing a large bill for you at the end of the month.
All of these are good reasons to make sure to keep your API keys and secrets safe and secure.
In this article, we’re going to look at how to make sure your API keys and secrets don’t accidentally leak to your version control system. The easiest, but also the most dangerous, way to store your API key is to define a constant in your app’s source code. You might have seen code like this:
When committing code like this to your version control system, anyone who has access to your repository can go ahead and use the API key in their app to access the API. This might not be a big deal if your code lives in an in-house repository with tight access control, but it is a huge security risk for open source projects.
The easiest way to work around this is to externalise your API key into a configuration file that you don’t check in to your repository. You can then keep the API key in a secure location (such as a password manager) and hand it out to developers on a need-to-know basis. For example, you might want to use the API key for accessing the production endpoints only on your CI/CD server and provide developers with API keys to the development endpoints (which might have stricter rate limiting and tighter cost caps).
In iOS, we traditionally use PLIST (short for property list) files to store and manage configuration data. PLIST files essentially are XML files with benefits. For example, Xcode provides a graphical editor to make editing PLIST files more pleasant, and there’s an easy-to-use API for reading PLIST files.
Let’s have a look at how this helps us to keep the API key in the above code snippet safe and make our code more secure. | https://medium.com/better-programming/fetch-api-keys-from-property-list-files-in-swift-4a9e092e71fa | ['Peter Friese'] | 2020-10-01 19:12:33.052000+00:00 | ['Open Source', 'Xcode', 'iOS', 'Swift', 'Programming'] |
Fiat to crypto exchange bitpolo.com goes live | Bangalore — 6 May 2020
Highly anticipated fiat-crypto exchange BitPolo, goes live with its trading platform bitpolo.com custom-designed for Indian users, on May 6, 2020. Headquartered in Bangalore, India, BitPolo cryptocurrency exchange offers crypto trading with a series of desirable, state-of-art features like high liquidity markets, fiat payment gateways, tight order book spread, instant INR deposits and withdrawals, engaging and easy to use UI, and bare minimum fees. Chief Business Officer Mr. Suresh Choudhary said, “We were building through the bear market and thought the timing of our launch cannot be more apt than when the world is slowly inching back towards normalcy post a pandemic & recessionary environment. As we foresee fragilities of traditional asset classes, crypto markets seem to offer the bigger upside and we intend to bring simplicity and solid technology to the screens of Indian traders and hodlers.’’ The company’s Head of Strategy Mr. Chandan Choudhury said that “COVID-19 is an eye-opener. We always knew at the back of our minds that there is a huge bubble across traditional asset classes fuelled by loose monetary policy. It is imperative we make strides towards crypto adoption and we expect people actively participating in this distributed, permission-less crypto/blockchain ecosystem and anticipate bitpolo.com to enable this vision.” Crypto usage and adoption have been snowballing in India, especially after the SC’s ruling in March this year that was proclaimed in favour of it. The first crypto, Bitcoin, after shaking off the brief pandemic induced volatility, also shows signs of correlating with gold and exhibiting price-action and properties similar to the safe-haven asset. BitPolo’s launch overlaps with an increasing necessity for an exchange providing a comprehensive, holistic, and unparalleled service. BitPolo, with its pioneering, robust platform seeks to abridge millions of Indian crypto users to a market that provides convenient BTC to INR trading, high-speed order matching, uncompromising security, and uninterrupted 24/7 support.
About BitPolo
BitPolo, founded in March 2020, is an idea that strives to introduce crypto assets to each and every citizen of India. A group of crypto enthusiasts, traders, and fin-tech promoters had weathered down the previous two-year period of uncertainty, waiting for the right opportunity to disrupt the market. BitPolo is the culmination of efforts to develop a trading platform both simple and futuristic in its delineation. The BitPolo team states that it firmly believes in and works by the motto that ‘Crypto assets are the inevitable future.’
Visit https://www.bitpolo.com to explore a seamless trading platform.
Contact: Chandan, Head of Strategy
Email: [email protected] | https://medium.com/mrcryptoindia/fiat-to-crypto-exchange-bitpolo-com-goes-live-e277272ee840 | ['Anand Agarwal'] | 2020-05-06 06:17:30.793000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin', 'Exchange'] |
How to Choose an Exchange in the Crypto Asset Market. Part 4 — Summary | How to Choose an Exchange in the Crypto Asset Market. Part 4 — Summary
We would like to sum up our series of articles about working in the crypto asset market and come up with some news and ideas.
As it was mentioned before your first step into the new world of cryptocurrencies is often through an exchange where buyers and sellers interact. According exchanges it is very important to indicate two important moments: liquidity and reliability. As you already know the more the turnover, the higher the liquidity. Trading volume is an indicator of exchange popularity. There are hundreds of exchanges in operation and new ones are popping up every day. To make sure the intention of the trading site to conduct an honest business, it is worth to look at the latest news and comments of its founders on legal and regulatory issues. Learn carefully an exchange where you want to buy and sell your cryptocurrencies and never invest more than you can afford to lose. Check the relevant policies, look into the reputation and confirm that there is enough security. The more secure exchanges charge the higher transaction rate.
Moreover, there are some principles for choosing an exchange in terms of convenience and compliance with your strategy such as number of trading pair, accessibility for new participants and users from other countries, amount of a commission, possibility of margin trading, quality and immediacy of the technical support and so on. Try to find out all your options and think about how you can spot a safe exchange for long term perspective. Finally, do not be afraid to sign-up for different exchanges and use them all. Exchanges are appeared and some of them promise perspectives to all participants of crypto market.
Everybody is making money in crypto these days and looking for tokens to invest in and earn. The next step after knowing the best cryptocurrency exchanges is to figure out your trading strategy and Simdaq platform can help you. The platform is already available for users.
Registration is free now. www.simdaq.com
Trade free and safe with our simulator based on real historical data! | https://medium.com/simdaq-blog/how-to-choose-an-exchange-in-the-crypto-asset-market-part-4-summary-545da7e4ecc6 | [] | 2018-09-14 12:46:24.154000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Exchange', 'Token Sale', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Crypto'] |
Where Magic Weaves | Amids the clear blue sky
It’s a vast universe we pass by;
Across the oceans they say we travel the world,
But little did they know the life of a bird | https://medium.com/@shilpa-suresh/where-magic-weaves-101d151aec63 | ['Shilpa Suresh'] | 2020-12-20 14:59:17.456000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Poetry', 'Imagination', 'Magic', 'Creativity'] |
How to Maintain Brand Loyalty in a Pandemic World | Summer 2020: The Virtual Revolution has dawned. Our economy was destined for a radical shift and COVID-19 has been the catalyst to our new virtualized world. Nearly every industry has been impacted and companies are shifting strategies and prioritizing values in order to stay afloat. Here are 3 ways to maintain brand loyalty in a pandemic world:
Own up to ethical responsibility. Today’s brands are looking beyond their own profits and reflecting upon values and the impact their product or service makes on society. We have seen a spike amongst brands that have established a mission to use their power to positively impact the planet and people. Increased transparency in supply chain, product ingredients and/or profit contributions are all essential to brand trust. Successful brands recognize that consumers hold the largest stake in a brand’s digital voice. In fact, 64% of consumers expect a brand to represent them and solve societal problems. Take your customers through a complete journey. A customer’s experience with a brand starts the moment they decide to research a brand, which makes reviews and peer referrals one of the most important factors in a purchasing decision. As more people are shopping online, the website experience, customer service, packaging, and product integrity are all critical factors to a positive brand experience. Upkeep your product quality standards through digitized word of mouth. Today’s consumers want less volume and higher quality products. The first recession of a generation along with greater awareness of sustainability, calls for products with greater integrity and a lower carbon footprint. We no longer have in-store product samples or the ability to try or touch a product before buying. Purchasing decisions are now completely digital which has given rise to the value of digital word of mouth.
Build brand awareness, acquire new customers, and raise brand awareness during COVID with XrossWorld: The on-demand, fully-automated ambassador & influencer marketing platform. | https://medium.com/xrossworld/how-to-maintain-brand-loyalty-in-a-pandemic-world-d411a1051fa0 | ['Rebecca Borrego'] | 2020-08-28 23:07:52.648000+00:00 | ['Brand Strategy', 'Consumer Behavior', 'Digital Marketing', 'Pandemic Response', 'Influencer Marketing'] |
The NOMADX Story | NOMADX is seeking to revolutionise the way location independent professionals, or “Digital Nomads” live, work and travel the world.
NOMADX was born March 25, 2017 after 20+ years of digital entrepreneurship and five straight years of global travel experiences to over 50 countries. The founders saw a need to help others easily and affordably experience the slow travel Digital Nomad lifestyle whether for a month or a lifetime in amazing locations throughout the world, with our start in Portugal!
So what’s NOMADX?
NOMADX Slow Travel Pads™ and Community for Digital Nomads offers one to six plus month rentals direct from friendly hosts in cool local Portuguese neighborhoods. We help you stay on budget with a private room, apartment or shared coliving space ranging from €250 to €850+ per month. And, we offer access to our local digital community as a bonus. If you’re a Digital Nomad or a Host, please give us a try @ https://www.nomadx.com/
It’s our company’s mission as a Public Benefit Corporation to promote friendliness, cultural understanding and social interaction between Digital Nomads and the local communities in which they live and work. We realize that it’s important to give back and we’ve made that part of our company’s mission!
NOMADX makes it easy and affordable to live the Digital Nomad lifestyle, explore new cultures, and meet people from around the world while maintaining a healthy career. We provide the infrastructure necessary for getting you away from your home office or crowded co-working space and into a perspective-shifting setting, for as little as a month, and at local prices that are much more affordable than AirBNB’s short term rates.
Professionals who choose the NomadX lifestyle have the opportunity to step out of their comfort zones, living like locals as they achieve personal and business breakthroughs in picturesque settings around the world.
Dave and Jen Williams founded NomadX in March 2017 to help global workers experience a new way to travel, live and work throughout the world. They saw a need that wasn’t being met by current industry providers so they founded NomadX!
We hope you enjoy what we have created!
NOMADX is a Member of the Startup Lisboa, Government Sponsored Incubator
Global Adventurers — Pilgrims of the World
DAVE WILLIAMS, Chairman, CEO and Co-founder
Dave Williams is a pioneer in the digital marketing, advertising and ad tech industries as a serial digital entrepreneur over the past 20+ years with multiple exits in in the early formative stages of the search engine marketing, social media and ad tech industries. He and his wife Jen, the company’s Chief Fun Officer, and their dog, Manu, now reside in Lisbon, Portugal and the Northern Algarve after moving from the United States in 2017 after visiting over 50 countries on their global travels.
They decided to move after discovering the country while hiking the Camino Portugues from Caminha in the far north of Portugal to Porto and then through the southern coast on the Rota Vicentina’s Fisherman Trails. They immediately fell in love with the small coastal towns, rich culture, friendly people, culinary delights and the revived entrepreneurial spirit of the country. It was this inspiration that led them to starting NomadX as a way to share their passion for travel, adventure and living a location independent lifestyle.
Prior to starting NomadX, Dave and Jen spent the previous five years traveling the world where they saw an opportunity to improve upon the ease of finding affordable midterm housing and immediate connection to the local community for slow traveling freelancers, location independent entrepreneurs and remote employees. They’re driven by a passion for helping entrepreneurs, startups and corporate employees experience and incorporate the NomadX way of life into a futuristic global lifestyle.
Recent featured articles and podcasts:
Host Silvia Christmann from The DNX Podcast http://dnxpodcast.libsyn.com/dave-williams-summiting-the-peaks-of-entrepreneurship
Host Chris Reynolds from The Business Method Podcast: https://thebusinessmethod.podbean.com/e/ep357-bootstrapping-multiple-businesses-to-7-figures-dave-williams/
Host Marshall Mosher from Vestigo: https://blog.vestigo.co/episode-40-dave-williams-adventure-entrepreneur/
Host Jen Miller from 9th House Studios: http://www.9thhousestudios.com/podcast/serial-entrepreneur-adventure-sabbaticals/
Hypepotamus Articles: | https://medium.com/@marketing_85937/the-nomadx-story-c1428adf5f0e | [] | 2019-05-27 12:05:59.634000+00:00 | ['Digital Nomads', 'Travel', 'Nomadx', 'Nomad', 'Portugal'] |
Shame and Money, a Gay Man’s Journey | Shame and Money, a Gay Man’s Journey
It’s taken years to undo internalised feelings of lack and brokenness.
Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash
I was 8 years old, getting dressed with my family for a big night out, a banquet to honour a teacher who played a big part in my life and the lives of my siblings. The house was a flurry of activity, and I saw this as an opportunity to get really dressed up. We piled into the car and made our way to the hotel.
It was only when we were all sat around the banquet table, that my parents realised that I had covered my cheeks with my mother’s rouge makeup. Some people laughed, others were angry, and the look on my parents’ face of sheer disappointment was enough to crush me. I felt so much shame and confusion, all I could do was collapse into tears.
I don’t share this cringe-worthy memory for the sake of self-deprecation or to relive my curiosity about what my mom and sisters got up to in the mirror. This story is about my feeling ashamed and what I did with that shame.
That shame and pain turned into many, many years of overcompensating.
I overcompensated so much that by the age of 20, I had accumulated over $20,000 worth of debt that I was struggling to pay. That burden then turned into another cycle of shame for not being responsible and capable enough to honour my financial obligations.
So imagine, you have this vicious cycle of shame for being gay, taking it out on your finances, and then being ashamed and depressed because you’re not taking care of yourself.
Yep, that was me. It got so bad that I was buying groceries on my credit card.
But behind that “nice guy” activity, was a longing to feel loved and accepted.
And you want to know the worst part? I was making good money, so I really had no excuse for being in debt, having no savings, living paycheck to paycheck. I had no excuse, but I had a reason. I had a completely destructive attitude towards money, because I had a poor sense of self-worth.
In your close circle, how many of you would be described as “the reliable one”? That’s me. And what that used to mean was that I was the one everyone could come to for money. So I found myself giving out cash for years.
But behind that “nice guy” activity, was a longing to feel loved and accepted. So in many ways, you could say that I was buying acceptance. This was unconscious, but nonetheless a strong motivation.
About a year ago, I was giving a workshop to a room of about 50 people, many of them black, gay men, like me. In preparation for the talk, it struck me that there were very likely to be people in that room who either went through or were going through the same struggles that I had with money. And I guessed that it was also quite possible that those struggles might have had something to do with their own struggles with shame, brought about by their sexual identity and/or race.
I introduced the room to 3 personalities that I’d observed.
Either in myself or others, that I thought would help illustrate the ways in which our shame would often manifest itself in the ways that we dealt with money:
Paul the Perfectionist
We all know Paul. EVERYTHING about his life just has to be perfect, and he spares no expense in cultivating/having the perfect body, the perfect home, the perfect wardrobe, the perfect vacations, the perfect gadgets…anything that proves to the world and to himself that everything is alright, that he’s made it, in spite of himself.
Paul perhaps feels a sense of emptiness and disorder, brought on from the internalised notions that he is broken, imperfect and somehow needs fixing. He’s heard the untruths about himself and is motivated to counteract those ideas in the pursuit of perfection.
Carlton the Caregiver
Carlton takes care of everyone, even those who probably don’t deserve it. He puts his own needs second, just so he can prove that he’s worthy, reliable and good enough. He reaches into his pocket again and again, even if it’s hurting his own financial situation, because he has tied his sense of self-worth to what he can do for other people.
Carlton has internalised the lie that he is worth-less, that he is not worthy of love, respect or affection. So, he uses his finances to demonstrate his worth, to convince others that he is worthy.
Leroy the Life of the Party
Who doesn’t want to be around Leroy? He believes that tomorrow isn’t promised and as a consequence, he should live life to the fullest. He doesn’t worry about saving or the future because who knows if the future will ever come?
Again, Leroy wants to be the biggest character, the most fun in his group of friends, the one who never says “no” to a good time. And he’ll go to whatever lengths necessary to prove that YOLO is the way to go.
Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash
Now, I don’t want you to get me wrong. I’m not saying that any of these exaggerated characters are “bad” in and of themselves, but I believe that these are ways in which many of us deal with the shame, pain and confusion of growing up in a world that is hostile towards us because we’re both queer and BAME (for those of you outside of the UK, this is a widely-used acronym for Black Asian and Minority Ethnic people). For you, that shame or feeling of ‘otherness’ might be for other reasons: gender, socio-economic status, level of education, disability…anything at all.
Furthermore, I’m an advocate for many of the attributes that the 3 characters display: ambition and aspiration, caring and compassion, living in the moment.
What I should mention is that I’ve displayed all 3 of these personalities in my life.
Believe me, each of Paul, Carlton and Leroy STILL pop up in my behaviour from time to time. However, when I was really struggling with these archetypes, Carlton especially, I was doing so to my own detriment. I was literally smothering my financial well-being — at which point, this personality trait was doing more harm than good.
Back to my workshop. When I addressed that room of people last year, my main hypothesis was that as black and queer people they were likely to be harming themselves financially — this wasn’t a scientific assessment, simply my view derived from years of personal experience and observing others. And from the nods and audible affirmations in the room, it seemed that this hypothesis connected and had some truth.
What I wanted them to understand was that the result of my behavior took much longer to undo than the time it took to create.
The second motivation for having this conversation was because I believed (and still do) that there is a myth out there that needs to be dispelled. Have you heard of the Pink Pound? In the US, it’s called the Pink Dollar? This is the amount of purchasing power or wealth that exists in the LGBT community. It’s estimated at £6 billion in the UK and almost $1 trillion in the US. There is this belief that queer people, especially gay men, have more disposable income than our straight counterparts.
While this might be statistically true, I question whether that purchasing power translates into real net worth and financial well-being. Having lots of money to spend is great, but does it leave us in a better position financially, if all we’re doing is being either Paul, Carlton or Leroy? I don’t think that it does. So the idea of the Pink Pound can be misleading, especially to those of us who it’s meant to describe — giving the false sense that we’re doing just fine because we don’t have the same financial obligations as everyone else (in particular, not having children, although that is changing now).
I also worry about black LGBT people. While the Pink Pound theory suggests that being part of the LGBT community means having access to more money, I wonder to what extent this really applies to queer people of colour. The reality is that black people experience a significant wealth gap and there’s no reason to expect that this doesn’t apply to black LGBT people.
What does this mean? It means that we are being left behind. And that’s what I want to address. Let’s face it, queer people are less likely to have children to look after them in their older years, less likely to have family support. So my question is: what happens to the queer person near the end of their lives? Have they earned, saved and invested enough to enjoy retirement? This is an urgent question for me as a gay man, and for everyone else in the community.
The facts are:
We have more debt than our straight counterparts.
We have a lower savings rate and little emergency savings.
We are not using financial advisors and don’t plan to use one.
We may not have as much family support.
So, while I do the work of sharing the message of financial literacy and taking decisive action on a consistent basis, I think back to that young kid, sitting in shame. I feel a strong obligation to him, a desire to give him the support and reinforcement to look after himself — including his financial health. And while my perspective is that of a black, gay man, my motivations are wide-reaching. I want everyone to see how their financial destiny oftentimes has nothing to do with the reason that they typically blame — that they’re not earning enough money. If they’re anything like me, it has a lot to do with mindset and approach to money.
It is my passion to introduce people to the idea that seeing themselves as fully in control, regardless of where they are today, is the first step to making radical changes to their future. When I realised that I didn’t have to use my money to prove my worth, and that I had a duty to look after myself, then I started on the path to completely turning my life around. My hope is that this awareness becomes much more commonplace in all of our communities. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/shame-and-money-a-gay-mans-journey-116cea8aaa33 | ['Kayus Fernander'] | 2020-12-28 18:02:42.458000+00:00 | ['Love', 'Growth', 'Shame', 'Self', 'Money'] |
Happier Birthday to Me | Happier Birthday to Me
Part of getting older and becoming happier is integrating our messier, fragmented parts so we can become whole on our own
Photo by Lizzie Finn
A year ago, I escaped to Jamaica to attend a psilocybin retreat. I didn’t want to spend my 52nd birthday alone. After a sudden and painful separation, I thought it would be better to spend my birthday with strangers doing magic mushrooms than it would be to spend it alone.
I was right. The retreat was immensely healing and transformative. And it turned out those strangers were no strangers at all. Thanks to the intensive therapeutic experience we shared, those strangers became my band of brothers and healing partners in a mere week. I felt like I had known them my entire life.
The real stranger was me — and the life I had been leading.
I spent three decades with a man I barely knew. He had been there physically for me, providing a secure life for my children and me — but had never really shown a desire to connect to me (or anyone) mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.
I believed that my husband, like many men, adopted a public persona and put on a performance for others out in the world. It didn’t bother me too much when his personality was inconsistent because we all contain multitudes.
Besides, I thought he was showing ME his true self. I never imagined he was also performing at home for our family.
It wasn’t until I woke up in Jamaica, on the island where I spent my honeymoon 25 years earlier, that I realized my husband was not who I thought he was.
He was a stranger to me.
A stranger who had shattered my heart. | https://medium.com/narrative/happier-birthday-to-me-636a57d56e55 | ['Lizzie Finn'] | 2020-10-23 23:35:45.177000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Marriage', 'Relationships', 'Self', 'Happiness'] |
Keep Stress From Getting The Best Of You With This Personality Test | Keep Stress From Getting The Best Of You With This Personality Test
Stress doesn’t have to bring out the worst in you.
Previously published on Forbes
With the pandemic raging and disrupted work becoming the new normal, people are feeling resigned, mad and stressed out. Life is not like it used to be in “the good old days.” Everything seems strange and new. Most of us need help with stepping out of our behavioral bad habits when we experience stress.
At Henley Leadership Group, we rely on a tool called the Integrative Enneagram. The Enneagram is designed to reveal your internal operating system. It points to automatic and unconscious patterns you use to make decisions and get what you want, and what you do when you don’t get your way. This is critical information when you are navigating stress.
Here’s a look at each of the nine types.
See which one sounds most like you under stress. Or which one embarrasses you — that’s likely to be an indicator of an Enneagram type you resonate with.
Ennea Type 1: The Strict Perfectionist. Under stress, the Ennea 1 may seem critical or impatient even when you are trying to be constructive. You may be unaware of how irritation, anger and resentment show up in your body language despite your efforts to control these emotions.
Ennea Type 2: The Considerate Helper. Because you are attuned to social relationships and people around you, under stress, you may needlessly worry about the people you care about. You may find it difficult to resist helping people, even when they don’t want your help. You help others even when you are overwhelmed, burned out and tired yourself.
Ennea Type 3: The Competitive Achiever. Under stress, the Ennea 3 may find it hard to talk about negative stuff and often rush to dismiss these conversations as a result. This is particularly true if the negative stuff points towards your mistakes or shortcomings. To others, you may seem defensive and closed when stressed.
Ennea Type 4: The Intense Creative. If you’re an Ennea 4, you can become dramatic, moody, impractical and depressed under stress, over-emphasizing what is lacking in your life. You can be sensitive to the point of feeling deep melancholy about the state of the world and the possibility of lasting change.
Ennea Type 5: The Quiet Specialist. Under stress, the Ennea 5’s strong thinking orientation and ability to detach from feelings will come at the expense of interpersonal warmth. Even when you feel warmth, this may not be readily apparent to others. In trying to explain information and share your expertise, you may come across as patronizing. This shuts people down and makes it difficult for them to pay attention to what you are trying to say.
Ennea Type 6: The Loyal Skeptic. Under stress, the Ennea 6 is constantly focused on the things that can go wrong. Your tentative and cautious approach may seem to others like stubbornness, pessimism and a negative attitude — a negative Nellie. As you tend to worry a lot about what might happen and your ability to deal with this, it can lead others to experience you as insecure. This may lead them to doubt your ability, which can have an impact on the extent to which others are able to trust you to take care of things. This questioning of your ability is what you are trying to avoid, but your cautious approach may create just that.
Ennea Type 7: The Enthusiastic Visionary. Under stress, the Ennea 7’s active and quick mind may lead to assumptions that they know what other people are going to say. This often results in you not listening fully to what people are saying. Staying focused on any one thing for an extended period of time, especially under stress, can be challenging to you. You may find yourself feeling bored, distracted, restricted or impatient.
Ennea Type 8: The Active Controller. Under stress, Ennea 8s can come across as defensive and aggressive. You will seem forceful and blunt to others, even if you don’t feel that way. When confronting people about things, your approach may leave them feeling bullied or humiliated. The force with which you initiate and drive may ultimately leave people feeling unprepared or overwhelmed.
Ennea Type 9: The Adaptive Peacemaker. Under stress, Ennea 9s want to avoid being controversial. Despite disliking it when people pressure you into something, you also have difficulty saying no to people. You go out of your way to accommodate others and downplay your own needs. So, your “yes” isn’t really a yes. You can come across as passive aggressive, which is often a blindspot for a 9.
Can you identify your own patterns of behavior at work under stress? We say: If you spot it, you got it. The good news is, once you have identified your pattern, you are already on your way to interrupting it. Catch it and make a change. Stress doesn’t have to bring out the worst in you.
… Read More | https://medium.com/the-innovation/keep-stress-from-getting-the-best-of-you-with-this-personality-test-b36de0a4c32b | ['Dede Henley'] | 2020-08-20 20:22:09.595000+00:00 | ['Enneagram', 'Personality Tests', 'Pandemic', 'Stress And Anxiety', 'Leadership Skills'] |
The Bitbns-Dash Trade Contest is Back! | Hey Traders,
We are excited to announce a contest we are conducting in tandem with Dash. Under the Bitbns-Dash Contest, we will be selecting 11 lucky winners who will receive handsome cash prizes for participating in the contest.
Here are some the details pertaining to the contest:
Start Date: 12/02/2019, 18:00:00 Hours
End Date: 12/03/2019, 23:59:59 Hours
The Bitbns-Dash contest has two variants, which are as follows:
Based on Number of Trades
Top 25 users in terms of number of trades will be eligible for their respective rewards. This variant of the contest has been divided into two rounds of lucky draws:
First Round of Drawing
Top 7 will be selected from top 25 for the First Round of Drawing
Out of seven, three winners will be selected randomly.
First Winner — $400 worth of DASH
Second Winner — $300 worth of DASH
Third Winner — $200 worth of DASH
Second Round of Drawing
Remaining 18 out of top 25 will be selected for the Second Round of Drawing.
Out of eighteen, three winners will be selected randomly.
All three winners will receive $100 worth of DASH
Based on Trading Volume
Top 25 users in terms of trading volume will be eligible for their respective rewards. This variant of the contest has also been divided into two rounds of lucky draws:
First Round of Drawing
Top 7 will be selected from top 25 for the First Round of Drawing
Out of seven, two winners will be selected randomly.
First Winner — $300 worth of DASH
Second Winner — $200 worth of DASH
Second Round of Drawing
Remaining 18 out of top 25 will be selected for the Second Round of Drawing.
Out of eighteen, three winners will be selected randomly.
All three winners will receive $100 worth of DASH
Note: In order to claim their respective prizes, winners will have to share a selfie or be available for a video interview.
Happy Trading
Bitbns | https://medium.com/bitbns/the-bitbns-dash-trade-contest-is-back-71efe6f61d78 | [] | 2019-03-11 07:50:13.874000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Win', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Dash', 'Blockchain'] |
The Luxury of Flying in the 1970s | The Luxury of Flying in the 1970s
A private jet type of experience for common airlines
Boeing 747 first-class “Tiger Lounge” bar from the 1970s. The cabin was to be situated in the aircraft’s hold, with a viewing port in the central table. (Source: CNN Travel)
Traveling by air has become the second most common mode of transportation in the world, but this wasn't the case back in the 1970s as traveling by airplane was very expensive. In the early 1970s, many people did not see it as a safe means of transportation, although today this is considered the safest mode of transportation in the world.
The average price of a ticket was around $550, if we take into consideration inflation, that would be $3200 today. That is a lot of money with which the average Joe could have bought a good second-hand car. However, these flights had this price point for a reason, they were glooming in luxury. Today’s common flights are seen more like a long bus ride, but back in the day, you were welcomed in what seemed like the lounge of a fancy hotel.
People were allowed to walk freely in the aircraft even if light turbulence occurred. They enjoyed meals that were actually cooked on board the plane in what looked like small restaurants. The bathrooms were quite spacious and looked more like the bathrooms that you would see inside a house rather than how bathrooms look in normal planes. These sections were inspired by luxury train wagons from the 1950s.
The restaurant section from a Boeing 314
What is imperative to mention is that these were not first-class tickets, this was what every passenger was receiving. Once again, the planes didn’t need to have a lot of seats because there were only a few people that were using this means of transportation. As time passed, the industry became hungrier for profit by turning common planes into containers that could fit as many seats as possible and having separate planes for business class passengers that pay half of the price of a brand new car for a ticket.
Music band playing in an airplane circa the 1970s (Source: Messy Nesssy)
Yet, besides all the technological advancements I think it was more luxurious back in the day, or at least more groovy. In some airliners, the lounge even had a piano or even a full music band for entertainment. As we know, the 1970s were all about music, something that was enjoyed by everyone and made the flight more pleasant. Some of the bigger airliners such as the Boeing 747 even had a couple of separate rooms with full-size beds.
The bedroom section of a Boeing 747 (Source: USA Today)
For that period, flying was more than a means of transportation, it was an entertaining experience that made it worth every penny. Besides the reminding turbulences, most people would even forget that they were flying from the experience they were living.
Another interesting fact compared to today’s common flight experience was that passengers were allowed to smoke on board. Today, smoking inside a plane is completely prohibited as any source of fire is a risk to the safety of the passengers.
Those times really showcase that the focus was on the passenger/customer, who was taken care of from departure until arrival by a handful of stewardesses. By the late 1970s, most airline companies had separated these luxury flights into separate classes in order to attract more customers at affordable prices. | https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/the-luxury-of-flying-in-the-1970s-c37c09fc1aec | ['Andrei Tapalaga'] | 2020-12-04 21:56:33.939000+00:00 | ['History', 'Luxury', 'Culture', 'Travel', 'Marketing'] |
Why CCTV Security Systems Is Important For Your Business | Introducing a cutting-edge reconnaissance framework is critical now like never before with wrongdoing expanding and thefts occurring as a typical event. Past breaking-and-entering, a few clients can even hotel to burglary or veil themselves as groups of criminals that can cause exorbitant issues for your business.
Thus, a CCTV camera is a basic device that keeps your property secure, alongside keeping up the well-admission of your organization’s representatives and activities. It advances the security of the space, diminishes crime percentages, just as stops expected crush and-grabbers from harming your property.
Introducing a CCTV camera alone is certifiably not an adequate method to secure your business, however, it is a vital segment that empowers entrepreneurs to have an unmistakable outline of the continuous cycle of their everyday tasks, just as hold representatives under tight restraints with their presentation and conduct.
With that in mind, here are more conduct reasons why a CCTV camera is essential for the accomplishment of your business.
Crime Deterrent
Seeing a CCTV camera alone sets up the presence of the law and goes about as a genuine hindrance to hoodlums. While it doesn’t really keep individuals from completing criminal operations, it’s all that anyone could need to make things harder for them to push it through, accordingly lessening the crime percentage in business areas all in all.
Monitor Activities
CCTV cameras empower businesses or chiefs to keep steady over the exercises occurring in the working environment. By monitoring the laborers and guests at your site, your organization will have true serenity realizing they have a full outline of the happenings under the top of your business.
Reduced Retail Theft
Introducing a CCTV camera on your premises will lessen the probability of retail burglary as potential shoplifters are in high danger of location. In any event, when a thing is taken, it builds the indictment rates for your business as it empowers you to distinguish suspects at some random time and spot.
Eliminate Fraudulent Insurance Claims
Past hindering wrongdoing, CCTV cameras additionally keep clients from requesting deceitful cases against your business. With aggregate proof going about as visual and hear-able evidence, you can utilize it for your potential benefit and scatter any misclaims tossed at your organization.
Provides Staff Protection
Any bogus cases against your staff are moderated with a CCTV camera as entrepreneurs will have visual evidence of the unedited truth. It additionally gives records of conveyances or guests entering the structure, which is fundamental for monitoring undertakings and guaranteeing it is done effectively. Furthermore, it additionally shields your staff from expected attacks or unfortunate behavior, giving your business some significant serenity realizing that activities are running as easily as could really be expected.
CCTV WORLD provides security solutions across Sharjah, Dubai, Ajman, and all over UAE — get in touch today to see how we can help. | https://medium.com/@cctvworld-uae/why-cctv-security-systems-is-important-for-your-business-f4407344803f | ['Cctv World'] | 2021-02-22 09:36:37.918000+00:00 | ['Cctv', 'Startup Lessons', 'Business Strategy', 'Security Camera', 'Business'] |
MyDoc Organizer thought process | Organize and label your documents according to different categories.
Introduction
On a busy day, one of the challenges encountered is scrolling through mixed documents online. It is exhausting and time-consuming. This has affected me, especially when I am making applications online involving document upload. After filling the form, then comes document upload. This is where the real work begins. I will scroll and scroll until I find the document from its hiding place and I know you experience this too.
MyDoc Organizer is here to tackle this challenge. It will organize your documents according to different categories of documents, for example, you can create a folder for your projects, resume/CV or your confidential documents e.t.c. Instead of strolling through many documents searching for one document, Doc organizer helps you to categorize and label your documents into folders for easy access.
The features include search document, folders, categorize document, sort files, rename & delete.
Design process
I follow this design process,
Research
User flow,
Mood board,
Wireframe,
The UI and
The prototype.
Research
I didn’t carry out in-depth research for this app because it is a simple app and also because it was a personal project. Although an app like this exists in the App stores. But they are not still helpful as it cannot categorize your document into folders, for example, Doc organizer, Doc manager e.t.c.
Next step
Information User flow
Before I started, I created an information architecture on how the users will navigate through the app.
