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Will face masks be the next big thing? | Well, according to my calculations…
It depends on the number of people.
Information cascades occur when people make decisions sequentially, even if it goes against their own private information, based on the observed decisions of other people.
Let’s assume we have a group of people (N) who can decide between adopting or rejecting the fashion face mask trend. Everyone can observe the decisions of people in front of them, but not their private information.
We can build a mathematical model for what decisions they’ll make, based on the following components:
States of the world: The world randomly exists in either of two states, one where wearing face masks for fashion is a good idea (G) and one where it’s a bad idea (B) — individuals will try to figure which one is true. Signals: Everyone has private information, or a private signal, that gives them a clue about whether accepting is a good idea or not — maybe in this case, it’s your existing knowledge of fashion.
Signals can be high (H), meaning accepting is a good idea, or low (L) meaning it’s a bad idea. If it is, in fact, a good idea, then high signals will be more frequent than low ones.
Mathematically speaking, the probability of getting a high signal given it’s a good idea (denoted by Pr [H |G], or q) will be greater than 1/2. Pr [L | G] will therefore be 1 — q. The same applies for the opposite:
Created by Murto Hilali
As a rule, the first person will follow their signal, as will the second. (Proof can be found here).
If Person 1 and 2 make different decisions, person 3 is indifferent and will follow his own signal.
If they make the same decision (accept or reject the trend) person 3 will follow suit regardless of their private information.
This speaks to a trend that governs information cascades:
If the number of acceptances exceeds rejections by two, it starts a cascade of acceptance.
If the number of rejections exceeds acceptances by two, it starts a cascade of rejection.
Screenshot by Author | Cornell
This means three matching signals in a row will always cause a cascade. Let’s split N up into chunks of 3 consecutive people: the probability that they all get the same signal is:
By the same reasoning, the probability none of them get identical signals (i.e. no cascade happens) is
As N approaches infinity, this value starts to = 0.
That means the more people there are in the sequence, the likelier a cascade is to form. This could be a cascade of acceptance or rejection — if you want to get the former, encourage the first few people to all accept, and the rest will follow suit. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/face-masks-56ec2879564a | ['Murto Hilali'] | 2020-05-20 01:48:21.106000+00:00 | ['Neuroscience', 'Business', 'Mathematics', 'Psychology', 'Economics'] |
Thieves magician | Before the invention and application of CCTV, theft was quite mysterious, and thieves seemed like the great magicians because we came to know about the crime only after it had happened. Now at least we can see a theft live on CCTV recording, after the incident.
In India, it is customary for a newlywed woman to wear and display the gold ornaments and for all women to wear the gold jewelry in a marriage function.
Shortly after our marriage, we traveled from Jhansi to Lucknow to attend a marriage ceremony. My wife carried her jewelry, which she had received as the marriage gift, keeping it in her leather suitcase to wear in the ceremony.
It was a wedding season, so the train was overcrowded. We traveled second class, and this was a daytime journey. We kept the suitcase on the upper berth. During the travel, a few passengers climbed and sat on the upper berth too. We did not suspect any foul play, but when, after reaching Lucknow, my wife opened the suitcase to make up for the ceremony, most of the jewelry was missing. There was no doubt in deciding that some thief had stolen jewelry on the train. | https://medium.com/@raviranjangoswami/thieves-magician-76435a5a32ba | ['Ravi Ranjan Goswami'] | 2020-12-11 14:50:00.614000+00:00 | ['Travel', 'Thieves', 'Train', 'Magic'] |
Retention and Daily Active Users Explained. | To count active users per day in BigQuery you can use this SQL below. A bit ugly but something like this should work:
User retention table
For many marketers the metric that represents the most interest would be 30 day retention because if a user was active on day 30 that means it has been using an App for 30 days. If a user was active at least once during the last 30 days it makes that user a monthly active one (MAU).
However, it’s not necessarily true that this user is an active one.
We need to distinguish between measurable user activity (e.g. K-means clustering of your user base) and simply being active as MAU.
For example, if a user opened your App and then uninstalled it — is it an active user? Yes, it is.
In this article I will be talking about counting user logons and producing DAU/MAU metrics.
New active users are the users that, in a specified period, interact with your app for the first time. (eg. created an account) and then start using it daily, weekly or monthly. These users are often heavily influenced by the user onboarding process they experience.
Returning active users are the users that keep coming back to your app after the period of inactivity and are closely related to the retention and recurring revenue metrics of your business.
Now let’s create a new data source and visualize our numbers in Data Studio.
We don’t really need to use aggregation in SQL and materialize it because our dataset is relatively small and Data Studio can do aggregation for us.
Datasource:
You can see that I created a new field called user_pseudo_id_percent . We will use it to show the percentage of retained users later.
Now let’s add a new column week_ which we will use to calculate retention per week. Try running this bit of SQL and see what happens:
select ceil(DATE_DIFF('2020-10-25', '2020-10-10', DAY)/7) AS week_diff
week_diff
For example, in Firebase we have a similar thing called Weekly retention cohorts.
Firebase new user retention example (image by author)
Let’s add this new field to our datasource:
Adding weekly cohorts to retention
To accurately report on retention, your analytics tool needs to be able to recognize the same user even if they log in six months later using a different browser or device. This might become a real challenge because
… in real life it becomes way more complicated when users have different accounts and multiple devices.
What is an “Active user”
Let’s assume every client Application will log in several times a day when running. Each logon event can be recorded to your Data lake/Data warehouse along with the user id and the device id.
This is pretty much how Firebase logs users. You will have user_pseudo_id by default and user_id can be enabled like so:
There is a lot of things you can do to listen in on those events and even pre-process them to just the data you need before sending them to the Data warehouse. Things like Kinesis or Kafka can easily stream event data from your microservices.
— So what is an active user? — It depends on the business logic you want to apply to your datasets and reports.
Active users are often reported as Monthly active users (MAU), Weekly (WAU), and Daily (DAU). Let’s illustrate active users a little bit more with a visual example: | https://towardsdatascience.com/retention-and-daily-active-users-explained-79c5dab1bf84 | ['Mike Shakhomirov'] | 2021-02-03 15:14:53.276000+00:00 | ['Visualization', 'Firebase', 'Data Studio', 'Google Big Query', 'Google Analytics'] |
Home Again | Driving down the neighborhood with the windows down and the radio playing, the cool winds sweeping up the newly fallen leaves off the large oak trees on either side of the road, it’s all too familiar. The children wrapped in unmovable clothing and rubber boots, their laughter being heard for miles. On the corner of the street is the pumpkin patch, so orange and festive. Then the intersection with the old crack in the street that hasn’t been fixed in years, holding last night’s rainfall. Each passing house’s television displaying Charlie Brown and living rooms filled with joy among each family gathering. At the end of the street the prettiest house, with a well kept yard, grand windows, and lace curtains-the house is a beauty. This house has been vacant and quiet for awhile as if the joyful laughter died out years ago. This house’s secrets lay on the inside. The true deception that no one could see from the perfect view outside.
Pulling into the driveway and remembering the countless nights of her running out barefoot to sit and cry about the arguing. Getting out and locking the car to see the small dent in the corner of the garage door where she hit it after coming home at two in the morning buzzed. The small crack in the corner now a home of an orangish red spider that is spinning around a newly caught butterfly. Walking to the front door and seeing the flaking chips of paint from where it was slammed so many times throughout the years. To the left of the door the flower pot, where at least once a week she’d lose her key and have to use the spare that was poorly taped onto the bottom of. When lifted up the key was still there after all these years, surprised it wasn’t taken or lost when everyone moved out. It was time now to go inside yet hesitantly the door creaked open. The darkness slowly pouring out into the neighborhood but to be stopped by gentle closure. The smell of whiskey, and vanilla candles filling the air. The candles were always the cover up for when people came over. She had learned how to use a lighter at age six just to keep the house pristine. In hopes to mask the problem at hand because she knew long term the problem would never be fixed. To the right was the dining table where everything began. To family dinners that were never civil, they were times of him wrecking her self esteem. She was never the perfect daughter he wanted but he was no perfect father either. Six o’ Clock dinners always had the stench of alcohol with them and rarely few did he act like himself. Looking out the window behind the dining table, seeing the clear difference of how new the bottom piece of glass is from the top. The bottom piece cleary have being replaced from the night he threw his snifter at the window when told about the divorce. That same night she snuck out to get away from their bickering, and getting picked up by who was not her boyfriend because she never had one but a boy who she cared more than anything about. She never talked about what happened that night she left but she didn’t return till the morning. Her mother standing at the front door when his car pulled up and her getting out wearing his clothes. Her mother was mad but knew there was no stopping her.
To the left of the window, the living room, a place for gathering and relaxation. The same dark leather sectional that was a sleeping ground for her father almost every night. Remembering how her mother would yell at him and lock him out of their bedroom. That same year it had got so bad she got the locks changed and kicked him out. Her mother eventually would let him back everytime after he said he has changed. Her daughter knowing well to none that he hasn’t changed and then the cycle repeats. Her Mother dealt with a lot and the contemplation of divorce took her a very long time to be ready for. She was a stay at home wife and he was a drunken lawyer, yet she had to do what was right for her daughter. From the couch was the television, a twenty inch flatscreen that always played Fox News, all year round. Remembering every night when she’d get home from practice and hearing Tucker Carlson talk about Trump or Clinton ninety percent of the time. Slight right of the television was a staircase that led to the rooms. Going up the light amber wood stairs that ached when walked on to see the pictures on the wall and the small dust mites that have attracted to the frames to high to reach without a ladder. The very top step leading to the spread of four rooms. The only room worth going into was the one at the end. Straight center from the last step, the hallway seeming like an unbearably long distance to the door.
The slow steps to the door remembering every day she’d pace back and forth down the hallway when she heard her parents fighting. She always wanted to help but was continuously dismissed and looked down upon by her parents. To the arrival of the door, reflecting on the pure life that lives behind it. The twist of the silver plated knob and a small hault, the door opens to the display of her room. Exactly like remembered too. Pretty white sheets, a window that opens to the side of the roof, a fully stocked and organized closet. The smell of a coconut Sex Wax air freshner that’s meant for cars but there was always two hanging on the end rod of the curtains. The endless memories that fill this room. Walking over to the window and moving the slightly yellowed curtains to one side and seeing the view of the street. The countless times of her opening the window and sitting on the roof with her friends. Always hoisting up one of her friends who would park on the corner of the street at two in the morning to come hangout with her. He was always good to her and she knew that. They would sit and look at the stars, She’d talk about moving out, or how she wishes life was different but they’d always smoke. They both knew it wasn’t good but they both didn’t care because they knew there were worse things to be doing. Turning around from the window lays her bed. The bed looking like it just got made, and feels just as it did twenty years ago. Laying down and turning to the left gazing on the soul that grew up here. All eighteen years that she lived here, what a time it was for her. Always feeling bad for her but she turned out better than anyone expected. Getting up from her bed and taking one more long breath it was time to leave.
Closing her door, walking down the stairs, through the living room and across the dining room back to the front door. With one last look around the secrets were locked back inside. A step down the old porch stairs and gaze at a pretty red ladybug on the lawn, a tear rolls down. Walking past the garage with the orangish red spider whose captive butterfly is now fully wrapped, the car door shuts and the engine turned on. Backing up from the driveway of that pretty light blue house at the end of the street, driving away and now watching the house in the mirror as it slowly vanishes. That was a special house, it was the house that raised me. | https://medium.com/@olivia-mckenna26/home-again-1437dfaa9136 | ['Olivia Mckenna'] | 2020-12-27 23:36:23.819000+00:00 | ['Trauma', 'Home', 'Design', 'Home Again', 'Childhood'] |
The CLN Pre-Sale is Now Closed. Here Are The Results | As of today, 12/02/18 the Colu Local Network Presale event is officially closed. We have successfully sold 222,436,069 CLN tokens. Investors in the Presale include the IDB group, Spark Capital, Aleph VC and many others.
We would like to thank everyone in the CLN community for their continued support over the past few months. Together we can harness the power of blockchain technology to revolutionize the way we make payments and generate value for communities all over the globe. Our commitment to creating the CLN network remains unwavered and we are revving up gears for the upcoming crowd sale which starts on the 14th of February.
We have taken the following measures to ensure that our crowdsale is fair, transparent and geared towards supporting the goal of steadily developing the CLN network, here are some of the steps we took to ensure that :
Pre-Sale Investor Lock Ups
Most of the tokens that were sold in the Colu Local Network Presale have been locked up for a period of up to three years with a monthly vesting schedule. This might decrease the risk of manipulation. A total of 169,086,751 CLN tokens were locked and will be released gradually over time.
No bonus tokens were given without a lockup period. All this is easily verifiable on the vesting contract. https://github.com/colucom/CLN-solidity
Future Development Pool
The CLN tokens allocated to future development have also been locked up for a period of three years with no option of accessing the funds until the three years are over. This was done to ensure the network has sufficient funds for its continued development and the support of the CLN network and focus on creating long term value.
Team Pool
The team pool allocation will be locked for 36 months with monthly vesting and a 6 month cliff.
Transparency and Diligence
During the course of the token pre-sale we were fair and transparent about the lock up options and did not negotiate private deals. Our smart contracts have been audited by two auditing agencies to ensure security. We have implemented a KYC procedure to all potential participants. We voluntarily adopted high standards in the process and made every effort to comply with regulation in a continuously changing environment.
What’s Next?
The end of the Presale is just the first step of the token sale, we are looking forward to the crowd sale on the 14th of Feb. If you have not yet signed up and passed KYC please head to our website and go through the process so you will be ready to take part in the token sale on the day.
All participants taking part in the crowd sale must pass KYC and upload their ERC-20 wallet address, the CLN tokens will be sent to that address upon completion of the crowd sale.
The Future
Shortly following the end of the crowd sale, the set of smart contracts facilitating issuance of community currencies and providing liquidity to them will be deployed and available to the community to use. As part of the CLN community, we will continually be creating and working on more features of the CLN and begin developing the infrastructure to support payment transactions in communities that are part of the CLN ecosystem. We look forward to seeing what the community will develop for the network and how it will utilize its growing capabilities.
We appreciate the support that we have received until now and look forward to a bright future ahead.
To learn more, visit our website! | https://medium.com/colu/the-cln-pre-sale-is-now-closed-here-are-the-results-716f4848e4a1 | [] | 2018-02-13 12:22:36.990000+00:00 | ['ICO', 'Token Sale', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Finance'] |
How to Get Started With Sports Betting | Sports betting is simply placing a wager on a sporting event. You are betting that your team, horse, dog, or driver will win. If they do win, so do you! If they lose, you lose your bet amount. Sports betting takes place all over the world, though in the United States this type of betting is not as highly accepted as it is in Europe.
Online sports betting is probably the best option for those who are interesting in trying it for the first time. If you have never tried online sports betting, you are missing so much fun and excitement, and it can all happen in the comfortable surroundings of your home! The art of sports betting can seem confusing at first, but once you are familiar with some of the jargon that is used to explain the concepts and logic behind each type of bet, it is all much easier to understand.
One of the best ways for you to experience this engaging way to bet on your favourite racing and sporting events is to get acquainted with online sports betting. However, in order to best take advantage of all that sports betting has to offer, you need to know a little more about it.
Sports Betting — The Odds
How does online sports betting work? You should start by studying the odds for the sporting event you are most interested in placing a wager upon. When using online sports betting, you can find these odds in the various online sports books used by Internet gamers everywhere. You must open an account with an online sports book before you can place your bet, but this is simple to do.
Once you have chosen where you are going to do your sports betting, you need to decide how you are going to place your bet. There are many different ways for you to wager your chosen amount of money, but first, let’s talk about the spread and how it can affect the amount you bet.
Sports Betting — The Spread
The spread is a point advantage in sports betting, which is usually given to the team that is generally expected to lose a particular sporting event. If you decide that you will bet on the team that is expected to win, they will have to win by more than the spread number and cover the spread before you are considered to have chosen correctly. If you choose the team that is expected to lose, that team will have to lose by less than the spread number in order for your pick to be considered correct. If by chance the team wins by the number of points that were chosen as the spread, the game is called a push.
No one who engages in sports betting wins a thing if a game is called as a push, but you do get the amount of your original bet back. The point spread is done in order to make the all of the bets come out even for the sports book, and is usually done for sports such as basketball or football.
Sports Betting — The Bet
If you were to bet against the spread, most likely you would place a type of bet called an 11–10, or spread bet. By betting $11, you win $10 if your team’s score covers the spread. This is another way that the online sports book makes its money.
An over-under bet is also an 11–10 bet. With this type of bet, the total score of the two teams that played will be either over or under the total score that was listed before the game was played. Betting on the score being over is called ‘betting on the ball’. Betting on the score being under is called ‘betting on the clock’.
A proposition bet is a type of bet where the online sports book chooses what the odds and the conditions of the bet are going to be. This type of bet can be most interesting, even a little fun at times, for the conditions can be as unusual as which of two football teams will make the most touchdowns, which of two basketball teams will score the most three pointers, or even which individual player will make a certain move for the team. The odds for this kind of bet are sometimes 11–10, but can be better or worse depending on the circumstances.
A parlay bet happens when you are betting on more than one event, usually three. This type of bet gives you a much higher payout if you should win, but the catch is that all the events you bet on will have to win. If even one of them loses, they all lose, and you lose the amount that you bet.
A money line bet seems rather formidable, especially to someone who is just getting into online sports betting, but it is really one of the simplest bets of all. It is also called a Straight Up bet, and there is no point spread to consider. You will just choose your sport, and then the team you think will be either the underdog or the favourite. In a money line bet, the sports book will have numbers listed that are in the hundreds, with either a plus or a minus sign beside them. These numbers are considered the ‘money line’, and are the multipliers for the bets.
If the money line for your team is listed as 100, you will make an even bet. This means you will wager the same amount that you will get back. If the money line reads -110, then you must come up with the amount of money you have decided to bet, plus 10%. This extra 10% is known by the name of ‘juice’. If the money line for your team is listed as +110, then you simply place your bet with the amount you choose to bet. If you win a money line bet, you get the amount of your bet plus 10% back. For example, if you bet $10.00 and $1.00 in juice on a -110 money line and it wins, you get $21. 00.
A teaser bet in sports betting is actually a proposition bet that allows you to change the odds for the bet in either direction so that the wager is in your favour. You can go up or down in points, and must choose at least two teams, as is done in a parlay bet. You can have as many as 6 separate teams included on a teaser bet, but all of the teams chosen have to win in order for your bet to be declared a winning one. Once the games are over, the points from the teaser bet are added or subtracted from the final scores. The odds for teaser bets can be different each time, so it is a good plan to always check the sports book before placing your bet.
A tip to remember is that generally, when placing a wager on any sport that can finish with a high score, such as football, you will have a spread. Sports where the ending score is low, such as in baseball will have a money line. Remember also that favourable odds on a game can sometimes work in your favour. Online sports betting allows you to easily go from sports book to sports book to find the best odds.
…My Scandalous Secret to Crushing The Odds So Effortlessly
>> Click Here to Continue <<< | https://medium.com/@kemiuko2000/how-to-get-started-with-sports-betting-135e08ccbcab | ['Thug Thugger'] | 2021-12-23 12:44:21.232000+00:00 | ['Betting Tips', 'Betting', 'Sports', 'Sports Betting', 'Self Improvement'] |
Capturing container traffic on Kubernetes | It’s easy to capture network traffic with a capture tool (for example: tcpdump) if we have access to the network interface. But it’s tricky in Kubernetes. There are several options, for example: sidecar container, capture plugin, docker container, direct access in same network namespace.
Animated visualization showing pod to service connectivity. source: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/networking-blog/troubleshooting-kubernetes-networking-on-windows-part-1/ba-p/508648
Managed Kubernetes providers hardened security configurations, so depending on our access possibilities and rights to the cluster, the below examples may work (if it’s possible to access the node OS, if container is enabled to run the container as root, etc.). Below examples are tested on a VM-based K8s cluster created for my earlier article Setup On-premise Kubernetes with Kubeadm, MetalLB, Traefik, and Vagrant.
Tools
In most cases, the container, which the network traffic would be captured, does not contain any capture tool, of course. A part of the alternatives uses a new container, which contains network capture tools. My favorite Docker image is https://github.com/nicolaka/netshoot, which contains several networking tools, for example: tcpdump, tshark, termshark, iptraf-ng. The parameters will be executed as a command, for example:
sudo docker run -it --rm --net container:k8s_nginx_my-nginx-b7d7bc74d-zxx28_default_ae4ee834-fb5d-4ec4-86b1-7834e538c666_0 nicolaka/netshoot tcpdump -i eth0 -s 0 -Xvv tcp port 80
Tcpdump can redirect captured packets to stdout, which can be saved or used on the host, for example:
tcpdump -i eth0 -s 0 -w - >/tmp/container.cap tcpdump -i eth0 -s 0 -w - | wireshark -k -i -
The -v /tmp:/tmp/tmp can be useful, if captured packets are written into a file, inside of the container.
There are a few capture tools, which needs more rights (tshark, termshark), for example in docker run CLI : --cap-add=NET_ADMIN --cap-add=CAP_NET_RAW . Finally, a whole example with having a shell to run this kind of tools:
sudo docker run -it --rm -v /tmp:/tmp/tmp --cap-add=NET_ADMIN --cap-add=CAP_NET_RAW --net container:k8s_nginx_my-nginx-b7d7bc74d-zxx28_default_ae4ee834-fb5d-4ec4-86b1-7834e538c666_0 nicolaka/netshoot termshark
nicolaka/netshoot and termshark
Direct access to the K8s node
It’s the most harmless situation because we don’t have to touch the K8s cluster.
First, we have to know the Docker container name and where it is running on, for example:
kubectl get pod -o wide NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE IP NODE NOMINATED NODE READINESS GATES
my-nginx-b7d7bc74d-zxx28 1/1 Running 0 10m 10.244.2.2 node2 <none> <none> vagrant ssh node2 sudo docker ps | grep my-nginx-b7d7bc74d-zxx28 f22ab3b7130b nginx "/docker-entrypoint.…" 39 minutes ago Up 39 minutes k8s_nginx_my-nginx-b7d7bc74d-zxx28_default_ae4ee834-fb5d-4ec4-86b1-7834e538c666_0
62c7cacd66c1 k8s.gcr.io/pause:3.2 "/pause" 39 minutes ago Up 39 minutes k8s_POD_my-nginx-b7d7bc74d-zxx28_default_ae4ee834-fb5d-4ec4-86b1-7834e538c666_0
Our container is not the pause.
The container name can be cross-checked on the Traefik dashboard:
Traefik dashboard shows the backend container name
Capturing by nicolaka/netshoot container
The nicolaka/netshoot container should be run in the same network namespace (set by --net container: ):
sudo docker run -it --rm --net container:k8s_nginx_my-nginx-b7d7bc74d-zxx28_default_ae4ee835d-4ec4-86b1-7834e538c666_0 nicolaka/netshoot tcpdump -i eth0 -s 0 -Xvv tcp port 80
Capturing in the container network namespace
Docker uses Linux kernel network namespaces to isolate containers. With root access, it can be used for capturing the traffic:
sudo docker inspect --format '{{ .State.Pid }}' k8s_nginx_my-nginx-b7d7bc74d-zxx28_default_ae4ee834-fb5d-4ec4-86b1-7834e538c666_0 sudo nsenter -t 17900 -n /bin/bash -xec 'ip a; tcpdump -i eth0 -s 0 -Xvv tcp port 80'
Capturing in same network namespace
It’s possible to pipe tcpdump captured packets to Wireshark, see an example script for live remote capturing at https://github.com/pgillich/kubeadm-vagrant/blob/master/Ubuntu/capture_pod.sh. Example usage (container name is optional):
./capture_pod.sh default my-nginx-596d59c679-9t4vp nginx
Live remote capturing with tcpdump and Wireshark
Capturing in the container
If you have a statically-compiled tcpdump (see an example here: https://www.androidtcpdump.com/android-tcpdump/compile ), it’s possible to copy the singe binary to the container. See an example for live remote capturing with tcpdump and Wireshark:
kubectl cp tcpdump my-nginx-596d59c679-9t4vp:/tmp;
kubectl exec -t my-nginx-596d59c679-9t4vp -- /tmp/tcpdump -i eth0 -s 0 -w - | wireshark -k -i -
The above steps, including the static compiling, are bounded into one script. See example usage (container name is optional):
./capture_in_pod.sh default my-nginx-596d59c679-9t4vp nginx
This alternative expects the least rights in the Kubernetes cluster: only kubectl cp and exec are required to the Pod (container), without Pod restart. Side container, node access and alpha features are not needed.
Sidecar container in same Pod
This alternative has a drawback: the Pod will be restarted, because a sidecar container is added.
Adding the sidecar container:
kubectl edit deployment my-nginx spec:
(...)
template:
(...)
spec:
containers:
- command:
- /bin/sleep
- infinity
image: nicolaka/netshoot
name: netshoot
- image: nginx:latest
imagePullPolicy: Always
name: nginx
resources: {}
terminationMessagePath: /dev/termination-log
terminationMessagePolicy: File
Above edit operation can be done by kubectl patch , see more details: https://medium.com/@xxradar/how-to-tcpdump-effectively-in-kubernetes-part-1-a1546b683d2f
Starting netshoot shell:
kubectl exec my-nginx-7bc9465bb9-lqnwd -ti -c netshoot -- /bin/bash
Of course, tcpdump ... command can be written instead of /bin/bash to start a simple capture immediately.
Additional capabilities can be added with securityContext.capabilities.add (for tshark and similar tools), for example:
kubectl patch deployment my-nginx --patch '
spec:
template:
spec:
containers:
- name: netshoot
image: nicolaka/netshoot
command:
- /bin/sleep
- infinity
securityContext:
capabilities:
add:
- NET_ADMIN
- NET_RAW
'
Termshark uses /root/.cache , so it’s recommended to mount an emptyDir volume to there.
It’s possible to capture the traffic from the start. In this case, emptyDir volume should be created and -U option is suggested to tcpdump. See more details:
Ephemeral Debug Containers
Kubernetes 1.16 has a new Ephemeral Containers feature that is ideal for our use case, if the container runtime supports it, it’s enabled (see: feature-gates: EphemeralContainers=true) properly. It’s in alpa yet, see the feature description: https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements/issues/277
Example for starting a debug container:
kubectl debug -it my-nginx-b7d7bc74d-7t7nr -c netshoot --target=nginx --image=nicolaka/netshoot --image-pull-policy=IfNotPresent -- /bin/bash
See more examples here: https://downey.io/blog/kubernetes-ephemeral-debug-container-tcpdump/
It’s possible to use the raw API, too. Example to get above configuration:
kubectl get --raw /api/v1/namespaces/default/pods/my-nginx-b7d7bc74d-7t7nr/ephemeralcontainers | jq {
"kind": "EphemeralContainers",
"apiVersion": "v1",
"metadata": {
"name": "my-nginx-b7d7bc74d-7t7nr",
"namespace": "default",
"uid": "5363a259-411a-4658-9384-d136ce9b6519",
"resourceVersion": "2893",
"creationTimestamp": "2020-12-27T18:56:18Z"
},
"ephemeralContainers": [
{
"name": "netshoot",
"image": "nicolaka/netshoot",
"command": [
"/bin/bash"
],
"resources": {},
"terminationMessagePath": "/dev/termination-log",
"terminationMessagePolicy": "File",
"imagePullPolicy": "IfNotPresent",
"stdin": true,
"tty": true,
"targetContainerName": "nginx"
}
]
}
See more details here: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/ephemeral-containers/
References
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Follow us on Twitter 🐦 and Facebook 👥 and Instagram 📷 and join our Facebook and Linkedin Groups 💬 | https://faun.pub/capturing-container-traffic-on-kubernetes-ee4a49b833b7 | ['Peter Gillich'] | 2021-03-16 14:38:15.969000+00:00 | ['Kubernetes', 'Tcpdump', 'Network', 'Linux', 'Troubleshooting'] |
Why do Students Fear Mathematics? | I have heard multiple times from friends that they hate maths, and anything related to it. I had asked them once the reason for it, and one of my friends said,“ it is so boring, numbers. I am never going to use maths ever in my life again”. I remember thinking, “but, doesn’t everything we do involve maths?”. I remember leaving my thought unfinished. After some time, that thought came into my mind again, and I explored more on it. I found out that many students don’t like/fear maths because they don’t enjoy it. Now, think about this, are you afraid of something you enjoy or love? I hope that your answer is NO, so try and enjoy maths like you do for other subjects, because it is not an insect. ( This is not applicable for other fears :))
I wanted to share my reason for loving maths, so here’s my story:
I moved to Texas from India in 2017. I was a very advanced student in India and I used to get A + on all my exams (maths, science, english, hindi, etc..). However, with all that said, I had trouble belonging in US, and especially maths. The reason for that was because of the way math questions were worded, it wasn’t straightforward, like it was in India.
For example, in India the question would be,
“solve for x, 2x + 3x = 20”
However, in US, the question would be,
“ Amy bought 2 apples and John bought 3 apples, together they spent $20, what was the price of an apple?”
As you can see above, the questions are both the same, and I knew how to solve the first one when I was 12 years old, but I was unable to use the context to make the second question into an equation that I could solve for.
I went through this issue for the first semester of my 7th grade, and my teacher suggested that I move into an easier math level because I was struggling. When she said so, I felt the need to prove myself, and I spent so much time and effort that I finally understood how to make the context-type questions into equations, or whatever I needed to do with them. Finally, in the next test, I scored a 100, and the teacher was very impressed.
This incident in my life helped me to work towards something, and my mother and my teacher really helped me in overcoming this issue. This experience made me fall in love with maths, and from that point, I have enjoyed every math class that I ever took, and I believe that I will continue to be in the Data Science and Applied Mathematics field in college and after graduation.
Now, you must be thinking, this is cute story, but what is the point of that? Well, my point is that maths is used in every field, and it is just useful in life. Math is like a puzzle or riddle that requires knowledge to solve. If you start to enjoy maths like you do your favorite subject, it is easy to fall in love with it. And there is nothing to be afraid of in maths, because “anything and everything can be learned, all it takes is dedication” — anonymous | https://medium.com/@devika-nambisan/why-do-students-fear-mathematics-983ff6c8273 | ['Devika Nambisan'] | 2020-12-25 15:29:53.750000+00:00 | ['Fear', 'Math'] |
I’m Keen On Smart Glasses (But The Tech Just Isn’t There Yet) | While these might sound fairly respectable numbers, the reality is that they’re probably about half what they need to be to truly close that gap on regular headphones when it comes to convenience. You can’t exactly take your glasses off halfway through the day in order to top them up for later.
Fast-charging tech like that found in the Huawei X Gentle Monster Eyewear II can play a role here but it alone likely won’t be enough to get battery life in smart glasses over said precipice. There are serious engineering issues to be solved here. Smart glasses need to have enough battery life per charge that you never need to actually think about it. The fastest way to get more battery life might be to use bigger batteries but this will likely have a negative knock-on effect when it comes to the weight and comfort involved with actually wearing smart glasses.
Comfort and Design
This leads nicely into the question of design. Credit where it’s due — the smart glasses I’ve messed with to date have all felt lighter to wear than their long jargon-heavy list of features might lead you to expect. However, there’s a difference to be defined here between lighter than expected and actually comfortable.
For all that the elegance of headphone-free audio playback wins me over to the cause, the discomfort of actually wearing for more than a twenty minute train ride.
I have a suspicion why this might be the case.
From what I can tell, few — if any — smart glasses manufacturers are working directly with brands that already work in the eye-wear space. Y’know, companies that have actually made products that real people want wear on a day to basis?
Focals by North
I can only hope that this situation changes in the future because, right now, their absence is felt fairly literally. That goes double for manufacturers brands that don’t offer prescription lenses. Upselling me — a person who is already going to spend several hundred dollars on a pair of glasses because I have to wear them to see — is surely easier than starting from scratch.
One More Thing
If rumors are to be believed, Apple are looking to launch a play in the smart glasses space that emphasizes augmented reality sooner rather than later. If they do — and even more-so if it’s a success — it could shift the landscape for smart glasses and their proximity to mainstream consumers overnight.
Apple aren’t faultless but they do deserve credit for propelling things like tablets, cloud storage and smartwatches from niche gadget to tech necessity.
One of the things that might be holding back smart glasses as a category is the incoherence of it all. Google (who acquired North earlier this year), Snap, Bose, Huawei and the rest all have very different ideas about what smart glasses actually are, who they’re for and what they should do.
The arrival of a brand as big as Apple on the scene will likely lead to a consolidation in the answers to the above questions. Regardless of the final product itself, Apple’s strength as a brand will likely see it exert a form of gravity on its competition. Some will rush to embrace or adopt the things that Apple’s smart glasses get right, standardizing them. Others will lean on the inevitable weak-links to differentiate themselves.
Either way, I’m increasingly convinced that I will probably own a set of smart glasses sometime in the future. The tech world’s first wave of serious smart glasses aren’t compelling enough to push me over the line but their shortcomings provide a blueprint for the gadget that inevitably will.
It’s just a matter of time. | https://medium.com/@cvamped/im-keen-on-smart-glasses-but-the-tech-just-isn-t-there-yet-356b2c5ef0be | ['Fergus Halliday'] | 2020-12-14 20:33:58.081000+00:00 | ['Gadgets', 'Tech', 'Eyewear', 'Apple', 'Smart Glasses'] |
The laws of the interface | As Henry Petroski put it, “artifacts evolve from artifacts, so do books from books” (1994:x). I started thinking about these laws in 1994 when I finished reading the Italian edition of Pierre Lévy’s Les technologies de l’intelligence. L’avenir de la pensée à l’ère informatique (1990). In this volume Lévy proposed a new interpretation of the /interface/ beyond the traditional /user interface/:
The interface refers to translation operations, to bringing heterogeneous environments into contact. In this sense, it evokes the communication (or transport) and the transforming processes necessary for the success of the transmission. The interface holds together the two dimensions of becoming: movement and metamorphosis. It is the operator of the passage (Lévy, 1992:190).