User flow
Moodboard
Just like every start of any project, I went online to find inspirational designs similar to my mine from other designers. I visited dribble & Pinterest as usual. From the inspirational designs I gathered, I created a mood board to draw inspiration for my design.
Wireframe
Before I start any design, I love sketching on paper first before creating the wireframe. With paper sketching, I can easily determine whether or not my ideation make sense at all.
From the paper sketch, I created the wireframe, which serves as a reference while creating the UI design.
We are gradually approaching the real deal.
wireframe
Style guide
I created a style guide for consistency and easy workflow. I used warm colours for the UI design because they are calm colours. For the typography, I choose Roboto for mobile apps.
Style guide
The UI (The final design)
Using the wireframe as a reference designed the UI.
The introductory screens
The home screen
The home screen
The prototype
To wrap it up, I created the prototype of the MyDoc organizer.
The prototype
Final thought
I enjoyed each process in creating this App. Except for prototype which was a bit challenging. But with constant practice, I will master it. I want to use this medium to thank She Code Africa and the team behind it, for this opportunity. I am much better now than I was, before joining the She Code Africa Mentoring program. I also want to thank my mentor Adeyemi Deborah for her patience and mentorship. May God bless you all. corrections and criticism will be highly welcomed by me. Thanks for reading. | https://medium.com/@oluchi-m-eze/mydoc-organizer-thought-process-9fbc99dced4d | ['Margaret Eze'] | 2020-12-18 10:28:28.450000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'Design Process', 'UI Design', 'Product Design'] |
Meet Hyphora! | Learn more about us and what our goals are.
Hello there!
We are Hyphora, a social networking platform that allows students to create, share, and discover resources and extracurricular opportunities. It’s our goal to help all students succeed through a collaborative learning environment where they can discover their passions early on.
With the pandemic taking a significant toll on our educational experiences, internships, and jobs, we have worked to build up our databases for academic resources and remote internships/opportunities intended to reach high school and college students.
Through this publication, we hope to provide information that will help students grow during these unprecedented times and change education for the better.
You can check out our databases and learn more about us by visiting our website: hyphora.org
Have any questions, concerns, or comments? Email us at [email protected] | https://medium.com/hyphora/meet-hyphora-f064f86eb423 | ['Alagappan Sellappan'] | 2020-12-22 22:30:54.941000+00:00 | ['College', 'High School', 'Internships', 'Education', 'Startup'] |
When Should You Consider Canceling Your IUI? with guest Dr. Blake Evans | I’m excited to be interviewing Dr. Blake Evans of University of Oklahoma Reproductive Medicine in Oklahoma City. Dr. Evans is the recent author of an impressive paper, Mature Follicle Count and Multiple Gestation Risk Based on Patient Age and Intrauterine Insemination Cycles with Ovarian Stimulation. He is joining me to talk about when you should consider canceling your IUI.
Listen to our interview on The Egg Whisperer Show podcast
Dr. Aimee: Welcome, Dr. Evans. Tell me about your practice, tell me about what you do there, tell us about yourself.
Dr. Blake Evans: Sure. As the name infers, it’s an academic institution at University of Oklahoma. It’s in Oklahoma City. In addition to myself, there are three other physicians, and we also have a physician assistant.
We have a very busy practice. I love being here. I started here just a few months ago, actually, and I’m really enjoying it.
Dr. Aimee: I’m sure they love having you, too. You did your fellowship at the NIH, and you did your residency at Oklahoma State University Medical Center in Tulsa, and your medical DO degree at the Oklahoma State University for Health Sciences in Tulsa as well. I imagine it’s nice to be home now.
Dr. Blake Evans: Absolutely, it is.
Dr. Aimee: Excellent. As a fertility patient, one of the most frustrating things for our patients is to be in treatment and then have someone say, “Stop. You can’t move forward. You have to cancel your IUI.” Don’t you agree?
Dr. Blake Evans: Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Aimee: That’s a huge disappointment. I feel like we need to figure out what is right for our patients.
You did a scientific study that was published in one of the most reputable journals, Obstetrics and Gynecology, in May 2020. That study was titled Mature Follicle Count and Multiple Gestation Risk Based on Patient Age and Intrauterine Insemination Cycles with Ovarian Stimulation.
Say that 10 times. I’m just kidding, don’t do that.
Dr. Blake Evans: It’s a mouthful, for sure.
Dr. Aimee: It is a mouthful, but basically it helps people figure out when should their IUI be cancelled based on the number of eggs they’ve ovulated. I want you to break this down for us. Why did you do the study?
Dr. Blake Evans: As first year fellow particularly, I found myself commonly wandering the halls with pictures of follicles from the ultrasound and wondering at what point is it okay to proceed, is this too many follicles, based off of her age, does this make a factor in the outcomes. The answer is we don’t really know.
Of course, all of my faculty have of years of experience under their belt and just have an inclination as to when to proceed, but what is that number, what’s the percentage that you can tell the patient based off of this number of follicles, based off of your age, based off of your prior cycles, this is going to probably be the risk of multiple gestation, meaning a twin or triplet, or even high than that.
That was the main drive as to why we wanted to do the study.
Dr. Aimee: What was the clinical question you were hoping to answer?
Dr. Blake Evans: Really, I just wanted to know at what point are there too many follicles and does age make a factor. At what point is it appropriate to tell the patient, “Based off of the number of follicles we’re seeing today, if you proceed, you have a pretty high risk of pregnancy?
We really wanted to see does age make a correlation. Prior studies were not really specific in regard to the patient age, number of follicles. There was a number, a general number, but there was no specific guidelines or recommendation as to how many follicles are too many to proceed.
Dr. Aimee: What is a mature follicle? For people who are listening who don’t know what that even means.
Dr. Blake Evans: Good question. A mature follicle, at least based off of our study, the definition was 14 millimeters in size or greater. A mature follicle is potentially going to have a mature egg inside. If you have a mature follicle that releases an egg upon ovulation, then it can fertilize successfully and lead to a pregnancy.
We know from doing invitro fertilization and doing egg retrievals you actually can get a mature egg in a smaller follicle, although it’s less likely than with 14 millimeters. In general, that’s around the size of when we would consider it a mature follicle. Although, during treatments we’re trying to get it a little bit larger so that we’re more certain that there is a mature egg inside of the follicle.
Dr. Aimee: Right. That’s something that you measure on an ultrasound, the pelvic ultrasounds when people go in.
Dr. Blake Evans: Correct. Yes.
Dr. Aimee: What is a multiple gestation?
Dr. Blake Evans: Multiple gestation we defined in the study as the presence of a gestational sac with a fetal pole and cardiac activity, having two or more of those present within the uterus was defined as a multiple gestation. In our study we had most commonly twins, but we certainly had a fair number of triplets and even quadruplets in some of the numbers we looked at as well.
Dr. Aimee: You should have seen my eyes when you just said that. I have patients that come in and they’re like, “Oh my god, I would love to have twins.” I’m just like but that’s not the goal of treatment. Why is this multiple gestation considered a risk?
Dr. Blake Evans: That’s a really good question. A very common misconception in our field is, “I need to have more follicles or more embryos transferred because it will increase my chance of pregnancy,” when in fact — and I’ll show you the results in just a moment — that’s not necessarily the case. Spoiler alert. Multiple gestations, although twins are very cute, we all know someone or might even also have twins ourselves, however they do come with quite a considerable risk.
There is a four-fold risk of still birth in twins, even as high as six-fold risk of still birth in triplets, and even higher, as you can imagine, with quadruplets. They also come with the risk of preterm delivery, low birth weight, and also with those come other morbidities, such as respiratory issues, intestinal issues, metabolic issues, completely aside from how expensive it is to have a baby in the NICU for weeks on end.
In addition to that, the mother is also at quite a risk, too, because there is a higher risk of preeclampsia, diabetes, cesarian section, postpartum hemorrhage. These are all things that we try to avoid if at all possible. It’s something that we really need to counsel our patients on when they’re discussing these issues with us.
Dr. Aimee: I agree. Why does age matter?
Dr. Blake Evans: Age is a very important factor in infertility, mainly because the number of eggs that a woman has, they’ve been there her entire life, even when she was developing in her mother’s womb. You can imagine that over time both the quality and the quantity of the eggs will decline.
The presumption, what we know now based off of a vast amount of literature, is that in patients who are older reproductive age typically will need more follicles or more embryos in order to have a higher success of even just carrying a singleton pregnancy. The factor of age is quite important whenever we’re considering reproductive outcomes, because it certainly plays a role.
Dr. Aimee: What is IUI? That was part of your study, as far as looking at only IUI cycles. Why does it matter that you only included people who did IUI?
Dr. Blake Evans: That’s a good question. IUI, also known as intrauterine insemination, is a process that a fertility physician or provider will place a washed or prepared semen sample into the uterus around the time of ovulation. The whole purpose of doing the washing of the semen preparation is that you get a more concentrated sample of higher motility sperm and to ideally increase your chances that those sperm will fertilize at least one egg or two eggs.
The main reason we included IUI patients in the study is because most of the time, for example, if you’re a couple that does timed intercourse at home, it’s less likely or much less commonly that you’re going to come in for an ultrasound. Although they still do, but at least when we’re looking back at our EMR, electronic medical record, we have a much more robust number of patients of IUIs to look at. Adding timed intercourse in there as well would kind of muddy the waters a bit, so we kept it just at IUI.
Dr. Aimee: That makes perfect sense. I think sometimes patients think that they have a higher risk of multiples if they add the IUI, let’s say they have more follicles. Do you think that’s the case?
Dr. Blake Evans: I don’t think so. I think that the number of follicles there, you have to assume that the risk is still going to be present, even if you’re just doing timed intercourse. In those patients that do IUI and do timed intercourse, and they’re monitoring with an ultrasound, I would still counsel them the same.
Dr. Aimee: Got it. What is ovarian stimulation?
Dr. Blake Evans: Ovarian stimulation is a process by which you take either an oral medication, such as Clomiphene Citrate, also known as Clomid, or Letrozole, also known as Femara, or even injectable medications, so gonadotropins like FSH or Follistim, Gonal-f, or Menopure. There are several different names. These will induce follicular growth in the ovary, so all of the follicles that are inside the ovary are potentially going to grow and have a mature egg inside of them eventually.
The goal is to get just maybe a couple of follicles. However, with certain medications or different doses, the patient can respond quite differently and have too many follicles.
Dr. Aimee: Right. So, we’ve basically just defined all the terms from the title, Mature Follicle Count and Multiple Gestation Risk Based on Patient Age and Intrauterine Insemination Cycles with Ovarian Stimulation. Now, what did you guys find?
Dr. Blake Evans: It was a single practice facility where this data came from, at Shady Groves from 2004 to 2017. We looked at all cycles that patients used either Clomiphene Citrate, or they used Letrozole, or they used gonadotropins, or even a combination of oral and injectable mediations. We looked at the patient’s age and we basically categorized them and broke them down to less than 38, 38 to 40, and then over 40 years of age. We looked at the outcomes, we looked at the pregnancy rates after doing the IUI.
From here, I’d like to show you what we think is the most important part of this paper. That is both provider education and patient counseling with some graphs that we had made. I’m going to pull those up for you now.
As you go down here on this graph, 38 to 40 years of age, the risk is not as dramatic, but it’s still there. The singleton rate, the blue bar, it does start to increase as the follicles change. However, the risk of multiples still increases a decent amount. Then when you get into patients over 40 years of age, we actually found that it was beneficial to have more follicles here. When you go from one all the way up to four follicles, it nearly triples the pregnancy rate, but you still have a less than 1% chance of a multiple gestation. Even when you get to five follicles, this is when we did find that it was significantly at risk to have five follicles, but it’s still overall a 3% risk of multiples for IUI.
In this graph, this is breaking it down, and it’s a little bit more of bringing the risk to real life and showing the patient if you actually get pregnant this is the percent chance that it would be either a twin, as the red shows, triplet as blue shows, or even quadruplets. Once again, all ages over here. As you go up in follicle number, the chance of twins goes all the way up to 21% per pregnancy, so it’s if you get pregnant you have a 21% chance of it being a multiple, 5% a triplet, and then a less than 1% chance of quads.
The risk is similar for patients in this age. This is less than 38 years of age. For 38 to 40, we didn’t have any quadruplets above three follicles, but this was a small number overall. Then once you get to the patients that are over 40 years of age, you still see in general less than 12% chance of multiples up to four follicles. Above that is when we found that it was a risk for patients over 40.
Lastly, this is my favorite graph that we had made. This is a heat map that we had made. This is what I commonly will show patients whenever I am counseling about the difficult decision of do we need to cancel or what is your risk if you do in fact proceed.
Let’s pick a patient, for example, that is 32 years of age. You can see that in the green, this is the higher chance of pregnancy, the yellow is mediocre, and then red is a low chance of pregnancy.
We’ll choose a 34-year-old, 15% chance with one follicle, and it goes up with two, three, four, and five follicles. But we know on the prior graphs that it’s really mainly because of a risk of multiple gestations.
This middle graph shows the green is where you want to be, red is where you don’t want to be. This is when we do the IUI what is the chance of a multiple gestation, so twin, triplet, or higher. Once again, the red zone. We can find someone, say if she is 33 and she has four follicles. If you tell her, “Well, you just have a 5% chance of a multiple,” but this is what really hits home here is the same patient, say she has five follicles, her chance if she gets pregnant is as high as about 27% if she gets pregnant.
This is where I feel like it really hits home with the patient, because they’re like, “You’re right, I don’t want to do a trigger shot. I am okay with cancelling at this point.” I feel like this is a really helpful counseling tool that we’ve been able to utilize.
Dr. Aimee: I agree. I find that patients sometimes want to take the risk, but unless they know the exact number for themselves, they’re not really made to be part of the clinical decision-making process. I think your study helps providers and patients just feel more informed for sure.
The other aspect of what you shared with us is the age over 40. I have patients that are super educated, they’ve done their research, and they understand the risk associated with multiple gestations. So, when I tell a 40-year-old I’m perfectly fine doing IUI and not doing IVF, for whatever reason, but I want to stimulate four or five eggs for you, they look at me like, “But I don’t want twins.” Your graph shows that it’s really to give them the highest chance to have a single baby with a very low chance of multiples.
Dr. Blake Evans: Exactly.
Dr. Aimee: Patients who are doing IUI without being stimulated who are over 40, perhaps they should rethink that if they have an AMH or ovarian reserve that can maybe give them more than one egg.
Dr. Blake Evans: Right.
Dr. Aimee: What advice do you have as a leading expert in our field for anyone pursuing ovarian stimulation with IUI? What kind of questions should they be asking their doctors and what should they be thinking about?
Dr. Blake Evans: I would say that IUI is a very useful tool, it’s a very helpful tool for infertility treatments, it’s very common, but one thing I would really strongly encourage patients to consider is that it unfortunately does not work every time.
As I showed you on those graphs, it’s not a perfect treatment, it doesn’t work every time. Even a couple with nothing at all infertility related, they only get pregnant about 20% of the time per month. An IUI, even though it’s not quite as high as that, it doesn’t work every time, unfortunately.
The answer, or what the thought process is of the patient, I would encourage you to not think let’s just increase the dose, let’s make a higher dose and have more follicles because that’s going to help my pregnancy rates, when in fact it really is just going to increase your multiple rate, for the most part. Of course, that is age dependent and follicle dependent.
We did also look at number of prior cycles before and how long they’ve been infertile for. That overall did not make a difference by and large. We also broke down unexplained infertility and PCOS patients, and the risk was still present there, and very similar numbers to what I showed you with those graphs.
One thing in terms of providers that I would also say as well is that these numbers are not perfect. It’s just a counseling tool, it’s an estimation. It’s something that you can show the patient a figure, you can show them this is approximately what your risk of multiples will be. In fact, that’s probably the main criticism of this paper that I’ve found, which I don’t disagree with, is that using gonadotropins, some studies such as the AMIGOS Trial, part of the RMN, Reproductive Medicine Network, that was in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015, it showed that just using gonadotropins had higher risk of multiples as opposed to Clomid or Letrozole.
That is a big criticism of our paper. However, at the end of the day, of course we can also look at this further in future studies, but I like to think that a follicle is a follicle, two follicles are two follicles, three follicles are three follicles, and the risk in general is probably still going to be there whether it’s Clomid or Letrozole or gonadotropins. So, although it’s not perfect, I feel like this is a very helpful tool. It certainly has been great for me to show patients when counseling them as well.
The take home message is that caution should be used in proceeding with IUI after ovarian stimulation when there are more than two mature follicles in women younger than age 40 years owing to the substantially increased risk of multiple gestation without an improved chance of singleton clinical pregnancy. In women older than age 40 years, up to four follicles tripled the odds of pregnancy while maintaining a very low chance of multiples per IUI.
Dr. Aimee: How many ovulation induction cycles with IUI should a patient basically say enough is enough, it’s time to move on to something else?
Dr. Blake Evans: That’s a really good question. Typically, anywhere from four to six is when I’ll counsel a patient. At that point, if it’s not working, then we need to consider a different type of treatment after that.
Dr. Aimee: Awesome. Thank you for sharing your wonderful study findings with us. Thank you for all the research that you do. I quote and I send patients links to your articles several times a week. Thank you for all of the stuff you’re doing, and thanks for coming on and just breaking it down for us. And you’re going to come back and talk about your next study with us, too.
Dr. Blake Evans: All right, that sounds great. I’m happy to do it. Thank you so much for having me.
Dr. Aimee: Thanks, Blake. I appreciate your time.
Catch more of me and topics like this through The Egg Whisperer Show. Episodes are live-streamed on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, IGTV and Apple Podcasts . Sign up to get my newsletter. Tune in to The Egg Whisperer Show on YouTube. and Sign up for The Egg Whisperer School. | https://medium.com/@eggwhisperer/when-should-you-consider-canceling-your-iui-with-guest-dr-blake-evans-efea3c551a63 | ['Dr.Aimee Eyvazzadeh'] | 2020-12-21 19:37:52.460000+00:00 | ['Fertility', 'Womens Health', 'Infertility', 'Iui', 'Reproductive Health'] |
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DON’T STOP PARADISE | The first time
I met you
I fell in love
So deeply
With no difficulties
You glued yourself
On me
Now I’m playing
With the flames
Of your sparkling eyes
I’ve always made
Stupid mistakes
I want to get this one
Right
I can’t lie that
I am afraid
But I can’t run away
It’s a risk the pain
I can sense
The danger
My heart’s with
A stranger
If something is
Going to happen
I just don’t know
But I’m with you
I’m falling in love with you.
But don’t
Take me for granted!
Because I did
Break some hearts
Before
So, if
I’m letting you
Take the control
This is all
You need to know:
I don’t want you
To think about it
Twice
Only take me
To paradise
Wherever
You need to go
I’ll be there with you
I know they’ll
Talk about us
But I’ve waited
Too long for this
We both know
Love is dangerous
But I’m outrageous
You know me
Forget about
These conversations
Focus on our bodies
So we’d never
Stop doing this
And doing that…
Don’t stop the paradise. | https://medium.com/@petterd/dont-stop-paradise-bbfd8bec736d | ['Petter D'] | 2020-12-27 01:48:57.400000+00:00 | ['Passion', 'Poetry', 'Poem', 'Love', 'Sexuality'] |
Leonard and Siakam make some beautiful music against the Jazz | The Raptors sure know how to kick off the New Year in style. On New Years Day 2018, DeMar DeRozan dropped a career high (and franchise best) 52 points on the Bucks. While on New Years Day 2019, Kawhi Leonard painted his own masterpiece as the Raptors took care of business at home (122–116) against the frisky Utah Jazz.
Let’s take a closer at this victory with our customary 4 things we liked and 1 thing we disliked.
LIKE #1 — Kawhi’s Masterpiece
We here at Life In Repeat were in the building last year when DeRozan cooked the Bucks on New Years Day so you could hardly blame us for wondering what fireworks we were going to see this year on January 1st.
Sure, Leonard didn’t score as many points as DeRozan, but he did put on, in our humble opinion, the most dominant performance I have seen since Vince Carter dropped 50 on the 76ers all the way back in the 2001 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals.
Leonard finished with 45 points on a ridiculous 16-for-22 shooting performance (72.7%). At the half, he had 15 points but it was during the third quarter where he put his stamp on the game. During the third, he scored 19 without missing a bucket (7-for-7). He ultimately dropped 30 in the second half. Yowsa!
Here for your enjoyment is a two-minute highlight clip of Leonard’s dominant performance. Enjoy!
LIKE #2 — Kawhi’s Dominance
Over the past 14 games, Leonard is averaging 30.3 points while shooting 51.0% overall and 41.1% from downtown. Also, he has scored 20 or more during those same 14 games mentioned above — a career best mark for him.
This stretch has cemented Leonard as a serious candidate for his first ever MVP award. Also, he must be mentioned as a contender for Defensive Player of the Year — the dude’s nightmare-inducing defensive effort is just a joy to behold.
LIKE #3 — Another Career Best Performance
During the season, we have often written that Pascal Siakam has future superstar written all over him. But one of our Twitter followers asked us whether it is time to remove the word “future” from our common refrain. At first glance, it may seem premature. But the further I thought about it, the notion that Siakam may already be a superstar does not seem that far-fetched.
Against the Jazz, Siakam too finished with a career-best performance: 28 points (9-for-15), 10 boards, and 3 threes. The three-point shooting has long been considered Siakam’s kryptonite, but the dude is drilling them at a 35.4% clip. Add to that his switch-ability on defense and his ability to initiate the offense, and what you have is a superstar player — future or right now.
LIKE #4 — Norman Powell’s 2019
Here’s to hoping that the Norman Powell from this game is the Norman Powell we will see going forward. In 22 minutes off the bench, Powell finished with 14 points (6-for-11) and two triples. This was by far his best offensive performance in a very long time. If he continues to play like this, we may need to retire the Norman Powell Drinking Game.
DISLIKE — Kyle Lowry’s status
Kyle Lowry has now missed eight of the the past nine games with a back injury. The reports about the status of his injury have been conflicting to say the least. Depending on who you ask, he is either due back soon or there is no timetable for his return.
For as much as Lowry gets (fairly & unfairly) criticized, he is vital if the Raptors want to be playing in June. It’s a reminder how health is such a huge factor when it comes to championship aspirations. | https://lifeinrepeat.com/leonard-and-siakam-make-some-beautiful-music-against-the-jazz-cfcb7d7aa312 | ['Peter Kaye'] | 2019-01-02 19:12:12.216000+00:00 | ['Sports Journalists', 'Basketball', 'NBA', 'Sports', 'Toronto Raptors'] |
Advent: Preparing for Christ’s Birth-1 | Advent: Preparing for Christ’s Birth-1
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
Advent is a time, a time that is less than a month before Christmas, when people meditate on the birth of Christ, and things surrounding it, preparing their hearts for this special time of year.
Most people think of Christmas gifts, or Santa Claus when they think of Christmas. Jesus is God’s gift to us on Christmas. It is said often: “Jesus is the reason for the season.” In this post and next, I’ll share a couple of stories that occurred just prior to the birth of Jesus.
Joseph and Mary, the Parents of Jesus
Joseph could have had Mary put away, and could have disowned his wife-to-be when he found out she was pregnant. It would have been wrong for her to be pregnant by him, but even more by another man.
Mary knew she was not guilty of any judgments because an angel had told her she was pregnant by God the Holy Spirit, and that she’d have a son. She was pregnant through the act of God.
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Shouldn’t we copy Mary’s faith?
She didn’t doubt the angel When the angel told her of her condition she just asked, “How can this be?” Then her concluding words were, “Be it done unto me according to your word.” Her trust wasn’t in WHAT was happening, but in God —in WHOM she believed.
Joseph’s Private Visit from an Angel
An angel also spoke to Joseph, to calm his fears and doubts. How many of us have had to rely on a statement from an angel? Joseph was a good man and listened to the angel and believed him. Would you have?
Any testimony Joseph made about this would certainly be challenged by most people. It would take a lot of courage and faith to give such testimony in the face of unbelieving skeptics.
Many of us only believe when we’re with the majority, where we feel safe. We stand with others who believe the same thing — like so many churches and denominations we have today that we can choose from. If we don’t find people who side with what we think, we usually look elsewhere.
The Bible talks a lot about hearing the voice of God. But because many think this means with our physical ears, they feel they never hear God’s voice. I’ve never heard his audible voice, but I’ve had many impressions in my heart that I knew were not my thinking. They were 4th dimensional, not 3 dimensional.
God’s thoughts and ways are much higher than ours (Isa 55:8–9). We can’t even think them, let alone hear them with our ears. They must be revealed to us. We should at least consider God when we have heart impressions. Theology is merely man’s ideas about God, and so is our human wisdom. But the gospel is God’s revelation of himself, this word and his work.
Zechariah Also Had a Visit from an Angel
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Zechariah and Elizabeth were the parents of John the Baptist, a cousin and the forerunner for Jesus who came to tell people about his coming. Zechariah was Priest, a religious leader, and worked in the temple.
But when the angel spoke to him about the fact that his wife, who was old, would have a son, he wouldn’t believe it. Unlike Mary, the mother of Jesus, he doubted what the angel said, and wanted proof that what he heard was true. Due to his doubt, he was struck deaf and dumb until after his son was born.
Choosing to Believe or Doubt Can Control Us
Mary and Joseph were simple people, probably not too educated, and they didn’t have the need to search the scriptures to help them believe. They didn’t have the need to consult with others and to receive counsel. They simply believed the angel and trusted God.
Zechariah was very different, even though he was a highly educated Priest. Often, highly educated people, even in high religious positions, are the last to accept spiritual occurrences and are the last to believe God’s revelation to them. They want to ‘check it out’ with the Bible and other people. Paul speaks to this a few times in his writings. | https://medium.com/illumination/advent-preparing-for-christs-birth-1-60862ef0c78c | ['Roger Himes Esq.'] | 2020-12-22 14:57:20.753000+00:00 | ['God', 'Jesus', 'Christmas', 'Christmas Gifts', 'Advent'] |
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Ladies who are nursing or pregnant are not encouraged to take the enhancement, as it can hurt their wellbeing and that of the newborn child.
This enhancement may not be appropriate for youngsters more youthful than 18 years of age.
The enhancement isn’t accessible at any drug store or retail retailer. The enhancement is accessible through the authority site as it were.
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Last Verdict — Keto Burn XL
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https://keto-burn-xlreviews-and-price.jimdosite.com/ | https://medium.com/@supplementmart022/keto-burn-xl-healthy-weight-loss-reviews-price-5a886ddc49ec | ['Supplement Mart'] | 2021-12-20 18:16:05.700000+00:00 | ['Keto', 'Burn Keto', 'Health'] |
Keep track of your cloud computations | Increasing interested in using small computation units enclosed in AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, or GCP Cloud functions brings back the old problem of detecting the termination of the computation task, which is distributed among a vast amount of sub-processes.
Let us jump directly into the problem by analysing the following computation scheme
It is composed of three parts: splitter, sub-processes, and collector. By design, the sub-processes are the stateless functions that take input data and produce output(s). Hence, they do not have a notion about the whole computing process. Moreover, we also impose that the collector and splitter are stateless functions.
We can establish two synchronization points: splitter and collector. The barrier at splitter is trivial. At this point, we divide input data into chunks and distribute among sub-process. The problem arises with the synchronization at the collector. We can say that whole computation performed by sub-processes riches barrier only when all of the sub-process is completed. But how can we know that every of sub-processes completes the job?
Let first assign to each of the sub-process a state property, which can have two values: pending and done. The state is assigned to the sub-process in the splitter and updated when the computation results are received by collector. We can say the computation is done whenever all of the sub-processes are in state done.
The state can be stored in the form of lookup table indexed by unique sub-process id. To complete the design, we should also assign a unique id to the whole computation process. By this, we can have multiple computations running in parallel that consists of multiple sub-processes. Therefore, the lookup table contains sub-process-id → (state, computation-id) tuples.
Below is the extended computation scheme with additional elements mentioned previously.
The state of the computation (labelled by job-id) is monitored by the additional component state-observer. It periodically queries the lookup table and counts the number of sub-processes that are in state pending. If the result of the query is zero the whole computation is considered to be completed. Moreover, the update of the state is recorded with the timestamp. This allows to use of a last-resort method, basically timeout the computation job.
Example
Let us consider a simple system, in which we have a pile of documents in S3 bucket, and we would like for each of the document get the frequency of words appearing in the document.
We demonstrate the implementation using the components of the AWS public cloud. However, all of the components can be found in Azure or GCP clouds.
The diagram below shows the architecture of the solution. It basically reflects the general computation scheme showed above.
The idea behind this example is rather simple. There is a bucket that contains a bunch of text documents to process. We would like to calculate the word frequency in each of the document and store such a map (word→freq) for each of it in an output bucket. We will not describe the whole code, it is available in my GitHub project — only the key components.
Process state table
The track about the state of sub-processes is kept in the DynamoDB table with the following definition:
Hash key: job_id
Sort key: process_id
and GSI (global secondary index) defined as
Hash key: job_id
Sort key: state__process_id
The key point lays in the GSI, precisely in the sort key which is a concatenation of the process state and process_id . With that, we can very easily and fast get the number of processes in a given state by calling:
Observer
The observer is a lambda that periodically counts the number of processes (using the DynamoDB query on GSI — the code is above) in the pending state (for the requested job_id ). This is realized by combining the queue with a certain delay (30 seconds here) and attached lambda function.
The delay on the SQS queue can be achieved by DelaySeconds property. If all of the processes are done then the observation is done and the message is sent to the SNS topic:
{
"job_id": "job-identifier",
"status": "job-status
}
Splitter
This module gets on the input queue the request:
{
"job_id": "job identifier",
"bucket": "bucket-to-scan",
"output_bucket": "bucket-to-store-word-freq"
} | https://medium.com/nordcloud-engineering/keep-track-on-your-cloud-computations-67dd8f172479 | ['Jakub Krajniak'] | 2020-04-28 10:18:43.529000+00:00 | ['Parallel Computing', 'AWS Lambda', 'Serverless', 'Go', 'AWS'] |
Direct Benefits of Enhancing Customer Values | Enhancing the customer experience through sustainable commitments is the most vibrant step toward increased customers lifetime values
When we are evaluating something’s direct benefit, our aim is to define, analyze, and list all outcomes as well as their reasons. Customer lifetime values are no different. In order to implement a health strategy to enhance customer lifetime values define what it is, analyze its derivations, and list all the projections of its realization. Hence, our methods and tools are not different than the one we had used for other forecasting and analyzing missions. The difference here is that customer lifetime value-enhancing is beneficial for both parties. That is, both the customer side and organization side have their fair share of benefits through the correct increase of customer lifetime values.
First things first, the definition of customer lifetime values must be comprehended. It is a key element in the customer experience enhancement programs as well as any strategy to increase the volume of the organization. Customer lifetime values is a measurement where you evaluate the customers’ value to your organization in an unlimited time span. That is, rather than evaluating the value of first purchase, customer lifetime values help you to keep track of metrics that are beneficial to analyze cost per acquisition. Since keeping existing customers costs less than acquiring new ones, analyzing customer lifetime values is a great way to enhance your expansion.
Another thing is to retain existing customers longer to increase customer lifetime values. As we have mentioned, retaining existing customers is cost-effective. In addition to the above methods, organizations use churn prevention techniques to tackle bouncing. Loyalties and rewards are the number one tools to retain the existing customers in the organizational border so that customer experience and customer lifetime values increase correlatively.
Third and the last tactic is rather simple yet effective as well as others. Lowering the cost to serve to customers is a simple solution to enhance customer lifetime values. Halting marketing in areas where it is ineffective and offering low-cost channels for customers are the main tools to achieve cost reduction. However, a good market analysis must be implemented to start cost- reducing as it can backfire easily, where a volume of existing customers can be lost.
Therefore, considering the customer lifetime values as both current and future potential, the organization can gain more profit by only giving attention to their customers’ behavior in both the short-run and long run. Thus, planning campaigns according to the above-mentioned methods solve the issues. However, all those methods are easier said than done. In order to achieve them, a data-backed analysis must be undergone so that all said machine learning, artificial intelligence, and clustering can effectively do their job. Making predictions and acting accordingly is not an option anymore, it is a necessity. | https://medium.com/a-world-full-of-data-science-powered-by-enhencer/direct-benefits-of-enhancing-customer-values-cdab16d9a251 | ['Egemen Gurallar'] | 2020-06-29 06:20:11.422000+00:00 | ['Predictive Analysis', 'Data Science', 'Customer Lifetime Value', 'Customer Analytics', 'Enhencer'] |
WE SAW TWI-“LIGHT” | WE SAW TWI-“LIGHT”
It was that time of the year when faith was alive in the hearts of men and every family got to spend time together. There was joy, hope, laughter filled the air and every street smelled of home-cooked meals. Everyone’s worry and pain seemed to fizzle away in that season with the hope that everything will be okay.
It was hard to believe that a person could exist in that season and lack hope, but Rita didn’t care what you thought. Her pain was as real as it could be and she never believed a change would come. You can’t possibly understand she said, this challenge seems to be tailored to me. “I try to make it work, I do but it seems to get worse with every step I take”.
I just sat and watched as she paced around the house, flaring up at everything. I felt it was best to be quiet and watch because every word of encouragement seemed to attract a strong stare from her that wasn’t pleasant. I tried to put myself in “her shoes” and although I could “feel” her pain, it just couldn’t be the same. I once heard a friend say that miracles still happen but you need to have a little faith. I believe miracles happen, but in the face of challenges, faith sometimes seems hard.