The pages that follow are inspired by a wide range of authors, disciplines and theories, from interaction design to Actor- Network Theory (ANT), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), complexity, sociology of technological change, economy, and semiotics. Linguistics, biology, engineering and anthropology have also left their mark on more than one law. In this text I propose an analysis of interfaces focused on macroprocesses, in which the biological dialogues with the technological. To understand the ecosystem and evolution of interfaces I have borrowed concepts and interpretive models from the bionatural sphere and applied them to the technocultural sphere. Therefore, the two main objectives of The Laws of the Interface are:
To rethink the concept of /interface/ and extend its use beyond digital technology.
To analyze the interface from an eco- evolutionary model to identify a set of emerging laws.
Basically, what interests me most is to propose a model of technological change that dialogues with models of biological change but that, at the same time, can be applied to other spheres, for example social, political or educational.
Why Laws?
In the scientific domain a ‘law’ is a ‘statement of fact to the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present’. In this sense the ‘law’ is almost similar to a ‘principle’: ‘a general scientific theorem or natural law’ (Oxford Dictionary). This scientific aura around the law does not mean that it is absolutely certain: it just means that the evidence tends to support it.
Laws were made to be broken. That’s the way knowledge evolves. Nobody loses if we break a knowledge law; everybody wins if we ask a new question, search for a new answer or generate a new law. Nobody should have the last word in any conversation (and knowledge is one of the most fascinating social conversations of humankind).
Laws for whom?
The Laws of the Interface are a basis for thinking but also for doing. The reader will not find in this text a set of guidelines for designing better interfaces or a list of usability tips’n’tricks; rather the reader will learn how interfaces are born, reproduce and evolve. In this text I will describe many use situations and reflect on a series of basic principles that seem to repeat in different periods, scales, societies and technologies. The Laws of the Interface should be considered a support for conceptual-aided thinking. Thinking about what? Thinking about the evolution of the socio-technological network.
Towards a Theory of Interfaces
The path from a primary application of the eco-evolutionary metaphor to the development of more sophisticated theoretical models of technological change is not direct. In this context, the concept of /interface/ could become one of the necessary keywords for understanding the transformations of contemporary society. If in the 1950s everything was /structure/, in the 1960s it became /sign/, then in the 1980s /text/ was presented as the key concept for understanding an infinity of phenomena. Could the /interface/ be one of the keywords of the 21st century?
Finally, this Theory of Interfaces that we are in the process of building is itself a great theoretical interface that connects the contributions and organizes the reflections of an extensive network of intellectuals, scientists, designers and creators who, in the last two centuries, have been reflecting on the evolution of technological species and designing new places of interaction.
Note: This text is a synthesis of my book Las Leyes de la Interfaz published by Gedisa in 2018.
Next > First Law. The interface is the place of interaction
References
Lévy P. (1992). Le tecnologie dell’intelligenza. Bolongna: Synergon (Orig. edition: Les technologies de l’intelligence. Pariis: La Decouverte, 1990).
Petroski, H. (1994). The Evolution of Useful Things. New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Scolari, C.A. (2018). Las Leyes de la Interfaz. Diseño, ecología, evolución, tecnología. Barcelona: Gedisa. | https://uxdesign.cc/the-laws-of-the-interface-9bfe09e19e11 | ['Carlos A. Scolari'] | 2020-01-06 16:51:26.258000+00:00 | ['Design', 'UI', 'Technology', 'UX', 'Product Design'] |
How to Convert PDF to PDF/A in Java | PDF/A is a kind of PDF format designed for archiving and long-term preservation of electronic documents. Unlike paper documents that are easily damaged or smeared, PDF/A format ensures that documents can be reproduced in exactly the same way even after long-term storage. This article will demonstrate how to convert PDF to PDF/A-1A, 2A, 3A, 1B, 2B and 3B compliant PDF using Free Spire.PDF for Java.
Import jar dependency (2 Methods)
● Download the Free Spire.PDF for Java and unzip it.Then add the Spire.Pdf.jar file to your project as dependency.
● Directly add the jar dependency to maven project by adding the following configurations to the pom.xml.
<repositories>
<repository>
<id>com.e-iceblue</id>
<name>e-iceblue</name>
<url>http://repo.e-iceblue.com/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
</repository>
</repositories>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>e-iceblue</groupId>
<artifactId>spire.pdf.free</artifactId>
<version>4.3.0</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
Code Snippet
import com.spire.pdf.conversion.PdfStandardsConverter;
public class ConvertPdfToPdfA {
public static void main(String[] args) {
//Specify input file path
String inputFile = "C:/Users/Administrator/Desktop/sample.pdf";
//Specify output folder
String outputFolder = "C:/Users/Administrator/Desktop/Output/";
//Create a PdfStandardsConverter instance, passing in the input file as a parameter
PdfStandardsConverter converter = new PdfStandardsConverter(inputFile);
//Convert to PdfA1A
converter.toPdfA1A(outputFolder + "ToPdfA1A.pdf");
//Convert to PdfA1B
converter.toPdfA1B(outputFolder + "ToPdfA1B.pdf");
//Convert to PdfA2A
converter.toPdfA2A(outputFolder + "ToPdfA2A.pdf");
//Convert to PdfA2B
converter.toPdfA2B(outputFolder + "ToPdfA2B.pdf");
//Convert to PdfA3A
converter.toPdfA3A(outputFolder + "ToPdfA3A.pdf");
//Convert to PdfA3B
converter.toPdfA3B(outputFolder + "ToPdfA3B.pdf");
}
}
Output | https://medium.com/@andrewwil/how-to-convert-pdf-to-pdf-a-in-java-246875d6b474 | ['Andrew Wilson'] | 2021-04-13 06:35:15.297000+00:00 | ['Java', 'API', 'Pdf To Pdfa Conversion', 'Free'] |
DataOps Aphorisms | We speak to a lot of people about the ideas behind DataOps. Sometimes, the shortest phrase captures the idea the best.
The dictionary defines an Aphorism as aph·o·rism /ˈafəˌrizəm/ (noun):
a pithy observation that contains a general truth.
So we collected many of the things we have been saying in conferences, sales calls, and during customer implementations and created this rotating gif. Let us know what you think!
DataOps Aphorisms
Here is the list of DataOps Aphorisms: | https://medium.com/data-ops/dataops-aphorisms-e7ee3f15e04f | [] | 2020-04-08 13:44:58.560000+00:00 | ['Dataops', 'Agile', 'Data Science', 'Aphorisms'] |
Hello!! | Hello! I’m London. Assuming this is my introduction post, I guess I will tell you about myself. I am a nineteen year old female. I am engaged to my best friend and love of my life. Currently, I am doing online GED classes and this spring I hope to attend college at BSU (Ball State University). I also work part time at the Dollar General. Shocking, I know.
I will be using this blog to write out my feelings or discuss topics I feel strongly about. Occasionally, I will also write short stories just for fun. The reason I started this blog is I feel like it might be a good way to cope with my own problems.
I will keep this introduction post short and sweet for now! bye!! | https://medium.com/@videogames-and-sunflowers/hello-bc817b7c2e58 | [] | 2020-12-27 02:49:35.709000+00:00 | ['Diary Writing', 'Blog', 'Depression', 'Introduction'] |
Create a Folder Structure with VBA | In my current job in Mergers & Acquisitions, I have to prepare many complex folder structures for targets’ data rooms. It’s a tedious but straightforward process that can take up to an hour, as each Request For Information letter is almost the same but contains slight differences. For example, we may need detailed information of the shareholder structure and various related documents for a specific company we are looking to acquire. On the other hand, for a smaller, one-person organization, such a request is irrelevant.
I’ve struggled to create said data room folder structures for about a month now and decided it’s time to roll up my sleeves and figure a more robust way to make them.
It turns out it’s much easier than anticipated. It took me around 30 minutes to prototype the below code, and I decided it may help some of you by giving you an idea of how VBA can help with improved efficiency.
Getting Started
Let’s open Excel’s Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Editor (Developer tab -> Visual Basic, or Alt+F11), and add a new UserForm to the PERSONAL.XLSB file.
This is your Personal Macro Workbook that gets loaded with every instance of Excel. This means that if you want a macro to be visible for all excel files, you need to place it here. Let’s adjust the size of the User Form and add three CommandButtons and a TextBox. The idea is to ask the user to select a parent folder where the macro will generate the folder structure. This is then shown in the Selected Path TextBox for reference.
Once we click the Create Directories button, it will take our current selection in Excel and use any valid paths within this selection to generate corresponding folders. For more context, here is what I want the selection to look like. It’s a list of folders that I want to replicate within the parent folder. It is essential to list sub-folders below parent folders. Otherwise, the VBA function that creates a new folder (mkDir) won’t work.
Writing the Code
When we have ‘designed’ our user form, it’s time to start writing some code. If you double click on any item (a CommandButton in this instance), it will open the code editor and add the Click() event by default. You can always use the two drop-downs above the code editor to generate various event handlers for any object from your user form.
OK, let’s look at the code itself.
The Cancel Button
Private Sub cancelBtn_Click()
Unload Me
End Sub
The cancelBtn code is usually the first thing I write, as it makes testing my user form much more accessible. Plus, it’s effortless — we tell the user form to Unload (close) itself.
Get Folder Function
I already have a function that prompts the user to select a folder and returns that as a String that I will re-use in this macro. Let’s take a look at how it works.
Function GetFolder() As String
Dim fldr As FileDialog
Dim sItem As String
Set fldr = Application.FileDialog(msoFileDialogFolderPicker)
With fldr
.Title = "Select a Parent Folder"
.ButtonName = "Use This Folder"
.AllowMultiSelect = False
.InitialFileName = Application.DefaultFilePath
If .Show <> -1 Then GoTo NextCode
sItem = .SelectedItems(1)
End With
NextCode:
GetFolder = sItem
Set fldr = Nothing
End Function
We start by defining two variables — a FileDialog, and a String, which will hold the selected path. We then create a msoFileDialogFolderPicker and add some self-explanatory options to it.
The magic happens at the end of the With statement. There we have a conditional statement that checks if the .Show property is different from -1. The .Show property can either be -1 when we click the Action button (the one selecting the folder) or 0 when we close/press the Cancel button.
If .Show is anything but -1 (user selected a folder), then we skip and go to the NextCode section below. If .Show is equal to -1, this means the user picked a folder, so we set the sItem var to it.
Then the macro continues with the NextCode section, which sets GetFolder to the path string, and clears the FileDialog object from memory by setting it to equal Nothing. The way functions work in VBA, when we set the name of the function (GetFolder) to equal a value, this is the value that the function returns after it has completed running.
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The Browse Button
All the browseButton has to do now is call the function and assign its result to our user form’s path text box.
Private Sub browseButton_Click()
pathTextBox.Text = GetFolder()
End Sub
The FolderExists Function
Before we start writing out our folder creation code, we will need an additional function to check if a given folder already exists. We don’t want to overwrite an already existing location.
Function FolderExists(folder As String) As Boolean
If Dir(folder, vbDirectory) = "" Then
FolderExists = False
Else
FolderExists = True
End If
End Function
It’s a simple function that takes the folder path as a String and returns a Boolean (TRUE or FALSE). How it works is it tries to open the folder. If it doesn’t open, it doesn’t exist, and vice versa. Depending on the result, the function will return FALSE if the folder path does not exist, and we can create it.
Create the Folders
Now we have all the necessary parts to start our Subroutine for the Create Directories button.
This one is a bit longer, so let’s break it into bits.
Private Sub createDirsBtn_Click()
Dim sl As Range
Dim counter As Integer
counter = 0
If FolderExists(pathTextBox.Text) = False Or pathTextBox.Text = "" Then
MsgBox "Please, select a parent folder!", vbCritical, "No Folder Selected"
Exit Sub
End If
We start by adding two variables. We need a Range variable (sl) to hold the cells containing folders we want to generate. Next, we need an Integer variable (counter) to keep track of how many folders the macro generates. We then set it at zero so that it will restart every time the macro runs.
It’s time for the first check. We want to ensure the provided string value in our parent path field is a valid folder. It is also a good idea to make sure the field is not empty, as the user may click the Create Directories button before selecting the parent folder. In any of these cases, we show an error message and Exit the Subroutine, preventing the rest of the code’s execution.
Let’s look at the next check.
If TypeName(Selection) = "Range" Then
Set sl = Selection
Else
MsgBox "Please, use a valid selection!", vbCritical, "Selection Error"
Exit Sub
End If
The second check we perform is to ensure the user has a proper selection in Excel. They might have selected an image or a chart instead of a range of cells. In this case, we show an error and again Exit the Sub. Otherwise, we can set our Range variable (sl) to the current Selection.
Now we can go ahead and loop through all the selected cells.
For Each cell In sl
If cell.Value = "" Then
'do nothing with this cell
ElseIf FolderExists(pathTextBox.Text & "\" & cell.Value) Then
'do nothing, folder exists already
Else
MkDir (pathTextBox.Text & "\" & cell.Value)
counter = counter + 1
End If
Next cell
MsgBox counter & " folders successfully created!", vbOKOnly, "Done"
Unload Me
End Sub
Let’s employ a For Each loop to go over each cell within the user selection. For each of those, we check if the cell is empty (cell.Value = “”). We also check if the folder exists, using the function we added earlier, as we don’t want to overwrite any existing folders. In any of those two cases, the macro does nothing. If those are not true, we create the folder within the specified parent location and increase the counter by one.
Once the loop is complete, the macro shows how many folders were created and Unloads the user form.
That’s the code. Now, let’s add it to our Excel Ribbon.
Testing the Create Folders Macro
Right-click anywhere on the Ribbon tabs and go to Customize Ribbon. You can then create a new Tab and Group on the right side and look for the macro in the Macros section on the left. Add it, rename it and select an icon.
Now back to Excel. The user opens their folders list and selects all folders they want to generate. Note, we have 27 folders selected.
We hit the newly added Ribbon button, and our user form pops up.
The next step is to Select a Parent Folder. This will open a dialog window prompting you to select a folder.
This will then appear as a string in the selected path Text Box.
If this is the right location, we then press Create Directories. The macro thinks for a millisecond, and we get our message confirming 27 folders were successfully created.
Let’s make sure everything happened as it was supposed to. If we open the parent folder, we can see our folder structure reflected there, with all the main folders and sub-folders.
Conclusion
We have quickly prototyped a handy tool. It’s incredible how many aspects of the day-to-day work we can automate by employing a little VBA into our workflow. And being that the language and implementations haven’t changed in decades, it’s straightforward to learn, as information and tutorials are abundant out there.
You can copy the whole code below.
Please, show your support by sharing this article with colleagues and friends. | https://medium.com/magnimetrics/create-a-folder-structure-with-vba-b65223e49e0c | ['Dobromir Dikov'] | 2021-04-12 07:48:56.361000+00:00 | ['Optimization', 'Excel', 'Workflow', 'Vba', 'Business'] |
MFChain Announces Key Leadership Additions | Coming off a highly successful Blockchain Economic Forum event in San Francisco, MFChain is in the final stages of negotiations on a number of key partnerships. Each will add tremendous value to the MFX payment processing solution as well as the MF Mainnet ecosystem that will launch in 2019. With these changes, MFChain realizes that in order to stay on track with our roadmap, additional attention to development and additional leadership resources are necessary.
In an strategic move, our parent company Mammoth Project LTD will be taking a forward facing role within MFChain and leading all business and operational tasks within MFChain. Effective immediately Craig Neil, Founder Mammoth Project LTD and Jayson Rellis, Managing Director Mammoth Project LTD will join MFChain in a full time capacity. These key additions allow Viacheslav Shybaiev and the development team to focus on fully integrating all new partners API’s within the MFChain payment solution and also complete the full development of the MF2x protocol (full detailed announcement to come on MF2x).
In combination with the addition of Craig and Jayson to the MFChain core team, we are pleased to also announce that Naviin Kapoor has accepted a new role. Effective immediately Naviin is joining MFChain as Head of Blockchain Integration Asia and Middle East. We are excited for Naviin’s role and look forward to his leadership in driving adoption and partnerships in the Asian and Middle East Markets. | https://medium.com/modern-finance-chain/mfchain-announces-key-leadership-additions-9a1f8a8b2c07 | ['Modern Finance Chain'] | 2018-07-02 22:16:11.201000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Leadership', 'Blockchain', 'Ethereum', 'ICO'] |
Merry Christmas 2020 | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/the-musing-llama/merry-christmas-2020-489e30dcc976 | ['Deborah Digges'] | 2020-12-27 04:34:50.219000+00:00 | ['Comics', 'Drawing', 'Christmas', '2020', 'Humor'] |
The Story of the Seven Arts and How Cinema Connects Them All | The Story of the Seven Arts and How Cinema Connects Them All
This is how cinema captures your attention.
Photo by Jeremy Yap on Unsplash
Ricciotto Canudo lived in Paris. He was an early Italian film theoretician who worked side by side with avant-garde writers and artists.
In 1913 he published Montjoie!, a bimonthly magazine promoting Cubism in particular. Sometime before, in his manifesto The Birth of the Sixth Art, published in 1911, Canudo argued that cinema was a new art: “A superb conciliation of the Rhythms of Space and the Rhythms of Time.”
A synthesis of the five other arts:
Architecture
Sculpture
Painting
Music
Poetry
He saw Cinema as a ‘plastic art in motion’ and gave it the name of “the Sixth Art”. Canudo then added Dance as a precursor of the Sixth Art making cinema the seventh art.
During the early 20th century, artists and writers in Paris were living in the Impressionist wake. Many focused first on visual perception, then on reinterpreting what it meant to be moved by artistic representation.
After reading Canudo’s manifest and giving some thought about his theories exposing the birth of these Seven Arts to create new forms of expression, here’s what I gathered to understand how cinema captures our attention.
The Birth of the Seven Arts
Following Canudo’s statement of the forming of the Seven Arts, he says:
“We discovered, in fact, that two of these arts originally emerged from the human brain to allow them to fix everything ephemeral in life; in the fight against the death of the appearances and forms, enriching generations with aesthetic experience.”
They were meant to be something that would complete life, up and away from reality, proving the eternity of what humans experimented as an emotion.
That way, the first signs of emotion were created, with the capacity to irradiate over all generations, the pleasure of a life greater than life itself; of a multiple personality that everyone can recreate for themselves and above their world.
Architecture and Music immediately expressed this necessity of human beings, who were trying to retain all forces of their sentimental experience. Upon building the first cabin, dancing the first dance with slight escort of a voice to give some guidelines,
Architecture and Music had already been discovered.
Afterwards, the two of them met with that representation of living beings and things which were desired to be remembered.
Meanwhile, it was added to dance the articulated expression of its movements: words. This is how Sculpture, Painting and Poetry were invented.
Canudo states that despite Architecture being originated because of a material need in order to find protection, its individualized from other arts such as Sculpture and Painting.
Therefore, Music evolved through decades following a completely different process. It arises from a wholly spiritual need for elevation and oblivion. Though, it first appeared next to its partners: Poetry and Dance, remaining for years until its freedom as something utterly independent.
How The Cinematograph Drives These Arts
Canudo described the Cinematograph as a diffusion tool that enables the connection of the various artistic disciplines to promote a specific idea.
An idea which contains a story with a purpose to reflect life through different formats and serve as a guide for humanity.
This way, by the combination of multiple artistic representations, as Canudo expressed, by means of Architecture, Poetry or Painting, we can all experiment emotions that inspire and move us through history while we create our personal mindset and vision of the world.
Canudo writes that there are two significant elements of the Cinematograph: the symbolic and the real.
- The symbolic aspect is described by Canudo as the velocity of motion an image. Though viewers were able to see a story unfold at an unreal time and space, he believed movies permitted the viewers to truly absorb the stories presented.
- The real aspect of the Cinematograph thrives as films continue to “arouse [our] interest and wonder.” How hundreds of human decades have been projected over this ellipsis of movement their major aspirations.
Canudo believed that this scientific breakthrough created the opportunity for a humanity that “actively seeks its own show, the more meaningful representation of itself.”
Because humans have been creating images of themselves for years and years, yet these were only given motion with the advent of the Cinematograph.
-Anabel Estrella | https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/the-story-of-the-seven-arts-and-how-cinema-connects-them-all-6d63250b9000 | ['Anabel Estrella'] | 2020-10-15 10:49:53.357000+00:00 | ['Film', 'Art', 'Movies', 'Cinema', 'History'] |
LeetCode — Cherry Pickup II. Problem Link… | Problem Link: https://leetcode.com/problems/cherry-pickup-ii/
Problem Description: Given a rows x cols matrix representing a field of cherries. Each cell in the grid represents the number of cherries that you can collect. You have two robots that can collect cherries for you, Robot #1 is located at the top-left corner (0,0), and Robot #2 is located at the top-right corner (0, cols-1) of the grid.
Return the maximum number of cherries collection using both robots by following the rules below:
From a cell (i,j), robots can move to cell (i+1, j-1) , (i+1, j) or (i+1, j+1). When any robot is passing through a cell, It picks it up all cherries, and the cell becomes an empty cell (0). When both robots stay on the same cell, only one of them takes the cherries. Both robots cannot move outside of the grid at any moment. Both robots should reach the bottom row in the grid .
Approach Used: Dynamic Programming
Explanation: At every instance, we will be moving downwards (next row) but horizontally we will have three options — left, centre, right. This scenario will be there for both robots. So total possible moves at each instance would be a total 3(moves for Robot 1) X 3(moves for Robot 2) i.e. 9 moves. We will check for al these 9 moves and pick the best one until we reach the last row and can’t move forward. Intuitively, this already looks like a recursion problem. To optimize the time complexity we can use a 3d matrix where dp[i][j][k] will denote when we are at the ith row and robot 1 is in the jth column and robot 2 is in the kth column.
Code: (Java)
public int cherryPickupUtil(int[][] grid, int m, int n, int i, int r1_j, int r2_j, int[][][] dp){
//if we have crossed the last row then no cherries can be collected (base case) if(i==m)
return 0; //checking if it is a valid case (both robots inside the grid)
if(r1_j<0 || r1_j>=n || r2_j<0 || r2_j>=n){
return Integer.MIN_VALUE;
} //if we have already encountered this case before
if(dp[i][r1_j][r2_j] != -1)
return dp[i][r1_j][r2_j]; //this will contain the final answer after all the recursive calls
int ans = Integer.MIN_VALUE; //total number of cherries collected from this row
int curr_value = grid[i][r1_j] + grid[i][r2_j]; //scenario where both robots land on the same (but only one can take the cherries)
if(r1_j == r2_j)
curr_value-=grid[i][r1_j]; //all possible 9 moves
ans = Math.max(ans, curr_value+cherryPickupUtil(grid, m, n, i+1, r1_j-1, r2_j-1, dp));
ans = Math.max(ans, curr_value+cherryPickupUtil(grid, m, n, i+1, r1_j-1, r2_j+1, dp));
ans = Math.max(ans, curr_value+cherryPickupUtil(grid, m, n, i+1, r1_j-1, r2_j, dp));
ans = Math.max(ans, curr_value+cherryPickupUtil(grid, m, n, i+1, r1_j, r2_j-1, dp));
ans = Math.max(ans, curr_value+cherryPickupUtil(grid, m, n, i+1, r1_j, r2_j, dp));
ans = Math.max(ans, curr_value+cherryPickupUtil(grid, m, n, i+1, r1_j, r2_j+1, dp));
ans = Math.max(ans, curr_value+cherryPickupUtil(grid, m, n, i+1, r1_j+1, r2_j-1, dp));
ans = Math.max(ans, curr_value+cherryPickupUtil(grid, m, n, i+1, r1_j+1, r2_j, dp));
ans = Math.max(ans, curr_value+cherryPickupUtil(grid, m, n, i+1, r1_j+1, r2_j+1, dp)); //adding this to a dp matrix (so it can be used in future)
dp[i][r1_j][r2_j] = ans;
return dp[i][r1_j][r2_j];
}
public int cherryPickup(int[][] grid) { int[][][] dp = new int[grid.length][grid[0].length][grid[0].length]; for(int i=0; i<grid.length; i++){
for(int j=0;j<grid[0].length; j++){
Arrays.fill(dp[i][j], -1);
}
} return cherryPickupUtil(grid, grid.length, grid[0].length, 0,0, grid[0].length-1, dp);
}
Complexity:
Space complexity : O(m*n*n) . Since we used a 3d matrix to store the result of recursion.
Time complexity: O(m*n*n). Since we are going in each row once but in the worst case we could traverse all columns in all combination of robot 1 and robot 2.
Here m is the number of rows of the grid and n is the number of columns. | https://medium.com/@siddhantjain-sid/leetcode-cherry-pickup-ii-1662415c035a | ['Siddhant Jain'] | 2020-12-22 09:32:40.085000+00:00 | ['Dynamic Programming', 'Competitive Programming', 'Leetcode', 'Data Structures', 'Algorithms'] |
Effects of Transition on Children | Transition is a change that takes place in every life, some may absorb the changes easily and some get disturbed by them. Mostly it is difficult for children to accept the changes in their environment, lifestyle, surroundings, and family.
Transition can affect in four ways:
Bodily
2. Spiritually
3. Functionally
4. Mentally
Bodily transitions may be taken as changing educational institute, leaving old house and settled in a new one, or maybe simply moving from an activity to another.
Children are impacted spiritually by experiencing different situations in their life. They may be: deprivation, divorce or separation of parents, getting a lot of care, or being ignored.
Pubescence or facing medical conditions for a long time can be taken as examples of transitions in life that may affect functional development.
Mentally changes may include pre-school to primary school, also from primary to secondary school.
How transition affect child development?
Every child reacts to situations in a different manner. It all depends on his personality and the environment they are living in. They may react quite, aggressive, rude, harsh, or even don’t react according to their environment. They may revert or become intellectual, may work efficiently, or forget to do homework. When the thing is masticating at a child, they may react in the form of drawing some strange thing, acting in an unusual manner, and doing and expressing their problem in abnormal conversation.
The most common change that occurs in child life is changing their schools maybe because of location or academic issues. This transition makes the child timid and depressed about losing his friends and school. This stress can cause mental and physical illness. They may show different moods, they may lose their appetite, face sleeping issues. These reactions show how the child is affected physically and emotionally by the transition. Nevertheless, transitions/changes do not only have a negative impact on child’s behavior but also affects them positively.
Support the transition and strategies:
Children are very touchy to the new changes which occur in their life. Even a little change causes stress. Toddlers and infants are attached to the family, routine, and environment of their home. It is very difficult for them to cope with these transitions. It is important to keep in mind the impact of changes on a child’s mind.
For a practitioner and parent following strategies should learn which will help to cope with the changes.
· To infants and toddlers give them extra affection and care, show them closeness by hugging them and holding them to feel comfort in times of change.
· Infants are learning to be calm in situations. For this give them more stuffed toys and animals from home, family photos which help them in learning the important skills.
· Guide the child for the upcoming transition by developing an understanding of what will occur or what will happen next. These include feeding, changing the diaper, napping, and any new changes in other collaborators.
· For a pre-schooler make a picture for daily activities and paste it on the wall at the eye level of the child. This will help the child in reminding the task and telling you what will be the next task.
· Make a rhyme or a short song or phrase to greet the children while picking up, dropping off, before going to bed, and after waking up. This will bring a positive impression of the child’s learning.
· Make a plan of movement activities for example: guessing the games, arranging the items, hands in the air, etc. It will bring intellectual improvements in children.
Reflection:
In the setting, the strategies mentioned above were applied. Different children came to settings that we're going through transitions of different kinds. Some were moving to school(infant& toddler to early learners and early learners to pre-schoolers). Some were depressed due to family breakdown i.e. their parents were getting separated or divorced.
Following strategies were applied as a practitioner which gave maximum positive outcomes.
· It started with the interaction with the child which leads to speaking up out of their comfort zone.
· More love and affection were shown towards children which made them feel that there is someone who cares and listen to their issues and problems and will play a supportive role.
· Communication with the parents about their child and telling them about circumstances which they’ve faced. It bought a positive response in the parent and children bonding.
· Made links with school teachers and caregivers asking them about the current situation of the child and the concerns which are still needed to deal with.
· Made daily routine charts and upcoming events which developed the interest in the child about the upcoming task. | https://medium.com/@sadiakamray/effects-of-transition-on-children-a037fc462bb7 | [] | 2021-07-06 16:32:46.508000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Transitions', 'Psychology', 'Children', 'Medical'] |
Covesting Trading Competition and Bug Bounty Are Complete! | Dear community,
We are proud to announce that our Trading Competition and Bug Bounty have come to an end. We extend our sincerest thanks to all who participated. Through the two programs, Covesting was able to extensively test our know-your-customer (KYC) process, received many great suggestions and bug reports, and gained extremely valuable trading activity data that will help us continue to improve our platform ahead of the upcoming soft launch.
Trading Competition Results
The battle was tough and hard-fought as the competition faced challenging, sideways market conditions, However, using the right trading strategies and asset selections, our traders saw much success, proving that copy-trading can be a helpful tool for growing investment portfolios. In fact, the #1 trader in the competition earned an extremely impressive 58% ROI in just four weeks despite the ongoing market downtrend.
Winners were determined by the USD value of their portfolio. Here is the list of our Trading Competition winners: | https://medium.com/covesting/covesting-trading-competition-and-bug-bounty-are-complete-6c8f27845124 | ['Covesting Pr'] | 2018-10-23 17:58:02.172000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Investing', 'Trading', 'Bitcoin', 'Covesting'] |
The Fear of Being Feared is Not That Scary! | My love for literature and poetry began when I was quite young. And the person responsible for this eternal love is my grandma. She would nonchalantly quote from the works of William Wordsworth, sing from Shakespearean Sonnets, and relate any event, dilemma, or happy occasion to many a poem or prose. The other day, I remembered one such poem — Casabianca By Felicia Dorothea Hemans with the famous opening lines ‘the boy stood on the burning deck.’ I remember repeatedly asking her, why he didn’t run for his life to which she calmly explained that the lesson from that piece was ‘obedience’ and not going against instructions. ‘Casabianca’ is apparently a true account of an actual incident from the 1798 “Battle of Nile,” which Hemans so beautifully narrates in her poetic composition. It’s a treasured piece of literature, but the lesson from that piece is perhaps different in today’s progressive world of constant change and the need to question, rethink, and do things differently on-the-go to remain unscathed. I wish my grandma was around today so I could finally tell her ‘why’ I thought he was a stupid boy with no common sense :)
I recalled this when reflecting upon speaking up and expressing your views without fear whether in the corporate world or in your personal life. Why are people generally afraid to speak up? Has our structured culture made us robots that follow instructions even if we don’t agree or have better and progressive views about something? Are we afraid of being judged or possibly be reprimanded for speaking out or against? In the corporate world, while most organizations encourage this, in alignment with progressive cultures and amid efforts to be more inclusive and collaborative, those who thrive in such environments are few and far between. It’s often either ‘fear’ or ‘being feared’ that possibly leads to tight lipped, disgruntled followers who may have a more conducive or riveting thought.
Assuming the people around you are open to honest and open dialogue and feedback, whether it be positive or constructive, there are some fundamentals every individual may need to work on first.
Clarity in thought and removing emotions — Get your facts right and have enough information to back this up with solid details. Always verify details, especially if it’s a sensitive matter. Look at things objectively and based on the facts, irrespective of what sort of emotional connection you have to the matter at hand or person/people you’re dealing with. This is a tough one, but the more you consciously do this, the easier it is to remove your emotions and focus on the problem.
Speaking up with reason vs ‘empty vessels’ — If you’re going to disagree or disapprove of something, you better have reasons and explain ‘why’ you cannot align to that thought or idea. It’s easy to dis someone or something, but it doesn’t help if you’re unable to provide constructive feedback with reasons, examples and possible suggestions for improvement. There’s a fine line between criticism for the sake of disagreement, and constructive feedback for the betterment of all.
It’s not ‘what’ you say, rather ‘how’ you say it — Manage your emotions first before you open your mouth to speak. Choose words carefully. This does not mean you must sugar coat what you’ve gotta say, rather be respectful and focus on the facts and not the person. You’ve first got to win people over and make them comfortable before sharing your opposing views. This way it’s more likely they will be open to your feedback.
Most often than not, people shy away from speaking up or speaking out because it’s uncomfortable and you’re unaware of what the consequences might be. It takes a bit of courage and practice. In the end, being feared is a good thing — not because you’re fearful, but for being fearless. Else, you could end up being like that boy who stood on the burning deck … | https://medium.com/@zaithoonbinahamed/the-fear-of-being-feared-is-not-that-scary-913ac85bbc7c | ['Zaithoon Bin Ahamed'] | 2020-12-06 02:08:27.084000+00:00 | ['Corporate Culture', 'Progressive', 'Relationships', 'Leadership Development', 'Feedback'] |
Dawn | Dawn
Write off the pain
Photo by Shashank Sahay on Unsplash
The moments when other soul’s words saved me
would always be moonshine in my darkest night
But the moments where my pain and hurt
drips in this ashen papers –
this is my breaking dawn,
a healing of my own | https://medium.com/ipoetry/dawn-5f8d64767fb7 | ['Elai Batac'] | 2020-09-16 14:50:30.905000+00:00 | ['Self Love', 'Elai Batac', 'Writing', 'Prose Poem', 'Poetry'] |
Study on Bosco Verticale and Future Urban Reforestation | What is Bosco Verticale?
Bosco Verticale, is Boeri Studio’s project, with two residential buildings located in the dense commercial district of Milan, Italy. Two buildings have taken themselves as a brand-new design like a novel landmark and a milestone, which injects new vitality into both the Milan city and the entire urban architectural design at the same time. The green facade of the Bosco Verticale created “Treescrapers” for the city skyline, and this feature can resolve noise, air quality, shading for cooling, and other issues, while also embracing aesthetics.