Rita and I went to school together and meeting her was the best thing that happened to me. She was the life of the school, always wore a smile and music was always around her. She carried this atmosphere of Joy that could make a bad day turn bright. She loved helping people and did a lot of volunteering in orphanages and societies. Rita had a beautiful voice that could pierce anyone through the heart. I remember when we used to sing together as we walked through the garden in the twilight, it was as though the world stood still at that moment and everything seemed to make sense. There was no musical concert we heard of and knew we would enjoy that we did not attend. Music seemed to be a part of our life force and lived in everything we did. We were both members of the church choir and never missed a rehearsal or service for anything. We once had a Christmas carol concert where the choir had to merge with the drama unit for a ministration. The event took place in a large school hall that was beautifully decorated with flowers, drapes and lightening of different colours. I remember the bright lights in the hall go dim which redirected our focus to the brightness of the stage and everywhere was silent. The actors began a play about the birth of Jesus while soft and melodious music played at the background. The actors never spoke a word, but the lyrics of the song explained everything. The song was a duet by a male and female with the rest of the choir softly harmonizing some parts of the song. Rita was that female who sang the duet. I saw tears roll down the eyes of many in the congregation like bright crystals that sparkled with the reflection of light, oh it was so pure. As it came to a close, candles were lighted at different sections of the hall as the music faded. Everyone went home solemn and peaceful that night. That was the best carol I had ever attended and it bonded my friendship with Rita forever.
After school, we all pursued our careers but always remained very close, although we didn’t attend concerts together like we used to, even though we missed it. It was the third year since I last saw Rita, she called one morning and her voice sounded like she had cried all night. Joel is gone she said as she burst into tears, I couldn’t believe my ears. Joel was the youngest in her family and he brought joy to everyone around him, but he suddenly fell ill and now he’s gone. So many things went wrong after Joel’s death. Even in my wildest dream, I could never have imagined anything like this happening to Rita. In less than one year, she had lost two members of her family, her thriving company hit rock bottom and her partners wanted nothing to do with her anymore. Rita was to be married in October that year but she was now broken and decided to let go of her fiancé who rejected her decision. Everything was not going well and sometimes it seemed like a spell was cast.
I had to put in for a transfer at work so I could be with Rita because I knew she needed me the most at this time. Rita had given up and even my faith wasn’t strong enough to carry us both because we were both grieving. While at the hospital, Mama smiled and said, “never lose you joy my children, the devil will want to steal it from you but don’t let him have it”. Those were her last words before she passed. We were back home sad, tired and our eyes were sore from crying not knowing what else to do. Rita was wrapped up in my arms when suddenly she began to sing, I let her be for a while, then joined her to sing. We went on and on for almost an hour, suddenly we decided to pray. After praying, we were peaceful and continued for about a week till our joy was full. Rita spoke with her fiancé and apologized. We then decided to plan our lives and make an impact while fulfilling our purpose.
The event of our lives afterwards was nothing short of a miracle. In a few months, Rita was back on her feet stronger than ever with a faith that could move mountains.
These events got me thinking about the subject of faith, joy, prayer and music. Are they connected? | https://medium.com/@tanimonureabisolamaria/we-saw-twi-light-36b1e73c8f09 | ['Tanimonure Abisola'] | 2020-12-18 11:01:54.245000+00:00 | ['Friendship', 'Music', 'Faith', 'Joy'] |
Stay positive and don’t predict. The myths of optimism don’t let you… | Stay positive and don’t predict
Everyone has a unique journey to travel and has a story full of excitement, twists-and-turns, suspense, thrill, and tragedy, moreover, with a choice to end it as he/she desires. However, the living methodology isn’t very complex as what people assumed to have; it is strategic and constant to almost everybody. You have to be just OPTIMISTIC about yourself. Good luck would have been coming to your bag, but your savage fear must be defying to welcome it in your life, or you don’t want to see it since you have blindfolded with the negativity. OPTIMISM is a microscope that helps you magnify the minute details of every minute opportunity we’re hoping or we have missed, already.
So, here we can discuss the importance of being OPTIMISTIC in life, not to be mistaken with being a PREDICTOR. As I saw, there is a vast difference in hope and obsessivity.
As I observed and with all the experience I have gained up to date — I would classify the people based on their living style into three categories—
Those who are entangled in the past — it is extremely hard for them to accept the adversities of the present since they have already gone through enough of their journey and found their present is somber, unlike the past. Those who live for today, and today is the primary, however, rest is secondary or doesn’t exist at all. Those who are nervy about the safe future neither matters the past nor the present; they are good to be indulged in the dreams of the future.
In my point of view, the second category is the happiest of all the aforementioned and well-versed and experienced with the way of living. Whatever happened in past should be taken as experience, live today no matter how it is going — good or bad, and be OPTIMISTIC for the future, and again don’t PREDICT. Not only mine, but it was also the saying of Albert Einstien—
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, be hopeful (or optimistic) for tomorrow.”
Why I have a huge urge to compare Optimism and Prediction?
When you predict you cling with it and as Buddha said —
“You can only lose what you cling to.”
When you’re Optimistic for the future — you’re hoping to get it and seeking every possible way to procure control of your needs.
Being a predictor you would lead towards the nature of passivity, however, being Optimistic you would see every failure as a new opportunity to gain experience over, eventually rise again and fight. When things would not go as you predicted, you will see your every hope fading and so the urge to live life with ecstasy. If you’re predicting too much — then you’re willingly deepening the wounds you already have. Every prediction born from the past, and the assumptions will never satisfy you, you’ll always find yourself missing the target by a very minuscule difference. If you’ve already assumed your future, say if you have already predicted your result then why would you study? If you’ll be optimistic about your good results then your brain will entice you to put your efforts to make the result better or achieve what you’re hopeful for (a good result). If you’re predicting then I must say you have already given up trying for a sorted life; I am afraid, later you’ll curse your fortune. Life is indeed probabilistic, very uncertain, but we would propel it wherever we want to take it, everything is uncertain — who knows Big Rip may happen tomorrow and universe would burst into atoms — this is what called to be assumptions and legitimate as well since we can’t do anything except predicting, but where we’ll be on the next day, we know it better, don’t we?
If I can swim, why I’m assuming the ship will come to draw me out of the whirlpool? If I would be deterministic and hopeful for my life then I will make efforts to swim, rather than waiting or assuming myself dead. That is why some people have will power to conquer anything in the world and some keep waiting in the abyss of darkness, couldn’t see the ray of hope.🤷♀️
There is a vast life beyond to walk; you’ll never know your future nor you can predict, however, you can be hopeful of getting it.
Stay Cheerful, keep seeking the cult of happiness, if you’re still predicting stop it urgently — because predicting is detrimental and somewhere you’re avoiding to take your responsibility, anyway. Then happiness will loathe you.😒
Stop Anticipating! React — give your life a chance to persuade you to make it better!
PS. Please show your love to this blog, if you like.😊😊 | https://medium.com/@utkarsh161099/stay-positive-but-dont-predict-a27f148c7f0b | ['Utkarsh Srivastava'] | 2020-12-11 08:03:52.445000+00:00 | ['Predictions', 'Journey', 'Optimism', 'Life', 'Hope'] |
Why visual storytelling is more relevant than ever | #startup #media #tech #storytelling #image #photo #journalism
A picture is worth a thousand words. That’s a popular saying that seems even more relevant when we look at the way we, as readers, relate to news and facts shared in the media.
When information can be visualized, it becomes easier to grasp. Especially when reporting on a complex topic (such as the Covid-19 crisis), images, illustrations and graphics can be strong elements to help people understand and engage better with a story.
At NMA, we have a wide range of startups in our portfolio developing tech solutions to innovate the media industry.
Check out some of the companies that can help publishers, agencies, broadcasters (and other companies) to improve the storytelling in a visual way:
Comics for news
If you think comic strips are only suitable for fiction, be aware that they can be a fine resource for publishers to report on topics (such as the ongoing pandemic crisis) in a straightforward, uncomplicated way. Tebeox already allowed several publishers to share news through digital comics — check out the examples and get in touch to work on new ones.
Getting images right
Frameright is an editing tool that allows content creators to make multiple, intelligent crops in images and photos to be used in articles shared online — it is not just a matter or ending headless portraits, but also to be socially responsible when sharing them.
Visual and social
Visual stories are especially important when reporting through social media — and Cutnut story editor allows media houses to edit, publish and preschedule nicely designed stories for Instagram and Google Amp.
Reproduction from cutnut.net
Art meets journalism
Journalists, bloggers and content producers in general can commission illustrations to use in their articles through Minty’s platform. See how we can fight Corona with art.
Minty’s Instagram profile features some of the illustrations: check out @tasteminty
Interacting with data
What better way of dealing with lots of data and numbers than by having them nicely displayed in interactive graphics? 23degrees has already partnered up with publishers and broadcasters to power up their interactive data reporting on the latest developments regarding developments of the Coronavirus pandemic. | https://medium.com/next-media-accelerator/why-visual-storytelling-is-more-relevant-than-ever-92030f8503c5 | ['Next Media Accelerator'] | 2020-03-24 12:01:15.704000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Startu', 'Covid 19', 'Media', 'Tech'] |
HAIR CARE OILS | Essential oils are obtained from plants by steam distillation and evaporation. It is primarily the power of fragrances, but also amazing aromatherapeutic properties.
ESSENTIAL OILS — TYPES
Essential oils have long been used by Chinese and homeopathic adherents to treat a variety of ailments. They contain only natural ingredients and rarely cause side effects.
Essential oils have many different uses. They are used in hair and scalp care. Find out which essential oils will best care for your hair.
ESSENTIAL OILS — LAVENDER OIL
Lavender oil improves the blood supply to the scalp, thus accelerating hair growth and generally improving its condition. It also has antibacterial properties, which can improve the condition of the scalp. Use lavender oil mixed with 3 tablespoons of any base oil and 3 tablespoons of olive or coconut oil to make a mixture for oiling the scalp. We put it on the scalp, rinse after 10 minutes. The treatment can be repeated several times a week.
PEPPERMINT OIL
Peppermint oil has a warming effect and strongly stimulates microcirculation of the scalp. It stops the process of hair loss and stimulates the growth of new hair. Extends the life cycle of the hair (anagen phase). Activates dormant hair follicles to grow new hair.
Scalp oiling mixture: mix 2 tablespoons of peppermint oil with the base oil. Massage into the scalp, after 5 minutes. rinse the oil and wash your hair with shampoo.
ROSEMARY OIL
Rosemary oil is a great way to increase hair growth and density. It has regenerative properties, thanks to which it accelerates the reconstruction of damaged cells and stimulates cell division. That is why it is irreplaceable in the regeneration of damaged hair. It also has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. To make the scalp massage mixture, you will need a few drops of rosemary oil, olive oil or coconut oil. Mix all ingredients, massage the mixture into the scalp. After 10 minutes, rinse it, then shampoo your hair. The procedure should be performed twice a week.
ESSENTIAL OILS — CEDAR TREE Cedar
tree oil improves hair growth and prevents excessive hair loss. In addition, it reduces grease because it can reduce the production of sebum. It also has antifungal and antibacterial properties, making it helpful in getting rid of dandruff.
Studies have shown that a blend of lavender, rosemary, and cedarwood essentials helps in treating alopecia areata.
To make the mixture, you will need a few drops of cedarwood oil and 2 tablespoons of base oil. Mix the ingredients thoroughly, massage into the scalp. After 10 minutes, rinse thoroughly, wash your hair with shampoo.
LEMON GRASS OIL
Dandruff is a fairly common scalp disease. A healthy scalp is essential in maintaining healthy hair. Lemongrass oil helps you get rid of dandruff quickly and effectively. But on the condition of daily use. Add a few drops of essential oil to your shampoo and conditioner.
THYME OIL
Thyme accelerates hair growth, improves microcirculation of the scalp, thus preventing excessive hair loss. In addition, it helps in the comprehensive treatment of alopecia areata. Mix 2 drops of essential oil with 2 tablespoons of base oil, massage into the scalp. Rinse after 10 minutes.
Clary Sage
Oil Clary Sage Oil contains linalyl acetate, which accelerates hair growth. It prevents hair breakage, strengthens it and improves its condition. To make the mixture, you will need 3 drops of oil and a tablespoon of base oil. Massage the mixture into the scalp, rinse after 10 minutes.
TEA TREE OIL
Tea tree oil has strong cleansing and antibacterial properties. Applied topically to the scalp, it accelerates hair growth, activating the hair follicles to grow new hair. Add 10 drops of essential oil to your shampoo for washing your hair daily.
ILANGE OIL
Ilang oil stimulates the production of sebum, so it should be used by people with dry scalp. It reduces hair breakage and improves its structure. Mix 5 drops of ilanic oil with 2 tablespoons of warm oil. Massage the mixture into the scalp and wrap the head with a towel. After 30 min. rinse thoroughly. | https://medium.com/@kolarym/hair-care-oils-4518ef90ce6e | ['Mariola Kolary'] | 2021-10-31 23:53:09.772000+00:00 | ['Hair', 'Hair Oil'] |
Django User Authentication in 5 Minutes | Django User Authentication in 5 Minutes
A neat UI alongside a lucid back-end to build a perfect authentication system
Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill in understanding and coding authentication in django. Authentication, as we all know, is a basic necessity required for the users’ to pass through, before they encounter the actual treasure or the application in general. It’s a protective gear to be worn by an application to ensure secure access to it. Here, I’m going to walk you through 5 simple steps that shall help you in integrating authentication with your django application.
Background photo from Unsplash
To start a django project -
django-admin startproject auth_django . if windows,
django-admin.exe startproject auth_django .
Step 1: Handling settings in settings.py
Assuming we’ve a project set up, let’s quickly define a few authentication URLs in the settings.py file in the project (auth_django) folder (an app isn’t being considered due to the simplicity of the application).
# Login & Logout URLs
LOGIN_URL = '/login/'
LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL = '/home/'
LOGOUT_REDIRECT_URL = '/login/'
Also, initialize the path to templates/ folder in ‘DIRS’.
TEMPLATES = [
{
'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates/')],
...
]
Note: Create a folder named templates/ in parent auth_django/ directory.
Step 2: Defining Views in views.py
Django Views is where the logic resides. Create views.py file in auth_django/auth_django/ path. We define two views — one to help the user register, and the other, to display the home page. Login and Logout views are taken from the predefined auth_views (to be seen in Step 3).
The home view renders a success page. @login_required is to make sure that home isn’t accessible to unauthenticated users’. The register view initially displays a UserCreationForm that prompts the user for username, password and confirm password. When a user submits the form, the details are captured and validated. If validation is successful, details are saved in the default database (SQLite) and the user is taken to the home page via authentication.
Step 3: Initializing URLs in urls.py
Authentication URLs are all associated with views in urls.py. home and register URLs are mapped with the views in views.py. login and logout are mapped with the inbuilt auth_views. as_view() is a method in the class LoginView/LogoutView which returns a callable view.
Step 4: Creating Templates
Users’ understand the application through templates. login view by default uses registration/login.html in templates/ folder. Thus, we define all the templates in registration/ folder.
base.html — Encloses external libraries
2. login.html — Login Form
3. register.html — Registration Form
4. success.html — Home page
Project Directory Structure -
Project Directory Structure
Step 5: Code Harvest!
Handy commands:
To migrate the database -
python3 manage.py migrate
To run server -
python3 manage.py runserver
User Registration Window
User Login Window
Home Page
I hope this article has helped you. Thanks for reading! | https://medium.com/swlh/django-user-authentication-in-5-minutes-4db08c5c459a | ['Samhita Alla'] | 2020-11-02 06:46:13.433000+00:00 | ['Django Framework', 'Python', 'Django', 'Authentication', 'Bootstrap'] |
“The Coming War On China” — Watch John Pilger’s Powerfully Relevant Documentary | U.S.Navy guided-missile destroyer USS William P. Lawrence (DDG 110), top middle, transits through international waters with the Indian Navy destroyer INS Kolkata (D 63) and tanker INS Shakti (A 57), Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force helicopter-carrier JS Izumo (DDH 183) and destroyer JS Murasame (DD 101), and Republic of Philippine Navy patrol ship BRP Andres Bonifacio (PS 17). Date: May 5, 2017. (Photo: Japan Maritime Self Defense Force)
“The aim of this film is to break a silence: the United States and China may well be on the road to war, and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable.”
( Caitlin Johnstone) “The aim of this film is to break a silence: the United States and China may well be on the road to war, and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable,” Pilger says in his 2016 documentary The Coming War on China, which you can watch free on Youtube here or on Vimeo here.
“In a few years China has become the world’s second-biggest economic power,” Pilger’s introduction continues. “The United States is the world’s biggest military power, with bases and missiles and ships covering every continent and every ocean. China is a threat to this dominance, says Washington. But who is the threat? This film is about shifting power, and great danger.”
As we’ve been discussing for years now, the relentless quest of the US-centralized empire-like power alliance for total world domination has put it on a collision course with the surging economic powerhouse of China which refuses to be absorbed into the imperial blob. The empire’s continued existence depends upon its ability to undermine China before it grows too powerful or the empire grows too weak to stop its ascent, at which point global hegemony becomes impossible and we are living in a truly multipolar world.
China has therefore always been the final boss fight in the global campaign of violence and domination by what Pilger calls the “empire which never speaks its name”. And the ramping up of anti-China narrative management by the US government indicates that we are being psychologically primed to accept this world-threatening confrontation, just as Pilger warned in 2016.
“The danger of confrontation grows by the day,” Pilger says.
The powerful film breaks down the way the USA has been encircling China with a “noose” of military bases since the Korean War, which all have massive amounts of military firepower, including nuclear firepower, pointed right at China’s cities. Pilger shows the psychopathic toll this has inflicted upon the people who live in the areas where the US war machine has set up shop in the Pacific, including an especially enraging segment on the use of Bikini Atoll natives as human guinea pigs to test the effects of nuclear radiation on people. Also deeply disturbing is the revelation of just how close the US came to launching nuclear warheads at China due to a miscommunication during the Cuban missile crisis.
The film describes China’s recent history and explains its climb in economic power which led us to this point, and the USA’s generations-long history of provocation and hostility toward its government. It also addresses the silly projection so many westerners harbor that if the US wasn’t bullying and slaughtering the world into compliance, China would take over doing the same.
The White House is launching a communications plan across multiple federal agencies that focuses on accusing Beijing of orchestrating a “cover-up” & creating a global pandemic, according to two US officials & a government cable obtained by The Daily Beast https://t.co/3Xjm08G2Mw - The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) March 21, 2020
Back in 2016 it was harder for people to see this escalation on the horizon, but now in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic we’re hearing a frantic, disproportionate amount of anti-China sentiment from the Trump administration and its supporters, in the same way we heard Russia hysteria amplified over the last three years by Trump’s enemies. Trump was politically pressured to dangerously escalate cold war tensions with Russia, and he’s now being politically incentivized to pass the blame for his administration’s spectacular failures in addressing this pandemic on to the Chinese government in a way which manufactures support for escalations on that front as well. Two different narratives, same agenda.
“The new president, Donald Trump, has a problem with China,” Pilger says at the end of the documentary. “The urgent question now is will Trump continue with the provocations revealed in this film and take us all to the edge of war?”
The answer to that question appears to be coalescing. It’s a good time for us all to watch this film. | https://medium.com/citizen-truth/the-coming-war-on-china-watch-john-pilgers-powerfully-relevant-documentary-ef569354d571 | ['Citizen Truth Staff'] | 2020-08-08 00:37:44.590000+00:00 | ['China', 'Us China Relations', 'Nuclear War', 'Film'] |
Food Service Equipment Market Size Worth $44.66 Billion By 2025 | The global food service equipment market size is expected to reach USD 44.66 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 5.0% over the forecast period, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Expansion of food service industry and demand for high-end technologies is creating new growth avenues for the market. Changing lifestyle of the working population coupled with high demand for ready-to-cook food is boosting the sales of refrigeration equipment. Moreover, increasing disposable income and the need to upgrade kitchen equipment are also contributing to the growth.
The kitchen purpose segment led the market in 2018. The segment is further categorized into cooking equipment and food and beverage preparation equipment. This equipment are an essential part of producing food for a large number of customers. The equipment is used to carry out different operation ranging from cooking, cutting, baking, and others to improve the productivity of food production operation.
The market for quick service segment is expected to expand at the highest CAGR over the forecast period and is expected to reach over USD 13.17 billion by 2025. Food service equipment are extensively used in restaurants for food processing and handling. Substantial growth of the quick-service restaurant, especially in Asian Countries such as China and India is expected to boost overall market growth in the forthcoming years.
Click the link below:
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/food-service-equipment-market
Further key findings from the report suggest: | https://medium.com/@marketnewsreports/food-service-equipment-market-7c18a74f1471 | ['Gaurav Shah'] | 2020-12-11 11:04:25.956000+00:00 | ['Food', 'Equipment', 'Internet of Things', 'Frozen Foods', 'Kitchen'] |
Infographic: Programming languages adoption trends 2020 | Languages are a beloved subject of debate and the kernels of some of the strongest developer communities. The choice of programming language matters deeply to developers because they want to keep their skills up to date and marketable. They matter to toolmakers too, because they want to make sure they provide the most useful SDKs. So which programming languages had notable changes in adoption trends in the last 3 years?
We’ve shared the answers in our infographic with key findings from our Developer Economics 19th edition survey, which ran in June-August 2020 and reached 17,000 developers in 159 countries.
JavaScript is the most popular programming language
As of Q3 2020, 12.4M developers globally were using JavaScript. We also estimate that in mid-2020 there were 21.3M active software developers in the world. So, 58% of all developers use JavaScript. Notably, the JavaScript community has been growing in size consistently for the past three years. Between Q2 2017 and Q3 2020, nearly 5M developers joined the community — by far the highest growth in absolute terms across all languages. Even in software sectors where JavaScript is least popular, like data science or AR/VR, over a fifth of developers use it in their projects.
It’s a good idea to learn Python
For the second half-year period in a row, Python is the most widely adopted language behind JavaScript. Python now counts 9M users, after adding 2.2M net new developers in the past year alone, outranking Java at the beginning of 2020. The rise of data science and machine learning (ML) is a clear factor in its popularity. An impressive 77% of ML developers and data scientists currently use Python. For perspective, only 22% use R, the other language often associated with data science.
What’s new with Java and other well- established programming languages?
Java, with over 8M active users worldwide, is the cornerstone of the mobile app ecosystem — Android — as well as one of the most important general-purpose languages. It’s adoption may have remained stable in the past six months but, in the overall picture, the Java community has gained 1.6M developers since mid-2017, which corresponds to a 24% growth.
The group of major, well-established languages is completed with C/C++ (6.3M), PHP (6.1M) and C# (6M). The fact that C# lost three places in the ranking of language communities during the last three years is mostly explained by its slower growth compared to C/C++ and PHP. C and C++ remain core languages in IoT projects (for both on-device and application-level coding), whereas PHP is still the second most commonly used language in web applications, after JavaScript. On the other hand, C# may be sustaining its dominance in the game and AR/VR developer ecosystems, but it seems to be losing its edge in desktop development — possibly due to the emergence of cross-platform tools based on web technologies.
Android developers behind Kotlin growth
Kotlin is one of the fastest growing language communities, having increased more than two-fold in size since the end of 2017, from 1.1M in Q4 2017 to 2.3M in Q3 2020. This is also very evident from Kotlin’s ranking, where it moved from 11th to ninth place during that period — a trend that’s largely attributed to Google’s decision to make Kotlin its preferred language for Android development.
Swift surpassed Kotlin in popularity this year, after attracting slightly more net new developers in the first half of 2020 (400k vs 300k). Since Swift became the default language for development across all Apple platforms, the adoption of Objective C has been decreasing steadily. This phase-out from the Apple app ecosystem is also matched by a significant drop in the rank of Objective C, from ninth to 12th place.
Finally, the more niche languages — Go, Ruby, Rust, and Lua — are still much smaller, with up to 1.5M active software developers each. Ruby and Lua have been around for more than two decades now, but their communities have essentially stopped growing in the last three years. On the contrary, Go and Rust appear to be actively adding developers, although it is still unclear whether the two languages will climb the programming language ranking in the coming period.
What’s your favourite programming language? Take our Developer Economics 20th edition survey to support your choice! | https://medium.com/@deveconomics/infographic-programming-languages-adoption-trends-2020-ca99231627d1 | ['Developer Economics'] | 2020-12-23 20:18:48.250000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Python', 'C Programming Language', 'Java', 'Programming Languages'] |
Search serving and ranking at Pinterest | Pinterest Engineering
Pinterest Search handles billions of queries every month. Every day, we help millions of Pinners discover useful ideas by delivering results among billions of Pins saved by people with overlapping tastes. In the early days, we built our first search system on top of Solr and Lucene. Over past few years, we’ve evolved our search stack by adding new layers, designing services and experimenting with ranking functions. Advancements in our search product have resulted in product evolutions over the years and across platforms that range from the search guides that have become industry standard, to improved results based on signals like interests and location, to visual search that uses the latest in computer vision. In this post, we’ll provide an overview of our search serving and ranking stack, and look ahead to future improvements.
Life of a search query
The following diagram shows the life of a search query on Pinterest.
When a Pinner searches on Pinterest, the query goes from our API layer to our search backend. In the search backend, an Anticlimax service understands the query, Obelix machines find the most relevant Pins for the query and an Asterix service coordinates the returned results.
Asterix
Asterix serves as the super root of our search system. It first talks to Anticlimax to understand the query intent and then rewrites the query. With the query rewrite result, Asterix constructs a personalized ranking function that may favor personalized results, such as local content, fresh content or partial matches.
Inside Asterix, there are three major components: cluster client, rerankers and blenders. The cluster client is a scatter/gather service that distributes search requests to Obelix nodes, waits for results and then merges results together. (The cluster client also retries on outliers and handles partial results and other failures.) The merged search result is then reranked based on different business logic. For example, a machine learned reranker generates a new ranking score for each Pin based on context features, while a local reranker boosts Pins in a Pinner’s language.
The search results from different clusters are blended using both simple and complex blending logic. For instance, we can use proportional blending to insert 10 percent fresh Pins into results. More complex blending logic allows us to, for example, surface Buyable Pins in results based on query intent, such as “men’s black sneakers”.
Anticlimax
Anticlimax is our query understanding and rewrite service. It has a pluggable interface so engineers can plug in their rewriters and datasets. Each query rewriter takes in a structured query and user information from the previous worker and rewrites it into another structured query.
All query rewriters are chained in a sequence, and we execute them one by one. Spell correction and query segmentation must be executed before other rewriters. Query expansion, query category prediction and other workers can switch order or execute in parallel.
We support different data sources for each query rewriter. For example, the spell correction model is stored in memory, larger dictionaries are stored as HFile on disk and query category prediction data is stored in a different service (which we query for every search).
Obelix
Obelix is a single leaf search server. It receives search requests from Asterix, retrieves and scores matching Pins from the index and returns top results to Asterix.
An Obelix server may have multiple index segments. The Pins inside each index segment are ranked according to query independent score. This score measures Pin quality, which is an important factor of the final ranking. With the static rank, we’re able to score first few retrieved Pins for most search queries and guarantee the best Pins are scored. Static rank also enables us to have complex functions for scoring.
The searcher in Obelix scans and scores multiple index segments in parallel. It maximize our CPU usage during non-peak hours and improves latency.
Search Ranking
Search ranking is the process of choosing the most relevant, useful and personalized Pins for a search query. We solve this unique problem from four different aspects.
Query. Similar to other search engines, Pinterest query rewrite does spell correction, query segmentation, category prediction and other rewrites. However, a unique aspect of Pinterest search is what Pinners are searching for. On Pinterest, people issue exploratory queries for ideas versus asking objective questions. To provide diverse results, we developed a context-based query expansion. By analyzing query logs and engagement data, we extract query pairs that have similar keyword context and engaged result, and use them to construct term expansions. For example, “relief” can expand to “remedies stress” under context “anxiety”. After expanding our result, we provide guides to help user drill down specific interests. Content. Pinterest has a unique, human curated dataset constructed of Pins, boards and Pinners. We explore different signals from our content, some human readable (e.g. board titles) and some not (e.g. embedding vectors for Pins, boards and Pinners).
Let’s look at an example of work we’ve done to better understand board titles. Let’s say a Pinner saves a Pin about “Daisy Ridley at the 2016 Academy Awards” to a board called “Oscar gowns.” We extract dozens of signals, such as board title frequency, Pin topic distribution and board quality, and can then understand this Pin is not only about “Daisy Ridley” but also related to “oscar gowns” and, more specifically, “2016 oscar gowns.”
Personalization
Now that 150 million people use Pinterest every month, and more than half of Pinners are outside the U.S., the ideas and interests on the platform are more diverse than ever. This presents a huge technical challenge–showing the right idea to the right person at the right time. For example, if a Pinner searches “football” in the UK, he or she is likely not looking for American football content. To make search on Pinterest more personal for every Pinner, we boost results based on certain preferences, such as gender, location and language.
There’s a lot more we can do to personalize the search experience for Pinners, and we’re exploring strategies and building plans for the future of personalized search.
Ranking
We use a machine learning model to score search results. The model aims to optimize user engagement with results after issuing the query, such as a Pinner saving a result or clicking through depending on the query’s intent. As mentioned, model features are from query, content and Pinners, like the text matching score between a rewritten query and a specific text source (e.g. board title), the match between search query category and Pin category or the match between Pin description language and a Pinner’s language. In the end, all features are combined in a linear function, and we can still understand and tweak certain parameters.
We’re also experimenting with different models including neural networks and gradient boosting decision trees. There’s a lot of ongoing work,both in terms of search quality and the infrastructure side so we can better understand content and apply complicated scoring functions online.
Conclusion
Building a personalized search experience is a huge technical challenge. Our search infrastructure and ranking are still very young, and there are endless opportunities for engineers to make a big impact. We’re building our next generation serving system with capabilities for better personalization. We’re also investigating different signals, ranking models and verticals that provide better user experiences. If you’re passionate about helping millions of people find personalized, useful ideas, join our team!
We would like to acknowledge the tremendous contributions of the search team Keita Fujii, Kevin Ma, Laksh Bhasin, Maesen Churchill, Matthew Fong, Roger Wang, Rui Jiang, Timothy Koh, Ying Huang, Yuliang Yin, Zhao Zheng, Zheng Liu, and Zhongxian Chen. | https://medium.com/the-graph/search-serving-and-ranking-at-pinterest-224707599c92 | ['Pinterest Engineering'] | 2017-03-01 18:39:39.582000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Ranking', 'Pinterest', 'Search', 'Personalization'] |
‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’ Shows a Ted Bundy He Would Have Liked | Lily Collins and Zac Efron in ‘Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile’ (Netflix)
Of all the serial killers who entered the lexicon of American culture over the past half-century, Ted Bundy, who confessed to over two-dozen murders committed in the 1970s and was executed in 1989, remains something of a standout. The likes of the Zodiac Killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, or Dennis Rader (aka the BTK) have shocked for many reasons, most particularly their depravity and ability to elude capture. Bundy, or at least the legend of him, followed a different trajectory.
The story on Bundy was that, unlike many more obviously socially maladjusted killers, he was able to live a seemingly normal life while simultaneously killing and raping young women. In this version, he utilized his above-average charm and intelligence to disarm his victims and elude capture, much like the kind of charming fictional psychopaths who repel but more attract in popular culture. That image was crafted first by the somewhat breathless press coverage over his 1979 trial (not coincidentally, the first to be nationally televised) and a little later by The Stranger Beside Me, the 1980 account by his onetime co-worker Ann Rule which both cemented his reputation and launched her true-crime writing career. That take on Bundy has been more critiqued of late, with questions being raised about why some in the media fall for this fannish take on a serial rapist and murderer who was, in all likelihood, of only average intelligence and magnetism.
Joe Berlinger’s competently made but fairly infuriating new Netflix movie Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile falls right into the charming-killer version of the Bundy. Having already made a docuseries on Bundy — Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes — to avoid repetition, Berlinger likely wanted to pursue a more unique, targeted angle with his narrative take on Bundy. Extremely Wicked is based on The Phantom Prince, Elizabeth Kendall’s account of her years-long relationship with Bundy, who pursued his crimes while keeping her in the dark. Berlinger’s stated intent was to show how Bundy, played by Zac Efron, could be so attractive that he would be able to get away with these brazenly-conducted crimes for so many years. If that’s the case, he may have succeeded, but at a high cost.
The most notable result of Berlinger’s decision to show us the charming side of Bundy — law student and good boyfriend by day, killer by night — is that at almost no point, excepting for a very brief sequence near the end, do we see him committing any of his many horrific crimes. Instead, the movie follows in vague fashion his relationship with Kendall (an unremarkable Lily Collins) from a swooning meet-cute at a college bar in 1969 to a final jailhouse send-off just before his execution. It’s a muddled dramatization. Years are leaped past and states hopped with abandon. Attention is paid to Bundy’s romantic manipulation, after a first seemingly chaste night together, Kendall wakes up to find an apron-wearing Bundy in her kitchen, making breakfast and cooing over her infant son. Afterwards, though, as he is chased down by law enforcement for disappearances in Washington, Utah, and Colorado, we are not shown quite enough of how he is able to keep the wool pulled over her eyes for all those years.
Kaya Scodelario and Efron
Although Michael Werwie’s script seems to track Kendall’s perspective, it cannot help but also include numerous scenes she is not privy to, from Bundy’s various run-ins with the law and his on-the-side relationship with supergroupie Carol Anne Boone (Kaya Scodelario). Berlinger visually hypes Bundy’s attractiveness to an almost laughable degree, particularly in the scene when Bundy has just escaped from a courthouse and is walking the streets of Aspen while being ostentatiously ogled by every woman who walks past. The argument for all these moments is that they show how Efron’s Bundy uses his wiles to elude capture. But all that they ultimately do is reinforce the charming-killer narrative while disassociating it from any acknowledgement of the cold darkness that lay behind that warm grin.