“More than 94% of tall buildings are clad with glass, so we started thinking about these skins, metal, ceramics, and other materials that ‘mineralize’ the urban surfaces.” — Stefano Boeri
Site map
What and How did the green facade form?
The green facade of Bosco Verticale, as the most iconic and important feature for sustainability, has been planned carefully and thoughtfully. The benefits of the plants are variable, and it highly depends on the positioning of the vegetation. The size and the thickness of the plants and also the leaf characteristics of each species would affect the final results.
In order to make the Green Facade live and benefit the building, the methodology that monitoring the trees has been applied to the site. The monitoring data provides information to determine if plants are in good health, or if they suffer from some deficit that can negatively affect their physiology. Trees were selected for test on the different heights and areas of the selected building to evaluate the growth and performance.
Trees selected for the monitoring program in Oct 2013 (CTBUH Report)
After two years of monitoring, the general condition of the trees was good and ready for the next step. Different species of trees, shrubs, and perennial plants have eventually being planted at the planter outside the building.
From the date this building was planned for the completion of the construction, seven years have passed, the two shiny green towers with living green envelopes have rises in Milan’s skyline. The green coverage is relatively dense. In plan view, the vegetation is about 2.3–3.1 meters from the exterior wall and covers over 50% of the floor perimeter. In the elevation calculation, the green coverage is around 40% (Wood, 2014).
“Sustainability without biodiversity is ‘mechanical sustainability….I started to think about this visionary project to see if a tall building could become a ‘medium’ for ecosystems. ” Boeri
Section view of Bosco Verticale
What does the green facade do?
The green facade of Bosco Verticale also exists as a regulator of the urban microclimate. The overall vegetations planted on the buildings are over 900 trees, 5,000 shrubs, and 11,000 perennial plants, which will have an unimaginable regulating effect on temperature, oxygen emission, and humidity. The research report in Vertical Greenery claims that plants can act as a sunscreen, windscreen, and solar energy transmitter inside the overall internal environment. Urban Forestry’s research survey shows that every year, the buildings will absorb 30 tons of carbon dioxide and produce 19 tons of oxygen, which emissions can be comparable to 215,000 square feet of forestland. Plants can also absorb dust particles in the air passing through the building. It is mentioned in an article by CA Aggie Group that these buildings are therefore called the “green lungs” of the city for their functions as filters. Humans are not just the only users of Bosco Verticale. In addition to about 100 different plant species, including 15 species of trees, 45 shrubs and 34 types of perennials make their homes in the buildings. These plants also provide a nesting and living environment for more than 20 species of birds and uncounted insects, forming a wonderful phenomenon of harmonious coexistence between the high-tech city and nature.
What is the echo from the industry?
Bosco Verticlae wins many awards in architectural designs.
-Best Tall Building in Europe by the Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat 2014
-International Highrise Award (IHP) 2014 for the world’s most innovative high-rise building by the City of Frankfurt am Main together with Deutsches Architektur museum and Deka Bank
-International Highrise Award 2014 for the world’s most innovative high-rise
-Best Tall Building Worldwide 2015 by the CTBUH in Chicago
Especially the final one, “2015 Best Tall Building Worldwide” at the 14th Annual CTBUH International Best Tall Building Awards Symposium, which surpassed the judges for the other three selected works and finally won the global championship. (CTBUH, 2015)
Our group follows the LEED rating system to give a score on Bosco Verticale, and the final result is similar to how it certified by officials: it received 75 points out of 110 from us and can be confirmed as a Gold LEED project.
LEED Rating from our study group: Result is 75 out of 110
Who are the designers and what do they say?
Members of Stefano Boeri Architetti
SBA, also known as Stefano Boeri his Studio, participated in the majority of proposed concept establishment and designs of Milan’s Bosco Verticale. From 1993 till now, Boeri’s studio engages in research and practice in the architecture and urbanism fields and also becomes part of the urban redevelopment designers that include both landscape and cultural designs diversification. Bosco Verticale is one of their most successful works, but also an exhibit of their implementation on one main concept that: architects have the duty to launch a global campaign on urban forestry to multiply the presence of forests and trees in our cities for the final objectives that reverse climate change, protect existing natural species, and enhance a greener, healthier and more pleasant living environment for humans. (Stefano Boeri Architetti) Present every tall building as a tree, and “planting” every city as a forest. An idea that is considered innovative and astonishing, but actually reveals its possible future by this group of passionate people.
At the same time Boeri’s Studio claims for the priority of urban forestry in globalizing governmental cognition in city designs, they participate in the actual creation and implementation of this concept by turning those green buildings and sites into real places in use.
How would the urban forest grow?
Bosco Verticale is the first vertical forest designed by SBA, and it is a starting sign. The concept of urban forestry has been applied to large amounts of instances. You can find their existence in world-spread SBA projects.
Bosco Verticale, SBA
Verticale Forest in Cario, SBA
The vertical forest on the top is Tirana Vertical Forest, the middle one is Cairo Vertical Forest, and the bottom one is Nanjing Vertical Forest, all use the same planting, construction, and irrigation technologies that have been developed and proved feasible in Bosco Verticale. Plants on the exterior wall and balconies play significant roles in CO² absorbing, air purification, air humidifier, temperature regulator, and so on.
One really interesting point is, all those vertical forests have their different building uses due to the difference in locations, which reflect the various cultures and backgrounds of different countries. This also implies that even in all kinds of environments, the concept of urban forestry can still be interpreted and contributed to green tall buildings development.
Urban Jungle, SBA
Italy’s Prato Urban Jungle, designed with the main purpose of co-living between human and natural species and re-naturalization. Like Bosco Verticale’s effectiveness, the vegetation cover in these buildings achieves real green colonization and meanwhile providing solutions for sunlight exposure, air quality, moisture, temperature, and noise problems. As a result, the urban jungle successfully creates a green and healthy environment for its users.
Space utilities on this site according to the SBA website:
-Transformation of the unused roof into a green roof, making it an island of biodiversity, usable by employees as a place for socializing, for small events or physical activity
-Creation of a large entrance pergola that welcomes the inhabitants and creates a green connection with the greenhouse — designed by Pnat — and the garden
-Transformation of the ground floor and the existing car park into a social garden, as a place accessible by the residences’ inhabitants
etc.
Ca’ delle Alzaie, SBA
Ca’ delle Alzaie, three class A residential buildings with private gardens located in Treviso, Italy, near the historic center. The site uses continuous terraces along the riverbank to create vertical elements for plant nursery places. Linear overhanging pots and vases for small and medium-sized shrubs are placed on the north side of the building, and the medium and large ones are planted on the south side. Plants will change colors when seasons alternate, which creates a splendid visual outcome.
Palazzo Verde, SBA
The Palazzo Verde is located in Antwerp, Belgium. One of its main design purposes is to improve the overall surrounding urban ecological environment and create a city greenification landmark. Tree function of absorbing CO² and producing oxygen, also doing great on regulating the general high-density population cities’ air problems. The platform of man-made forests can also act as homes for natural species that live in cities but are struggling with habitat problems.
Tirana Riverside, SBA
SBA designed Tirana Riverside with the cooperation of SON-Group.
It is located along the northern border of the Albanian capital close to the Tirana river and acts as a large public area that provides self-sufficient clean energy, water, food, and urban public services. Domestic greenery designs are shown in open ground lands, rooftops, and many common living spaces, and play a distinctive role in mitigating the urban heat island effect.
Cancun Smart Forest City, SBA
Cancun Smart Forest City, a new planning forestry urban district in Mexico.
The entire forest city is designed as one hundred percent of energy production self-sufficient. Most of its energy will come from a perimeter ring of photovoltaic panels, also together with an underground water system connected to the sea for irrigation purposes. Additionally, the city only allows electric and semi-automatic vehicles inside, which means that transportation will exist in a green style.
Are there any further improvements for Bosco Verticale?
Part of sustainable development includes equity and meeting the social demands of a region. Bosco Verticale is unattainable to the majority of Milan residents, the starting price for an apartment unit is 2 million euros which translates to about 2.4 million dollars. In Italy, the average income is 2,500 euros a month. As the second-largest city, Milan is facing a lack of affordable housing; Vertical Forest’s government investment was part of an urban renewal redevelopment of the Porta Nuova district to increase residential and commercial areas. Going back to planning, design process, and construction a possible solution to making Bosco Verticale more affordable would be to increase density and reduce square meters of each apartment. There are only 113 apartments, each has about 160 indoor sqm and 60 outdoor sqm. Increasing density would create more housing opportunities, and there should also be an affordable housing program.
Resources
Brent Lunds. Sustainability in the Built Environment: Bosco Verticale — The Skyscraper with 600 Trees, The California Aggie, 2015
Giacomello, Elena, and Massimo Valagussa. Vertical Greenery: Evaluating the High-Rise Vegetation of the Bosco Verticale, Milan. Published in conjunction with the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH), Arup, and Università Iuav Di Venezia, 2015.
Land. “Porta Nuova — Milan, Italy.” LAND , LAND Italia, 13 Feb. 2020,
Scheuermann, Rudi. “Increased High-Rise Resilience to Stabilize Cities of the Future.” Increased High-Rise Resilience to Stabilize Cities of the Future, CTBUH’s Research Paper, 2016.
The Skyscraper Center, Global Tall Building Database of the CTBUH
Wood, A., Bahrami, P. & Safarik, D.Green Walls in High-Rise Building. 2014 | https://medium.com/@xqren/study-on-bosco-verticale-and-future-urban-reforestation-86683c720b3 | ['Qixuan Ren'] | 2020-12-17 07:16:44.935000+00:00 | ['Vertical Forest', 'Sustainable Development', 'Urban Planning', 'Urban Revolution'] |
How to hire great software developers for your startup | 1. Determine if you NEED to hire and if you can afford it
First, determine why you are planning on spending time, energy and money to hire another engineer. Do you really need one?
Could you test out what you want to build in a less technical way first? Can you be more efficient or focused with your current team? Could you use an existing tool or service instead of building it in-house? Can you actually afford to hire this person for at least a year or more?
Hiring people is expensive, time consuming, and fairly high risk compared to other things you need to do in your business, so when you aim to hire, it should be with purpose and intent. Not “just cuz” or in the name of “growth”.
The growth you’re looking for is revenue and/or market share, not team size. #2 might be required to get #1 but it does not guarantee it. Always remember the order of importance!
Far too often I see non-technical founders feel like they need to find someone technical from day one. In this day and age of “low code” and “no code” tools there is a lot you can do by learning some basic coding, understanding how the web actually works, and using some of these “low code” tools. You should start here because it will help you understand the unique challenges software development presents and you’ll be able to better connect with and empathize with your technical teammates.
As companies scale I also see tons of “we’re hiring 40 engineers” on LinkedIn. That’s just ridiculous. I laugh every time I see those, wondering to myself:
What the hell is your scale-up going to do with that many cooks in the kitchen on your ONE product?!
In my experience, 99% of the time hiring technical people that fast ends in disaster. Both for your company and for the engineer. Unless you have really streamlined processes, almost every time, both of you end up frustrated and underwhelmed with the progress, quality, and time spent.
Getting familiar with the products, release cycles, nuances of the codebase, company culture, and the development team dynamics takes time and requires really good onboarding processes and documentation. Without those you are destined for chaos.
In my experience, depending on the person, product, and your onboarding process, it takes 4–8 weeks for people to ramp up and really be effective.
This isn’t to say that you can’t scale up an engineering team quickly or move faster than what I’ve seen. Just that you need to be prepared and most of the times I’ve been involved in such hyper growth, it usually ends up being an absolute gong show and huge waste of resources.
With all that out of the way, you think you still definitely need an engineer? If the answer is “yes”….
2. Determine the type of role you are hiring for
What type of developer are you looking for?
Front-end (user facing web), back-end (server side), data science, mobile, data/database, security, infrastructure, 3rd party integrations, blockchain, or are you looking for the incredibly rare 🦄 Unicorn Developer that has experience doing all of the above?
Not all developers are the same!
I’m lucky to have 3 Unicorn Developers on my team. I also do okay. 🦄 🦄 🦄
3. Actively seek out people that you think might be a good fit for the role you are looking to fill
For us, this predominantly involves searching Github by our tech stack (Node, React, React Native, Docker, Kubernetes), programming language (JS, SQL), prominent projects.
We also look through our own developer network of people familiar with the open source web framework my co-founder David Luecke and I built — FeathersJS. This isn’t to say we strictly limit searches to our tech stack but that’s where we start in order to reduce ramp up time and then spread out.
We’ve been a remote team since before it was cool, so we also look for people all over the world and don’t limit ourselves to just developers in Canada.
We’ll analyze their code, pull requests, issue creation, etc. We’ll then create a short list of candidates and cross-reference this against LinkedIn and Twitter to see where they are located and how they portray themselves (ie. make sure they’re not an asshole).
We start with the the quality of their work and work backwards to evaluating their experience, what we think they’ll cost, whether we think they may be a good culture fit, and their availability. By doing it this way and relying on an avatar to evaluate the quality of their work first we’re trying to (hopefully) avoid bias’ for age, race, gender pronoun, or experience.
If we think their code and development process is good and they don’t seem like an asshole, we’ve already essentially confirmed that we’d like to hire them unless something goes awry during the interview process. And even if they may not be signalling that they’re actively available, we still give them the pitch!
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take — The Great One
I realize that not all great developers are active on Github, but many are, so there is a law of large numbers here. Also, we use Github and git at Bidali so if you’re active on there, there will be less ramp up time.
4. Pitch them to book a meeting
Most great engineers are employed already and generally are not actively looking for jobs. This is still an engineers job market and, after all, you are trying to convince them to invest part of their life’s work into your idea.
Even if you are looking for junior developers fresh out of school that you can mentor, to find the best, you need to actively seek out candidates and pitch them on why they should care about your business. This is more similar to pitching investors than you might think.
Try and get warm intros. If you can’t and you’re reaching out cold, keep your emails short and personalize them. Respect your next hire’s time! (this is a running theme in our process)
You should have researched this person a bit already so briefly:
tell them about your mission and why you’re passionate about it;
explain why and how you would love to have them help;
ask if they would be open to a short call; and
share a bit about you or your culture (optional but recommended)
Here is a template I use:
Hey <First Name> 👋 I’m the CEO of Bidali. I value your time so I’ll cut to the chase. We’ve been on the hunt to add a new <role> to our team and I came across your Github profile and was really impressed with <project>. At Bidali we’re on a mission to democratize financial access and enable anyone to contribute to global GDP. Our vision is to create the world’s first global bank and payments network that is owned by its users. Think, a global debit system and credit union that pays the people that use it. It’s a big vision so we could use some help. We started Bidali because we experienced first hand the inequality that is keeping 3 billion people around the world from reaching their full potential and creating financial security for their family’s future, simply because they lack access to trusted and fair banking services. To us, the ability to have adequate financial access is a fundamental human right. I’m sure you get a lot of these emails, but would you be up for a short call? I’d love to learn more about you and what your goals are, tell you a bit about myself, and see if what you’re looking for in life aligns with what we’re trying to achieve and the opportunities available. We think you could really help us take <initiative/product> to the next level. We offer a competitive startup salary and equity compensation but I’m not going to pretend that we might be able to compete with <their current company or Google>. That’s not why people join startups. People join them because they are fun, exciting, rewarding and have the potential to change the world! We are an experienced remote-first team that values autonomy and doing things right. While I am biased, I’m also an engineer, and I think that this is a great opportunity to solve some interesting problems and build tech that can have a huge positive impact on the world. After looking at your background, I think you could be a great fit. 🙂 Let me know if you’re interested and we can schedule a call that fits with your schedule.
It’s fine to follow up, but if you don’t hear back after your initial email and a gentle follow up, politely thank them for their time and tell them that if anything changes they should reach out.
Do not send repeated emails with the same crap! This is a quick way to turn people off. Developers read their email. They also get a lot. There’s a chance they may have missed one but if you sent 2 emails a week apart and didn’t hear back they’re not interested.
Try to avoid cold outreach via LinkedIn. Good devs get tons of recruiter SPAM via LinkedIn. Twitter is probably better but most devs that are available for hire have their email connected to their Github profile or you can usually find their email somewhere. Often you can also send them a DM on Twitter and have more success.
Doing all this shows you care. ❤️
4. In-Person or Video Meeting
If we can (before the pandemic started) we try and meet 1-on-1 in person, in a casual setting over coffee, tea, a beer, a hike, playing video games, whatever. If that’s not possible, then it’s a video call but we still try and create a less formal atmosphere.
When meeting in real life, this is an opportunity to showcase your culture so we give the person an opportunity to choose from a variety of activities that the interviewer and/or many teammates like to do. This helps temp check culture fit and whether they have a more assertive/direct demeanor or a more passive one.
The nature of the chat is simply to get to know the person on a human level and it’s a back and forth conversation where I’ll share personal information, answer any questions, and ask them questions.
Some things that I typically ask:
What do you like to do for fun?
What are your hobbies?
What are you passionate about?
What are your goals and ambitions? (assume money is not a concern)
Do you have a family?
What’s one of the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do in your life? (I’ll usually lead with something of my own to open up)
What are you most proud of? (I’ll also lead and share first here)
If they seem like they might be a good culture fit and would gel with the other existing teammates we ask whether they would be open to doing a fun project to see how they solve problems. If so, we continue on.
5. Take Home Project
Next, we give people a fun take home project that allows them to be creative and show off their skills. They can complete it on their own time over the course of 7–14 days which must span 2 weekends in order to give them enough “outside of normal life” time.
For developers it’s called “Cat Herder App” where, depending on the challenge you choose, you need to create a component of a system that allows a cat daycare to keep track of its cats! 😻
Herdin’ Cats
We have projects that would be better suited for developers focused on front-end, back-end, mobile, etc. While we are hiring for a specific skillset, the software developer we’re interviewing can choose whichever project they want and the complementary pieces for their component(s) to work are provided.
For example, if a developer chooses the backend project, they’ll be given a fully built web app. If they choose the mobile or front-end projects, they’ll be given a functioning API and database that is already hosted for them.
When we identified this person as someone we might want to hire we’ve clearly identified their skillset for a specific role, but this is really the first test — do they try something new, stick with what they are most proficient at, or try and do more than one project?
There is no wrong answer. We’re trying to evaluate their tendencies and this also gives us an opportunity to see if they have other surprising skills that don’t necessarily show up on their Github activity.
We also let people choose their own dates and set their own deadline within the 7–14 day window. This is important for many reasons.
It allows us to assess how eager the person is to work on the project, how they are with time management and how aggressive they are with setting deadlines. It also gives them the opportunity to be in control, work on their own terms, and (hopefully) it feels less stressful and more like our regular work environment.
Once again, there is no wrong answer here.
We know that people have other jobs, kids, and other parts of their life that they need to do so this is factored in when we evaluate their decision and their project. However, in order to best compare apples to apples, unless there are extraneous circumstances we try and keep the allowed time within the 7–14 days and don’t allow extensions.
Our take home projects can be completed in as little as 2 hours but we’ve had people spend much more than that because they were having fun. 😀
The project descriptions are fairly open ended, at times with vague directions. This is intentional as you’ll see in the next section when we discuss how we evaluate the submission.
Once the take home project is complete we move on to evaluating.
We’ve toyed with the idea of compensating people for this time but thus far have not because we scope the project so it can be done in a few hours, the project should be fun and allows for creative expression, it in no way is related to the business, and we are allowing people to set their own timelines and choose whether they want to participate. This may change in the future.
6. Peer Evaluation
Once the project is submitted 3 team members get together and evaluate the submission on the merits of:
Technical execution — How good is the code? What frameworks and modules did they use? Why? Is the folder structure organized? Is there documentation? Tests?
— How good is the code? What frameworks and modules did they use? Why? Is the folder structure organized? Is there documentation? Tests? Time management — How long did it take them to complete? How often did they commit code (bursty or consistent)? Did start strong and slow down or did they start slow and rush to complete? Did they meet or beat their projected timeline? Did they put in extra time after completing the criteria?
— How long did it take them to complete? How often did they commit code (bursty or consistent)? Did start strong and slow down or did they start slow and rush to complete? Did they meet or beat their projected timeline? Did they put in extra time after completing the criteria? Work style — Did they ask questions or make assumptions and plow away? Did they use 3rd party modules or home roll things? Did they prioritize certain things over others?
— Did they ask questions or make assumptions and plow away? Did they use 3rd party modules or home roll things? Did they prioritize certain things over others? Fortitude — You can tell a lot from the way people solve problems. Did they seem to get flustered or frustrated? How did they handle unknowns and difficulties?
— You can tell a lot from the way people solve problems. Did they seem to get flustered or frustrated? How did they handle unknowns and difficulties? Creativity — Did they follow instructions or do something different? Do they have design or copywriting skills? Did they flex their creative muscle and stretch themselves?
— Did they follow instructions or do something different? Do they have design or copywriting skills? Did they flex their creative muscle and stretch themselves? Bonus skills — Did they surprise us with anything?
There aren’t any right or wrong answers here really. It all depends on the type of person we’re looking for in order to round out the team. Just like with sports, if you have too many “Type A’s” on a team it won’t have as good a chemistry and performance as a well balanced team with a mix of people that like to lead and people that like to assist.
7. Pair Programming & Review
Next, someone on our team (who hasn’t met the person already) pairs up with the developer to ask the them about their decisions, how they felt about their execution, and what they would like to improve.
If the person doesn’t have improvements they want to make, then for each project, we have some suggested improvements based on curveballs we intentionally put in the project descriptions. We look to see if they picked up on those because it demonstrates awareness.
The new hire and the developer work together to complete it. This happens during a normal work day and we ask them to block off half a day. Since this could mean taking vacation time we compensate the developer for their time regardless of whether they are hired.
The existing teammate that pairs up with the developer gives the rest of us feedback on how they were to work with. Mainly looking for any red flags like:
whether they cheated on the project and got someone else to do it;
how receptive they are to feedback;
if they have any bad work/code habits;
are they an asshole to someone that is their peer and not be their boss?
Generally, if the submission was solid and we’ve reached the end of this stage we’re very likely to extend an offer.
8. Offer Letter With Options
If the majority of the people involved in the hiring process vote to hire the new developer then we extend them an offer letter. We do this democratically because we’re a team, and the person that is going to work with them day in and day out has just as much of a say as the CEO (or HR manager).
This offer is pretty standard. We give them 1 week to consider the offer and 3 different options for compensation that range from more salary and less equity, to more equity and less salary.
We try and get as close to a fair market offer as we can — based on what we can afford, the person’s skill level, and the cost of living for them. We follow a similar process to what the team at Buffer does in that regard.
At the end of the day people do their best work when they don’t have to worry about money, feel fairly compensated, like their team, and are excited about what they are working on. So, we strive to deliver all this and hire less, push people out of their comfort zone, and provide better compensation.
9. Onboarding
Once the person starts, they’re paired up with a “buddy” for up to 8 weeks. This buddy’s #1 job is to ensure the new hire is supported, successful, and is able to be effective as quickly as possible. We have milestones we like to see hit, such as:
Account set up and access to everything they need on day 1;
1st code contribution in 2 days;
1st product or process improvement suggestion within 4 weeks; and
1st lead on a feature in 8 weeks
The evaluation of success rides just as much on the new hire’s buddy as it does the new hire and the goal is to get them feeling like part of the team, that they are making a difference, and enjoying their job.
10. Reviews at 2, 4, and 8 weeks
One of the Bidali founders checks in with the new hire and their “buddy” at the 2, 4, and 8 week marks to see how everyone is feeling. This is where, before the 3 month probation period is over, we: | https://medium.com/@ekryski/how-to-hire-great-software-developers-for-your-startup-7b768010dc9 | ['Eric Kryski'] | 2020-12-06 20:33:03.176000+00:00 | ['Hiring', 'Startup Life', 'Startup', 'Startup Lessons', 'Developer'] |
The Data Science Breakdown | Descriptive
Interpretation of historical data that yields useful information on an event based on patterns and meaning, and frequently is associated with Data Visualization and Business Intelligence acuity. Descriptive Analytics companies can determine KPI and Metrics that should be focused on to improve goals and internal processes. Descriptive Analytics aims to answer questions revolving around “What happened?”.
Figure 2: Descriptive & Diagnostic Example
Descriptive Analytics Real World Example
Viewer interaction with creator content on Social Media. In this scenario, a creator on a platform like TikTok or Youtube is trying to garner more User interactions on their videos. Based on past Viewer interactions, a bar graph was constructed, showing the interaction between Viewers. With this, the Creator can identify the most to the least interactive viewer. Once information like this is determined, more questions begin to arise like “Why it happened?”.
Diagnostic
Examines data to answer the question, “Why it happened?”. Diagnostic Analytics focuses on the reasoning behind why an event occurred. This analytics section is generally used to identify anomalies, determine a causal relationship, and further delve into the analytics. In this case, anomalies would be outliers or any major extrema that are seen to not fit in with the rest of the data. Hidden relationships are identified by looking at an instance and the events resulting in these instances.
Diagnostic Analytics Real World Example
Why those Viewers interacted with the content, based on the presented pie chart of Leah’s past interactions with content, we can see she tends to like funny videos. This information can help the Creator in determining why Leah interacts the most with this particular content. With this identified relationship, the Creator can then unearth other relative information.
Predictive Analytics
In this section of Analytics Data, Algorithms, Statistics, and Machine learning techniques are utilized to forecast an event, value, or classification accurately. Simply put, it uses historical data to predict the probability of an outcome to answer the question, “What may happen?”. Unlike the previous sections, this field is considered more intensive since algorithms are used to enhance patterns for building predictive models.
Predictive Analytics Real World Example
Forecasting views or interactions on upcoming content based on historical data. Since this section of Analytics is advanced, this concept can be simplified and portrayed by a line graph with the function ( Y = MX + B). Although, there is an assumption that the independent variable, X, has some relationship with dependent variable Y. The function has four parts in terms of predictive analytics, Y, which in this case is the output or dependent variable. M, which is the slope or the rate of change that is applied to X. X, the independent variable or feature that is analyzed to find its connection to Y. Lastly, B, in this case, refers to where the graphed line intersects the vertical Y-axis. This information and historical data can be utilized to estimate where the line is expected to go and can be constructed, in this case, from video #5 to video #6.
Figure 3: Predict and Prescriptive Example
Prescriptive
This section of Analytics focuses on determining the best course of action for a given situation. This section has strong ties to predictive and descriptive analytics because it uses history to make estimations to define the next steps. Prescriptive Analytics answers questions like “What should be done when it happens?
Prescriptive Analytics Real World Example
Determine actions to improve content engagement. Based on the scenario of video #6’s viewer interactions decreasing, the Creator can see that videos with animals tend to get more likes and interactions, with dog videos being the most interacted. So, in the scenario that video 5 doesn’t receive the intended number of likes, consider bringing in a dog for video 6 to improve ratings. | https://medium.com/swlh/the-data-science-breakdown-5c503a80ffc3 | ['Taylor Lucero'] | 2020-11-11 05:56:18.110000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning', 'Learning And Development', 'Data Science', 'Data'] |
The year that was: a look back on 2019 | Today, we turn six years old.
A major milestone for Aire and a well timed birthday for a bit of New Year reflection. And while we have big ambitions for an important and impactful 2020, we’re also grateful for the year that was.
So what did we get up to? Here’s a summary:
A new funding round landed in February…
We closed our Series B round of funding in early February. Backed by European enterprise VC Crane Venture Partners, with strategic investments from Experian Ventures, Orange Digital Ventures, White Star Capital and Heartcore, this significant investment has been crucial in helping us grow sustainably this year.
… as did a reseller agreement with Experian.
Combining our own credit insights with Experian’s bureau and decisioning services, we signed a reseller agreement with the bureau last year. An important partnership that demonstrates the value in additional insight we can provide for Experian clients, in turn exposing us to a number of lenders who can benefit from our product in the future.
We joined new initiatives…
We were delighted to be selected for Tech Nation’s Future Fifty programme — a powerful network of the UK’s top fifty leading late-stage tech companies. Alongside the likes of Starling and MarketFinance, our selection onto the programme in March was an accolade we were incredibly proud to receive.
… and grew important partnerships.
We’ve continued to work with with global brands such as Toyota Financial Services and N Brown — brilliant, innovative companies who have placed commercial value in understanding their customers better by using credit insights from Aire. We look forward to continuing, and extending, these relationships in 2020.
We continued to expand our team…
We made a whole lot of brilliant hires across the business, bolstering our Executive Team with the addition of Fred Becker (COO) and Anjna Rughani (VP of People) as well as formalising new areas of the business: from Operations and Customer Success to Marketing and Communications.
… as well as our external expertise.
Central to Aire is our absolute commitment to knowledge and expertise. One way we’ve done this is through our Aire Fellows: experienced industry leaders who offer strategic advice to Aire on an advisory basis. This year, we’ve continued to expand this group, which now constitutes a number of credit risk and lending professionals across the financial services industry.
We launched into the US…
Hot on the tails of our Series B funding announcement, we officially launched stateside and over the past few months, we’ve racked up the Aire-miles to prove it! This realised a long-term vision for the company, Aire having always been built to solve global, not just UK, financial exclusion. Putting roots down in the US this year has therefore been an exciting first step on our expansion journey.
…and continued to build out our awareness.
Both stateside and here in the UK, we spoke at, attended and exhibited at a huge number of events. Some of our highlights were LendIt, FinTECH Talents, DC FinTech Week and Wired Smarter and we’re looking forward to getting back on the events circuit in the Spring.
So, as we step boldly into 2020 and embark on a brand new decade, we look forward to sharing with you plenty more of our milestones.
Remember, the problem we’re solving isn’t an easy one — it will take us time.
But with each new hire, and each new partnership, we get that bit closer to our mission of delivering credit where it’s due to everyone, fairly and without bias or discrimination. Join us: aire.io/careers | https://medium.com/@airelabs/the-year-that-was-a-lookback-on-2019-c13b333dbcfc | [] | 2020-01-14 08:48:32.099000+00:00 | ['Birthday', '2019', 'Fintech', 'Startup', 'Credit'] |
How to Spot an Abuser: Clue #9 Low Frustration Tolerance | Have you ever had an abusive partner? That is someone who has used degrading and demeaning language, withheld affection or financial help in order to punish you, hit you, shoved you, punched you, kicked you, or consistently yelled at you?
And after being involved with that abuser, did you ask yourself if there were signs you missed that would have helped you detect their abusive tendencies earlier on?
If you answered yes, it is best to put your sleuth skills to work before stepping into an new relationship. When you meet someone be on the look out for the tell tale sign of low frustration tolerance.
People who are abusive have an extra hard time managing stress and frustration. In the face of stressful situations, they get demanding, unyielding, controlling and very angry. These characteristics make them more likely to lash out.
When I was with my abusive ex, it was during his times of frustration, aka when I was around other men in social situations and if he was drunk, that he most likely to lose control. It became a pattern. One we all want to avoid.
Notice if your date/ significant other is unable to manage moderately difficult situations without being highly frustrated and without demanding that other people make these situations disappear for them, it is a very bad sign.
For example, observe how they manages stressful situations at work and whether they become obsessive and unnecessarily frustrated with tasks and unresolved issues with other people. Asking them questions about their past can be a good predictor of what they will be like in the future. If they are unfair with others, do not excuse them just because they cater to you. It may not last.
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, please CALL 911. For crisis and counseling services, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1–800–799–7233 or TTY 1–800–787–3224.
Hotline advocates are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year to provide confidential crisis intervention, safety planning, information and referrals to agencies in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
For more info on the red flags of unhealthy relationships and the green flags of healthy ones visit me here: https://theyogascribe.wixsite.com/mysite
Please leave a comment below or connect! I’d love to hear from you.
May you be happy, healthy, safe and at peace. | https://medium.com/@jackie-jacksonus/how-to-spot-an-abuser-clue-9-low-frustration-tolerance-56f75ba3acd2 | ['Jackie Jackson'] | 2020-12-02 19:35:10.230000+00:00 | ['Get Help For Dv', 'Domestic Violence', 'Red Flags', 'Frustration Tolerance'] |
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Social inclusion and explosion of Nazism: how democracy ate and puke itself through interactive communities | Photo by Erika Fletcher on Unsplash
Democracy is acting like a double edged sword. Pluralism and the majority rule has been advertised as the modern paradise, however, democracy itself is a paradox: handling the destiny of an outcome to the hands of many has already proved its unethical consequences many times through history:public shaming or cyber bullying nowadays should not surprise anyone considering our ancestors’ enthusiasm to sentence the gladiator to death within a flip of a thumb.However, some pages in the history are still surprising in their level of brutality. For example, the rise of Nazi party in Germany.
If we ping a random German guy nowadays and ask for his opinions on national socialism, racism or hatred towards other races, there is a high probability that our person of interest will exhibit lack of interest, if not contempt or humiliation. Ironically, if we had a chance to repeat the same experiment 170 years ago, there is a high chance of getting similar results. Then, what led the majority of Germans to receive Nazism easily 80 years ago?
According to a research by Satyanath, Shanker and Voth, the rise of Nazism in Germany had causal relationship with one of the indicators of democratic society: civic activism, which means civil people’s engagement in various social clubs, bridging people from different backgrounds around same interests: gymnasts, singers, students, chess players and etc. Despite having non-military and non-political nature, these clubs served successfully as a platform of spreading Nazism ideology among members.
Sounds relatable?
Funny fact, these platforms were the result of a democratic step in Germany’s history, namely, the 1848 Revolution by the political left which demanded the right of free assembly.
Researchers show that increased participation in any kind of civic activity in the 1920s positively predict accepting Nazism, as towns with more dense social networks experienced faster Nazi party entry. Some individual examples in the research show that, even most indifferent members of society which had no prior sympathy towards Nazi ideology, accepted it just because their club mate, who seemed as a reasonable guy, was a carrier of ideas. By penetrating in people’s lives in early 20s century, backed up with political instability and economic crisis, Nazism found it’s perfect environment to thrive.