Particularly frustrating is how the filmmakers treat Bundy’s 1979 Dade County trial. Already a circus before it even began by dint of its media-saturated defendant, the trial was turned into even more of a sideshow by it being the first to be nationally televised, not to mention featuring a judge (played in meticulously oily fashion by John Malkovich) so enamored of Bundy that he seemed on the verge of asking for an autograph. Many of the details from this section are true, including Bundy’s showoff decision to fire his defense team and represent himself. However, the movie itself seems just as entranced by the defendant as the judge or his many wide-eyed female fans in the courtroom.
Efron’s skills at presenting an engaging mixture of wily attractiveness that hints at but falls just shy of extreme self-regard make for the kind of appropriately charming character who could entice women to let their guard down and police to overlook him as a suspect. Unfortunately, Berlinger makes the mistake of showing actual footage of Bundy during the credits. Efron successfully mimicked many of Bundy’s mannerisms, but took his assignment a little too far. The real Bundy came across as obviously preening, not to mention jumpy and not particularly eloquent. Presenting the character closer to how he appeared to seem in reality would have been a more interesting gambit. Showing just how low the bar is for educated white males to come across as charming and intelligent, the movie could have been a damning indictment of a particular strain of criminal privilege.
The ultimate result of all this queasy glamorization is not so much a dramatization, but rather something closer to Bundy fan-fiction. | https://medium.com/eyes-wide-open/extremely-wicked-shockingly-evil-and-vile-shows-a-ted-bundy-he-would-have-liked-97d8e501611f | ['Chris Barsanti'] | 2019-05-06 16:33:42.070000+00:00 | ['Joe Berlinger', 'Ted Bundy', 'Movies', 'Netflix', 'True Crime'] |
Visualization and Miracles | As it goes, we were doing an internal conference, and one of the speakers had no time to do a visual wrap-up for his presentation. So, he went with the slides that only had the portraits of the authors to whose work he was referring. The presentation was about the basics of lean, and the authors were Deming and Taylor. While everyone seemed to get bored with the listening, as there was no nice visual stuff such as the one we’d all become used to, I suddenly caught myself visualizing the talk of the boss and the worker in my head (it was in the presentation: the boss was intent on having his workers transport 47 tons of cast iron in one shift instead of 12 tons, or something of that nature).
This got me thinking that sometimes visualizations are doing a lip service to us. As we sit back comfortably, watching videos or live presentations with cute data and/or concept visuals, we are actually stifling our ability to create visualizations by ourselves! The picture is served to us, like a plate dish at a restaurant, so we make no use of the imagination “muscles”, and they get weak.
I’m not saying that everyone who watches animated drawings such as these ones is doomed to a life of zero creativity. My point is: we want to be watchful about keeping this balance — yes, again, it’s about a balance — between perceiving someone else’s visualizations — as well as visions — and creating our own. The power of our inner creator should not be shy about itself. As we watch others speak, and write, and sketch their stories , we might get all humble and subdued about what we are capable of bringing to the table. No influencer, no matter how many times “liked” they are, will draw a vision of our business, or of our product, or of some function of the app/software we’re working on. There’s always a time to look at someone’s visions/visualizations, and time to create our own. Each and every “how-to” about creativity includes this magic word called “vision”. Have you ever thought why any business starts with a vision? It’s exactly for this reason.
There’s a paradox: on one hand, the visual media is everywhere. Lots of visual channels deliver the dish to any, even to the laziest of the recipients. The problem is that the legions of those watching produces too few creators.
We’ve got 1 more month left in the year 2019. And one more week left before Thanksgiving. It’s this time of the year that we collectively allocate to miracles. So, I suggest that we devote this window to our creativity and to cleaning the debris of anything we don’t want or need any more, as we visualize:
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Related:
Visualization: Understated or Overrated?
My Favourite Ways to Visualize Ideas
The 18’s and the Thanks
Better The Devil That You Don’t Know
A Christmas Tale of a Software Developer and Santa | https://medium.com/quandoo/visualization-and-miracles-261fd8642cc5 | ['Olga Kouzina'] | 2019-11-21 11:30:08.706000+00:00 | ['Learning', 'Software Development', 'Creativity', 'Insights', 'Visualization'] |
Beyin Ritimleri Sınırları Tespit Etmemize Yardımcı Oluyor | Izmir University of Economics ACM Student Chapter aims to facilitate communication and collaboration with students studying in the university’s computer science fields and with ACM communities at other universities by organizing, workshops, programming competitions and seminars. | https://medium.com/izmir-university-of-economics-acm-student-chapter/beyin-ritimleri-s%C4%B1n%C4%B1rlar%C4%B1-tespit-etmemize-yard%C4%B1mc%C4%B1-oluyor-6016c586350d | ['Alican Akca'] | 2020-12-26 13:31:48.025000+00:00 | ['Nörobilim', 'Fizik', 'Bilim', 'Türkçe', 'Ieuacm'] |
BIC Writing Contest — Pitch Live | Blockchain in Chicago is an event happening February 22nd, 2018 at Venue 610 in Chicago. This writing contest will be decided by the likes and shares you give to the article along with a little weight from the judges (Hannah, Joe, and Danny). The point is to get a little extra marketing out there for the event. Sure there is a fully decentralized way to do this, but as a community organization we are simply having fun experimenting with a new technology. Payments will be posted on the 28th with transaction ID and addresses.
For info on the event check out blockchaininchicago.com
For info on us check out chicagoblockchainproject.com
And now an article from a community member:
Chicago’s Cryptocurrency Wealth Begins with Community Engagement.
Cryptocurrency access and wealth building begins with human capital and no other group get’s the formula than the Chicago Blockchain Project.
“We have just broken the 100 attendees mark about 2 weeks out,” says Joe Hernandez, on the upcoming event Blockchain in Chicago Kickoff to 2018. Its organizer, crypto enthusiast nicknamed “Disruption Joe,” is looking forward to featured speakers including Current CEO Dan Noaves and Blank Build CEO Kim Parnell. The A/V team will be “filming pro quality raw video including backstage interviews,” says Joe.
The kickoff event was organized to cater to the needs of Chicago’s growing crypto community of enthusiasts and professionals who would like to get involved. “Crypto is the dessert that attracts people to learn more,” he says, “It is our job to feed them their decentralized vegetables.”
The first half of the event, will focus on the growing business community who would like to leverage not just digital currencies but also blockchain technologies. The second half, participants will dive deep into cryptoland with workshops set up for learning and engagement.
Organizing the Crypto Community
The community that inspired the the Chicago Blockchain Project is a 1,600+ member meetup group by the same name. From traders and developers to consultants and private equity, members attended 50+ events and retweeted 200+ Tweets, with hash tags ‘#buidl’ and ‘#ChicagoHodl.’
“We wanted to become a resource for the community meaning, hosting mostly free meetups for our members to show off products and ideas.”
The Blockchain model for Business
The idea of cryptocurrencies and the application of it is made possible by systems like the Blockchain that allows transaction history to be public. Record keeping will be open. Whereas throughout history, ledgers had been kept private.
It is an innovative concept, where a block is a transaction…chained to all prior blocks, so hacking becomes difficult. In peer-to-peer networks, transactions can be limited between just as few parties inside of organization, within an ecosystem, or on the public web.
Take the financial service industry, where millions of transactions are handled in any day, taking days to settle. Not with blockchain. It takes minutes.
As more cities adopt meetups and telegram groups modeled after the Chicago Blockchain Project, cryptocurrencies and the blockchain will continue to flourish.
Credit Pitch Investors Live for the article and picture. | https://medium.com/chicagoblockchainproject/bic-writing-contest-pitch-live-80ff8f012534 | ['Disruption Joe'] | 2018-02-19 17:43:41.501000+00:00 | ['Investing', 'Entrepreneur', 'ICO', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Blockchain'] |
Salesforce — Enable Mass Quick Action | I am going to explain the functionality of Salesforce ‘Mass Quick Action’ with the help of a real use-case.
Scenario
The scenario is to generate a pending request record to a Contact object in custom functionality. (The Request record will be generated with different statuses for Example ‘Pending’, ‘Failed’, ‘Refused’ etc).
Here we need to generate the pending request records for Contacts by selecting multiple Contacts(It can be 1 or 10 or 100).
Solution 1
Since lightning is recommended by Salesforce we can create a custom lightning component.
Query all the Contacts. Select multiple contacts(1 or 10 or 100 but need to manually select). Click a button to generate the pending request records for those selected Contacts.
Limitations and the Issues on Solution 1
If you have millions of Contact? Will Solution 1 is good?
No, Because we don’t have any filter condition to show a specific number of Contacts. Then?
We can simply ask the user to give the filter condition? damn. will all the user/ admin know how to put filter condition? which means do they familiar with the SOQL?
No. Then?
Solution 2
We have an inbuilt functionality called Mass quick action in Salesforce can be added to an object’s search layout.
After setup a mass quick action, we can select up to 100 records in a list view and perform mass updates.
You can use a mass quick action with cases, leads, accounts, campaigns, contacts, opportunities, work orders, and custom objects that support quick actions and have a search layout in Lightning Experience.
You can’t perform mass quick actions on a Recently Viewed list so you have to create your own list view to use this Solution.
How can we Implement Solution 2 for our need?
Create a checkbox field in Contact object called Is_GDPR_Request_Generation__c with unchecked as default value.
Create a quick action in Contact object as ‘Generate Request’ by following,
Salesforce lightning experience -> Object Manager -> Contact -> Buttons, Links and Actions -> New Action -> Fill the form like below -> Save
Quick action for Mass Update
When you click Save button you will be redirected to a page to set up the quick action layout. Remove all the fields from the layout and Save -> Yes. You will be redirected to the following page.
Click New button at the section Predefined Field Values,
Select the field which you created in Contact and give the default value is true.
Click search layout of Contact and edit the list view -> Under List View Actions in Lightning Experience section -> add the Generate Request quick action to Selected Quick Actions tab.
Create a list view on Contact object(Refer https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=customviews.htm&type=5),
The list view for the contact object you updated now displays buttons for the actions you added.
The Users can select multiple Contact records in the newly created list view and use the mass quick action button to perform bulk updates.
How can we update the Contact record and generate Request record?
Create a Trigger in the Contact after an update like below.
trigger ContactTrigger on Contact (after insert, after update) { if(Trigger.isAfter) {
if(Trigger.isUpdate && UTILS.stopRequestGeneration == false) {
UTILS.stopRequestGeneration = true;
List<Id> contactsIdToGenerateRequest = new List<Id>();
for(Contact con : Trigger.new) {
contactsIdToGenerateRequest.add(con.Id);
}
UTILS.generateRequestForSelectedContact(contactsIdToGenerateRequest);
}
}
} -------------------------------------------------------------- public with sharing class UTILS{ public Static Boolean stopRequestGeneration {
get{
if (stopRequestGeneration == null){
stopRequestGeneration = false;
}
return stopRequestGeneration;
}
set;
} public void generateRequestForSelectedContact(List<Id> contactIds) {
//Query the Contacts with its Requests where it status is pending.
List<Contact> contactList = [SELECT Id, (SELECT Id, Status__c FROM Requests__r WHERE Status__c = 'Pending') FROM Contact WHERE Id IN :contactIds];
List<Contact> selectedContactsToGenerateRequest = new List<Contact>();
List<Contact> allContacts = new List<Contact>();
List<Contact> allContactsToUpdate = new List<Contact>();
//loop through the queried Contact and if it is not have Requests with pending status fill to selectedContactsToGenerateRequest and also to update Contacts Is_GDPR_Request_Generation__c field fill all the Contact into allContacts.
for(Contact con: contactList) {
if(con.Requests__r.size() == 0) {
selectedContactsToGenerateRequest.add(con);
}
allContacts.add(con);
}
List<Request__c> requestsLst = new List<Request__c>();
//Create Requests for the valid Contacts
if(selectedContactsToGenerateRequest.size() > 0) {
for (Contact contact : selectedContactsToGenerateRequest) {
Request__c request = new Request__c(
Contact__c = contact.Id, Status__c = 'Pending', Type__c = 'Test'
);
gequestsLst.add(request);
}
if(requestsLst.size() > 0) {
insert requestsLst;
}
}
//Update the Contacts Is_GDPR_Request_Generation__c to false.
if(allContacts.size() > 0) {
for (Contact contact : allContacts) {
contact.Is_GDPR_Request_Generation__c = false;
allContactsToUpdate.add(contact);
}
if(allContactsToUpdate.size() > 0) {
update allContactsToUpdate;
}
}
}
}
Summary
Create a Boolean field at Contact. Create a quick action at Contact and make the predefined value is true when you select multiple contacts to update via the quick action. Create a trigger at Contact to call the specific logic to generate a request for those Contact when the Contact Boolean value is true. Generate the requests and change back the Contact’s Boolean value to false if we need to generate the Requests again to that particular Contacts.
References:
The Considerations when we play with quick action can be found,
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=customviews.htm&type=5 | https://medium.com/@tharis63/mass-quick-action-6e25d3a55493 | ['Hariprasath Thanarajah'] | 2019-08-08 05:52:08.093000+00:00 | ['Salesforce', 'Quick Action'] |
My Cat Has Cancer | My Cat Has Cancer
And I don’t really know how to deal with it
The author and her cat, Jameson. Author’s picture.
I thought he might just have a bacterial infection. He had straight liquid coming out of his butt. There’s really no other way to put it. Get in the poo box — sound of a faucet running. He’d throw up here and there. I’d get home from work and he just wouldn’t shut up.
Oh my God, I wanted to throw him through a window. I love him, but Christ almighty, I don’t have kids, or a dog, for a reason. I didn’t realize he was yelling at me because he felt like ass.
So I took him to the vet. They did some blood work that came back ever so faintly anemic, and because I’d brought him in six months prior for some vomiting issues, they said they’d like to do an abdominal UltraScan to make sure everything was cool in there. He’s 12 years old, so it was probably a good idea. I was all for it. Plus, they’d have to shave his belly. Hilarious! I’m even more on board.
Hahaha, look at that belly! Author’s picture.
Brought him back in for the scan. In these Covid times, the waiting room is now your car in the parking lot. At least I can listen to my own music. Eventually, the vet came out to give me the results of the scan.
She said the lymph nodes in Jameson’s belly were gargantuan, and that his intestines were kind of thick, but the rest of his organs looked fantastic. So he either had the worst case of IBS she’d ever seen in her life… or lymphoma.
OK.
This didn’t really register with me. News like this never does. Especially if you give me options. If you give me options, I’m always going to go with the least fatal one first, then jump off that other bridge later.
I’m not always good with feeling feelings in the moment. I think (notice I said think there?) I often get overwhelmed and need time to process them. Like fallout from an atom bomb. Or I often equate it to letting Jell-O set.
I’m getting much better at letting myself feel things, undoing all that childhood trauma and conditioning, but this was very much a survival tactic. You button that shit up. Or, I do.
I also kinda need a house to be dropped on my head.
The vet said I was taking this news very well. That kind of jolted me. I was like, uh… I didn’t hear you say he had cancer and was dying. You said he MIGHT have lymphoma, and to ME, that means he TOTALLY doesn’t.
For me, in the wave of news I don’t like, shock and denial are instant, and I immediately attempt to set up permanent residence. Barcalounger goes there, flatscreen goes there…
I told the vet I have a degree in Theater and I’m a very good actor and none of this has hit me yet. I’m the court jester making everyone laugh at the funeral, and I’m sure I’ll eventually fall apart, I said with a laugh.
We decided to bring Jameson back in two weeks to rescan his belly. They sent me home with anti-nausea meds and Prednisone. If he had IBS or cancer, Prednisone was the answer and something he’d need for the rest of his life. Rock and roll.
Liquid meds via syringe I have to cram down his throat. Not so rock and roll.
I got home from the vet and looked up lymphoma and read how the life expectancy rates for large cell lymphoma are 3–6 months and small cell lymphoma are 9 months to a year.
Bottle of Prednisone in one hand and my phone in the other and I just start shaking. This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. This has got to be a joke.
This is my baby kitten. This is my baby Jameson. This is my baby pooh.
The baby Jameson. Author’s picture.
I’ve had him since he was three months old, just days before my 30th birthday. He was born on St. Patrick’s Day. He’s my needy, clingy puppy dog kitty who greets me at the door and always has to be touching me. Have To Touch The Mama. My little garbage disposal fruit eater, Rice Krispie Treat, danish stealer.
He’s my kid. He’s my family.
Nope, nope, nope. Not gonna deal with this right now. Back to my Barcalounger in Denial Land.
I was honestly fine with this until the next day (shocker) when, not only did reality start to set in, but so did me having to tell my parents. Well, telling my Mom. Telling my siblings was pretty OK. Dad doesn’t do feelings (where DO you get it from, Niki?) or much in the way of words, so not gonna get much of a reaction or support there, so that leaves Mom.
I tried to hold it together all day before I stopped by their house on the way home from work. I don’t know why, but I was surprised at how hard I broke down, and I always try so hard NOT to break down, as I told her Jameson might have cancer.
She didn’t break down and become a blubbering mess as I expected. Medication will fuck with your emotions sometimes. She was the reasonable, we’ll get through this person I needed, and I was thankful.
The vet called with some test results. They’d taken some fluid from Jameson’s lymph nodes to try a test that might show whether or not he had cancer. The test had come back inconclusive. So there was still a chance he just had heinous IBS.
I felt the heaviest weight in all the land lift off my shoulders and damn near floated out of the backyard. I was also frightened by how I only noticed this weight had even been there once it was gone.
For two weeks life was back to normal, with the added trauma of giving liquid meds to a cat who very much doesn’t want them. His liquid butt turned into solid poo butt and my hopes were super high that it was, indeed, just heinous IBS!
Not really helping me write, there, pal. Author’s picture.
I took Jame back in for his belly re-scan. The vet said his lymph nodes weren’t that much smaller than before, and that was a likely indication of small cell lymphoma. This news had a little more bite to it than last time.
I know all things die. Believe me, I’ve thought about when he’ll die since the moment I got him, but it was always of natural causes, and when he was at least 20. We had a Siamese who lived to be 20, so I have high expectations. And he died at home, in my Dad’s arms, in our garage, when I was 17.
My parent’s cat, Cat, got cancer and was a miserable, projectile vomiting wretch, and my Mom made the decision to put him down. All my sister and brother-in-law’s dogs eventually got cancer and had to be put down. (Is there something in the water?) I can’t imagine having to make that decision. And now I’m having to imagine eventually making that decision.
I find it increasingly difficult to maintain my residence in Denial Land. I’m slowly walking away from my Barcalounger and flatscreen. I can’t afford movers.
She said it was possible to do an endoscopy and biopsy his intestines to find out definitively yes or no, and that procedure would run a cool $6,000.
You read that right.
Those are human prices. And that’s just to find out a yes or a no. Now, if he had a tumor they could go in and cut out and that would solve the problem, I would throw down my credit card, no problem. Wouldn’t even bat an eye. But six grand just for a yay or nay? And the treatment is the same either way? I think I’ll have to pass. | https://medium.com/assemblage/my-cat-has-cancer-cb3d63dade42 | ['Niki Marinis'] | 2020-11-26 15:10:44.979000+00:00 | ['Cancer', 'Life Lessons', 'Pets', 'Love', 'Self'] |
The Anti-Mask Crowd in Other Scenarios | So that got me thinking, how would these people react in other scenarios?
On an airplane that’s losing altitude
“I’m not going to wear an oxygen mask! My body, my choice! As long as you allow abortions, I’m not going to wear an oxygen mask!”
Getting an X-ray
“No way, Doc. There’s no way I’m wearing that lead apron. First of all, there’s no proof that radiation doesn’t make you stronger. I’m not giving up my chance to become Spider-Man. Second, I’m not gonna let you cover up this sleeveless Big Johnson shirt for one second.”
During a zombie outbreak
“I’m not going to wear zombie-proof clothing! I’d rather get bitten and die and be a literal zombie for the rest of my life than look stupid by wearing PPEZ.” (Personal Protective Equipment from Zombies.)
In the old west shootout in Back to the Future Part III
“I’m not going to stuff a potbelly stove door under my shirt to protect me from Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen’s bullets. I’d rather die in 1885 and never ride a hover board again than make it back to present day and finally take Jennifer to the lake.”
When Godzilla attacks while they’re dining at Outback Steakhouse
“That’s great that you’re handing out Godzilla shields, but read my lips: I’m Not Gonna Wear One! I’m going to sit here and eat this Bloomin’ Onion, shit my pants, and die here in this booth like a real man.” | https://extranewsfeed.com/the-anti-mask-crowd-in-other-scenarios-888e22e326c8 | ['Dave Fymbo'] | 2020-07-01 15:06:00.919000+00:00 | ['Satire', 'Politics', 'Humor', 'Masks', 'Covid 19'] |
5 Happy New Year 2021 Party Ideas | Happy New Year 2021 Party Ideas
It’s that point of the 12 months while we get dressed up and get all dolled as much as birthday celebration difficult in order that we are able to bid good-bye to the 12 months and welcome the brand new 12 months with a brand new beginning.
However, matters are specific now and everybody is vigilant approximately the coronavirus pandemic however we cannot be extra excited to welcome the New Year 2021 due to the fact as all of us realize 2020 become one hell of 12 months however we need to birthday celebration and live secure on the equal time. The most effective manner to do that is via way of means of throwing a residence birthday celebration and restricting the visitors so you can experience yourself at your great via way of means of reducing the danger of coronavirus.
Here we’ve got made a listing of five matters that you could do to make your birthday celebration rocking and taking place via way of means of staying secure on the residence:
1. Dress Up
First matters first! Do now no longer neglect about to get geared up due to the fact it is that point of the 12 months and who does now no longer like to get dolled up despite the fact that you’re going to live at domestic, your buddies are nonetheless going to sign up for you. So cross order that gets dressed that you’ve got been trying for goodbye or simply take out that birthday celebration gets dressed out of your cloth cabinet and keep in mind to put on the mask, despite the fact that few human beings are going to acquire at your residence, your protection is for your palms so why now no longer.
2. Plan a digital birthday celebration
The great manner to live secure is to host a digital birthday celebration and invite as many as buddies you need at the video name and get the party on. You can talk, dance, and vibe via way of means of seeing every different on-display screen and it’s going to include no human touch so that you are secure from the outer international and there may be some other plus factor that now in case you get too inebriated you could be at domestic and also you do not want to rise up in remorse the opposite morning. So, cheers! for that.
3. Movie night time
Invite your two-3 near buddies for a film night time and rise up all night time even as looking at films is a notable manner to welcome in 2021, so make certain that your Netflix is operating nice and you’re done.
4. Make a cocktail
A new 12 months’ eve cannot simply do without a cocktail so it is the time to get on well and make a cocktail. Add anything liquids you need to feature in it, you could even upload cherry garnish on the pinnacle of it to feature the cultured and you’re geared up to take the charge.
5. Toast! Toast! Toast!
Take out that champagne bottle and lift a pitcher only for your self due to the fact you made it all of the manners here, you deserve it, you’re able to it so this complete toast is only for you. To upload the appeal and feels have it withinside the announcement glass. | https://medium.com/@garrywilliamson/5-happy-new-year-2021-party-ideas-bd9c4eef78ee | ['Garry Williamson'] | 2020-12-27 09:54:11.203000+00:00 | ['Happy New Year', 'New Year Party', 'New Year Resolution', 'New Year', 'Party Planning'] |
Grate.App Árukereső | 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/%C3%A1rukeres%C5%91/grate-app-%C3%A1rukeres%C5%91-43acac6cbbb1 | ['Botond Kopacz'] | 2020-12-25 23:40:59.139000+00:00 | ['Android', 'Apps', 'Hungarian Language', 'iOS', 'Árukereső'] |
Your Life Is Full of Porn. Stop Getting Yourself Off. | This Is Your Life On Porn
You wake up. You go to the toilet and relieve yourself. Your day starts out well. You have many goals you want to achieve and your to-do list is ready and waiting for you. “Just one sec,” you say to yourself. Then, porn enters the bathroom while your undies are wrapped around your legs.
Lifestyle Porn
You whip out your phone and open the app of your favorite magazine. Everywhere is consumer-focused ads telling you that your life could be better. They show the lifestyle you could be living if you weren’t living this 9–5 nightmare you call a life. You think to yourself “I’m so stupid. How do I escape the rat race?”
Lifestyle porn is all about people you’ll never meet and places you may never get to go. It’s a curated list of the top 1% of experiences you could have in your life. The lifestyle looks perfect.
You never see what it takes to earn the lifestyle, only the end result which is the lifestyle.
It’s frustrating as hell to watch lifestyle porn. Your lifestyle is never going to be the same as someone else and that’s the point. You can create your own lifestyle rather than copy a porn version you’ll never have.
Money Porn
Laptop. Laptop. Laptop.
They always have a laptop on their knees and downpayment on a Ferrari ready to be delivered during a socially distanced unveiling at their mortgaged home. The laptop is a symbol for one word: easy.
A laptop makes you think making money is easy.
If money was so gosh damn simple, we’d all be rolling in it and nobody would ever need to wake up early for work again. Money porn sells the dream that cash will solve all your problems.
If you only had money, then you’d have happiness. Money porn is a lie. Without meaning and fulfillment, money won’t do a thing for you. In fact, money can make your life worse, not better, if you haven’t discovered meaning or fulfillment first. Money can cause you to be a jerk and be addicted to the ridiculous goal of having to be first while others lose.
Nobody has to lose for you to win and that’s the problem with money porn.
Startup Porn
All you need is a business and you’ll be successful. In Australia, where I live, 9/10 startups fail in the first 5 years. This means startup porn is statistically designed to ruin your life.
A business is hard work. Easing your way into business is a superpower and all the startup porn ignores that. The startup peddlers tell you to walk away from everything and start a business. That’s stupid advice.
Adding too much risk to your life will only stress you out, leading you to make terrible decisions you’ll regret later in life.
You can be happy without a startup.
(If you’ve got a regular job, then you’re already an entrepreneur with one customer anyway.)
Revenge Porn
Social media makes this version of porn really easy.
You can sabotage other people in the comment’s section of their posts or in the hidden chamber of secrets known as direct messages. Seeking revenge feels good. Seeing people lose, so you can, win seems obvious.
When you eradicate the idea of winners and losers from your life, you welcome the gift of opportunity through the door of your mind.
The more people you help, the better you do for yourself.
If you help people, they will help you in return.
You can do more when you collaborate, than you can by yourself. The game of life is rigged against you. You can never be a winner at everything, so why even try to? It doesn’t make sense.
The need to win only leads to eventual disappointment. You can crush it today by giving up revenge porn and helping people do better.
People “Doing It” Porn
Porn consisting of people having sex is not good for you either. Most of this content shows scenes and acts you can never replicate. The bar you have for physical looks and crazy sexual acts will only increase.
Drop porn for real-life sex with your partner. It’s much better.
Influencer Porn
If you have a personal brand and lots of followers, you’ll do incredibly well.
A personal brand is everything, they say. No it’s not. Gary Vee explains social media nicely.
“I really miss when people understood that people who consume their content are a community, not a group of people that are there to serve their ambitions.”
Nobody gives a damn about how many followers you have or your brand. The influencer movement is a lie designed to keep you on social media platforms so you continue to play the game. Use social media, absolutely — but use it to be helpful and for a cause greater than your own selfish desires.
Take it from somebody who knows the social media game well — 100,000 followers feels like 1000. Followers and a brand won’t make you rich, successful, happy or die with no regrets.
Influencer porn is designed to sell you products, not make you successful in life. You don’t need any of it.
Cure Your Porn Addictions with This.
You don’t have to live a life of porn. Porn is the default option and we don’t even know it. I lived a life of porn too. Not anymore.
The secret to kill all forms of porn is discipline.
Discipline yourself to focus on what you know is good for you. You have a list of habits already that you probably follow — like exercise, reading, leisure time, meditation — and you can focus your time there and get far better returns than the endless porn-fuelled addictions of meaningless nonsense.
Porn is an addictive distraction to doing the work you know you want to do. Getting started with your life’s work each day is hard, but so is continually distracting yourself with life porn.
Whatever your version of porn is, abolish it.
You can get yourself off with life, rather than porn. It feels better too. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/your-life-is-full-of-porn-stop-getting-yourself-off-c16cc0b092f1 | ['Tim Denning'] | 2020-07-31 17:01:01.525000+00:00 | ['Addiction', 'Life', 'Money', 'Social Media', 'Productivity'] |
Running Commentary 12/7/2020 | Malice defeats Axe Backwards, who decided to try a flamethrower this year | Video from BattleBots Twitter.
BattleBots
The start of the 2020 season did not disappoint. The big match, Tombstone vs. Endgame, has been something people have wanted for some time, of course. I’d like to say upfront that I’m not a huge fan of either team, and I’m not trying to make excuses for or diminish anybody when I say that Endgame won by a lucky shot. I don’t think Mabey and company would deny that. Still, it was an exciting fight at the end of a night of great matches.
Besides the main event, the most spectacular fight was between Malice and Axe Backwards. As usual, Axe Backwards lost. What made their loss spectacular was the fact that they added a flamethrower to their bot this year. My advice is always “don’t add a flamethrower”, and I’d like to take this opportunity to explain why: bots are generally made of metal, either aluminum or steel. These have melting points of about 1,200 and 2,500 Fahrenheit respectively. A propane torch can certainly get that hot, but you’re only going to do damage if you can perform a close, sustained burn. And even so, as was the case with Axe Backwards and many bots before it, the fuel tank is a serious weakness.
Rusty bores into Sporkinok | Video from BattleBots Twitter
There were several new bots Thursday night, and the one that has captured the most attention is Rusty. David Eaton showed up with no team, no sponsors, and a bot made out of spare parts, and won. That’s a great story.
Rusty was on my list of favorite new bots, mostly because its weapon is one I’ve thought would be an effective one: a drill. I don’t have a lot of hope for Rusty in fights against anything with a high-energy weapon, but I’m hoping Eaton can maybe get some sponsors off this strong start and be able to come back again with a better-funded, more solidly built bot with a drill.
Captain Shredderator bounces off Lockjaw | Video from BattleBots Twitter
Finally, I’d like to talk about the Lockjaw vs. Captain Shredderator match. For the third year, I’ve been able not only to confidently say Shredderator will lose a given match, but to be able to say how. Any bot that can take a hit from Shredderator can win the match by just tanking until Shredderator had bashed itself to death pin-balling around the box. With so many veteran bots having been redesigned over the years, I have no idea why Nave keeps the same glass cannon season after season. | https://medium.com/the-edwards-edition/running-commentary-12-7-2020-b5498b62f816 | ['Derek Edwards'] | 2020-12-07 13:03:03.077000+00:00 | ['Battlebots', 'Star Wars', 'Birds', 'Mandalorian'] |
Fail Forward Fast — LimaCharlie. About five months ago the team at… | About five months ago the team at LimaCharlie launched a framework for automation that was built around the idea of Replicants. A Replicant was to be a digital automaton: a platform for building algorithms that could be configured by the user to automate away some of the drudgery.
The platform worked exceedingly well in that it allowed us to build out a wide variety of capabilities quickly. The Replicants were able to perform complex tasks on-demand for a single endpoint or continuously across the entire fleet.
The problem with the Replicants, as we came to understand it, was with the mental model. The concept worked great for us as developers building out the capabilities but it did not fit when thinking about it from the perspective of a user. The interface was awkward and having the Replicants grouped together did not make a lot of sense.
After spending some time thinking about it we came to the conclusion that users did not care about the Replicants but rather what they could do for them. Replicants use their individual abilities to do jobs and provide said abilities as a service. And so we refactored the technology to provide users with a set of services that can perform jobs at the user’s request.
We still use the Replicant platform on the backend to build out our services but now deliver the services that they offer using a familiar pattern.
Services are provided through the main navigation menu and with them you can automate YARA scanning, run detection and response rules against historical data, perform file integrity monitoring, automate incident response tasks and adjust your telemetry verbosity with more to come.
The process of arriving at this new delivery model has been an interesting one and exemplifies the benefits of being an early stage company adhering to an agile development philosophy. Instinct often drives us towards the core of a problem and through an iterative process the solution can be honed. | https://medium.com/limacharlieio/fail-forward-fast-limacharlie-7e667d0ffddf | ['Christopher Luft'] | 2019-08-22 16:25:51.238000+00:00 | ['Informationsecurity', 'Fail Fast', 'Automation', 'Infosec', 'Cybersecurity'] |
Kissing a fairy | The blond boy doesn’t seem like the straightest thing ever, but in the early 1960s, there’s always hope. Emily Godsall, his sort-of-adopted-mom, thinks over all the advice that God and Freud have had for boys like the 17-year-old Bruce Campbell living in her house for the summer before college. His mother, Marion, is an obvious case of nymphomania, and his dad, Jim, an obvious head case of authoritarian asshole. And to a Freudian mind, they probably messed Bruce up for life.
But as a Christian, Emily goes on faith. He’s an artist. Maybe a great artist. Maybe he’ll be asexual? That’s the Freudian idea. Sublimation. Doesn’t the artist transform sex into art? If she can help him, it’s to become a classical pianist on the way to being a composer—and that means discipline. Living under her watchful eye, his life becomes an art bootcamp. Sleeping on the couch, he gets up and practices piano all day, in between cigarettes.
And maybe he can get a girlfriend.
Attending the Godsalls’ church, Trinity Lutheran in Norristown, Bruce meets sixteen-year-old Debbie Hower. With a bit of a push, they’re dating.
In church choir, she remembers, she’d sung his arrangement of ‘O Sacred Head Now Wounded’ —
‘O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down . . .’
And now ‘together’, they seem ideally matched. Two blond kids, often read as brother and sister. “We were,” she tells me, “madly in love.”
They’d spend evenings out—like going to see the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary in Philadelphia. Dropping Debbie off, he’d kiss her goodnight.
“It would go straight to my heart,” she says.