Fortunately, social capital was not the only strong factor. Research also demonstrates power of strong governance, by introducing additional variable, stable governance as a barrier against spreading of Nazi ideology. For example, Prussia, which was a more politically stable state, despite having already established several democratic reThe exponential spread of ill-like ideas within networks is neither new, nor an ending process. If it wasn’t for Nazism, there will always be some new, dark, controversial “disease” which will penetrate into every part of people’s lifestyle like a parasite, live and breed within daily activities, like clubs in 1920s or twitter in 2020s. Seems like history is doomed to repeat itself, and we all have no choice other than playing our roles.forms, had been resilient towards Nazism. This shows strong and stable political governance can balance democracy within the society, holding it going from “breaker of chains” into a “mad queen”.
Tricky part: The researcher mentions contradiction with previous researches, which concluded that low level of civic activity and self-isolation in German societies. However, I don’t think it contradicts with previous research. If it was so, why long term civic activity does not result in more radical outcomes?Let’s consider “Nazism”as a virus, and people in late 19thcentury as aborigens which had low level of social exposure, and therefore, low level of immunity.Maybe, it was due to timing: the people lacked social activities in 19thcentury, and when it was democratized, these “Steppenwolves” more vulnerable to new ideas. For that reason, we cannot tell that non-social engagement was not determinant for Nazi ideas to grow.
“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” — Will Rogers
The exponential spread of ill-like ideas within networks is neither new, nor an ending process. If it wasn’t for Nazism,there will always be some new, dark, controversial “disease” which will penetrate into every part of people’s lifestyle like a parasite, live and breed within daily activities, like clubs in 1920s or twitter in 2020s. Seems like history is doomed to repeat itself, and we all have no choice other than playing our roles. | https://medium.com/@lala-rustamli/rise-of-nazi-how-democracy-ate-and-puked-itself-through-interactive-communities-5570e707f79d | ['Lala Rustamli'] | 2020-12-12 12:24:48.243000+00:00 | ['Research', 'Germany', 'History', 'Nazis', 'Democracy'] |
I Was Not Meant to Be a Homeschool Teacher | I Was Not Meant to Be a Homeschool Teacher
Kudos to all elementary school teachers. I am not equipped for your job.
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
Strange times always call for strange measures. The COVID-19 pandemic certainly hasn’t been an exception. It’s shaken all of our worlds and what we once thought was dependable.
My home state closed public schools for the remainder of the school year in mid-March. Now, our local school board has just announced that all grades will follow a solely virtual learning model at least until late October.
Since the first announcement of school closures, I’ve been wearing every hat in my figurative closet — mom, wife, daughter of elderly and thus vulnerable parents, employee, and last but not least, teacher.
Each week that passes seems to take just a little more of my sanity with it. | https://medium.com/home-sweet-home/i-was-not-meant-to-be-a-homeschool-teacher-c3ae0a4a115f | ['Kelsey Jane'] | 2020-08-14 12:40:17.714000+00:00 | ['Parenting', 'Motherhood', 'Children', 'Education', 'Family'] |
The ABCs of CBD | Photo by R+R Medicinals on Unsplash
CBD oil is the latest health and wellness trend, but what is it that makes the properties and effects such a benefit for potentially so many people?
Cannabidiol (or CBD for short) is one of the many chemical compounds found in the cannabis sativa hemp plant. There are other cannabinoids in the plant, such as CBN, CBG and THC; and all of these different cannabinoids have different uses and effects in the body. While THC gives the high associated with cannabis, the other cannabinoids do not produce the same outcome which means you can experience the medical benefits of the cannabis plant without any unwanted psychoactive effects. To clarify, for those that are curious but apprehensive about trying CBD oil, it does not get you high.
So what does it do?
CBD binds mostly to the CB2 receptors in the body’s own endocannabinoid system. These receptors are responsible for a wide range of different functions throughout the body, serving as core components in the immune system, cardiovascular system, central nervous system and musculoskeletal system.
CBD is known to produce a range of different effects in the body, including relieving stress and anxiety, reducing pain, reducing inflammation and aiding sleep. CBD oil can relieve the symptoms of many different conditions, including epilepsy, autism spectrum disorder, anxiety and insomnia among others; and moreover it promotes overall wellness in the body by stimulating the endocannabinoid system. Both studies into the benefits of CBD oil, and anecdotal evidence from those that use it show that this natural plant compound has promising potential to help with a wide variety of conditions. Additionally, CBD oil has a very high safety profile, with no known toxic effects.
What to look for in a CBD oil
Photo by Enecta Cannabis extracts on Unsplash
CBD oil tends to be a catch-all term for CBD products, which can include tinctures, extracts and topicals. Due to the complex legal status of cannabis, there is a lack of regulation around products containing CBD which means the onus is on the individual to do their own research and choose the product that’s right for them. While guidance around dosing is available from various books and online resources, there is a certain amount of trial and error to find out the right kind and dose of CBD oil for you. Without proper regulation, it is likely to be a frustrating period for consumers wanting to experience the benefits of CBD oil, while we wait for policy to catch up with demand. In the absence of definitive guidance and clarity from regulators, the advice is always to choose oils produced by reputable brands, made from organic ingredients and have been lab tested, ideally by a third-party.
A number of chemists and health food shops now stock CBD oil, and you may have noticed different terms being used to describe them. But what do they all mean?
Spectrum oil or isolate
Broadly speaking, there are three main types of CBD oil — full spectrum, broad spectrum and isolate. Broad spectrum oils contain other cannabinoids as well as CBD, but it has had the psychoactive component THC removed. Isolate contains CBD only with all of the other cannabinoids removed. Full spectrum oil contains all the cannabinoids, including traces of THC.
While it comes down to personal preference, there are known benefits to consuming full spectrum oil as this contains more cannabinoids, and these different compounds work together in the body in what’s known as the entourage effect. While full spectrum CBD oil won’t get you high, it does contain trace amounts of THC which means that it can be detected in the body, although this very much depends on the dosage, method of consumption and individual biology.
Extraction method
You may have noticed different types of extraction method listed on CBD oil websites or packaging. This term refers to the method in which the cannabinoid compounds have been taken from the plant. The most common extraction methods for commercial CBD products are CO2 and solvent based. CO2 is the safest and highest quality, but it is expensive to produce. Solvent-based extraction use substances like butane or ethanol to extract the desired compounds, but they can also contain other by-products of the plant, such as chlorophyll. This kind of extraction method also runs the risk of leaving residual solvents in the oil, so the safest and most reliable extraction method seems to be CO2.
Carrier oil
Once the cannabinoids have been extracted, they need to be transported into the body, and one of the most effective ways to do this is by adding it to a carrier oil. These plant-derived oils are used to carry essential oils and plant supplements, whilst also helping supplements like CBD to absorb better into the body. These oils are usually fairly mild in terms of flavour, and they can have a whole host of therapeutic benefits. The main carrier oil you’ll find in store-bought CBD is MCT oil, or occasionally hemp oil; but there are lots of other carrier oils that could be used. Organic sunflower oil, avocado oil and pomegranate seed oil are known to compliment CBD well; or even arnica oil, which would make a great base oil for a soothing CBD balm.
Potency
Average potency of good quality CBD oils usually range somewhere between 5–15 mg. Depending on this number, the quantity of oil needed could range between a 4 drops and 40, so it’s important to understand the strength of oil you use as it varies brand-to-brand.
You may have noticed different percentages like 5% or 15% on the bottles of CBD in your local pharmacy or health food store. When combined with the volume of the product (usually a 10ml bottle) working out how much CBD is actually in your bottle can be a bit confusing. The strength of CBD oil is very much down to individual needs and preferences, but it’s always advisable to start with a lower percentage oil, say 5%, and work your way up as required.
Reputable brands usually state the total amount of CBD in the product, as well as per serving which is helping to make it easier for consumers to understand. Unfortunately, while the legislation still lags behind it is down to brands to help educate customers about dosing. | https://medium.com/@sarahgreenwrites/the-abcs-of-cbd-3c6ef42362d6 | ['Sarah Green'] | 2019-11-27 08:21:51.237000+00:00 | ['Cannabis', 'Hemp', 'Cbd'] |
How to Experience Greater Joy Through God’s Presence | God’s Desire is that You Experience Holy Pleasure with Him
Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash
Our Holy God is Full of Joy
Most people don’t associate “God” with joy and pleasure. But the Bible describes God as being full of joy and having time with Him can be joy-giving for us.
“In Your presence is the fullness of joy and in your right hand are pleasures forever.” Psalm 16:11
For a variety of reasons (sins distortion of our souls, the enemy’s lies, God dealing with horrible, lasting sin in the Old Testament…) even many Christians don’t see God as joyful.
And yes, God hurts with those who hurt and gets angry over evil and it’s effects in people’s lives. He is also the most joyful Being anywhere, all at the same time. God is multi-dimensional and has capacities beyond our understanding.
God has the ability to have a direct, personal, intimate relationship with billions of people all at the same time. He has the desire and ability to love you, interact with you, and fill you personally!
And the Bible says over and over again that God is love and His presence is the highest level of joy possible (“fullness of joy.”) When something is full, there is room for no more. In God’s presence is joy to the max.
God is perfectly holy, without sin or any trace of evil. He is light and in Him is no darkness. (1 John 1:5)
Godly holiness goes hand in hand with perfect, untainted joy.
You Are Warmly Welcomed By God
On days when I know I’ve really messed up, I used to hesitate about coming to God. He is holy, I am not.
But once I really got the truth that I was never good enough to come to a perfect, holy God because of my virtue or actions, but Jesus is always good enough to come to Him….and I am in Christ….all that changed.
Now, when I mess up, even doing those things I’m really embarrassed about or ashamed of, I RUN TO GOD. Through faith, I am in Jesus and He is always good enough. I know that without His on-going help, I will consistently sin and do dumb things.
But because I have received God’s amazing gift of eternal life through faith in Jesus, God can do what He always wanted to do. He can welcome me with a smile and share with me His amazing love, peace, and joy.
If God the Father got up and ran to the prodigal son coming home covered in pig-slime, with the accompanying smells, and gave Him a huge hug, kissed him, wept tears of joy over him, threw a huge party for him and put him back in his place of authority (Luke 15)….how much will He celebrate and welcome those who WANT to know Him and follow Him? (That means you)
Learning to Interact with God
In some ways it’s so easy to talk with God. Just direct your mind and words to the One who is always with you. It’s easy.
On the other hand, it takes practice and a new way of interacting with someone you cannot physically see or touch or hear. This is one of the biggest reasons sincere believers don’t experience the joy of God.
Let me encourage you…you can learn this. You were designed by God to live in fellowship with Him.
Here are some simple steps that continue to help me.
Simply acknowledge that He is with you. Something like, “Thank you, Jesus, that you are with me right now.” Picture yourself walking in the door to the most loving, joyful, beautiful, healing, wonderful place and Person you can imagine. Picture God smiling at you with the biggest smile you’ve ever seen. Read some of God’s words in the Bible, especially verses about His love, holiness, goodness, joy, etc. Thank Him that those words are true. Receive them in your soul.
That’s a great way to start!
If you want more FREE resources on living a Jesus-Centered, Jesus-Empowered Life check out www.TruVineMission.com
If you want help in clarifying and then achieving your God-given purposes take a look at www.MarkFurlongCoaching.com | https://medium.com/@mrkfurlong/how-to-experience-greater-joy-through-gods-presence-4831e459bc6c | ['Mark Furlong'] | 2020-12-24 16:13:26.538000+00:00 | ['God', 'Jesus', 'Happiness', 'Prayer', 'Joy'] |
Numpy Guide for People In a Hurry | Photo by Chris Ried on Unsplash
The NumPy library is an important Python library for Data Scientists and it is one that you should be familiar with. Numpy arrays are like Python lists, but much better! It’s much easier manipulating a Numpy array than manipulating a Python list. You can use one Numpy array in place of having multiple Python lists. Numpy arrays also compute faster than lists and is extremely efficient for performing mathematical and logical operations. It’s a powerful tool to know!
This article serves as a quick cheat sheet that provides an overview of the basics of Numpy as well as useful methods. I will go over how to initialize Numpy arrays in multiple ways, access values within arrays, perform mathematical and matrix operations, and use arrays for masking as well as comparisons. I find Numpy arrays to be super helpful to use in solving Python coding puzzles.
Let’s get started on the fun.
Numpy
First and foremost, you must import Numpy with the following code.
import numpy as np
Multiple Ways to Create Numpy Arrays
Unlike a list, you are not able to create an empty Numpy array. Below are multiple ways to initialize a Numpy array depending on your needs.
If you have a list that you would like to convert to a Numpy array, we can easily convert it.
Accessing Elements In Array
We can access an individual item or a slice of data. Similar to lists, the first element is index at 0. For example, array1[0,0] indicates that we are accessing the first row and the first column. The first number in the tuple [0,0] indicates the index of the row and the second number indicates the index of the column.
Broadcasting
“The term broadcasting describes how numpy treats arrays with different shapes during arithmetic operations.” — SciPy.org
Broadcasting is a way in which one can get the outer product of two arrays.
According to the documentation, “When operating on two arrays, NumPy compares their shapes element-wise. Two dimensions are compatible when
they are equal, or one of them is 1
If these conditions are not met, a ValueError: frames are not aligned exception is thrown, indicating that the arrays have incompatible shapes.”
In order to successfully get the outer product, we use reshape. This method changes the shape of the array so that we can make it compatible for Numpy operations.
Mathematical and Matrix Calculations
One of the reasons I love Numpy arrays is that it’s super easy to manipulate. Concatenate, add, multiply, transpose with just one line of code!
Below are some examples of various arithmetic and multiplicative operations with the Numpy arrays. Operations not covered below can be found in the documentation here.
Other cool features include concatenating, splitting, transposing (switching items from rows to columns and vice versa), and getting the diagonal elements.
Above, axis = 0 tells the computer that we want to concatenate by rows. If instead we want to concatenate by columns, we use axis = 1.
Comparisons and Masks
A useful thing we can do with Numpy arrays is to compare one array to another. A boolean matrix is returned in the comparison.
We can use this boolean matrix to our advantage. That is, we can do boolean masking. With this boolean matrix as a mask, we can use it to select the particular subset of the data that we are interested in. | https://towardsdatascience.com/numpy-guide-for-people-in-a-hurry-22232699259f | ['Julia Kho'] | 2018-12-31 19:48:56.380000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Python', 'Python Programming', 'Numpy', 'Programming'] |
How I Botched Father’s Day | It’s the day after Father’s Day. And as I reflect on yesterday, I’m realizing something…
I wasn’t any less of a mediocre dad on Father’s Day than I am on any other day.
Big-picture-wise, yesterday was nice. There were no huge catastrophes. For sure, there were some unfortunate things that happened (as you’ll soon see), but it could’ve been a lot worse.
For the sake of this essay, I’m going with this premise: the thing that brings our kids the most joy (particularly when they’re my daughter’s age — 5) is for us to be present and attentive to them. That’s what the parenting books and the high priests and priestesses of parenting bloggers have told me, so I’m going with it (we’ll get into this later)…
But first, walk with me…
A quick play-by-play
I woke up to Rory at 6:30 am giving me a hand-crafted, folded, and stapled card (with the family and the dog framed in a big heart, naturally). At this stage, she loves giving gifts as much as she does getting them, so she’s been itching for a week to hand it over.
I soaked in the special moment for about four minutes before my mental ideal and the reality of the day started to part ways and devolved into busyness and distraction.
Late last week, a giant tree snapped in half and severed every wire between the house and the power poles including the internet line. Our power was quickly restored, but we’re without internet until Wednesday (3 more days). Being that Alex, my wife, and I both work from home, this is a big inconvenience.
So after the special card moment, I knew that I needed to get my weekly newsletter out. (Consistency is key, ya know. And what kind of good American solopreneur takes a day off on Father’s Day? Gotta get it done.) So I left Rory with her iPad as I tethered off of my iPhone’s hotspot and eeked out my newsletter (with several errors that I later noticed).
[9:30 am — Total time spent present and attentive to Rory: 10 minutes.]
After I hit ‘publish’, I realized that Church was coming up in an hour, so I rushed out, walked the dog, and got back home just in time to shower and get ready. I did all of that and we made it to church to spend a quick 10 minutes with Rory because she wanted to watch the baptisms (always a joy to behold), but then she got bored, so we took her back to the nursery so she could play in there instead of sitting through the service (being that I’m headed towards ministry, the last thing I want to do is force religion down her throat since she’ll soon be bathing in it through me).
[11:00 am — Total time spent present and attentive to Rory: 20 minutes.]
After service, Alex took us out to a surprise Father’s day ‘acoustic brunch’ at the famed Old Town School of Folk Music, one of my favorite places in Chicago. The food was good, but the music was incredible (and the company was even better, of course).
[12:30 pm — Total time spent present and attentive with my daughter: 1 hour, 20 minutes.]
This week, my in-laws will be in town for a family wedding and my mother-in-law is a stickler for household cleanliness. So, when we got home, I decided to start cleaning the house because I probably won’t have time during the work week (because just because you work from home doesn’t mean you can do chores around the house and get paid at the same time). Alex tackled the laundry and I started cleaning the kitchen with fervor.