She realizes how talented he is. “He could draw. His talents didn’t just go to music. It was art, clothing, design. Multi-faceted. He was genius for sure.”
Everyone says she looks like Mary Travers in Peter, Paul and Mary, the folk group, and everyone knows Bruce is a big, big fan of the group. He’d gone to see them with his mother, and he and Debbie go see them too. Bruce loves Mary, and her hair. He loves Debbie’s hair too. “That’s what he used to comment on,” Rob Godsall says of Debbie. “The long blonde hair.”
Bruce likes Mary’s feet as well. He draws them all the time in his notebook. Did that seem unusual?
“I don’t think Bruce thought anything he did was unusual,” Rob says.
Bruce takes Debbie to visit his mom.
Marion might be home, but not answer. Or if she invites them in, soon after, asks them to leave. “Why didn’t she want me to stay?” he wails.
Debbie sighs. “Nobody could hurt him like his mom could. Not that she did intentionally. And then there was little Willy. It’s funny . . . to describe complex things.”
Debbie’s family takes him along to the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City, featuring Michelangelo’s Pietà, and exhibits on the ‘Space Age’.
“I did like the boy,” Debbie’s mother says. Her daughter, she sees, is “pretty smitten with him. As far as his — ”
She pauses. “I thought he was a nice boy.”
He wants a folk group.
It’ll be like Peter, Paul and Mary, a trio. Debbie doesn’t have the voice, but Phyllis does, so it’ll be her, him and Rob? Or maybe Ward, unless he’s busy but their friend Bob isn’t. Bruce tries shuffling names, then finally calls it ‘The Last Three’.
I ask Rob if there formal rehearsals?
“With Bruce, nothing could have been that formal,” he says.
Mrs. Godsall drives Bruce & co. around to gigs at various venues, like the Valley Forge Military Hospital, to play for wounded soldiers.
But he needs better singers, he decides. With Mrs. Brownlow’s help he enlists identical twins Grace and Marty Lavender, a year younger than him. They are, Rob recalls, “austere in their presentation.” They’re Baptists, and have no desire to be folk singers.
Bruce shows them the music he has in mind. Protest music? Bob Dylan?
It’s all “very radical,” Grace thinks. But they say they’ll give it a try, so Bruce starts coming over to their house with his guitar to rehearse. “His fingers just flew over the strings,” Grace says. “He had a real passionate need to play.” On his guitar, he can play all three parts.
As the girls live near Marion’s trailer they’ll drop him off there afterward. “It was common knowledge,” Grace says, “that all was not quite right.”
Whatever that means, she’s too Baptist to say. But they seem to be making it work, with Bruce between two brunette girls, the blond star—the Mary.
John Ingrassia remembers the first time he sees “that beautiful boy with diamonds in his hair.”
He sighs at the memory. “He really did glow.”
John doesn’t glow. His hair is long and black. He dresses in black too, like Antonin Artaud, the ‘insane actor’, his role model.
It’s hard to ‘glow’ when you’ve just gotten out of the psych ward after your latest nervous breakdown.
But everything changes that day when he shows up at the Free Library of Philadelphia to meet up with his friend Peter, who’s a freshman piano student at Temple University. They’re the same age, but John is still in high school because of his “problems.”
John brings his history teacher, since they’re kind of having an affair. John feels used, but the guy keeps the other kids from picking on him. That’s worth something? Bruce gives one dismissive look at the guy, though—and the history teacher is history. “Ten minutes later I was hating him too,” John says. “Or seeing him in a whole new light, that was emanating from the boy next to me.”
Although a Beatnik, radical, communist, ex-Catholic, ex-everything, John was fascinated by this straight-laced guy from King of Prussia—with that crucifix reliably pinned to his lapel. “He had neat blond hair and wore sport coats, button down shirts and tie,” John recalls. “I wasn’t even sure about the really strong feelings I had for him.”
Peter had met Bruce at auditions for Temple. “He didn’t play piano as well as he should have,” he says. “He was kind of uneven and slapdash technically, but he had phenomenal data processing ability to handle notes and musical data, and had written some phenomenal chamber music and solo instrumental music.”
The three become friends, or a “Bruce groupie thing,” as Peter jokes. They go to the symphony, since Peter gets tickets through his parents, who are professional musicians, or head over to Wanamaker’s department store to see the famous, massive pipe organ.
They’ll go to Peter’s house, though his mom doesn’t like Bruce. When Bruce sits at Peter’s grand piano and starts playing—she’s not amused.
“I was supposed to be the genius, not him,” he says.
Then it’s off to class at Temple, where Peter tries to explain to Harvey Wedeen, Temple’s new young piano professor, why Bruce isn’t showing up.
Bruce seems to be “playing” with Harvey too. “His composition gift was something he’d hid from Harvey,” Peter says.
Peter talks up Bruce’s compositions, so he’s assigned a composition teacher, and doesn’t show up for that either.
Things had gotten tense at the Godsall house.
One day, Mr. Godsall, prone to depressive cycles, tells Bruce, “Don’t you know when you’re not wanted?”
Rob and Ward assure Bruce he is wanted—but he leaves anyway.
He’ll live at the YMCA in Philadelphia, and work on his career in classical music. He’s writing “something big,” Marty recalls, like an opera based on a Shakespeare play. Peter recalls a suite of seven pieces called Views From the Capitoline Hills. “I couldn’t even play some of them,” he says.
But the folk band demands more and more of Bruce’s attention. They need some glitz, he thinks. “It was kind of gold, red and shiny,” Grace recalls, of the costumes John’s sister makes for them.
It was actually John. “I stitched up a couple of nice matching gold lamé frocks,” he says. He stole the material from Wanamaker’s. It was a visual emergency. The girls are “highly resistant” to wearing them, but do.
The group’s playlist tends to range from “Take This Hammer” to “It Ain’t Me, Babe” to “What Have They Done to the Rain?” Then he has a new arrangement for “They Call The Wind Maria,” from Paint Your Wagon.
“The rain is Tess . . .”
“The fire’s Joe . . .”
“And they call the wind Maria,” each sings, as ‘Joe’ tells his story: “I’m a lost and lonely man without a star to guide me.”
It becomes their theme song, and band name: ‘Moriah, Tess and Job’.
John is surprised to learn the original lyrics have ‘Joe’ and ‘Maria’. It seems Bruce slips in biblical references, without telling anyone. Moriah is the mountain where God tells Abraham to take his son Isaac, “for a burnt offering,” i.e. to sacrifice him.
And Job, of course, is the Bible’s divine sufferer, tested by Satan for his faith.
Bruce starts wanting to be called ‘Job’ too. But when he’s Job, he doesn’t wear suits. He wears faded denim, boots, and smokes non-filtered cigarettes.
“I think the ‘Job’ thing was just more conducive to calling himself ‘J.C.’, which he sometimes did,” John says.
But Job—in addition to Jesus—seem to have been longtime identifications, and part of the mystery of ‘Jobriath Boone’, his later performing name. A reference might be Archibald MacLeish’s verse play, J.B., which is about the biblical Job. Bruce doesn’t explain things.
At finals at Temple, neither Bruce nor Job show up.
“He was just bored and very unhappy about something,” Peter says.
“We’d go visit friends of his down in the seamy districts of Philadelphia,” Debbie recalls. John eyes her warily.
The folk group is offered a regular gig at The Main Point, a coffee shop in Bryn Mawr, but days after graduating high school, in 1965, the girls leave for college.
He stays busy. The Bryn Mawr Repertory Theater hires him to play piano for productions of The Fantasticks and Carnival. “It’s really funny,” John reports in his letters to Grace, “because he’s supposed to hate theater and I love it, but he’s the one with the job.”
Debbie goes on late-night train rides to turn pages as Bruce plays, she sighs, “masterfully.”
He’ll be a famous artist, of course, but in which art? He keeps up his painting. Peter likes one of a minaret pointing into a golden sunset — “kind of phallic,” he thinks, “with an Arabic skyline way below that.” Bruce gives a painting to Helen of himself as Robin Hood, asleep under a tree.
He could be a classical, or folk musician. Rock music, of course, is out of the question. “I mean,” John says, “it really was yucky.”
Bruce takes his guitar on the train and plays concerts to passengers. He works as an organist for a local Presbyterian church. All his adopted mothers come to hear him. “He could punch your lights out with his piano playing it was so beautiful, but to me he wasn’t as good on organ,” Mrs. Joe says. “He was capable, but he didn’t have the flair or fire he had on piano.”
John and Peter go too. Bruce opens that service with the overture to Lawrence of Arabia. They laugh so hard, they leave the pulpit. Later on, Bruce announces he’ll play a piece by Prokofiev, his favorite composer, and one of his own. “These two composers,” he says, “both have Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.”
He says in a later interview: “I was flipped out by Prokofiev’s music — then it was too late to do anything musically whatever that is.” That might mean that being a serious classical musician starts to feel like it died around 1953, with Prokofiev. Bruce does love him, though, especially Alexander Nevsky, a soundtrack to a 1938 war movie.
There’s wars inside of him too. Willie recalls that Bruce takes him once to the huge mall, and they go into the piano store. Bruce sits down at one and breaks out into a frenzied performance, as a clerk closes in nervously.
“He was not afraid of confrontation,” Willie says.
Rob recalls another time being in a music store, and Bruce sits at a player piano, the kind that played automatically. He improvises harmonies as it plays the melody.
An irritated clerk comes over and removes the roll, so the piano goes silent. Until it keeps playing—the same exact tune? It’s Bruce.
He’s a great mimic in general. For comic effect, he’ll quack like Donald and Daisy, his two pet ducks he keeps at his father’s house, or he does until they move.
Not returning to college, he becomes eligible for the draft. He’d delayed registering. Helen takes him in, recalling the ‘perturbed’ woman clerk who glares at the blond miscreant, saying, “We’re gonna get you.”
Meanwhile, John is back in the psych ward.
He’s been talking about suicide again. When Peter brings news of Bruce, though, John gets better quickly. He has an idea! His parents and doctor even agree, so Bruce comes to stay at their house.
It’s a period of intense artistic activity. Bruce listens to John’s mother’s canary. “He could imitate the song on guitar, which excited the bird.”
John only remembers because he’d recorded it, and would listen to the tape later. “There was lots of laughter on that tape, and he had the most beautiful laugh.”
Bruce writes music and teaches John to play guitar, though John can’t pick up Bruce’s odd style of holding the neck, pinky pressing down as four fingers fly over the strings.
They paint. Bruce does one of John’s history teacher that he’d been seeing, now slumped over a cup of coffee. And he does self-portraits. “Lonely men leaning on lamp posts, smoking cigarettes, gazing far off,” John recalls.
There’s one of his mother holding a cocktail glass looking drunk and crazy. “We all thought Marion was a monster,” John says.
One night, Bruce and John are at a coffee house in Bryn Mawr talking to some older guy who invites him to his place—for drinks.
They go, and Bruce drinks, and drinks. The guy suggests Bruce stay over.
“It might’ve been the first and only time in my life when I felt a sense of purpose,” John says. Bruce is drunk and raving. “Why doesn’t anyone love me?” On and on, as John carries him to the train station. A lady gives them money for a cab as Bruce keeps going. “Don’t ever leave me. I’m not a good friend.”
John tries not to wake his parents as he helps Bruce to bed. Undressing him. Stopping at the sight of his nearly-naked friend. “A kind of awe of beauty,” he says. “I mean, touched by God with beauty.”
Turning off the lights in anguish he’s up all night, “thinking, thinking, thinking.”
The next day, they talk. They’re more than friends, they agree. They go to bed, and out of the darkness, Bruce says, “John, c’mere.”
“It had to be our little secret,” he sighs. And before long Bruce is saying, “Don’t get attached to me. You cannot get attached.”
The warning comes just in time. “I was deeply in love,” John says.
He clings to the boy with diamonds in his hair.
“In my nutty little head I was angry that I wasn’t a girl and I couldn’t have his baby,” he says. “If I were a girl, he would have been more affectionate.”
What all was going on in the way of intimacies?
“There was never much affection from him,” he says. “We were good boyfriends, and we ‘fooled around.’ Not much in the way of kissing. Times were weird, we were young and knew nothing, both virgins.”
But they’re together. That’s what matters.
“I thought we were glued together forever.”
Bruce isn’t too fond of whatever’s being directed at him.
“He often scolded me for being too emotional, for loving him, for not being ‘a man,” John says.
One night there’s a snowstorm.
Bruce and John take the train to King of Prussia, but can’t get a ride back. It’s really cold and snowy, but Marion’s trailer is close.
She isn’t home, but they let themselves in, and go to bed. Late at night she arrives, and somehow realizing they’re being sexual with each other—throws them out into the storm.
“We had to walk miles to the train, to get back to Philly,” John says.
Whatever he is—it what he doesn’t want to be. Bruce gets counseling at church, Debbie is told later, with Pastor Bob “confronting him with the fact that homosexuality is against God’s order.”
But Debbie’s mom thinks Pastor Bob would’ve been “accepting.”
She pauses. “Yes, I do. I think so.”
An awareness of it settles into the Campbell family—never to be discussed openly, but lurking in a discussion that erupts into argument. Jim maintains that if you don’t act like a Christian, like he does, you’re going to Hell.
Helen isn’t sure Jim is totally saved, i.e. “giving over wholeheartedly to the fact that Christ died for our sins.” But she agrees: “You can’t continually — ”
She struggles for the words. “Christ does forgive our sins, but if you continuously sin, you lose your salvation.”
Was that Bruce’s view?
“That’s what he was lambasting the family about,” she says. “That we didn’t know the meaning of Christianity, according to him.”
Bruce quits church.
He’ll visit Grace and Marty’s, for the music, or John’s Catholic church. John goes anywhere Bruce goes. “I worshipped him,” he says. It dawns on him, very slowly, that Bruce has fallen for another boy.
This is a difficult matter. John, indeed, talks about drug use, sex (ideally odd relationships with straight guys), theater, communism, his stays (past, present, and future) in mental wards, but not about the boy Bruce leaves him for. The answer is always silence.
Boy X worked in the Display department at Wanamaker’s in King of Prussia, as John works in Display in Philadelphia, so they know each other, is all he’d say.
“He seemed nice,” Peter recalls, of meeting him. But Peter is upset at Bruce. “He had dumped John, I felt, rather abruptly and cruelly.”
Throughout this ordeal, John remains the theatrical professional. He’ll mount a play, Beckett’s Endgame, which he’ll produce, direct, and of course star in. He just needs music.
Off he goes to King of Prussia, to find Bruce at work. Unhappy to be interrupted, Bruce says he can’t do the job “for professional reasons,” but takes the script and shoos John away.
Weeks pass. John’s co-star quits. Bruce can take the part? Off he goes, as Bruce again sends him away, though as he leaves, John turns to see Bruce staring at him? Speaking in an altered voice —
“Finished, it’s nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.”
A line from the play, delivered, John thinks, exactly right. “I bet you didn’t know that Bruce is quite an actor,” he writes Grace.
Otherwise the tone in John’s letters is resigned. “Have you ever been surrounded by hundreds of people every day and you still feel lonely? That’s the way it is with me.”
He hears Bruce was dumped by Boy X. Then he hears Bruce has quit Wanamaker’s, and got a job at another department store, typically working in the men’s department.
Then Bruce calls him to say—he’s been drafted.
John remembers the song on the radio. It was “The Sound of Silence”—as he was freaking out. “I would have gone to Canada with him,” he says. “But he was somehow resigned to this fate.”
He pleaded with Bruce, to no avail.
“The main reason he was doing this, was to prove to his father, (and perhaps to himself) that he was a ‘man.’”
On May 18, 1966, Bruce shows up at the train station.
He’s in Company E62 heading for Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He greets Rick Mott, his old classmate, who’d been drafted too.
On layover in Washington D.C., everyone gets drunk, and talks music. Bruce is into Dylan, some Beatles, Sonny and Cher. A “simple and direct” sound, Rick thinks.
On arrival they get their hair cut and start training, crossing monkey bars, marching, keeping guns and quarters spotless. Afterward they sing and joke. A couple times, Bruce recites the limerick that’s going around.
There was a young gaucho named Bruno
Who said, “Screwing is one thing I do know.
A woman is fine,
And a sheep is divine.
But a llama is Numero Uno.”
“He was such a great mimic,” Rick says. “He would ‘xerox’ the company commander all the time.” Behind the guy’s back, Bruce does the face and says, “Hey, ahh, son” just the same way, as everyone laughs.
His own father is, of course, so proud of him. Jim even drives down to Fort Jackson to visit, bringing Debbie. So Bruce gets to show off his pretty girlfriend.
“He enlisted in the OCS I’d say to try and please his father, probably,” she says. “I guess if he had to be in a situation he’d rather be leading.”
It seemed like they both had a life together, stretching out ahead of them.
“We would plan,” she says, “the castle we should live in. Or the ring I should wear. Or the shoes I should wear.”
Private Campbell has problems with authority.
He writes home about them eagerly. “He did something once and had to hug a tree for hours as punishment,” John recalls. “He made some bad puns about ‘rank’.” Bruce writes Emily Godsall too. “A lot of humor and sarcasm,” Rob recalls. “Then he would talk about how much he missed her.”
Private Campbell likes getting muscular, and likes his dad being proud of him, for once. Jim drives Debbie down for a visit, so he gets to show off his pretty blonde girlfriend.
Upon taking the Army’s aptitude test he’s offered Officer Candidate School, which means a third year? “He decided he was going to make something of himself,” Rick says. Bruce passes around the letter from home, full of his praises. A year later he’s home on leave.
The song on the radio is “Stop, In the Name of Love.” John is living in a thespian commune when Bruce shows up, still in love, he says, with Boy X. Can John talk to him? John knows him. Can John help?
Obviously, John says, he can’t.
“Why can’t you just be my friend?” Bruce pleads.
“I could never be friends with you!” John screams. “It would tear me apart!”
Bruce is crying. John is crying harder!
Spending the next three days and nights sobbing in the arms of his lesbian den mother, he finds, at last, the great role of his life. “The light went out of my life when Bruce went away,” he sighs. “I bored endless potential lovers with tales of the one true great love of my life.”
Jim and Helen drive Bruce to the train station in Philadelphia. He’ll be sent, they understand, to Vietnam.
The train is delayed. He frets he’ll be late. It pulls in, and away he goes.
The F.B.I. is all over town. An agent tells John he was the last friend to see Bruce, and if he hears from him, he’s to report him. “Yeah right,” John snickers.
How Debbie weeps. But Bruce is gone. | https://medium.com/prismnpen/kissing-a-fairy-e325ffe18a7a | ['Jonathan Poletti'] | 2020-06-05 15:07:33.002000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Christianity', 'Creative Nonfiction', 'LGBTQ', 'History'] |
Quick and Easy Ways to Create a Quality Podcast | If you are quite familiar with podcasts and how they really work, it is also likely that you are already well aware of podcasting’s increasing popularity, power, and clout. In fact, podcasting is no longer just for people who are passionate about it. Nowadays, even businesses are now getting into podcasting to increase recall and brand awareness.
However, while podcasting can seem easy, there’s actually more to it than meets the eye. Fortunately, even if podcasting can come with their own unique set of challenges, it is reassuring to know there’s also no shortage of ways to make the entire podcasting process quick and effortless.
Create a topnotch podcast the fast and easy way by keeping the following awesome tips in mind:
Employ tongue clicks
If you are new to podcasting, expect to commit more mistakes than you would like. However, you have to remember nobody started out an expert in podcasting. Yes, even the successful podcasters you admire.
If anything, keep in mind that making mistakes is perfectly normal, if not expected. The good thing is there is such a thing as podcast editing. You don’t have to always get things right the first time around. Podcast editing will take care of your blunders and slips, intentional or otherwise.
To make the podcast editing process easy, use one technique that’s going to make the process easy — employ tongue clicks. How does it work? Each time you have a verbal slip, click your tongue and pause for a few seconds before continuing.
Tongue clicks will make it easy for anyone editing your podcast to scroll through ad find the pauses and gaps. This technique will save a significant amount of time and can make editing faster.
Have a great system in place
While not everyone may be aware of it, there are several processes involved before a podcast is considered good enough to be shared with listeners. From the writing of the script down to the interview proper, things can get messed up quite easily if there is no robust system in place.
Since podcasts have different needs, goals, and objectives, there is no template that will work for everyone. In line with this, consider it best to create a system that’s tailored to your unique goals, needs, and objectives. In addition, don’t shy away from polishing the system when you need to until you find the system that’s perfect for you.
Be consistent
Podcasting can be hard and demanding at times. This is especially true when you have a lot of things on your plate. However, when it comes to podcasting, the importance of staying consistent cannot be overstated. With that in mind, staying consistent should rank high in your priority list.
Observe consistency in everything you do — from the podcast quality your listeners expect down to time the episodes are released. Fortunately, there are plenty of tools you can use that will warrant you don’t miss any deadlines or release dates. Use them to work for you so you’ll be able to deliver consistent quality outputs at all times.
Have you started your podcast? What other tips do you swear by? | https://medium.com/@glindberg104/quick-and-easy-ways-to-create-a-quality-podcast-571d5a9dbfc9 | ['Gustaf Lindberg'] | 2019-02-10 13:09:53.707000+00:00 | ['Podcasting Tips', 'Podcasting', 'Podcasting Strategies', 'Podcasting 101', 'Podcast'] |
How to Get Free Instagram Followers and Likes in 2022? | Getting free Instagram followers for an unlimited number of accounts seems too difficult to make it! But people still spare efforts to try various ways to increase free followers for Instagram. There are kinds of Instagram growth services and websites to increase followers on Instagram instantly. With your followers up, you’ll benefit a lot from your Instagram account.
In addition to making your account look more interesting and rich in terms of content to gain free followers on Instagram, another faster and easier way to make it is with the help of various Instagram followers apps. There are many apps or websites to solve the problem of growing followers, most of which need to pay. You can buy followers, such as 100 free followers, 500, 1000, or more based on your needs. At the same time, you can also buy Instagram likes.
Honestly, the Instagram official doesn’t support and encourage users to buy Instagram followers or likes, especially those bot Instagram followers or fake followers which more prefer you to get Instagram followers organically. However, such kinds of tools continue to emerge. Fortunately, some tools cater to the rules of Instagram, helping users naturally grow their followers without violating any rules of Instagram, like GetInsta. On top of that, this free Insta network is totally free.
GetInsta is a top-ranked free Instagram followers app dedicated to offering real and unlimited free followers for Instagram easily, quickly, and organically. It is also one of the best tools to get Instagram likes without password. This free Insta net provides a 100% safe and clean security system to gather real-person at one place to follow and like each other. Everyone can get unlimited free Instagram followers or likes for their own Instagram account and posts.
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Sounds good? Really good it is. You can give it a try, it won’t let you down! | https://medium.com/@monicamaoliuzhu/how-to-get-free-instagram-followers-and-likes-in-2022-7464a5f782c8 | [] | 2021-12-16 08:29:52.346000+00:00 | ['Instagram', 'Instagram Marketing'] |
A Doula’s Role in a Medicalized Birth and the Danger of Glorifying Natural Birth as Ideal | Illustration by Sophia Pekowsky 2018
In the popular imagination, doulas are associated with natural birth. A doula is kneeling with someone in labor; swaying with them over a birth ball, applying compression, and helping them work through the physical pain of labor. In a hospital setting, doulas can be perceived as a protective shield from the horrors of an overly medicalized birth and uncompassionate doctors. In fact, one of the main arguments for hiring doulas in hospitals is that their continued support leads to fewer medical interventions. What then, is a doula’s role in a birth that involves multiple medical procedures? When someone is hooked up to a fetal monitoring system and must stay on their back? When someone has received an epidural and does not feel any physical pain? If a C-section is necessary, has the doula “failed”?
As both a researcher and a doula, I straddle the fascinating and sometimes messy grey area between theory and practice.
Most people who study birth agree that there is a huge problem with the over medicalization of birth in the US. The C-section rate, as of 2016, was 31.29%, which means that one in every three women* will have a C-section. This is more than twice the World Health Organization’s suggested 10 to 15%, and many people report unsatisfying and even traumatizing birth experiences in hospitals relating to C-sections and other medical interventions.
In her book Birth as an American Rite of Passage, anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd outlines the technological model of birth that exists in most American hospitals. Within this model, birth is thought of as an illness, something that needs to be treated, monitored, and cured, rather than a normal and healthy process that sometimes has complications. She describes how many medical interventions in hospital births are in fact unnecessary, caused by a need to hurry labor along, to fit the unpredictable phenomenon of birth into a fixed schedule. In a subsequent book, Birth Models That Work, Davis-Floyd uses the latest scientific evidence to argue that birth models that produce the best outcomes for both the child and parents are those that actively seek to use medical intervention only when necessary.
As a researcher, my hope is to conduct studies that influence policy, to advocate for “birth models that work”, that promote cultural awareness in birth practices and avoid unnecessary and potentially harmful medical interventions during labor. However, as a doula working in a hospital, my job is not to push the person I am supporting towards a natural birth, nor is it to fight with doctors and nurses. My job is to be there in labor with the person I am supporting in that moment, to stand with them and help them understand what is happening around them, whether they’re getting a C-section in an operating room or laboring in a bathtub at home.
*While not all people that give birth identify as women, the most accurate statistics use this language. When I am describing specific research, or examples where birthing people do identify as women, I will mirror this language, but I will generally try and use gender neutral language to acknowledge trans and nonbinary people who give birth.
One of the most powerful moments of my doula training was an exercise in controlling our judgment.
We watched a video that followed four different birth stories, each on radically different ends of the natural-medical spectrum. One of these women had scheduled a C-section to have the most control possible over her birth. My instinct was to judge her, for thwarting the natural labor process and for unnecessarily undergoing an intense and potentially harmful surgery. But upon further questioning, there were more profound reasons for her need for control. She had experienced multiple miscarriages and each one had torn her apart emotionally. Her husband was distant and cold. She needed her birth to be predictable and scheduled, and she was terrified that it would once again end in loss.
“Who do you think needs the most support?” the trainer asked us at the end of the video. The other women in the video were planning natural births- one even went as far as to request no medical personnel beside her. But most of us in the workshop agreed that the woman who was getting the C-section needed a doula the most. Even though she would be immobile, and potentially unconscious, the presence of a trained and supportive person to calm her, to hold her hand during the operation, and to debrief with her afterwards would be vital in how she processed the experience- this could affect not only her emotional health but also how she bonded chemically with the baby.
Despite the proven benefits of limited medical intervention in births, glorifying natural delivery as the “ideal” way to give birth ignores the reality of who can have a natural birth, which in the US, is deeply linked to race.
Studies show that health complications such as gestational diabetes and high blood pressure are more likely to appear in Black women. This is due, in part, to a wide range of systemic injustices that limit access to healthy food and prenatal education for marginalized people. However, even among wealthy Black women with access to these resources, the statistics don’t drastically change. In her article “Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life or Death Crisis”, Linda Villarosa explains,
“For black women in America, an inescapable atmosphere of societal and systemic racism can create a kind of toxic physiological stress, resulting in conditions — including hypertension and pre-eclampsia — that lead directly to higher rates of infant and maternal death. And that societal racism is further expressed in a pervasive, longstanding racial bias in health care — including the dismissal of legitimate concerns and symptoms — that can help explain poor birth outcomes even in the case of black women with the most advantages.”
In pregnancies where these types of complications are involved, medical interventions such as C-sections can be life saving. When doulas are conceptualized as useful in natural births alone, they can end up ignoring people most affected by systemic injustice, creating a self-perpetuating cycle where people with more resources receive more support.
A doula’s role in a medicalized birth can be equally as important, if not more so, than in a natural birth.
In an induced birth, for example, the doula provides emotional support more so than physical support. Induction of labor usually requires a constant attachment to a fetal monitoring system, which often renders the birthing person immobile. Induction also tends to be more painful, and this combination of increased pain and limited mobility can lead to the use of epidurals. In this situation, a doula’s job is varied. It can look like checking in with someone as they drift in and out of sleep, making sure they’re drinking water, talking and laughing with them, explaining the medical jargon when the doctors don’t do so thoroughly enough. A doula will also help process the experience after the birth, making sure the birthing person continues to feel validated and taken care of after they have left the hospital.
The founders of The Doula Project describe their work as “a quiet form of activism, an advocacy of compassion, a watchful eye on the medical industrial complex.” The present tense support that doulas provide is, in my eyes, equally as important as long-term advocacy that challenges the over medicalization of birth and ingrained racism in medical spaces. In an unjust and violent world with so much that needs to be changed, it’s easy to overlook the seemingly simple act of companionship and continued support, especially in hospital settings where medical interventions are involved.
During a highly medicalized birth, I see a doula’s role as creating opportunities for agency in situations of limited control.
When someone is tied up to four different machines, not allowed to eat or drink, and has their cervix poked and prodded at every other hour, it’s easy to begin to feel like a vessel for a baby instead of a whole person. Within this context, the option of a choice as small as adjusting the temperature of the room, removing or adding blankets, or even changing the channel on the television can bring back someone’s sense of self in the birthing process, creating comfort and confidence that is intrinsically linked to hormones that improve birth outcomes and decrease chances of postpartum depression.
It’s important that hospitals, birth workers, and prospective parents value doulas beyond their ability to reduce medical interventions and instead focus on the long-term effects that doulas can provide even in situations where medical intervention is necessary. Additionally, I implore birth workers that conceptualize natural birth as the “ideal” and “correct” way to give birth shift their thinking to include the varied and complex reasons why a more medical birth might be the best or necessary option for someone. Instead, birth workers can brainstorm ways to facilitate connection, empathy, compassion, and care into medical practices that often seek to mechanize the unarguably emotional experience of giving birth. | https://sophiapekowsky.medium.com/a-doulas-role-in-a-medicalized-birth-and-the-danger-of-glorifying-natural-birth-as-ideal-f7a3786c49d8 | ['Sophia Pekowsky'] | 2020-11-02 19:12:00.510000+00:00 | ['Doula', 'Womens Health', 'Feminism', 'Birth', 'Reproductive Justice'] |
What You Seek is Seeking You! — Rumi | The universe is always waiting to help us reach our goals. The trouble with us is that we keep changing our goals. When we go to management school to set short, medium and long term goals; or even if we go for a job interview, we are asked — what are your goals — please briefly state your short, medium and long term goals. This allows the interviewer to assess whether we will be able to fit into the organisation culture and whether our goals are more or less in alignment with the organisation goals. This is fine when it comes to jobs — but what about our life goals? Have you ever defined them? Have you ever in your wildest dreams had liberation (moksha) as one of your goals? Because, if that is not your ultimate goal then you have missed the purpose for which you have taken this birth!
From the moment we take birth the universe is conspiring to take us to our ultimate life goal that is liberation. We lose our path — in this competitive world our parents feel that earlier the child starts learning the better (we have schools for 1.5 to 2 years old toddlers) — education starts that early — meaning we have already started going contrary to the universe’s goals! Even then the universe keeps sending messages to each one of us, but we keep missing the messages or misinterpret them to suit our own ideas of life and we get stuck in this birth-death-birth cycle!
Over several births and several Gurus, we ultimately reach a birth which could be said to be our last birth — this is after we have lived all our dreams, satisfied most of our desires and realised for yourself that we are not happy in spite of having everything that life can offer. That is when we start looking for spiritual guidance, start turning inwards. Once we do that, we actually start correctly interpreting the messages that the universe is sending us. The Guru-energies then direct us to a realised Master who becomes the inspiration for us to turn inwards. Once you turn inwards, you find peace and solace which all the material wealth, education, power, post-position could not give you all these years. You then slowly start understanding the world of illusion in which we live, one realises that what we had been seeking all our lives had been seeking us over several births. We ultimately find that divinity, peace, silence, joy and bliss right within us while we had been chasing all of this outside in the material world. Ultimately, we find our own true self and become one with nature! Self-realisation at last! | https://medium.com/@girishborkar/what-you-seek-is-seeking-you-975f9d459a47 | ['Girish Borkar'] | 2021-08-26 03:48:15.356000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Spiritual', 'Mindfulness', 'Spiritual Growth', 'Meditation'] |
Slayed in the Spirit: Bethel Church and the Rise of Christian Supernaturalism | Revival Nation
Ever since the Puritans — a hyper-legalistic sect of Protestantism — landed ashore at Plymouth Rock in 1620, the United States has been a near-constant state of religious revival. And many of those early settlers believed the New World to be the New Jerusalem and themselves as God’s new “Chosen People.”
Modern missionaries in foreign countries often worry about syncretism, or the blending of old and new religious beliefs that create hybrid religions.
Back in 17th-century colonial America, syncretism wasn’t on anybody’s radar. Lacking theological gatekeepers and with an emphasis on “religious freedom,” the immigrant-friendly New World became a melting pot of conflicting spiritual ideologies.
In Fantasyland, historian Kurt Andersen writes,
“As Yale religious historian Jon Butler has written, the early United States was an ‘antebellum spiritual hothouse,’ Christian faith blending freely with folk magic — belief in the occult, clairvoyance, shamanic healing, and prophetic dreams, much of it old folk superstition no longer constrained by Puritan doctrine and order.”
As a result, new hybrid versions of Christianity that highlighted emotional spectacle, spiritual warfare, miraculous healings, and apocalyptic prophecy began to dominate the religious landscape.
Salem Witch Trials, 1692
Colonial America was also a deeply superstitious place. Witches, shapeshifters, changelings, and Native Americans (which some Protestant preachers described as “instruments of the devil” and “professed enemies of Christ Jesus”) prowled the wilderness of the new Promised Land. Therefore, it was important for Christianity to be more powerful than the demon-haunted world lurking outside the walls of the church.
For the various Protestant sects fleeing the Church of England and Roman Catholicism, religion finally became something it hadn’t been for a long time: Exciting.
And this was no more apparent than the First Great Awakening (1730–1755) and Second Great Awakening (1790–1840). Watershed moments in American history, both revivals forever altered the ways Americans interacted with Christianity: It was not enough to know the Holy Spirit; one had to experience the Holy Spirit.
The First Great Awakening
During the First Great Awakening, tens of thousands of American colonists flocked to hear preachers like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and John Wesley deliver theatrical performances heavy on fear-based and emotional appeals in tents, pastures, and town squares. Prayer and worship gatherings became riotous displays of euphoric religious experientialism.
Congregations would faint, moan, convulse, weep, and collapse in fits of hysterical laughter and collective religious ecstasy. No one had ever seen or heard anything like it before.
During one sermon, Jonathan Edwards was so disturbed by the audience’s reaction (one observer remarked, “[there was] howling, screeching, groaning as of women in the pains of childbirth”), he wrote another sermon urging caution against emotionalism, saying emotional outbursts didn’t prove the legitimacy of a revival and “enthusiasm often spreads even when evangelists proclaim false doctrine.”
Forty years later, the Second Great Awakening was triggered by the Red River Meeting House, a religious camp meeting of several hundred people led by James McGready, a Presbyterian minister, in June 1800.
After observing a service at the Red River Meeting House, minister Barton Stone wrote, “It baffled description. Many, very many, fell down as men slain in battle, and continued for hours together in an apparently breathless and motionless state.” In a letter to friend, minister McGready wrote, “There you might see little children of ten, eleven and twelve years of age, praying and crying for redemption, in the blood of Jesus, in agonies of distress.”
Another seminal event was the Cane Ridge Revival of 1801, an impromptu week-long religious festival in Kentucky that saw between 10,000 and 25,000 attendees — an absolutely massive turnout given the population density of early 19th-century America.
Cane Ridge Revival, 1801
At Cane Ridge, dozens of preachers erected make-shift stages and delivered fiery exhortations of the “true new Gospel” amid the glow of multiple bonfires. Participants laughed uncontrollably, collapsed, barked like dogs, and danced with wild abandon. Young women writhed on the ground and moaned in near-orgasmic bliss. Preachers found themselves drowned out by hundreds of people “spontaneously exhorting” their own divinely-inspired messages. And, while sitting on the shoulders of adults, children spouted apocalyptic prophecies.
According to one observer, Cane Ridge was filled with “Sinners dropping down on every hand, shrieking, groaning, crying for mercy, convoluted.” Another visitor commented on the untold number of attendees blessed by “the jerks,” or seizure-like convulsions: “Their heads would jerk back suddenly, frequently causing them to yelp…I have seen their heads fly back and forward so quickly that the hair of females would be made to crack like a carriage whip.”
Historian Paul Conkin called the Cane Ridge Revival “the most important religious gathering in all of American history.” For decades afterward, a common evangelical prayer at on the onset of any camp revival meeting was “Lord, make it like Cane Ridge.”
And, yet, the events at Red River Meeting House and Cane Ridge Revival have been shuffled to the annals of history. Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists owe their denominations’ prevalence to the the First and Second Great Awakenings, but the sensational (and cringe-worthy) emotionalism have largely been stripped from the narrative.
When modern critics treat Bethel Church like an eccentric anomaly or evangelical outlier, they’re failing to take into account the wider context of America’s religious history. And therein lies an uncomfortable truth: Perhaps more than any other denomination, Bethel’s Christianity is America’s Christianity — emotional, attractional, and supernatural. | https://medium.com/interfaith-now/slayed-in-the-spirit-bethel-church-and-the-rise-of-christian-supernaturalism-acf4f5f775a2 | ['Joe Forrest'] | 2020-02-17 17:38:29.188000+00:00 | ['Spirituality', 'Christianity', 'Church', 'Faith', 'Religion'] |
Business Interests and the Broader Political Agenda | Hydrocarbons have been central to Russian economic development following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Aided by foreign direct investment from North America and Western Europe, the Russian energy sector began to modernize during the turbulent 1990s and liberalize as a result of the loans-for-shares initiative from the Yeltsin administration in 1996 (McFaul, 1997). This restructure enabled the sector to take advantage of global windfalls in market prices in the early to mid-2000s, which supported the growth of state expenditures as the Federation experienced greater political and economic growth vis-à-vis its counterparts in both the G8 and the OECD (Saradzhyan, 2016). Despite the downturn in global market prices over the past decade due to the Great Recession and the Shale Revolution, the energy sector continues to represent a significant revenue stream for the Federation’s state expenditures and a significant portion of its Gross Domestic Product.
Similarly, hydrocarbons have played a large role in the United States. The petroleum and natural gas sector represents about 8% of the overall Gross Domestic Product and directly supports 6% of the U.S. workforce (American Petroleum Institute, 2018). Given its weight in the economy, the sector uses its capital to invest in significant lobbying efforts at all levels of government. In the period 1998 to 2018, energy firms, largely led by the hydrocarbon sector, spent $2.2b in federal lobbying efforts (Open Secrets, n.d.). As a result of the Shale Revolution, the United States has managed to sustain hydrocarbon production levels at historic highs, propelling it to the position as the leading global petroleum and natural gas producer, taking the title from the Russian Federation in 2011 for natural gas production and in 2013 for combined petroleum and natural gas production (Brown & Kahan, 2019). In 2018, the United States overtook Saudi Arabia as the global leader in total petroleum production (Brown & Kahan, 2019).
Although Russo-American relations have historically rarely been more than cordial, relations dramatically soured during the Bush administration over differences in foreign policy, in particular concerning West and Central Asia and the European states of the former Soviet Union. NATO’s expansion to the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 2004 represented the first time that a state of the former Soviet Union joined the U.S.-led military bloc. This elicited strong wording from President Putin that the balance of power had shifted to the extent that it inhibited the Federation’s ability “to implement its political commitments to military containment in the north-western part of the Russian Federation” (as cited in Fedorov, 2013). Former Prime Minister Primakov had stronger words for the expansion, stating that it amounted to “containing” and “weakening” the Federation (as cited in Fedorov, 2013).
The Obama administration attempted a “reset” of relations in 2009, with Secretary of State Clinton and Foreign Minister Lavrov symbolically pressing a red “reset” button in Geneva. However, ties rapidly cooled by 2012 due to mutual mistrust and intersecting objectives. Treatment of political dissidents and the two parties at odds over the Syrian Civil War pushed relations past the breaking point. In 2012, Congress passed the Russia and Moldova Jackson-Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012 (Magnitsky Act), which represented the first major piece of sanction legislation (bills) against the Federation under the Obama administration. The Magnitsky Act was named in memoriam for Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian investigative journalist who was murdered in 2008 while investigating corruption; enactment of the Magnitsky Act resulted in the targeting of Russian political leaders whom the United States held responsible for his death.
Two years later, the Euromaidan in Ukraine (November 2013–February 2014) and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution exposed Ukraine as a key focal point in a proxy war between Moscow and Washington for European influence. In early February 2014, Russian intelligence leaked a phone conversation between former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt that confirmed U.S. involvement in selecting the next leadership of Ukraine and playing a deeper role in the crisis than that of the neutral mediator it was projecting (BBC, 2014). The 2014 annexation of Crimea several months later and the ensuing War in Donbas kickstarted additional Russian sanctions with Western European support and cooperation. In March 2014, the Obama administration issued three separate executive orders (13660, 13661, 13662) targeting the Russian Federation in relation to Ukraine, followed by the signing of congressional sanctions legislation in April and December and a fourth executive order in December (U.S. Congressional Research Service, 2020). These sanctions represented the first time that the Russian hydrocarbon sector had been targeted by the United States since the Soviet-era Yamal pipeline embargo imposed by the Reagan administration from 1980–1984. Executive and congressional sanctions continued to be imposed against the Federation through 2018 in response to various actions taken by the Putin administration. These efforts included targets in both the energy sector and the political elite.
References:
American Petroleum Institute. (2018). Oil & natural gas: Supporting the economy, creating jobs, driving America forward. https://www.api.org/~/media/Files/Policy/Taxes/DM2018-086_API_Fair_Share_OnePager_FIN3.pdf.
BBC. (2014, February 7). Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
Brown, B., & Kahan, A. (2019, August 20). The U.S. leads global petroleum and natural gas production with record growth in 2018. Today in Energy, the U.S. Energy Information Agency. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40973.
Fedorov, Y. E. (2013). Continuity and change in Russia’s policy toward Central and Eastern Europe. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 46(3): 315–326. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.postcomstud.2013.06.003.
McFaul, M. (1997). Russia’s 1996 presidential election: The end of polarized politics. Hoover Institution Press.
Open Secrets. (n.d.) Lobbying: Top Industries. https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=i&showYear=a.
Saradzhyan, S. (2016). Is Russia declining? Demokratizatsiya, 24(3), 399–418. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/628611.
U.S. Congressional Research Service. (2020). U.S. sanctions on Russia (CRS Report No. R45415). Retrieved from https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R45415.pdf. | https://medium.com/business-interests-political-agenda/introduction-46576658862 | ['Jay La Plante'] | 2020-11-26 22:17:18.291000+00:00 | ['Intro', 'Russia', 'Energy', 'Oil And Gas', 'Foreign Policy'] |
Decoupling E2E tests | Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
A couple of months ago I was being interviewed for a QA role by a startup company. When I asked what was their test strategy the interviewer replied that they automate all the scenarios with Cypress. To me it was a red flag for several reasons, thus I started to ask more questions. But the only response I got from the interviewer was — how do I know its all working unless it’s tested this way (through the UI). For some reason, I think this is the byword for testing in many people’s minds — test everything through the UI. All of this happened in 2020, that’s exactly 5 years after Just Say No to More End-To-End Tests was published. Five years in tech is like an eternity. And still, we (as a testing community) tend to put E2E tests as a cornerstone for our test strategy.
I am not saying an end to end test are evil, they still can have its place in today’s test strategies, but they should be used wisely and on an appropriate scale. The biggest issue I had with them is that they are very expensive to debug and they have very high requirements on our (testing) infrastructure to avoid all possible timeouts and hiccups. This includes servers running our backend service, CDN, database, and others. The „how do you know its’ all working“ is, on one hand, the biggest selling point of E2E tests to many people but on the other, the complexity is their biggest drawback. Imagine our E2E „login“ test fails. There are endless possibilities of what could go wrong — CSS issue(button is not visible), API not responding, API interface changed but UI logic was not updated accordingly, maybe just some infrastructure issue, or an issue with a database schema, and so on. Although the „login“ test mitigates very specific business risk, it does so very ambiguously. In 2020 we need our tests to be much more targeted and isolated to decrease their run-time and the time needed for debugging. Put it in other words, we need our tests to be much more effective as we develop and deliver software at a higher pace than ever before.
The microservice architecture demonstrates the rapid pace of software delivery and development while emphasizing testability and reducing complexity as opposite to monolith applications. All of this is possible because microservices are independent and loosely coupled. This means that one microservice is responsible for very specific business capabilities. Let’s carry the same paradigm to testing. So Instead of performing complex E2E tests (which tests application through several layers), try to decouple it and test each layer separately or in smaller and more manageable parts. The practical way to achieve this would be to mock the API and run our front end application against it. As a result, our UI test would be much faster and resilient and we would cover frontend specific risks only. To cover the other risk, we should also introduce contract tests and API tests. This way we would ensure these two systems (front end and backend) understand each other and the backend application works as expected. These practices in place allow us to test specific risks on the appropriate layer instead of testing them all through one layer only. All of this has one important incidental benefit, we can run these test much earlier in the delivery pipeline (shift left), they can run locally during every opened merge requests, instead of waiting for application deployment to the testing environment. | https://medium.com/@novyludek/decoupling-e2e-tests-b434c51fc2d1 | ['Luděk Nový'] | 2020-10-13 10:01:54.739000+00:00 | ['Qa Testing', 'E2e Testing', 'Test Automation'] |
Kura Biotech Pioneers Enzymological Techniques for COVID-19, Narcotics Detection | By: Olivia Van Dervort
Kura Biotec is a Chilean biotechnology startup whose high-efficiency enzymes have revolutionized testing for illegal narcotics worldwide. With products used by clients spanning from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and the World Anti-Doping Agency to the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse, Kura Biotec’s ability to utilize local waste products for scientific innovation makes the company a leader in the Chilean health technology space.
Manuel Rozas, the son of a Chilean entrepreneur whose company manufactures aquaculture byproducts from salmon industry waste, returned to southern Chile after graduating from university with the goal of applying the same concept to advanced biotechnology. His first breakthrough came in the form of the red abalone, a type of sea snail whose viscera produce an enzyme with massive potential for drug testing. In 2010, Rozas developed the first version of BG100, an enzyme extracted and developed from naturally occurring abalone beta-glucuronidase enzymes. Three years later, he founded Kura Biotec, opened an office in Los Angeles, California, and entered into distribution agreements with major buyers.
BG100 represents a leap forward for high-efficiency enzyme testing, reducing the time it takes to conduct opioid analysis from as many as 16 hours to less than one. The enzyme has since become an essential tool for the purposes of drug testing in forensic, athletic, and judicial arenas; in 2016, it was used in over three million drug tests worldwide.[1] By 2018, Kura Biotec reported annual production of roughly 20 million samples valued at $1 million.[2] The company, still based in the Chilean city of Puerto Varas, now operates in the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia with a variety of enzyme products for sale, including two others that have broken records for efficiency.
Kura Biotec’s enzymes detect the presence of a vast array of drugs in human and animal urine and blood by breaking down the molecular aggregates formed when drugs are metabolized in the body. By “cutting” these aggregates, the enzymes can trace and measure the presence of specific molecules. After initially extracting beta-glucuronidase from red abalone, Rozas and his team at Kura employed a computational model to apply genetic modifications to the original enzyme, developing an even more efficient version. Kura’s catalog of enzymes can be applied for myriad purposes, and CEO Eduardo Wallach believes this diversity of use is what sets the company apart from competitors: “We offer more than a hundred different applications for the use of the enzymes and, according to the needs of clients, we devise new uses.”[3]
The dynamic nature of Kura’s business strategy is evident through the objectives the firm set for itself in the past year. In 2019, Kura began to pivot toward innovation in genetics with the goal of optimizing DNA tests for early disease detection. The company translated the same mechanisms used for toxicology enzyme extraction and development to genetic enzymology, and though some critical components of the process were not patentable, early investments in research and development (R&D) meant that Kura already had the proprietary knowledge of enzyme extraction to enable the sector shift.
From there, the possibilities for growth were nearly limitless: Kura began to explore proteomics, or the detection of proteins in substances, for purposes like understanding and combatting food allergies. And when the novel coronavirus pandemic reached South America in late February of 2020, catching nearly every industry off guard, Kura’s existing knowledge base served as an invaluable tool and knowledge platform. The company developed a rapid COVID-19 detection test that uses RNA obtained through saliva samples to provide results in only three hours. Kura developed the test in three months, thanks to prior research and a partnership with the Chilean Ministry of Sciences, and is currently implementing its first stage of production with an anticipated capacity of one million tests per month.[4] Wallach, speaking for Kura in an August 18 interview with ITIF staff, stated that the objective of this endeavor is to empower Chilean businesses to recover productivity while actively fighting the pandemic.[5]
A core feature of Kura Biotec’s ethos is a desire to revitalize the community from which it extracts its resources. According to Wallach, the company aims to make Puerto Varas a hub for South American biotechnological innovation. The construction of new state-of-the-art laboratories there in 2018, as well as the addition of 19 new team members from across Chile between 2018 and 2019, suggests significant value addition for the city.
Nonetheless, a sometimes less-than-hospitable innovation policy backdrop in Chile has meant that Kura’s international growth has accelerated at a much faster rate than its domestic growth. The firm gained its first Chilean client, a company that detects hormones in animal meat, less than a year ago. Rozas admits that, despite the fact that all of the company’s R&D takes place in Chile, Kura has not attempted to obtain any patents for its processes or products in the country. The firm has not yet run into any intellectual property disputes, but industry-wide sentiment suggests that Chilean patents are not respected the way that they are in the United States or elsewhere.
Though the nation shows great promise for biopharmaceutical innovation, with efficient allocation of R&D funding and successful programs for attracting entrepreneurs, investors, and global research partners, Chile is held back by weaknesses in its protection of patents and the clinical test data biotech companies like Kura have to submit to regulators before their products can be approved (also known as regulatory data protection). According to the Pugatch Consilium’s 2017 Biopharmaceutical Competitiveness & Investment Survey, “…slow implementation of regulatory data protection and the recent threat of compulsory licensing based on pricing considerations [hinder] an otherwise promising national effort to turn Chile into a hub of innovation.”[6] Chile’s recent dalliances with possibly issuing compulsory licenses on certain biopharmaceutical products in response to the COVID-19 crisis have also raised concerns about the nation’s respect for novel intellectual property rights.
Nevertheless, thus far, the speed of Kura’s innovation process is such that it has managed to stay ahead of competitors without intellectual property protections. However, as the company seeks to build a greater domestic client base and to expand into new industries like genetics and proteomics, it will need greater assurance than mere speed to stay protected.
Intellectual property considerations are vital for the continued success of Kura and for the broader growth of the Chilean biotechnological industry at large. As Rozas points out, a lack of certainty of existing legal protections for Kura’s extraction processes and products has forced the firm to be less open in research and entrepreneurial collaborations. This sense of competition over legally protected collaboration translates to uneasy relationships between actors in the Chilean life-sciences innovation space; Kura has found since its inception that, while basic academic knowledge is available in Chile, there are almost no domestic resources for obtaining applied or industrial knowledge. This dearth of information forces Kura to rely upon other markets for growth and redirects business that would otherwise invigorate the Chilean economy.
Kura Biotech stands out as a pioneer for South American life-sciences innovation; its breakthroughs in enzymology and its ability to rapidly adjust to changing technological needs in the health care space attest to the firm’s unparalleled research capabilities and work ethic. That said, without the proper intellectual property protections, Kura will not stay ahead for long. With an overarching goal to give back to the country from which it extracts its most valuable resources, Kura needs a stronger set of domestic IP protections for its work if it aims to continue to conduct research and business in Chile.
[1] Eva Sanchis, “El molusco “afrodisíaco” que actúa como arma contra el crimen del FBI,” BBC, October 28, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-37802255.
[2] Isabe Ovalle, “La enzima chilena del FBI,” Capita, September 20, 2019, https://www.capital.cl/la-enzima-chilena-del-fbi/.
[3] Ibid.
[4] “Laboratorio chileno Kura Biotech logra desarrollar kits de detección del coronavirus,” Grupo de Diarios América, August 20, 2018, http://gda.com/detalle-de-la-noticia/?article=4159426&utm_content=136746611&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&hss_channel=lcp-3709143.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Pugatch Consilium, “Ascending to the Peak of Biopharmaceutical Innovation: Biopharmaceutical Competitiveness & Investment (BCI) Survey, 4th Edition” (Pugatch Consilium, October 2017), https://www.pugatch-consilium.com/reports/BCI_2017_Report.pdf. | https://medium.com/innovate4health/kura-biotech-pioneers-enzymological-techniques-for-covid-19-narcotics-detection-e8d33a75e360 | [] | 2020-08-31 15:13:42.875000+00:00 | ['Biotech', 'Science', 'Enzyme', 'Covid 19', 'Technology'] |
PySpark process Multi char Delimiter Dataset | The objective of this article is to process multiple delimited files using Apache spark with Python Programming language. This is a real-time scenario where an application can share multiple delimited file,s and the Dev Team has to process the same. We will learn how we can handle the challenge.
The input Data set is as below:
Name@@#Age <--Header
vivek, chaudhary@@#30 <--row1
john, morgan@@#28 <--row2
Approach1: Let’s try to read the file using read.csv() and see the output:
from pyspark.sql import SparkSession from pyspark.sql import SparkSession
spark= SparkSession.builder.appName(‘multiple_delimiter’).getOrCreate() test_df=spark.read.csv(‘D:\python_coding\pyspark_tutorial\multiple_delimiter.csv’)
test_df.show()
Output
#Note: Output is not the desired one and so the processing will not yield the desired results
Approach2: Next, read the file using read.csv() with option() parameter and pass the delimiter as an argument having the value ‘@@#’ and see the output:
test_df=spark.read.option(‘delimiter’,’@@#’).csv(‘D:\python_coding\pyspark_tutorial\multiple_delimiter.csv’) test_df.show(truncate=0)
error
#Note: spark throws error when we try to pass delimiter of more than one character.
Approach3: Next way is to use read.text() method of spark.
mult_df=spark.read.text(‘D:\python_coding\pyspark_tutorial\multiple_delimiter.csv’)
mult_df.show(truncate=0)
spark.read.text
#Note: spark.read.text returns a DataFrame.
Each line in a text file represents a record in DataFrame with just one column “value”. To convert into multiple columns, we will use map transformation and split method to transform and split the column values.
#first() returns the first record of dataset
header=mult_df.first()[0]
print(header)
Output:
Name@@#Age #split('delimiter') the string on basis of the delimiter
#define the schema of the Dataframe to be created schema=header.split(‘@@#’)
print(schema) Output:
['Name', 'Age']
The next step is to split the row and create separate columns:
#filter operation is removing the header
#map operation is splitting each record as per delimiter
#.rdd converts DF to rdd and toDF converts the rdd back to DF mult_df.filter(mult_df[‘value’]!=header).rdd.map(lambda x:x[0].split(‘@@#’)).toDF(schema).show()
Final Output
Hurray!! We are able to split the data on the basis of multiple delimiter ‘@@#’.
Summary:
· Read Multiple Delimited Dataset using spark.read.text() method
· use of map(), filter() transformations
Thanks to all for reading my blog, and If you like my content and explanation, please follow me on medium and share your feedback, which will always help all of us to enhance our knowledge. | https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/pyspark-process-multiple-delimited-data-ef99fa05c6f7 | ['Vivek Chaudhary'] | 2020-09-17 06:08:52.798000+00:00 | ['Python Programming', 'Python3', 'Big Data', 'Programming', 'Apache Spark'] |
COSTUMES ARE POWERFUL: Radtai’s Top 10 Acting Tips | Carry Grant in North by Northwest (1959)
3) Costumes are Powerful
It’s Oscar Wild who says “you can never be overdressed or overeducated.” We see so many actors study their characters’ backgrounds, stories, psychology extensively, they care, however, less about how their characters would dress. If you are among those actors who care too little about costumes, I humbly think you have missed a very important point.
James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Imagine James Dean without red jacket in Rebel Without A Cause, Marlon Brando without a fit T-Shirt for his Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire, Michael Douglas without suits in Wall Street, or more recently, Garry Oldman without proper attires made by a Savile Row tailor to look like Winston Churchill in The Darkest Hour, or Joaquin Phoenix without those colorful dresses in Joker. I wonder would these actors got an Oscar nominations and wins if they have no such an iconic costumes to support their roles?
Michael Douglas (right) in Wall Street (1987)
Garry Oldman as Winston Churchill in The Darkest Hour (2017)
Joaquin Phoenix in Joker (2019)
It goes back to the Hollywood in 50s when stars such as Fred Astaire or Carry Grant have to dress themselves to look their best on a screen. In order to achieve it, they went to Savile Row Tailor such as Anderson & Sheppard or Huntsman to have a suits made. These suits will hide their flaws and highlight their prominent points. In those suits, they walk, talk, and get about in the scene better, as a results, they act much better.
Fred Astaire (right) in Funny Face (1957)
Sadly, those good old days have passed. Nowadays, we have somebody whose title called “Costumes Designers” and “Costumes” supervise us an outfits. A lady called Edith Head won, however, 8 oscars for her works in costume designs. And I think Timothee Chalamet does it well as he always turns out beautifully, whether on a screen or any occasion. It is not only a matter of looking good on a screen, but as an actor it is also crucial that you know how to market yourself to be memorable and stand out of the crowd, and dressing well will help for sure.
Edith Head Hollywood Costume Designer who won 8 Oscars
Timothee Chalamet
At least, it is worth it to ask yourself before entering the scene. “Is your costume in the right fit and does it work well with you ?” If it is not, why don’t try changing it? | https://medium.com/@radtai/costumes-are-powerful-radtais-top-10-acting-tips-621f1d49934f | ['Radtai Lokutarapol'] | 2020-12-23 03:19:08.614000+00:00 | ['Film', 'Hollywood', 'Acting', 'Costume', 'Menswear'] |
Avaliando a qualidade de um modelo de classificação binária | 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/porto-seguro/avaliando-a-qualidade-de-um-modelo-de-classifica%C3%A7%C3%A3o-bin%C3%A1ria-ef33aa541ab0 | ['Fernanda Ribeiro'] | 2020-12-11 15:48:19.028000+00:00 | ['Ciencia De Dados', 'Classification Algorithms', 'Machine Learning', 'Classification', 'Inteligencia Artificial'] |
Interview with Ash Herr | Interview with Ash Herr
I’m a multimedia artist and creative technologist from Texas! I moved to San Francisco after university and started heading towards the intersection of art & technology. Haven’t looked back since.
What is your definition of art + tech?
fluid!
Who, or what, inspires you in your art and in your life?
I love art that enhances our perceptual information and sensory modalities — like how behavior can shift in a certain setting, how energy moves around us, how we change over time.
What’s next for you as an artist?
I’m working on several interactive installations! stay tuned :~)
Are there any technologies that you are excited about working with or that have been a game changer for you?
I have really enjoyed working in augmented reality! i think augmented reality is an incredible medium for artists, especially as it facilitates the breaking down of boundaries between our natural and artificial realities.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
The Ira Glass quote on the taste gap — “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
You can meet Ash Herr at the CODAME ART+TECH Festival『 JOYNT 』 | https://medium.com/codame-art-tech/interview-with-ash-herr-db8333fb45a1 | [] | 2020-12-13 02:05:48.281000+00:00 | ['Festivals', 'Spark', 'Workshop', 'AR', 'Art'] |
Farming dApp Crypto Rancho launches on GoChain MainNet + AirDrop! | At GoChain we’re always supportive of any project that drives blockchain adoption, today we’re excited to join a new gaming community! We’d like to introduce our community to Crypto Rancho — a decentralized farming game LIVE on the GoChain network!
Getting Started + Airdrop for New Players
In Crypto Rancho, players can farm, fight and trade their way to the top while earning tokens for their efforts. In the farming direction, players can choose between 22 crops and 5 animals, manufacture resources and craft new items and outfits. All items can be traded in the Crypto Rancho market, where they can add orders to buy or sell goods similar to a real stock market. In the battle section, players can compete in force with other players for bets using the over 400 items available to improve their character and fighting characteristics. Items have the ability to increase player strength, agility, spite and more to improve their chances of winning and to claim rewards. Crypto Rancho offers 500 unique in-game items and is currently available on all browser-capable devices.
For a limited time, Crypto Rancho is doing a community airdop for all new players. To claim your complimentary tokens, use Telegram and go to https://t.me/cryptorancho_airdrop_bot, follow the on-screen instructions to claim 100 CRT and 1 GO token to get you started on Crypto Rancho! | https://medium.com/gochain/farming-gaming-dapp-crypto-rancho-launches-on-gochain-mainnet-airdrop-1ecc01d491c7 | [] | 2018-10-17 16:52:16.096000+00:00 | ['Go20', 'Airdrop', 'Gochain', 'Dapp', 'Blockchain'] |
Dining at Aru, Melbourne | It was just 37 days after the opening date; it already felt like a well-oiled machine that’s been operating for a year. Of course, you would expect nothing less from hotelier and restaurateur Adipoetra Halim. With no sign of stopping, his ‘Johnny Depp to Tim Burton' Khanh Nguyen delivers the goods on this strong sophomore blockbuster.
The space is designed for high energy. Wide service and traffic paths, feature hearth and fermentation shelves are the first things you see; kitchen pass front and centre like a beating heart pumping through to each table, a bar area that continues the long space, and a temperature-controlled wine section that’s somewhat ‘open' for anyone to admire yet neatly tucked away, nice and dark. Dining spaces are divided into smaller zones — it seems like a subtle but clever pandemic-ready design if space restrictions ever get activated again.
We booked for seats at the bar counter — definitely a pro-tip if you like to immerse yourself deep as an audience to everything that goes on in the kitchen, catch big glimpses of chefs ‘in their zone' and being able to throw the occasional questions about ingredients and techniques (while they’re 8 dockets deep at peak time, of course). To paraphrase an old saying, “I love hard work. I could watch it all day.” With a cocktail in my hand. | https://medium.com/@AzAzmanFOH/dining-at-aru-melbourne-c294226e0449 | ['Az Azman'] | 2021-07-25 21:39:22.698000+00:00 | ['Hospitality', 'Restaurant Review', 'Foodies', 'Melbourne', 'Restaurant'] |
Analyzing CitiBike Data: EDA | Let’s get some more information on the data.
df.info()
#sum of missing values in each column
df.isna().sum()
We have whooping 5,77,703 rows to crunch and 15 columns. Also, quite a bit of missing values. Let’s deal with missing values first.
Handling missing values
Let’s first see the percentage of missing values which will help us decide whether to drop them or no.
We can not afford to drop the missing valued rows of ‘birth year’. Hence, drop the entire column ‘birth year’ and drop missing valued rows of ‘end station id’,‘ end station name’,‘ end station latitude’, and ‘end station longitude’. Fortunately, all the missing values in these four rows (end station id, end station name, end station latitude, and end station longitude) are on the exact same row, so dropping NaN rows from all four rows will still result in only 3% data loss.
Let’s see what gender talks about our data
We can see more male riders than females in New York City but due to a large number of unknown gender, we cannot get to any concrete conclusion. Filling unknown gender values is possible but we are not going to do it considering riders did not choose to disclose their gender.
Subscribers vs Customers
Subscribers are the users who bought the annual pass and customers are the once who bought either a 24-hour pass or a 3-day pass. Let’s see what the riders choose the most.
We can see there is more number of yearly subscribers than 1-3day customers. But the difference is not much, the company has to focus on converting customers to subscribers with some offers or sale.
How many hours do rides use the bike typically
We have a column called ‘timeduration’ which talks about the duration each trip covered which is in seconds. Firstly, we will convert it to minutes, then create bins to group the trips into 0–30min, 30–60min, 60–120min, 120min, and above ride time. Then, let’s plot a graph to see how many hours do rides ride the bike typically.
There are a large number of riders who ride for less than half an hour per trip and most less than 1 hour.
Same start and end location VS different start and end location
We see in the data there are some trips that start and end at the same location. Let’s see how many.
Riding pattern of the month
This part is where I have spent a lot of time and effort. The below graph talks a lot. Technically there is a lot of coding. Before looking at the code I will give an overview of what we are doing here. Basically, we are plotting a time series graph to see the trend of the number of rides taken per day and the trend of the total number of duration the bikes were in use per day. Let’s look at the code first then I will break it down for you.
You might have understood the basic idea by reading the comments but let me explain the process step-by-step:
The date-time is in the string, we will convert it into DateTime object. Grouping the data by days of the month and counting the number of occurrences to plot rides per day. We have only one row with the information for the month of July. This is an outlier, drop it. Repeat steps 2 and 3 but the only difference this time is we sum the data instead of counting to get the total time duration of the trips per day. Plot both the data on a single graph using the twin axis method.
I have used a lot of tweaking methods on matplotlib, make sure to go through each of them. If any doubts drop a comment on the Kaggle notebook for which the link will be dropped at the end of this article. | https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/analyzing-citibike-data-eda-e657409f007a | ['Sujan Shirol'] | 2020-10-03 05:43:38.525000+00:00 | ['Seaborn', 'Python Matplotlib', 'Visualization', 'Data Analytics', 'Data Science'] |
Gympass front-end architecture redesign | Other than these 3 main problems, we also have a lot of legacy code that has a lot of code smell and bad practices. We also have a HUGE boilerplate to create anything, be it new page routes or API routes on our integrated BFF. Having the BFF and the SSR engine on the same server also means that we have coupled them and there’s a single deploy pipeline for them both.
Also, having these problems really discourages us as engineers on creating new front-end services and that made our current repositories turn into little monolith applications with multiple contexts inside of it.
And since we did not have the habit of documenting things, we have a pretty bad documentation of the current stack.
The solution
Let’s solve our problems one by one, shall we? The first problem is that it is very difficult to create a new service. To solve that our SRE creates an inside tool that we call Josie.
Josie takes a template as a parameter and generates a new service from scratch, creating production and homologation environments with just a simple command.
That’s it. We now have a simple app running on production with a single command. There are still some config’s that we have to do manually, but this CLI simplified our life a lot.
Now all we had to do was to create the template. We thought about it and reached the conclusion that we can be more productive using an existing framework, with an dedicated team working solely on the SSR engine, then trying to give maintenance to an in-house engine WHILE creating new user experiences (we may change this vision on the future, when our team grows and our platform gets more robust and that’s absolutely normal). That’s why we’ve chosen Next.js.
Gympass + Next.js = ❤
We proceeded to create the template with everything that we thought would be necessary to develop our future features. We then got to the next problem: what if we wanted to change something to all the services that use this template?
To circumvent this problem we created an internal package to be used on the template, with everything that we thought was core for our application. Configurations, helpers, components, you name it, we have it all inside this package.
When we change something, all you need to do is bump the package version on your package.json and get the latest code. We reached this final infrastructure:
Final service structure
We still have the last problem to solve, which is multiple BFF’s with the same API’s. This was probably the biggest change in our developer mindset. To power our current native app (iOS and Android, written in react-native), we developed a GraphQL BFF which was being used only for the app. We were not using it on the web because as explained before, changing the core on our legacy code base was pretty hard.
We took the opportunity to create this interface with it for the front-end applications too, allowing us to keep the same logic in a single, concise, place. Now features that exist both on the app and the web can use the same queries to build the interfaces. This is a dream come true.
Our example, following this new structure would look like this:
Our legacy application uses Redux to manage the state of the application, now we only rely on Apollo to do that (that’s why this was a big mindset change).
Although this change is pretty nice, we didn’t want to force it, that’s why we made the Apollo provider optional through a higher order component, which also comes from our core package. This is an example of the final result:
With this current stack we also solved the other problems that we had, with a new and better code and less to none boilerplates. | https://medium.com/gympass/gympass-front-end-architecture-redesign-6d3231812a02 | ['Kaic Bastidas'] | 2020-03-24 20:40:33.872000+00:00 | ['Front End Development', 'Nextjs', 'Kubernetes', 'React'] |
10+ Free & Premium React Website Templates for Stunning App-Based Projects | Building a usable UI for the admin area of your site can be challenging. There are plenty of parts and elements that you want to make good-looking and way more usable. At times, you need to enhance the elements and functional solutions of your designs, thus making your projects pixel-perfect everywhere. This is when React website templates come into play.
The web offers a wide choice of premium and free React JS one-page website templates. You can also make use of a range of HTML5 and CSS3 website templates based on fully responsive designs.
All of such solutions are fully customizable and ready to be modified using built-in elements and color choices. In the list of Rect website templates featured in this article, you can find a selection of themes apt for many topic-specific projects.
The fully responsive designs of the templates look good on all devices and screen resolutions. All of them come loaded with the essential components needed to build your own app-based web project or application seamlessly.
Letslaunch — Responsive Multipurpose HTML5 Website Template
Details
By means of the Letslaunch website template, you can create a functional remarkable website for any personal or business project. There are 125+ design pages available alongside with 250+ reusable UI blocks and 30+ demos. The theme can be a perfect fit for photographers and designers. It also supports eCommerce functionality, making it easy to launch a web store with 9+ shop styles.
Material Kit React — Free Material-UI Kit
Details
Material Kit is one of the most impressive react website templates featuring material UI design. It makes use of light, color, and movement. The fully responsive design of the theme makes your web project look stunning on all devices. Material Kit React template will also work well for the launch of app-based web projects. Adjust it to your liking, using material UI effects, animations, ripples, and transitions.
Reliance HTML template
Details
Reliance theme is the ultimate choice to get started with charity and donations web projects. There are 25+ ready-made HTML5 pages available in the theme’s download pack. You can bring a more impressive showcase to your site’s pages by means of the remarkable CSS3 animation effects. The parallax scrolling animation can add a sense of depth to your site’s pages.
Paper Kit React — Free Bootstrap 4 And Reactstrap UI Kit
Details
Paper Kit React JS one-page website template is available for free download. The template is created in soft pastel colors. A fully editable layout structure lets you choose from dark and light color versions. This is a free Bootstrap 4 template that is intended to look good on any device. The template includes a set of premade pages that you can adjust for a landing page, profile page, and register element.
Moreno | Multipurpose HMTL Website Template
Details
Moreno website template is apt for photography and design-related projects. It is completely Bootstrap-based. Using this multi-purpose HTML 5 theme, you get a functional and flexible web solution that is easy to use and modify. The download package has clean, elegant, and modern pages. The responsive design of the theme includes 20 web-ready stunning colors and cool animation effects.
Material Kit PRO React Premium Material-UI Kit
Details
Material Kit pro is an example of premium react website templates featuring 1000+ components to give you the complete freedom of it customization. The theme contains multiple color choices, which you can modify using SASS and JSX files. Every item of this React website template comes in 2 forms — PSD element and HTML/ReactJS/CSS/JSS implementation. Similar to other react JS one page website templates, all components of this item come in separate layers organized in handy folders.
Eventes — Event Conference HTML5 Website Template
Details
Eventes HTML template is a perfect choice for websites promoting conferences and public events. The theme features material UI components that make it look trendy and visually stunning. Fully responsive design of the theme is ready to be adjusted to match a range of topic-specific online projects, including Business meetings, Seminars, Conferences, Meetups, etc. The theme’s download package includes 3 ready-to-go homepage layouts. It features remarkable animation effects and a set of 360+ icons.
NextJS Material Kit Free NEXTJS Material-UI Kit
Details
NextJS React JS website template free theme comes next on this list. The material UI kit of the template features bright and fresh colors that are well-suited for the launch of usable and visually stunning online resources. The theme provides you with the complete freedom of its layout modification. There are 100 individual frontend elements that have multiple states for colors, styles, hover, focus, etc.
Goldenframe — Wedding Website Template
Details
Making use of the Goldenframe website template, you can create an elegant and remarkable website for your wedding project. There are 4 premade homepage demos included in the theme’s download pack. It comes loaded with a set of smart UI components that can match any type of wedding event project. The fully responsive design of this Bootstrap 4 template is created with valid HTML5 and CSS3 practices.
Now UI Kit PRO React Premium Bootstrap 4 And Reactstrap UI Kit
Details
Now UI Kit PRO is one of premium react website templates featuring fully responsive designs. It contains 1000 components, 34 sections, and 11 example pages. This is one of the most popular react JS one-page website templates available in PSD and Sketch formats. It makes use of bold colors, stunning typography, clear photography, and spacious arrangements.
Bitrix — Startup Agency and SasS Business Website Template
Details
Bitrix is a completely Bootstrap HTML and CSS template. It’s ready to be used for the launch of a startup or a fully-fledged landing page website. It includes a set of 3 ready-to-go live demo versions, which you can import to your site with a click. The theme looks clean and modern. It has an eye-catching design that is enhanced with a bunch of color schemes that are easy to handle by expert and beginner web designers.
Paper Kit Pro React — Premium Bootstrap 4 And Reactstrap UI Kit
Details
Here is one of those premium-quality react website templates are adjusted to run smoothly on all devices. It comes loaded with 100 handcrafted elements that let you create a truly amazing website. The UI Kit is created in pastel colors. It’s fully coded and based on the premium Bootstrap 4.
Kroma | Creative Multipurpose Website Template
Details
Kroma is a creative HTML5 template that is intended to let you build remarkable user interfaces. This is one of those stunning premade website templates that are apt for creative online projects, consultancies, and agencies. The theme has a set of well-organized high-quality HTML5 files that are ready to be adjusted in a way that matches your web project to the fullest.
Now UI Kit React — Free Bootstrap 4 And Reactstrap UI Kit
Details
Now UI Kit React JS website template free version features a fully responsive design. The download package of the template includes over 50 handy elements and 3 templates that you can use on your site. Now UI Kit is one of the most popular react website templates available in PSD and Sketch formats. | https://medium.com/javarevisited/10-free-premium-react-website-templates-for-stunning-app-based-projects-b57b69c2084 | ['Lana Miro'] | 2020-07-19 06:42:32.991000+00:00 | ['Reactjs', 'Website Templates', 'Website Design', 'React', 'Design'] |
SAP Buys Business Objects | This article was originally posted on October 11, 2007.
I was out of the country for a few days last week, almost totally disconnected (yes, it felt good), and almost missed the weekend announcement that is sure to have long-lasting effects on the Business Intelligence world: SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects.
Now, after Oracle has snapped up Hyperion, SAP buys Business Objects, leaving Microsoft and Cognos looking at each other like the last lonely boy and girl standing on opposite sides of the floor at a junior high dance… | https://medium.com/@mikegilronan/sap-buys-business-objects-a61d2f5d2ca2 | ['Mike Gilronan'] | 2020-12-23 12:22:49.818000+00:00 | ['Sap', 'Erp Software', 'Business Intelligence'] |
Abode of love. | “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” - Martin Luther King Jr
Abode of Love.
And there i am heading towards gratification, abode of pleasure and contentment i see in you.
You’re sensuous, you’re voluptuous, you’re the world to me.
You complete me, with you felicity entwines me.
You’re my puissance, a source of invigoration.
Deep down, you possess me. Every bit of serenity and tranquility flows within you.
That fortifies me and there i say i’m taken.
Abha | https://medium.com/@abhasingh-9152/abode-of-love-83f511fee6 | ['Abha Singh'] | 2020-12-10 17:05:08.087000+00:00 | ['Writers On Medium', 'Intimacy', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Love', 'Literature'] |
Reading Less | If you told me
I shouldn’t have these imagined auguries
in my lap
or spindled hands twitching
writing in the scarlet air
as the case may be
I confess
I did nothing as you said
but the book swallowed me
and spit out
some version of acrimonious misery
of me of sketchy atmospheres
nothing that I can recognize | https://medium.com/storymaker/reading-less-eaa527e75bf3 | ['J.D. Harms'] | 2020-07-28 18:02:49.028000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Story', 'Reading', 'Image'] |
What exactly can Epay do? | A secure, fast, and low-cost cross-border money transfer platform
ThưTrang “I am a Vietnamese working in South Korea, and I need to send money home every month. It costs more fees and spends a long time to send money home through banks. By chance, I learned about Epay on Facebook and tried to make a small remittance. It supports both bank card transfers and cash deposits at ATMs. The price is 3 times cheaper than banks, and my family can receive the money on the same day, which is amazing!”
Cooperated with more than 400 banks around the world, Epay aims to build a one-stop remittance platform to provide convenient and affordable money transfer services for millions of people who study, travel, do business, and work abroad. Simplifying the whole process, funds can arrive on the same day and the fee starts at $3.
Make bulk payment with multi-currency and multi-channel
Mr.Lin “I’m an international live broadcast platform operator, this platform enables us to reach worldwide customers. They receive the platform coins as remuneration and need to exchange the coins for their local currency. After cooperating with various payment platforms, we found Epay is the only platform that helps us solve the pay-out issue in different currencies. The handling fee is extremely reasonable, funds can be received on the same day, that’s amazing!”
Epay can effectively help corporates such as live broadcast platforms, online teaching companies, foreign-invested enterprises, and labor dispatch companies to make bulk payments. Epay supports more than 80 currencies, receivers can pick up cash or receive it through a bank account. There are more than 200,000 cash pick-up locations around the world, which enables people to move money wherever it needs to be, in the most time and cost-efficient manner.
The bridge between E-currency and legal currency
The popular E-currencies such as PM, Advcash, Payeer, Fasapay, etc., platforms only provide purchase methods. If you want to transfer e-currency to a bank account, you have to use a third-party platform. Epay is an important bridge between E-currency and legal currency.
If you want to exchange PM, Advcash, Payeerm, or Fasapay for real money, first you can deposit them to the Epay account, and then withdraw them to your bank account. And if you need E-currency, you can also deposit USD/EUR to Epay via international wire transfer or local bank, and then purchase the E-currency you want.
Epay can also provide payment solutions for those e-wallets. Just like the cooperation model between Advcash and Epay. Users can easily withdraw Advcash to their bank accounts in more than ten countries on Epay by simply accessing the Epay’s payout interface. | https://medium.com/@epayglobal/what-exactly-can-epay-do-cc368a78defa | [] | 2020-12-17 06:44:51.652000+00:00 | ['Payments', 'Remittances'] |
Oracle dNFS with Docker | As everybody knows Docker containers have ephemeral storage, which means, once you removes your container any change on the filesystem will be discarded. For a RDBMS point of view this means that any data stored at your tables will be lost, for using Oracle Database at Docker the filesystem where your Datafiles resides must be attached to an external storage.
When using Docker Swarm this external storage is commonly placed at NFS server. Oracle provides a native client for talking with your NFS storage providing mainly a direct path access to the data, here two excellent posts at Ron's Blog with information about:
the mainly benefits of using dNFS is multi-path access to your Datafiles giving more throughput and fault tolerant access, following a picture taken form Ron's Blog show this architecture:
Multi-path access using dNFS Oracle driver
this post shows how to use Oracle Docker images with dNFS enabled by extending 18.3.0 EE image or a pending 18.4.0 XE image. First our simple Dockerfile.nfs for enabling dNFS driver over official Oracle Docker images, 18.3.0 EE:
# Pull base image
# ---------------
FROM oracle/database:18.3.0-ee
# ----------
MAINTAINER Marcelo ochoa < # Maintainer# ----------MAINTAINER Marcelo ochoa < [email protected] RUN cd $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib && make -f ins_rdbms.mk dnfs_on
or 18.4.0 XE:
# Pull base image
# ---------------
FROM oracle/database:18.4.0-xe
# ----------
MAINTAINER Marcelo ochoa < # Maintainer# ----------MAINTAINER Marcelo ochoa < [email protected] RUN cd $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/lib && make -f ins_rdbms.mk dnfs_on
to build our new dNFS enabled image just run with EE version:
$ docker build -t "oracle/database:18.3.0-ee-nfs" -f Dockerfile.nfs .
XE version:
$ docker build -t "oracle/database:18.4.0-xe-nfs" -f Dockerfile.nfs .
once you have your RDBMS Docker image ready a sample Docker Swarm stack like below could be used to start Oracle using dNFS native driver:
some remarks about above docker-compose stack definition:
db_data volume is defined as an external NFS backed storage (one of my NAS IP is 10.1.253.110, with Oracle recommended NFS mount options)
test_oranfstab_xe is an external config including multi-path definition to my NAS, here an example on how to create this config using command line:
$ echo "server: NAS-DTICs
> path: 10.1.253.110
> path: 10.1.1.241
> nfs_version: nfsv4
> export: /dbdata/xe-18c mount: /opt/oracle/oradata
> " | docker config create test_oranfstab_xe -
fbpuy0pjjx2t6ssan6almtjn5
$ docker config ls
ID NAME CREATED UPDATED
fbpuy0pjjx2t6ssan6almtjn5 test_oranfstab_xe 17 seconds ago 17 seconds ago
note that in above config definition we are adding multi-path access to our NAS storage (10.1.253.110 and 10.1.1.241), export and mount parameters must be equal to docker-compose.yml definition. Deploying our stack with:
$ docker stack deploy -c docker-compose.yml test
will result on RDBMS XE up and running after a few minutes (wait for your RDBMS create theirs Datafiles), if your NAS is not fast enough and Docker healthcheck file kill your stack add this healthcheck definition to avoid the problem:
healthcheck:
test: exit 0
interval: 60s
timeout: 3s
finally to see dNFS multi-path in action lets try to run an IO calibrating test by connecting to the root CDB and running with SQLPlus as sysdba:
set long 10000 lines 140 pages 50 timing on echo on
set serveroutput on size 1000000 declare
l_latency integer;
l_iops integer;
l_mbps integer;
begin
dbms_resource_manager.calibrate_io (
1, /* # of disks */
20, /* max latency */
l_iops, /* I/O Ops/sec */
l_mbps, /* MBytes/sec */
l_latency /* actual latency */
);
dbms_output.put_line ('I/O Ops/sec = ' || l_iops);
dbms_output.put_line ('Actual Latency = ' || l_latency);
dbms_output.put_line('MB/sec = ' || l_mbps);
end;
/
during the IO calibrating process we see at the NAS resource monitoring something like:
NAS resource monitoring with multi-path dNFS enabled
which means that two network interfaces are used and we got about 86Mbytes throughput (note that we have a 1Gbs interconnect switch) also by querying v$iostat_file system view we see that our Datafiles have:
ASYNCH_IO : ASYNC_ON
ACCESS_METHOD : DNFS_LIB
if instead of using oracle/database:18.4.0-xe-nfs Docker image we change our docker-compose.yml with oracle/database:18.4.0-xe image network utilization during IO calibrate test is:
NAS resource monitoring without multi-path dNFS enabled
only one interface is used to access to our data resulting in a slow IO capabilities and no Asynch IO: | https://medium.com/oracledevs/oracle-dnfs-with-docker-8a3e35c0b558 | ['Marcelo Ochoa'] | 2019-05-14 21:20:02.732000+00:00 | ['Dnfs', 'Oracle', 'Docker', 'Swarm'] |
The importance of sorrow and what it brings. | For decades, sorrow has been made out to be the villain in mainstream media. From songs where the artists plead with sorrow to go away, to cliche movies that mislead us, telling us that sorrow cannot coexist with joy. It pains me to say this but such behavior should be unlearned, sure it is amazing to play a classic song that gets you all emotional but the problem lies in feeling guilty for doing so. Sorrow brings great lessons and it gives one the opportunity to better oneself. We are human and we are made to feel. Allow yourself to feel.
Now, with feeling comes another stage, letting go. As much as it is necessary to feel, it is just as important to pick yourself up and to try again. In order to let go, you first have to come to terms with your sorrow. One needs to understand and question their feelings of sorrow, then get over them. It is imperative to know why you feel the way that you feel before coming to terms with it. Ask yourself the right questions and watch as the answers just flow. Once you have the answers, learn the lesson and move forward.
The lessons learned bring about newfound joy, joy that lets you move forward. Joy is Sorrow’s second in command, it gets to clean up after sorrow and revive you again and again. It is for this reason that these two are considered interchangeable. Joy can either arrive sooner or later, the choice is yours. Do you choose to question your emotions sooner and learn to come to terms with them or do you just succumb to Sorrow’s chokehold? Do not delay Joy’s arrival, look deep within and then shall Joy arrive. Joy awaits you patiently and lovingly.
With all that being said, learn that those two go hand in hand and it is impossible to get one without the other. It is like a package where you only receive the other if you have successfully understood the other’s existence. Today’s youth has made coming to terms with your emotions a sin, it is cooler to act heartless and pretend that you are not phased by life’s challenges, avoid this. Do not let anyone tell you how to feel and how to navigate your own life, it is much better to be sorrowful than to have regrets when you no longer have the power or energy to change your life. To live is to feel so do not deprive yourself of that privilege. | https://medium.com/@olwethu/the-importance-of-sorrow-and-what-it-brings-eb0ab1057e76 | ['Olwethu Morake'] | 2020-12-19 15:36:14.891000+00:00 | ['Unlearning', 'Letting Go', 'Sorrow', 'Joy', 'Teens'] |
ELK stack basics — Deploying and configuring ELK stack(“open source Splunk”): | ELK stack basics — Deploying and configuring ELK stack(“open source Splunk”):
Let’s get a basic understanding of what is ELK stack. ELK is acronym for Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana. Often referred to as Elasticsearch, the ELK stack gives you the ability to aggregate logs from all your systems and applications, analyze these logs, and create visualizations for application and infrastructure monitoring, faster troubleshooting, security analytics, and more. It is a software stack(similar to LAMP stack) which uses and combines the functionality of these 3 opensource software:
Elasticsearch-
Elasticsearch is an open-source, RESTful, distributed search and analytics engine built on Apache Lucene. Support for various languages, high performance, and schema-free JSON documents makes Elasticsearch an ideal choice for various log analytics and search use cases
Logstash-
Logstash is an open-source data ingestion tool that allows you to collect data from a variety of sources, transform it, and send it to your desired destination. With pre-built filters and support for over 200 plugins, Logstash allows users to easily ingest data regardless of the data source or type.
Kibana-
Kibana is an open-source data visualization and exploration tool for reviewing logs and events. Kibana offers easy-to-use, interactive charts, pre-built aggregations and filters, and geospatial support and making it the preferred choice for visualizing data stored in Elasticsearch.
Enough theory, Lets start deploying(I am using kali-linux virtual machine for demonstration- steps will be similar to any other debian based distro):
Kali-Linux debian based distro
1. First we will install Elastic search
a) Elasticsearch package is not available in default repositories of kali linux, therefore we need to manually add its GPG key for secure installation.
wget -qO - https://artifacts.elastic.co/GPG-KEY-elasticsearch | sudo apt-key add -
b) Then we need to add the custom repository of elasticsearch:
echo "deb https://artifacts.elastic.co/packages/7.x/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/elastic-7.x.list
We can check in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ that our custom repository is indeed added.
ls -l /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
c) Install elasticsearch:
apt-get update && apt-get install elasticsearch -y
d) Then we need to configure the elasticsearch for this we need to mae changes in elasticsearch.yml file available at /etc/elasticsearch/elasticsearch.yml
For demonstration purpose we don’t need to change it. However I have uncommented line no 55 which specifies elastic to run only at localhost not on all interfaces (These type of misconfigurations in live systems lead to databreaches and other attacks).
This file also has configuration options for your cluster, node, paths, memory, network, discovery, and gateway. Most of these options are preconfigured in the file but you can change them according to your needs. For the purposes of our demonstration of a single-server configuration, we will only adjust the settings for the network host.
e) Start the elasticsearch service:
systemctl start elasticsearch
Also we can check it by accessing port 9200 on localhost:
2. Now we will setup kibana:
As we have already added the custom repo for elasticsearch we should be able to install kibana with apt.
apt install kibana
systemctl start kibana
We can check it by visiting http://127.0.0.1:5601/status
3. Now we will install and configure logstash:
a)
apt install logstash
b) Configure logstash:
Logstash’s configuration files are located at /etc/logstash/conf.d directory.
Logstash is like a pipe. It takes data from one end do some operations on it and pass it to elastic search in consistent manner.
Detailed configuation guide is available @ https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/configuration-file-structure.html
For us a simple configuration specifying port on which logstash will listen for data is enough:
input {
beats {
port => 5044
}
}
I named it input-beats.conf you can name it whatever you like.
Next we create a output configuration file. I named this elasticsearch-output.conf you can name it whatever you like :
output {
if [@metadata][pipeline] {
elasticsearch {
hosts => ["localhost:9200"]
manage_template => false
index => "%{[@metadata][beat]}-%{[@metadata][version]}-%{+YYYY.MM.dd}"
pipeline => "%{[@metadata][pipeline]}"
}
} else {
elasticsearch {
hosts => ["localhost:9200"]
manage_template => false
index => "%{[@metadata][beat]}-%{[@metadata][version]}-%{+YYYY.MM.dd}"
}
}
}
And finally we check our configuration is correct or not by running this:
sudo -u logstash /usr/share/logstash/bin/logstash — path.settings /etc/logstash -t
Make sure you are inside /etc/logstash/conf.d directory prior running this.
if we get Configuration OK in output, we are good to go.
4. Now lets see how can we send data from our system to logstash pipe. Here we will be something called beats: The Elastic Stack uses several lightweight data shippers called Beats to collect data from various sources and transport them to Logstash or Elasticsearch. (beat is just a automated tool which keeps running to monitor changes in log files and fetch these changes) There are different beats available we will be using filebeat.
a)
apt install filebeat
b)
Configure the filebeat by editing /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml as shown below.
(We need to make changes only in between line no 176–202)
c)
Next, we need to set up the Filebeat ingest pipelines, which parse the log data before sending it through logstash to Elasticsearch. To load the ingest pipeline for the system module, enter the following command:
filebeat setup --pipelines --modules system
d)
Then we need to load the index template into Elasticsearch. An Elasticsearch index is a collection of documents that have similar characteristics. Indexes are identified with a name, which is used to refer to the index when performing various operations within it. The index template will be automatically applied when a new index is created.
sudo filebeat setup — index-management -E output.logstash.enabled=false -E ‘output.elasticsearch.hosts=[“localhost:9200”]’
e)
Filebeat comes packaged with sample Kibana dashboards that allow you to visualize Filebeat data in Kibana. Before you can use the dashboards, you need to create the index pattern and load the dashboards into Kibana.
As the dashboards load, Filebeat connects to Elasticsearch to check version information. To load dashboards when Logstash is enabled, you need to disable the Logstash output and enable Elasticsearch output:
filebeat setup -E output.logstash.enabled=false -E output.elasticsearch.hosts=[‘localhost:9200’] -E setup.kibana.host=localhost:5601
f) Ok finally we are ready to start and enable Filebeat:
systemctl start filebeat
systemctl status filebeat
g) We should now be able to visualize our data in kibana.
One more sanity check:
curl 'http://localhost:9200/filebeat-*/_search?pretty'
Now it is up to you read documentation and make changes accroding to your need!
Thank you for reading!!
Author: Prabhsimran (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pswalia2u/)
References: | https://medium.com/@pswalia2u/elk-stack-basics-deploying-and-configuring-elk-stack-open-source-splunk-956aa416045c | [] | 2021-05-18 09:47:17.496000+00:00 | ['Monitoring', 'Logstash', 'System Administration', 'Cybersecurity', 'Elasticsearch'] |
Goodbye KuCoin — it’s time to move on | Goodbye KuCoin — it’s time to move on
Friends,
KICK token is waiting to be delisted from KuCoin exchange. This is for the best, and we will tell you why.
But first, the details…
The KICK / ETH and KICK / BTC trading pairs will be stopped on December 22, 2020 at 18:00 (UTC + 8). We recommend cancelling all existing orders in these pairs on KuCoin as soon as possible and starting the KICK withdrawal process. You may withdraw your assets and continue trading KickToken on the KickEX exchange or withdraw KickToken to your private wallet. Official deposits and withdrawals of the aforementioned pairs will close on January 16, 2021, at 18:00:00 (UTC + 8) on KuCoin.
Now, here’s why it’s happening…
The KickEX team did not inform KuCoin in time about an experimental listing with decentralized exchange Uniswap, which required the adding of liquidity — specifically, 500 Ethereum and 11 billion KICK. We had to temporarily create 10 billion KICK, due to the lack of a sufficient amount of the token. (This temporary issuance has since been burned.) It was this fact that caused the delisting since our agreement with KuCoin states that additional token issuances must be explicitly agreed upon with the KuCoin exchange.
Of course, KuCoin’s decision upset us, because we worked together for a long time and burned this temporary 11 billion KICK — but it is their exchange and their rules. We still believe that KuCoin is a wonderful exchange with a great team. We sincerely express our gratitude to them for many years of work and we regret what happened!
In an act of good faith, we will soon list the KuCoin Shares token on KickEX. Despite this issue, we still consider KuCoin our friends and hope that KICK will return to KuCoin soon.
The good news
That said, this should not be construed as bad news. There are several positives, here. For example, KickToken will no longer be affected by the KuCoin bots when Bitcoin rises or falls, which means it will become a more-independent asset.
Of course, we will continue to do everything possible to develop KickToken and the Kick Ecosystem. KICK will never be removed from the KickEX exchange. Additionally, we are actively working to allow residents of currently-prohibited countries to trade on KickEX. Our team is doing everything to solve these regulatory hurdles.
Thank you for your continued activity and support. The Kick Ecosystem is growing and developing very quickly — and, with it, so is KickToken!
Trade KICK on KickEX now!
Sincerely,
The KickEX Team
We offer support 24/7
KickEX Trading Chat | https://medium.com/@kickecosystem/goodbye-kucoin-its-time-to-move-on-45e6dc1226d1 | ['Kick Ecosystem Official'] | 2020-12-16 14:30:38.795000+00:00 | ['Trading', 'Partnerships', 'Kick Token', 'Kucoin', 'Kickex'] |
Some Thoughts on Microservices Architecture | Microservices architecture is not a bad thing, microservices offer inherent horizontal scalability, decomposition into small parts, etc., but microservices architectures are also the fastest way to lose your shirt if you don’t think fully through what you’re attempting to accomplish.
Put it this way: what are the major differences between a complex distributed application and a large-scale orchestration of microservices?
· The base protocol of most microservices, REST, is one of the most limited protocols available, particularly in terms of recoverability from network errors.
· There is no developed, proven framework for orchestrating microservices, whereas the Actor framework in distributed applications is well-known, well-proven and available today on a number of platforms beyond ERLANG and Smalltalk.
· The pieces of a distributed application were designed with that application in mind.
· Some thought has usually been given as to how the overall state of the application is to be maintained, while many microservice developers and management proponents seem to think that it will magically maintain itself.
· And the biggest difference? Terminology, nothing more.
Since it’s fairly well known that complex distributed applications are a difficult undertaking, the fact that many people in the software industry seem to believe a large-scale orchestration of microservices to produce a complex resulting application is simple is ridiculous.
The most commonly touted MSA I’ve seen gives no thought to shared storage or eventing, which should be the first two things settled on before attempting any distributed architecture. MSA in many ways does simply take SOA and go further, but that further doesn’t make it easier, it makes it more difficult. Done properly, it should also offer better horizontal scalability, more flexibility when refactoring, etc., but those don’t come for free.
The easiest way to begin thinking about it is that with your finished microservices you have a set of reusable functionalities, but you don’t yet have a system. How you go about building a system from that set will determine in the end whether you have a flexible, maintainable architecture or a stress-inducing money pit that accomplishes little to nothing.
The quickest answer is to look at the required functionality for a complex distributed application, because in essence, that’s what you’re creating. The simplicity of the services themselves only moves the complexity up the stack. From that functionality you can determine the state that needs to be maintained by each service and the shared context that all the services will need access to. Finally you need to make a decision on what will have the capability to modify that context and how you’re going to make it easily and quickly available to every service involved in the orchestration. | https://medium.com/@dasein42/some-thoughts-on-microservices-architecture-601f744a4b33 | ['Andrew Glynn'] | 2020-12-02 14:38:50.585000+00:00 | ['Systems Thinking', 'Distributed Systems', 'Design Thinking', 'Microservices', 'Architecture'] |
The Dignified Cushion Cut Diamond | The Dignified Cushion Cut Diamond
One of the oldest types of cut for diamonds is the cushion cut and this is why it is mostly found in antique jewelry shops. The cushion cut diamond is a perfect way to show your partner just how much she means to you since it is very exquisite and comes with a bit of history of past lovers. With the antique factor comes an also astonishingly beautiful sparkle. The history behind each stone is what makes it so popular.
Before acquiring a cushion cut diamond, it is good to know a bit of history of this cut. The first ever shape of cushion cut was the ‘old mine’ cut. Its peculiarity is that it has deep proportions and its irregularities are slight on the outline and sometimes on the facets’ arrangements indicating that these cuts were made by hand. This gives it a more dignified look while retaining a deep ancestral charm. Almost all ‘old mine’ cut diamonds are more than 100 years old dating back to the 17th century and there’s a very good chance that when acquiring this particular type of stone, you are also acquiring one of the very first diamond source ever discovered which can be either India or Brazil. Now South Africa dominates the diamond market since the 1860s.Those looking for a unique diamond cut for their partner would fall in love with the cushion cut diamond.
The octahedron is the natural shape of a rough crystal of diamond and this shape fits in perfectly in the cushion cut shape giving it a rectangular or square outline and mild round corners. A very interesting quality of the cushion cut diamond is that each crystal has an individual cut maximizing their beauty which in contrast nowadays is done by machine mostly to retain the weight of the diamond as much as possible. The old day charm is lost in modern day laser cuts which are done by machines. The cushion cut diamonds were made to reflect light to the best of their ability and because the light sources of that era were natural lights, candle lights or gaslights, it creates an almost rainbow type of reflection. Once again we can’t help but compare this style to the modern cuts which are very different.
Investing in a cushion cut diamond is a big step and it carries a wealth of history. It is advisable to look for an antique jewelry specialist who would be able to advise you on the real worth of your future acquisition together with all its specs and provide you with a pool of information of different type of diamond cuts. | https://medium.com/@angelinagertz/the-dignified-cushion-cut-diamond-438ac6341e2 | ['Valentin Magro'] | 2016-12-13 08:28:25.757000+00:00 | ['Diamonds', 'Jewelry'] |
Alonzo Hard Fork: The Cardano makeover that changes everything | Cardano has indisputably been one of the fastest-growing cryptoassets this past year.
Year to date, ADA has seen returns of over 1,300% and in the process unseated Binance Coin to secure the coveted (and ever-changing) third spot in the crypto market cap ranking.
Despite this spectacular growth, it’s not breaking news to point out that there’s little awareness of what Cardano actually is. Nor is there much understanding about the imminent Alonzo hard fork. Expected to occur sometime on Sunday 12 September, the upgrade promises to deliver new capabilities to Cardano through the integration of Plutus scripts.
The five epochs of Cardano
Founded in 2015, Cardano is open-source, proof-of-stake platform and the brainchild of mathematician, technology entrepreneur and Ethereum co-founder, Charles Hoskinson.
Hoskinson, who serves as CEO of the blockchain research and engineering company behind Cardano, IOHK, established Cardano based on rigorous peer-reviewed research and a comprehensive development model.
Cardano’s development road map is divided into five main stages — each focused on expanding the functionality of the network. These are: Byron, Shelley, Goguen, Basho and Voltaire.
Today, the project is on the cusp of achieving the objectives outlined in the Goguen stage of the roadmap. This will see smart contract functionality arrive on the network via the Alonzo hard fork, which has the crypto universe waiting with bated breath.
Alonzo Hard Fork
Named after Alonzo Church, a US mathematician and one of the founding fathers of computer science, the major upgrade is being rolled out in colour-coded stages: Alonzo Blue, Alonzo White and Alonzo Purple, leading up to a hard fork expected at around 12 September 2021.
At the time of writing, the Alonzo upgrade is in phase Purple, having completed the Blue and White upgrades. There are also two smaller components post Alonzo Purple, colloquially referred to as Alonzo Red and Alonzo Black, which are reserved for final bug fixes.
Once the upgrade is successfully implemented, developers will have the opportunity to create projects in niches such as DeFi, NFTs and dApps — meaning Cardano will likely become a serious challenger in the smart contract space.
Programmers for Cardano’s smart contracts will use one of three languages: Plutus, Marlowe or Glow.
Plutus and Marlowe are both embedded by Haskell, a programming language popular in academia and industry, earning it a strong reputation for robustness.
Hoskinson, who often takes to Youtube to share updates and thoughts on the current state of the network’s development, has expressed that the emergence of easier dApp building will bring with it more projects that can help solve real-world problems.
Last year, IOHK partnered with the Ethiopian government to track the performance of over five million students in local schools. The project will give each student a tamper-proof academic record that could help them secure jobs or study abroad.
Will slow and steady win the smart contract race?
Since the launch of Ethereum 2015, Vitalik Buterin’s brainchild has dominated most of the DeFi space. However, the platform has also faced a number of hiccups and is currently hampered by scalability issues and high network fees, allowing rivals such as Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot and Solana to steal market share.
Cardano, on the other hand, has garnered both criticism and praise for its preference in taking a meticulous, research-based approach to the blockchain, which has ultimately led to the project developing less quickly than its competitors.
So while smart contract capabilities for Cardano have been a long time coming, Alonzo marks only the beginning for Cardano.
With the Cardano community also recently welcoming the release of the new Djed stablecoin whitepaper on 17 August, it certainly seems there’s a whole lot in store for this platform. | https://medium.com/@ivalila03/alonzo-hard-fork-the-cardano-makeover-that-changes-everything-6095a488905f | ['Iva Lila'] | 2021-08-25 12:36:43.934000+00:00 | ['Ada', 'Smart Contracts', 'Crypto', 'Cardano'] |
Anatomy of Gossip | Anatomy of Gossip
“Your criticism towards other people makes me feel censurable.”
I thought to myself.
Photo by James McDonald on Unsplash
I was sitting with a group of people at a bar, having a few drinks. Popular themes of our conversation were politics, arts and culture, and gossip…
My mind started moving away from that table slowly with the last theme. I started looking at our table from above, seeing the rest of the outdoor sitting at that bar. Repeating patterns of our social habits and existence through gossip… General ambience of a group of people not agreeing on something talked to me: “There’s only one way to do things.” I was one of those people, and I know I still am without even realizing my own ego talk time to time. But why did it feel so wrong at that moment? Because I was just an observer, and feeling superior didn’t interest me anymore.
I believe that criticism may be used as social practice in some situations and can be very beneficial for the person criticized. What if the person is not there with you?
Gossip taught us to cooperate and made us even more social through our evolution process.
A good amount of our everyday conversation contains gossip with personal judgements, because hurtful judgements we make about an absent third party rely on our need to feel temporarily superior. We reflect on our insecure parts that need to be exposed.
If we are sharing the same personal judgements with other people, it’s even better. We make our space in a social group stronger. Unfortunately, our attempts to not to agree with somebody else may make other people feel easily disagreeable and judgeable in some other occasions.
Psychologically, gossip is the projection of insecurity.
When we judge and blame others, we expose an unhealed part of ourselves that needs a relief. Everything wants to be seen an heard, so do our self-doubt. We can either make this unhealed part conscious, or just keep walking this inner negativity out unconsciously. Often through projection.
At an energy level, it is a sign of blocked chakra, and it spreads the news as much as the negativity.
Everything is energy, including our words. While we keep relieving our unconscious insecurities temporarily through gossip, we let it build new negative opinions on top of each other. Ripple effect of negativity spreads as fast as rumors.
How to not to be a part of this energy
With an absent third party, it’s not possible to cure the problem that is being judged. Here’s some possible answers to not to be a part of judgmental conversations, and safely end them.
Why does it interest you so much? I’d rather to talk something more positive. I don’t think we can help them right now, so maybe we should leave this conversation to some other time. Does this really matter at this moment?
I hope we all notice everything inside of us, and do not relieve them to the outside world through gossip.
Keep your words bright.
Thank you for reading. | https://medium.com/never-fear/anatomy-of-gossip-2b6250e076fc | ['İpeksu Durmaz'] | 2020-09-20 15:47:14.182000+00:00 | ['Psychology', 'Society', 'Friendship', 'Mental Health', 'Critical Thinking'] |
Bitcoin Black Friday | We all like discounts and sales, and no more so than on Black Friday, which is almost upon us (This Friday 23rd November.
What originally started in the US has now become an international occasion representing the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Retail outlets around the world open early to allow shoppers to take advantage of discounts and special offers on everything from clothing and electrical goods to cars and jewellery creating a ‘shopping buzz’ around the globe that pretty much all of us have taken part in one way or another!
The anticipated event was not something that the world of crypto was going to miss out on! Bitcoin Black Friday started back in 2012 in a bid to promote Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency community. The one day sale is the internet’s day for the ultimate consumer experience, offering the Bitcoin community a fun event to participate in while showing support for all those merchants that accept payment in Bitcoin. Just like the traditional high street Black Friday, Bitcoin Black Friday sees hundreds of retailers offering cryptocurrency users special offers on all kinds of goods to be paid for in Bitcoin.
Sites such as Spendabit lists products from over 400 different stores, here you can purchase anything from a designer watch and iPad to books, sportswear and electrical goods. Those who are looking to decorate before the festive period can take advantage of serious home furnishing discounts from Overstock, If you are looking for that extra special handmade or vintage gift then we recommend checking out Etsy. If something more extraordinary is on your list then why not treat yourself to some cryptoart.
Over the years we have seen the number of retail merchants offering Bitcoin as a payment option rise significantly, this not only places Bitcoin on the map as a serious method of exchange but highlights the increase of cryptocurrency adoption.
Whether you are looking to treat yourself or purchase gifts for the whole family, Black Friday is the perfect opportunity to experiment and make a purchase with cryptocurrency — you might be surprised at just how easy it is.
If you are new to the world of cryptocurrency and would like to find out more about Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency revolution before Black Friday, take a look at B21 Life cryptocurrency and blockchain technology education app. Here you can learn the basics, keep up to date with the latest news from within the cryptoverse and find out some fun and interesting facts.
We are always interested to hear from the crypto community, so let us know what you will be purchasing with your Bitcoin this Black Friday in the comments below! Our next blog will take a look at the top Bitcoin Black Friday purchases! | https://medium.com/b21official/bitcoin-black-friday-f55f48c4224c | ['Rhea Craib'] | 2018-11-22 07:23:11.941000+00:00 | ['Retail', 'Crypto', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Black Friday'] |
Managing Time as CEO | A few months ago, we made a video on the responsibilities of a CEO, and I realized now that I never really covered how I manage to get everything done.
To me, the role of a CEO is mainly enabling your team, enabling them to fulfill and excel at their jobs. However, the company’s situation often requires you to roll up your sleeves and lead projects yourself.
As our operation has grown, my time has become more and more scarce and more and more precious. I’ve come to a point where I choose what projects will truly need my involvement, and I delegate others and do my best to stay out of them.
I am going to go over:
what a typical day looks like for me
the evolution of my tasks as the company has grown
the mistakes I’ve made, and
the tactics I use to make myself more efficient
This is how a daily schedule looks like:
I wake up at 5am, almost every weekday.
6 to 7:30 am — I exercise, usually a Tennis match.
I start working around 8:30 am, aiming to finish by 6:30 pm or so.
I block out 2 hours for lunch, which I don’t spend in full, but give me the flexibility to eat earlier or late, hang out with my family, or work as a buffer time without meetings to catch up with work.
I try my best to be free between 6:30 pm and 10:30 pm to hang out with family.
If I’m done with work, I’ll watch a movie or play some video games between 10:30 pm and midnight. Otherwise, I use that time to wrap up the task of the day. It’s a great time to work with zero distractions.
In bed by midnight. Rinse and repeat.
Weekends are most sacred to me. I do my best to get all pending items out on Friday, and I’ve been successful at it for the past few months.
Now, the biggest struggle for a CEO of a company my stage is calls and meetings. Most CEOs spend time in discussions with the team or with potential partners, but in my case, that time also includes calls with our customers.
Some of our Slidebean plans include consulting calls with me, which our users love. These calls give a great insight into the product and our customers’ needs- but of course, but take a significant toll on my calendar.
I control that workload by only enabling calls to be booked certain days per week and keep at least two workdays, where I only take a meeting if it’s genuinely urgent.
I’m strict about the meaning of ‘urgent’ because otherwise, you can’t get things done. For most CEO tasks for a company, our stage should be having a significant impact on revenue or productivity.
By the way, I never, ever, negotiate times for a meeting. That’s why we have Calendly.
Alright, now let’s talk about the evolution of tasks.
Founding Stage: founders and first employees
Tasks
In this stage of the business lifecycle, you will do a bit of everything. You’ll get a crash course on accounting and bookkeeping, legal. You’ll learn to setup domains and emails and redirect your domains to the different landing pages you are testing.
You need to have the capacity to do this and to do it fast. Time is precious in this stage because you probably will be pre-product, and therefore pre-revenue. Every day you spend in a day of runway spent.
More importantly, it’s during this stage that you will learn the trade of your company. You’ll learn who your customers are and why they are complaining because you’ll probably be handling those support emails yourself.
You’ll learn sales and marketing as you pitch your business and start getting the word out there.
That’s why the famous hacker/hustler/hipster combination is vital
That’s why the famous hacker/hustler/hipster combination is vital. By the way, check our our video on how to find a Co-founder. A hacker is a product person, and they own that branch. A hipster leads the design, defines an identity for the business and the brand, and finally, a hustler hustles. Investors, customers, evangelists, beta testers, press! Your job is to push your team to move, define the goals and milestones, and get everyone else excited about your product.
The biggest mistake I made during this time was probably working too hard. I often had 14-hour workdays, which a younger Caya (in his twenties) could manage but not sustain for long.
This is unsustainable; DO NOT DO IT. I got into some unnecessary arguments with my co-founders because they were ‘only’ putting up 10 hours per day.
What they knew, and I didn’t, was that after an 80-hour week, your brain just doesn’t function properly anymore. You need rest, and family time, and beer, and… sandwiches to keep ideas flowing. DO NOT underestimate the value of leisure time.
Tips
Find out the most urgent need of the business and ensure that the team that has control over that task has a clear runway.
Product was the most urgent thing in our earliest stages: getting a viable product into the market; or completing that urgent feature request.
My job then was making sure that we brought that out as fast as humanly possible. How? By offloading tasks from the key person in charge of that task.
Learn to delegate. Learn to trust your co-founders and to disconnect yourself from tasks.
Learn to delegate. Learn to trust your co-founders and to disconnect yourself from tasks.
Tasks
You’ll still be doing a bit of everything, but you’ll soon find out that you can group specific tasks and put a name on them.
You can group all the support and help requests and put them under a ‘Customer Support’ person umbrella. Or you can group your accounting and bookkeeping tasks and assign them to an office manager.
Those will be your first hires, the tasks that you can group and offload. The great thing about this is, you know how to do all these tasks. You know how long it takes, and therefore, you know how long they should be taking to complete them.
In my case, the task that I could not delegate was the role of CMO.
We could afford some junior marketing people or junior paid media people, but not a CMO. We couldn’t afford one, so I had to become one. That’s the versatility you need as a CEO.
As the team scales, you’ll also need to create your first mental Organizational chart. Who reports to who? How do you assign teams for efficiency? Which of your hires have the potential to become managers, and which are better off on dedicated positions?
We also have a video about common Startups Mistakes. Go check that out.
I should have used this time to put more structure into things.
Your schedule will only get busier. You’ll soon start losing track of your business development conversations, so begin logging them and make it a habit.
Use Zapier to automate repetitive tasks. Become an email expert: whether it’s Inbox zero or some other method, pick your email tool and stick with it, own it, and make it boost your productivity.
Again, I failed to do this early on, which probably cost me hundreds of productivity hours until I finally carved out some time to solve it.
One of those was keeping track of your company SaaS tools. If you’re not careful, you’ll soon find duplicates or orphaned tools. I used to keep a spreadsheet which I updated manually, which was, of course, a waste of my time. I use Monthly now and tell everyone to auto-forward any invoice. Monthly just keeps a dashboard that the accounting team can access later.
Tips
Data! At this point, you will have more data than you can analyze regularly, and that’s probably OK. Make sure that you are keeping quality logs of customer activity.
You don’t need to look at them every week, but when a question comes up, like the age group with the most activity, or ‘how was retention affected after we released X feature’, you’ll need to be able to go back and see it.
Maturity
Mandatory disclaimer, we are not a mature company. What I mean by ‘maturity’ is we have reached a point in the business where we are profitable, and we are not hiring aggressively. The CEO’s tasks move from keeping up with the scaling of the company to running it and making more strategic decisions.
At this stage, you just don’t have time to roll up your sleeves for almost any project. Your role is defining a project, handpicking the team that can bring it to a conclusion, meeting with them to get everyone on the same page, and getting out.
Your time at this stage is so tight that your involvement in a project might actually cause delays: if your team is waiting for your approval to move forward, things will move slower. You must empower your managers and your trusted team to make decisions of their own, to make mistakes even, as long as the project moves forward.
Just to clarify this definition of ‘project’- these are some of the projects that I have ‘started’ recently:
Building a new email onboarding and drip campaign system. I assigned this to the customer success and the data analyst teams.
Re-releasing our Company Forensics episodes as a podcast.
Re-thinking our brand presence in social media (which is far from great at the moment). This requires assembling a new social media team.
Figuring out a way to get our content on TikTok.
Hiring a new operations manager for our Costa Rica office, who can take over more of my administrative tasks.
Even with hires, for example, as involved as I would like to be in the process, I only have time to meet with the top 3 candidates. I’ve learned to trust my team’s judgment to do everything else.
This can be very frustrating at times, by the way. Sometimes you WANT to get your hands dirty with a project. You want to do some designs or figure out some UX mockups, but you just can’t. You have to resist the urge and trust your team to do it.
The only project where I’ve been able to dedicate some extra time is Monthly. I am so excited about it. One of the tasks I’ve been doing is getting in conversations with other CEOs about whether our ‘problem statement’ is correct. And it is (we have a video with me pitching that business, by the way)
Abandoned SaaS tools that nobody uses. Duplicate platforms. Manual spreadsheets to keep track of expenses. Mismatch in the way tools are classified on the books. It seems every company I talk to is struggling with this, and we believe Monthly is going to solve all that.
We are offering early access. You can sign up for free at monthlyapp.com. As tight as my schedule is, I will read your tweets about it, so please take a look and let me know what you think. | https://medium.com/@slidebean/managing-time-as-ceo-36b0949bdf5e | [] | 2020-12-01 00:09:18.413000+00:00 | ['Time Management', 'Caya Cayasso', 'Slidebean', 'CEO', 'Startup Lessons'] |
Coronavirus and the Perception of Death | Illustration: Noor Us Safa Anik
People all over the world are sitting at home, avoiding the joys of social life, sacrificing the comforts of their routine and income. All this for the sake of saving human lives. I’m glad that almost everyone agrees on this: even though it’s hard, we have to overlook our personal interests in order to save lives. Humanity has come together, uniting forces to face its two ancient enemies — disease and death.
But this is only the beginning. The current situation must lead to new, radical changes in society and in people’s mentality. Changes that can really push the whole of humanity forwards. Let me explain.
1. The reputation of evidence-based medicine and of scientific knowledge will increase. When a vaccine for coronavirus appears and people see that it works, fewer and fewer across the world will be questioning the value of immunisation. There will be fewer people claiming vaccines to be evil, seeing medicine as an imprecise science only to turn to homeopathy or popular remedies.
2. Governments will have to increase health-research spending, and people will have to spend more on the development of drugs for the treatment of cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and other dangerous conditions. But scientists will also, I hope, continue their efforts to find effective treatments for the common cold, given the many ineffective drugs currently sold in pharmacies.
3. More and more people will realise that death is an evil that must be fought by all, even at the cost of impositions and limitations. Just like the current pandemic-induced quarantine, more measures should be taken to save lives “in time of peace”. For example, by introducing more stringent speed limits and heftier fines on the roads (it is proven that this leads to a decrease in deaths related to car accidents), installing crash barriers on all main roads, closing down or modernising all harmful industrial activities (every year more people die because of pollution than because of any pandemic), and so on. We must save human lives even if it means closing some factories down, bringing some harm to the economy and annoying thrill-seekers. Just like what’s happening now.
4. With time, the opinion that humanity must work on minimising the risks to its survival (its existential risks) will become mainstream. This means investing more money in nuclear safety, in the development of advanced, human-friendly AI, in the prevention of new pandemics and in the fight against global warming. In 2015, Bill Gates gave a premonitory TED talk: we are unprepared for the outbreak of new viruses, we have to preventively create a system to combat them! Back then everybody ignored him, but now people are much more responsive to such warnings. Coronavirus has made people get to grips with the thought that there are risks all around and humanity has to jointly come up with a strategy to minimise them and create a safety net.
5. Finally, with time people will become increasingly open to the ideals of transhumanism and will come to agree that man has to at least delay, if not completely eradicate death from old-age. More money will be invested in science, more talent will come to this field, and aging research will finally move forwards from its current dead end.
Alas, every year tens of millions of people die of old age, but it does not make the headlines. Everybody takes this as the natural course of things, against which there’s no point fighting. Yet, once the plague and smallpox were also considered natural, and look what happened to them!
Some say that, of course, we must fight against aging, but later. There are more urgent problems right now, we cannot allow ourselves to close an eye on them and put all our strengths into lengthening our lives. And anyhow have no idea when such research would even bear its fruits. Well no! We can and must do this, just like we’re now dedicating all our strengths in fighting against coronavirus.
Instead of passively watching all that’s bad just happening in front of our eyes (remember the “observer effect”), people have to take their destiny into their own hands. The current pandemic, with all its horrible consequences, has a side-effect: it can nudge us on to accomplishing all this. | https://medium.com/@mustreader/coronavirus-and-the-perception-of-death-3ab23df96e6c | [] | 2020-04-23 13:28:55.982000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Perception', 'Future', 'Covid 19', 'Self Isolation'] |
Writing An Effective Six-Pager Product Document | The six-pager memo format found its popularity through Jeff Bezos and contrary to my initial apprehensions it does represent an idea more clearly than a hundred pager (not literally a hundred, but you get my point!).
The shorter format, while takes more effort for the writer, is extremely easy to consume and understand for the audience.
The difference stems from the mindset of the writer while tapping away at the keys of her laptop. A hundred pager is when you puke all your ideas onto the paper. It helps you think, draw ideas, visualize the structure, and so much more. But the same is more likely to be addled with inconsistencies (in words and ideas) and incoherent ideas.
A six pager is when you distill the most important ideas of your hundred pager, and cut the clutter. It mandates that you utilize real estate for the most important ideas you would like to convey.
To a reader, a six pages adds the perception of a well thought of document with thought-through ideas which creates much less inertia than when served a binder with a hundred pages.
A six-pager, in almost everything is a more effective way of communication. But because we are Product people, let’s focus on Product Documentation.
Clear intent
Hours and hours everyday we tap away at our tired laptop keyboard forming words, ideas and concepts. We write stories, make presentations, product documentation, marketing materials, and whatnot.
The audience for each could be very different, the effective format could be possibly across a wide spectrum, and more importantly your intent for each documentation could be very different.
Before talking about how to write a six pager, let’s be sure of what can be and should be represented in the format to be most effective. Not much would be gained by trying to squeeze yourself in two dress sizes smaller.
Never try to go for smaller documentation when your audience needs details. Examples include your stories, and your requirements for your Technical teams. Communication with tech teams is always a disaster waiting to happen by the slip of a few points and misalignments.
If you do not believe me you got to read the story of how my Product was lost in Translation.
Six-pagers are perfect for interacting and aligning with the other side of the value chain — sales, marketing, Leadership, onwards and across in Product.
The intent of your Six-pager is always to cover the “Why” and to some extent the “What” but never the “How”
Cut the clutter
A six-pager is not the first document I advise you to start thinking with.
Everyone’s style and process is different, but because I am writing this article, I would like to share my own process in the hope that someone might benefit from the experience.
Below is my own five-step process I use to reach the end goal of crystal clear communication through a document.
The purpose I enter the process with, is to produce something that can be used to:
Justify the need for the Product/feature I am proposing
Introduce a concept
Detail it just enough to reduce chances of misalignment
Abstract Thinking
At this stage my ideas are like pieces floating around in space. The whiteboard equivalent would be unrelated points strewn at different corners of the board.
I am aware of user problems, and I have some ideas to solve them but I have not yet put in the effort to make them cohesive. Not yet anyway.
Explain Your Idea In 3 Sentences To Your Neighbor
If you can explain your idea to your neighbor (who most likely is not in your team), then you have the full grip of a problem and a basic solution.
Why 3 sentences?
One sentence to frame the problem.
Another to convey your idea.
I give myself one extra, just in case.
But the intent is absolutely not to explain the idea in full but a bare glimpse of it. Your sentences need to be short, simple. I do not mind sentences which never end when reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment but I do not receive the same pleasure by reading a complicated sentence structure and flowery words in a Business Document.
Here is an illustration:
Problem: People do not want to take an extra trip to get their cars cleaned.
Solution: We can provide car wash services in all popular malls. Cars can be cleaned while people shop.
Resist the temptation to say any more.
Some of my held back sentences were:
This will increase the profits of shops in malls.
People will tend to visit malls more
We do not have to invest anything extra in security. We can leverage Malls’ security
Reduced cost in marketing. A simple banner at the entrance would do
And I could go on. Believe me the temptation to reveal what a brilliant idea it is and how much you have thought about it is irresistible, but try it anyway.
Detailing in a million pages, or as much as you need.
Before we begin talking about this stage, let me make it clear that the output is completely disposable. I use this stage for nothing but to get more ideas as I write, and then review. This is just how I do it, but feel free to skip.
I begin by focusing on three key parts. Starting with the Why, to talking about the What, and then possibly dipping my toes into the How.
I try to gather market research to verify and make a story for the “Why”. I have everything and more to convince anybody here of why this idea and Product makes sense. This stage is less thinking and more compilation of cohesive data.
While I tap away to capture the “What” that’s usually when some framework or constructs begin to emerge.
Constructs
Constructs are one abstraction level above UX. They lay down the key concepts that represent your idea to completeness. The primary constructs of your Products help determine your User experience to a great extent.
Let me use an example to explain further.
If Google Drive were to be used to store an organization’s documents, how would you design the experience to ensure that the document is visible to only the right folks in the organization?
You could define the authorization and controls as you upload a document, or You could define the authorization and control of the underlying folder and every added document inherits the settings, or Number of other creative ways we could possibly solve this..
The ideas of points 1 &2 can be represented in a 2x2 matrix as below:
You have now been able to define the constructs that would affect the direction of your user experience — the interesting ones being explicit declaration per document, and automatic management per folder.
Chop, Chop, Chop
The final step where we are almost there, is putting the final pen to the expensive paper.
The ideas are already drawn, the constructs ready. By this time you would already have filtered the content you want to write.
If you aren’t sure yet, ask yourself the question — Would this sentence/paragraph help a first time reader understand the concept?
There are a lot of things in the predecessor documents that you would be really proud of. Maybe the details, the complex algorithms, the beautiful AI model powering it. And, if you are like me, sometimes you want to mention things you are really proud of but they might not be essential to the purpose of the document.
Edit till the document falls together into place into an easy to follow and represents your ideas and nothing else. And there! You have your effective six-pager.
A few words of caution:
It’s perfectly okay and even advised to have a separate — bigger, more detailed documentation for your development teams. The six-pager is not effective to represent the elaborate “Hows” of your concepts and ideas. A good idea I sometimes follow is preparing a longer documentation with the first six pages acting as the hero of this story, and the rest dedicated to adding the required details for my technical teams. This helps me maintain lesser documentation per Product/feature and ensure higher consistency than managing multiple documents.
Hope the Article adds something more to your repertoire of expertise! | https://productcoalition.com/writing-an-effective-six-pager-product-document-876c40a3b1d8 | ['Aditi Priya'] | 2021-04-05 16:53:30.801000+00:00 | ['Six Pager', 'Product', 'Communication', 'Product Management', 'Documentation'] |
What is Gravity?!? Pt. 1. | A bit of context: I am a 14-year-old trying to find out how some of the things around me in this world works. I have no experience in this field other than high school physics. This is a series of blog posts where I write about all the topics that I come across while trying to figure out how gravity works.
I’ve always been told that gravity is a force by which the earth pulls objects toward its surface. I was never satisfied with this definition for the following reasons:
For the past 9 years, all I’ve ever been told about gravity in school is this definition, calculations of gravitational force, and that an apple fell on Sir Isaac Newton’s head.
The textbooks never had any information on how the force works or why this force works.
So I decided that I was going to find out what gravity is and how it works.
This is the 1st Part of the Topic “What is Gravity?” where I talk about how gravity works in space between objects in space
The first thing I found out is that this was already done. Gravity had already been figured out by Albert Einstein.
So here’s what I found out after doing some research :
We, humans, are very small creatures on this planet. The only dimensions we can access are Length, Depth, and Height but it turns out that there exists a fourth dimension in the universe.
This dimension is called Spacetime. Einstein found out that the two closely related parts of reality could be joined if the speed of light was constant. This is a vast topic that I am researching currently. I will be writing on all the topics related to spacetime later in the blog.
For now, in this blog post, I am going to try and help you to visualize Gravity that is experienced by objects in space.
Space-time is like a huge trampoline in space on which all of the objects in space move around.
So on this trampoline are objects with different masses that create curves on it. Like in the image above.
Now when there are many objects on this trampoline, like in space (due to Entropy), many curves are formed on the trampoline (Spacetime).
This results in the formation of very steep slopes around the bodies having large masses. So the bodies with less mass, move along the slope towards the heavier body. Hopefully, this image could help you visualize this concept
.
This is how bodies of greater mass in space attract bodies of lesser mass.
Hope this helped!
Interesting Links | https://medium.com/@edwinsanish/what-is-gravity-pt-1-b52d861463a2 | ['Edwin Sanish'] | 2020-12-19 05:15:01.674000+00:00 | ['What Is Gravity', 'Physics'] |
Agile Project Management | Scrum Framework | Scrum is an application development method in software engineering. The main feature of this development method is that it is based on Observer, developer and repetition. It acts from the assumption that many modern software projects are quite complex and it will be difficult to plan all of them from the beginning.
It ensures achieving the goal with regular feedback and planning. In this sense, it has a need-oriented and flexible structure. As it is shaped according to customer needs, it provides structuring according to customer feedback. Communication and teamwork are very important.
It is based on 3 basic principles;
Transparency : the progress of the project, problems,developments should be visible to everyone.
: the progress of the project, problems,developments should be visible to everyone. Audit : the progress of the project is regularly checked.
: the progress of the project is regularly checked. Adaptation: the project must be able to adapt to the changes that can be made.
Scrum Structure
Product Backlog: This is a list of what to do with the project.
This is a list of what to do with the project. Product Backlog Item: It is the name given to the specified items in the Backlog.
It is the name given to the specified items in the Backlog. Sprint: Activities divided into 1–2 week time zones.
Activities divided into 1–2 week time zones. Sprint Backlog: What to do is determined within the divided time, a detailed timeline is created.
What to do is determined within the divided time, a detailed timeline is created. Scrum Board: The tasks that are to be performed are taken into the “to DO” Section. He is brought to the “In PROGRESS” section when the team member begins this work. If a job is ready for testing, it is placed in the “to VERIFY” state. The work is brought to the “DONE” section after being checked. In Scrum meetings, these items are relocated according to their status.
The tasks that are to be performed are taken into the “to DO” Section. He is brought to the “In PROGRESS” section when the team member begins this work. If a job is ready for testing, it is placed in the “to VERIFY” state. The work is brought to the “DONE” section after being checked. In Scrum meetings, these items are relocated according to their status. Burndown Chart: The graph showing the Sprint days and the work remaining in the sprint. (Provides transparency clause.)
Roles in The Project
Product Owner: Usually owns the product or idea. It provides communication between the development team and the customer. Defines the properties of the project. Creates a product backlog based on project priorities. He has the authority to cancel the sprint. Why can Sprint be cancelled? In rapidly changing environments, work done in a Sprint may not be important to the business unit, or it may be more important work than work done in a sprint. The business owner might want to see that and cancel sprint.
Usually owns the product or idea. It provides communication between the development team and the customer. Defines the properties of the project. Creates a product backlog based on project priorities. He has the authority to cancel the sprint. Why can Sprint be cancelled? In rapidly changing environments, work done in a Sprint may not be important to the business unit, or it may be more important work than work done in a sprint. The business owner might want to see that and cancel sprint. Scrum Master: Knows the rules, theories and practices of the Scrum well and is the person responsible for the team applying those rules. Not the manager of the team. Eliminates situations that disturb the team, prevent their efficient work.
Knows the rules, theories and practices of the Scrum well and is the person responsible for the team applying those rules. Not the manager of the team. Eliminates situations that disturb the team, prevent their efficient work. Development Team: They are people who have the characteristics to complete all the work that is taken into a sprint. they form the sprint Backlog. They don’t expect the job to be given, they take the job themselves and develop it. People don’t have a single task, they do cross-tasking, everyone can do anything. It ranges from 5–7 people. Responsibility for the development of the project belongs to the development team.
Meetings | https://medium.com/@didemkuzuoglu/agile-project-management-scrum-framework-e732627c0312 | [] | 2021-04-25 12:29:59.045000+00:00 | ['Framework', 'Scrum', 'Scrum Master', 'Agile Methodology', 'Agile'] |
“LOVE?” | When I was younger I always had this fantasy, this idea, of what love was supposed to be like. The wonder of how it feels to fall in love.
How it feels to have that person who is said to “complete you”
Now I get asked what was being in love like?
My answer is nothing like you imagine; there is nothing magical about falling into a trap.
Love to me; as I tell them, is a trap
Why trust someone that much when you can’t even trust yourself?
You need to grow within yourself; follow ALL of your dreams BEFORE you add someone into your life.
You need to be settled with yourself before you settle with someone else.
However, do not settle for someone.
Love to me is someone entering your life to not change it but add a little something extra that has been missing.
Love to me when you have it, it is real and there is no chance of losing it.
Love will be found when it is meant to be found.
I never had the belief that love was real or that being in love was.
Love, yes. Is a thing. You can love friends, and family.
BUT soulmate love, until it is found no one can believe it is real.
Now as I am older I have the fantasy of being me; living my life.
Because why would I need love. When I love myself. | https://medium.com/@chauntelle1508/love-5baa5c50571a | [] | 2020-12-20 02:07:27.601000+00:00 | ['Falling In Love', 'Love', 'Heartbreak'] |
Coding with EMPACT: Tech training is empowering Syrian refugees and youth in Turkey | By Gulia Rakhimova
EMPACT is an innovation project of the World Food Programme (WFP) that supports young people to start tech careers, bridging their way out of hunger and poverty to the future of work and self-reliance.
After successfully training nearly 7,000 young people in digital skills in Iraq, Lebanon and Kenya, EMPACT started a pilot project in Turkey in September 2020. The first cohort launched in Turkey’s largest city Istanbul, targeting refugees and low-income youth, and adapted swiftly to the new physical distancing reality under COVID-19.
The first cohort of EMPACT students in Turkey took part in two entirely virtual coding bootcamps in October and November 2020.
Rebuilding lives in turbulent times
Launching EMPACT in Turkey has been a logical step. The country hosts the world’s largest displaced population and is home to 4 million refugees, including more than 3.6 million who have fled the conflict in Syria.
Building home in a new place comes with unique hardships for refugees. A lack of stable employment is one of them as refugees’ language skills, foreign education, and work experience often don’t meet the job market needs. Youth unemployment is a country-wide issue too, which may drive young people into the informal labour market — often in dangerous and low-paid jobs.
The economic fallout caused by COVID-19 is amplifying these problems. Across the country, businesses hit by the crisis are forced to scale down and limit their hiring plans. For example, service and tourism sectors, which would offer entry-level jobs, have halted in many places. Despite their potential, many young refugees, as well as youth from low-income localities, need WFP’s assistance to make ends meet.
So how can tech training make a change?
Untapped talent pool
On the other end of the spectrum, Turkey’s tech industry is facing skills shortages. In line with the government’s 2023 Industry and Technology Strategy, the number of software developers across the country needs to grow from 140,000 to 500,000 to meet the IT sector’s demands.
The EMPACT target group — unemployed and underemployed young people from refugee and host communities— represent an untapped talent pool which can fill this gap. The programme equips them with in-demand tech skills and matches their newly found talent with IT vacancies in private sector companies. It’s a win-win outcome: young people find stable jobs and generate life-saving income, and employers can hire qualified staff to meet their tech needs. Both contribute to a more productive economy.
“EMPACT is part of WFP’s broader livelihoods support programme in Turkey which aims to empower young people between 18 and 35 years old — helping them move from beneficiaries of food assistance to skilled professionals who own their future.” — Selin Altunkaynak Vodina, Programme Associate at WFP Turkey.
Fighting hunger with code
The first cohort of EMPACT in Turkey launched in Istanbul with outreach activities aimed at low-income youth and selection criteria designed to promote diversity and inclusion in the tech sector. For example, since women make up only 17% of tech talent in Turkey, at least half of the participants in each group are female. Out of 100 young people selected for the first cohort, almost half of them are Syrian refugees.
Turkey had a greater influx of people fleeing conflict than any other country and hosts more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees. Photo: WFP/Deniz Akkus.
EMPACT uses best practices to prepare students for the future of work. The curriculum includes classes in software development such as Javascript and Vue.js, English language training, as well as workshops in soft skills like business communication and resume writing. In addition to online courses, the Istanbul cohort went through two virtual coding bootcamps organized by Kodluyoruz, a tech-focused non-governmental organization based in Istanbul. By partnering with the private sector and online working platforms including Microsoft, Fiverr, Tempo Call Center, and ISKUR Employment Agency, EMPACT graduates are linked with online microwork and highly-skilled IT roles.
“This year is special for EMPACT. The curriculum intended for in-person classes was almost entirely redesigned to be held in the form of interactive online sessions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We had to ensure that participants had computers and stable internet to follow the classes.” — Elisa Molena, EMPACT Project Manager.
From the Bosphorus to the south
As the future of work evolves rapidly, and the global pandemic re-emphasizes the importance of IT literacy, EMPACT will continue creating new employment pathways for young refugees and youth from host communities in the technology sector.
Having embraced both in-person and virtual training modules, the pilot in Turkey will continue expanding in 2021 to nine more provinces: Bursa, Ankara, Konya, Izmir, Mersin, Gaziantep, Hatay, Sanliurfa and Adana. Over the next two years, it will empower 1,000 young people to move from poverty into meaningful careers. | https://medium.com/@wfpinnovation/coding-with-empact-tech-training-is-empowering-syrian-youth-refugees-5ab7bab14707 | ['Wfp Innovation Accelerator'] | 2021-01-11 12:32:21.648000+00:00 | ['Youth', 'Syria', 'Wfp', 'Future Of Work', 'Innovation'] |
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