Meanwhile, Rory was doing art. Alone.
We soon realized that we had more issues with our electricity. Alex informed me that our washing machine stopped working mid-cycle. Apparently, the power in the basement went out. I went down to inspect and there was a full load of clothes sitting in water. I found the thrown breaker and flipped the switch. This worked for a second, but then the power started surging (I’m no electrician, but this is what I’m calling it — ‘surging’: sending the washer into demon mode and making the lights sound and smell like they were going to explode).
I turned the breaker off, hand-wrung the clothes, and texted my landlord. He called me right away and told me he’d be over at some point — yes, on Father’s Day, and he’s a… father (not many things will get landlords to act as fast as they do with the threat of an electrical fire).
I ran back upstairs and continued to clean the kitchen. Rory was doing art in her room and asked me to come and play with her (as she had several other times that I so aptly deflected with busyness). I knew I should, but had so much going on. And I hadn’t even taken the dog for her afternoon stroll. But somehow, I submitted to the whisper in my mind that urged me to go sit with her. So I set down the dust rag, went over, and sat with her. For 10 minutes. Until I was pulled away by the text from my landlord saying that he was en route to our place.
Alex had to go to the store to get stuff for dinner (we invited a friend over) and since I had my hands full with wet clothes, correspondence with our landlord, an unwalked dog, and a half-clean kitchen, she brought Rory with her.
[2:30 pm — Total time spent present and attentive to Rory: 1 hour, 30 minutes.]
When they were at the store, I continued cleaning (seriously, it’d been a while and was reaaaally bad). Then our landlord came and had a look around. When they got back, I decided to sit on the couch and watch Wild Kratts with Rory as Alex prepped dinner. It was nice and relaxing.
[5:00 pm — Total time spent present and attentive to Rory: 2 hours, 10 minutes.]
Our friend came over at 5:30 or so and we had a nice time chatting. But Rory didn’t want to sit there and talk about boring grown-up stuff, so after she ate, she walked into the other room and watched more PBS Kids as we continued our in-depth adult discussion at the dinner table.
At 8:30 pm, I finished washing dishes just as Alex finished up giving Rory a bath. I sat down with Rory for our routine story and bedtime routine (I’m her human tranquilizer, it seems). As she sat on my lap and we rocked and I read her the pages from the second book of the Abby Hayes series, I realized…
Ugh… Father’s Day is over. This was supposed to be the day in which I soaked in my dadness and spent long, slow, and attentive quality time with her. But all I’ve been doing is making myself busy and thoroughly ignoring her.
The final tally
I mentally checked the tally again…
[8:45 pm — Total time spent present and attentive to Rory: 2 hours, 45 minutes.]
Out of the 14 hours in our waking day together, I spent less than 3 of them being present and attentive to Rory.
Yes, I was fortunate in many ways. I was fortunate to not have had to work a job across town all day (or the country/world for that matter). I was fortunate that our family was in good health. Brunch was nice as well as a couple of fleeting moments otherwise. And I was privileged to be the one rocking her to sleep. It could’ve been far worse.
But I couldn’t help feeling bad about it.
Did I really have to spend so much time cleaning? Could the dishes have waited until the morning? Could I have included her more in our conversation at dinner? Could I have had her participate in the cleaning and the dog walking?
So many shoulds were running through my head. Every mom and daddy-blogger I’d read was screaming into my ear. The law of parenting culture was condemning me and I felt deserving of it.
I fell short as the central character on the ideal Father’s Day in my head.
As I write this now, I realize how little I match up to my ideal self as much as I think I should.
Should, should, should. The shoulds never stop. For us parents, this is what causes us to project our self-disapproval and shame other parents on social media and across tables at school luncheons. This addiction to busyness is what makes us try to absolve ourselves by bribing college coaches and admissions reps. Because this ubiquitous guilt and performancism is too much to bear.
As I stood there and ‘shoulded’ myself, I knew that I needed grace as much as anyone.
But I wanted to justify myself. My ego didn’t want to feel bad, so I heard it start to whirl and kick in… What?! She has to understand. I was busy, right?! Stuff had to get done! We had company, we couldn’t talk about kid stuff?! Can you blame me?!
Instead, I chose to let the reality of the moment move into me. I (ready for this?) allowed myself to feel bad (gasp!).
In doing that, I saw that I was being way too hard on myself. Why all the despair and guilt? It’s because I was placing myself as the central character of this day and wasn’t living up to my exalted role. It was parenting perfection crazy-making run amok. My utter self-importance was turning this molehill into a mountain. I mean, truly…
My daughter doesn’t need my performance. I don’t even know if she’d like being around the ideal image of the dad I ‘should’ be in my mind.
Maybe she was fine doing her own thing as she watched me clean countertops, visit with friends, and handle electrical issues with the landlord. I don’t know. I can’t know. And I pray that I be released from trying to control the verdict of this judgment.
If you’re a dad out there in any fashion (or know one) who can relate, may this prayer be your own.
And I really hope they hook my WiFi back up sooner than later. | https://medium.com/higherthoughts/how-i-totally-botched-fathers-day-37ea619a6181 | ['Jonas Ellison'] | 2019-06-18 12:01:14.286000+00:00 | ['Essay', 'Fatherhood', 'Religion', 'Parenting', 'Ideas'] |
Radio #LatentVoices. 001 — A Glimpse of Another World. | Radio #LatentVoices. 001 — A Glimpse of Another World.
AI-driven musical storytelling
Eerie and fantastic at the same time: Exploration of AI-driven creative tools is full of surprises and discoveries. It’s like entering an Unsupervised Machine Dream — everything is new, unique, unexpectable.
For me running JukeBox for the first time was an ethereal experience.
Can you remember that scene from DEVS, a brilliant mini-series about a group of scientists who were guarding a secret? I don’t want to spoil the show, just this experience to scan another dimension — bit by bit, sound by sound, where pixelated obscurity becomes a clear vision… JukeBox provides you with a similarly overwhelming experience-
My first soundscape was this one. I’ve just run it per default settings. Sometimes the most usual can become the most surprising.
I’ve got this noisy soundtrack with somebody speaking:
After several iterations and around 8 hours of work, AI provided me this clean sound:
A poetic but unknown language. A man, speaking with silent bitterness about something, vanished. About life, about death. You cannot understand this language, but compassion and empathy are inundating your soul.
And then you hear heavenly musical instruments and a female voice, singing an ethnic song. You almost remember the transience of the nameless world you’ve experienced for a minute through an AI-portal. But it’s so familiar, full of past and missing future.
And yet — it’s all present.
The world of Unknown. Which you never will be able to recreate. Like a dream fading away. | https://medium.com/merzazine/radio-latentvoices-001-a-glimpse-of-another-world-796417f18b5c | ['Vlad Alex', 'Merzmensch'] | 2020-12-14 22:12:45.071000+00:00 | ['Art', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Latentvoices', 'Music'] |
How To Scrape Walmart Data: Price, Title, SKU, Description [For Free] | Introduction:
Nowadays people are using internet services and from the last few years, people are diverted to e-commerce. E-commerce is a business model that allows a person to buy and sell things over the internet. When you don’t have time for shopping and you want to do shopping, the best thing is online platforms. E-commerce is the best business model for someone who wants to start a new business. But for that, there are some questions one has to face.
Which e-commerce business is best for newcomers?
What are the techniques? Which will attract more customers?
How to survive with your business model concerning competitor business model, which is already doing well in the market?
If you have the same questions then there is one option which is called web scraping. This will help in the identification of the consumer’s choices and preferences. The process of web scraping includes the use of automated crawlers across visible content of different e-commerce platforms. Automated web scraping for e-commerce website portals generates information effortlessly. So newcomers can use this tool for their own benefit.
To help you learn the process of web scraping, we have come up with an easy tutorial on how to scrape different fields of the Walmart eCommerce website.
In this tutorial, we will build a Walmart Scraper to scrape product data like title, price, image, condition, etc. We’ll build this web scraper using ProWebScraper.
This Walmart Scraper will scrape the following fields, from the Walmart Detail Page:
Brand Title Model No. Price
Below is a screenshot of the data which we will be scrapping. | https://medium.com/prowebscraper/how-to-scrape-walmart-data-38de9532eb4a | ['Hiren Patel'] | 2020-12-09 12:42:28.553000+00:00 | ['Web Scraping Tools', 'Web Scraping Service', 'Web Scraping', 'Scraping', 'Walmart'] |
The 4–2–2 manifesto: My guide to better work-life balance | This is a story of love and loss. I love my job (I design future healthcare products & services) but I started to lose control over my life outside of work. Well, its not as tragic as it sounds but demands at work and my own work habits did lead to a poor work-life balance over the last few years. I had very little or almost no time to spend with my friends and family, learn any new skill or spend any time to unwind.
I thought I was managing both spheres relatively better when work and home lives were conducted in two separate physical spaces; I wasn’t doing great but I was managing OK. As working from home became a new reality due to COVID-19 situation, home and office merged into one, time boundaries became virtually non-existant and as a result I worked a lot more than I used to. I never had a burnout but it felt like I was close to having one. To make it worse, this felt like a lasting change. I knew my work habits had to change if I were to continue doing good work. I knew I needed something that would last beyond this Covid-19 induced work-life situation.
As a designer, I love to frame and work with crisp problem statements. I knew that I needed to fix my work timings but more importantly I needed to organize it well enough to do quality work — How might I manage my own time more effectively at work? So that I am able to make time for things that matter to me outside of work (family, upskill etc.)?
This is what I came up.
4–2–2 Manifesto
I will first prioritize my time to craft things. (4 Hours)
I will spend half my time to focus on applying my craft — creating design sketches, prototyping etc. This is what excites me and I want to spend lion’s share of my time on.
I will carve out time to enable communication with others. (2 Hours)
I will spend a quarter of my time unblocking my team — solving design problems, managing stakeholder expectations etc.
I will allot some time to focus on miscellaneous work. (2 Hours)
I will allot some time to focus on miscellaneous tasks — respond to emails, be part of scrum ceremonies, attend to any work that is not critical, and if nothing else use it as ‘connection time’ with colleagues.
Initial sketch of the 4–2–2 manifesto
Why I think this would work
It’s not like any other plan that it would start and end with me, it’s a Manifesto! Manifestos are published declarations of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer; by deliberately choosing to publish this manifesto I hope to be setting the right expectations with the right people in the right manner. I will be using this as a tool to assess how I spend my time at work — how I prioritize and manage my work within the 8-hour bracket, its impact on my performance and overall well-being.
My current role is a combination of individual contributor and design lead. I devised this manifesto keeping my day-to-day responsibilities and team norms in mind. As I work with colleagues distributed across 3 time zones I end up spending most of my late evenings in remote meetings. I prefer starting early but doing so and working late evenings was taking a toll on me. After a bit of experimentation, I figured 1PM-9:30PM works best, I am able to balance between focus time and still have enough overlapping time to work with team members from other time zones. I have reserved my mornings for exercise, rituals to improve mental clarity and some family time.
This is an experiment and the division of time is based on my current role, responsibilities and the overall setup. As I move forward I would continue to adapt this manifesto and keep the the wheel of work-life balanced. | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/the-4-2-2-manifesto-my-guide-to-better-work-life-balance-d17cefea61af | ['Sreedhar Reddy'] | 2021-01-02 07:53:15.385000+00:00 | ['Design Process', 'User Experience', 'Design', 'Ux Collective', 'Productivity'] |
Ocular Bangkok Offices | We are close to official opening of our Bangkok offices! Soon the offices will be very busy with our team working day and night to making Ocular a force to be reckoned with!
Ocular and its sister companies, soon one more poster to be added (our own bank;)
Beautiful Bangkok, our offices are located in Bhiraj Tower, prime location with a Emquartier and Emporium shopping mall as well as direct connection to the BTS train system.
Welcome to Ocular!
Our meeting room
Lounge area + office booths
Office booth
Interactive TV for showing visitors current and previous developments of the project.
Of course no self respecting office should be without an 88 inches TV ;)
We will add more photos and soon have an official opening party! Stay tuned!
Please follow us on telegram: https://t.me/oculartech and our official website: https://www.oculartech.io | https://medium.com/oculartech/ocular-bangkok-offices-a0a36a68dea3 | ['Ronny Iversen'] | 2018-05-29 04:37:05.808000+00:00 | ['Ocular', 'Bangkok', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Construction Technology Market Map: 3 Opportunities Ahead | Today we are pleased to release our construction technology market map. This market map follows our previously published housing market map and commercial real estate market map. A high-resolution version of the map is available here and the full list of companies is available here. This market map includes more than 150 technology companies operating across every aspect of the construction process, ranging from seed stage businesses to public companies.
At Thomvest, we are interested in the supply side dynamics of the real estate industry. We believe that the adoption of technology in construction can meaningfully impact the supply of real estate by breaking down silos in data, providing purpose-built tools for key stakeholders, and eliminating inefficiencies in the fragmented value chain.
While we have surveyed the broader construction technology landscape in our market map, we cover only a few areas of the value chain in this blog.
We see three key opportunities ahead for SaaS and tech-enabled companies:
1. Collaboration software that provides insights around workforce management: In a world in which labor supply is tight and skilled work is invaluable, workforce management becomes a must-have tool for operations teams to forecast costs and drive employee retention.
2. Materials management software that is built purpose-built for subcontractors: The pandemic has disrupted global supply chains and exacerbated the fragmented process of procuring materials — forcing the burden of responsibility to largely fall on subcontractors.
3. Platforms that address the construction payment chain from lenders → title companies → owners/developers → general contractors → subcontractors & suppliers. There are massive inefficiencies involved in the exchange of both information and capital, beginning with the construction loan draw process and ending with subcontractors receiving earned payments.
Setting the Stage: The Construction Industry in 2020
The structural challenges of the construction industry are well documented: The industry is highly cyclical and fragmented, and suffers from a chronic labor shortage. Underinvestment in technology has resulted in poor on-site coordination and execution. All of this has contributed to a massive labor productivity problem. While the construction industry is one of the largest contributors to the U.S. economy, representing $1.5 trillion or 5% of annual GDP, productivity growth has averaged only 1% annually over the past two decades.
The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the productivity crisis in many sectors of the construction industry. The industry has suffered from a confluence of factors: 1) government shutdowns resulting in project delays and layoffs, 2) the disruption in global supply chains, 3) the shift to remote work, 4) enhanced safety protocols in the field, and 5) tightened lending conditions.
At the same time, construction tech investment reached $1.3Bn in 2020, increasing 56% YoY. However, VC investment has tended to flow to similar parts of the value chain: 1) software platforms for managing the field, 2) reality capture and analytics tools that leverage drones, computer vision, and robotics, and 3) vertically-integrated companies that provide a full-stack approach to onsite homebuilding, general contracting, or prefabricated and modular construction.
Below, we take a closer look at a few of the most pressing challenges facing the industry today, as well as the 3 key opportunities for startups to address these pain points.
3 Opportunities Ahead: Workforce Management, Materials Supply Chain, and The Payment Chain
Workforce Management
Government shutdowns, the shift to remote work environments, and enhanced safety protocols surrounding Covid-19 have significantly impacted project schedules. According to a survey conducted by the Association of General Contractors in September 2020, 60% of GC firms report that at least 1 future project has been canceled or delayed and since the start of the pandemic. As a result, over 400,000 workers have been laid off as demand for future projects has stalled.
This has created a greater need for collaboration tools that bridge the field to the office, and provide insights around labor force staffing and utilization. Companies such as Bridgit, help teams answer key questions around which skilled tradesperson is best suited for a particular project or which staff members are over or under-allocated? In a world in which labor supply is tight and skilled work is invaluable, workforce management becomes a must-have tool that allows operations teams to understand their workforce costs and drive employee retention. We believe that this reflects a broader shift from field management to project management, specifically focused on the labor force or “workforce labor management.”
Materials Supply Chain
The pandemic has disrupted global supply chains and exacerbated the fragmented process of procuring materials and building parts. Construction firms have seen material delays, supply shortages, and rising shipping costs. On top of this, the burden of responsibility largely falls on subcontractors.
To illustrate this point, it is important to first understand the unique dynamics of the industry, which are shaped by contractual agreements among a hierarchy of stakeholders. Construction projects involve multiple stakeholders (owners, to developers, to general contractors, to subcontractors) and importantly, a transfer of risk and responsibility from top to bottom. This risk has only increased as projects have become larger and more complex over time, involving subcontractors who, in turn, subcontract work to other subs.
Subcontractors are responsible for ordering and paying for materials, as well as managing their materials once they arrive onsite. As a result of supply chain disruptions, materials have had to be shipped earlier and handled with care to prevent materials from being damaged, misplaced, or stolen onsite. Put simply, the mandate to procure and manage materials has become more challenging amidst tightening supply chains and interrupted project schedules.
We see a clear catalyst for materials management software that is built around the workflow of subcontractors. Materials management is largely handled on pen and paper or antiquated software that tacks on materials management as an ancillary product that is not tailored to the specific pain points of subs. Agora and StructShare stand out as solutions that are purpose-built for subs and address a gap that we see among the existing landscape: while many solutions address field management, there is a disconnect between the solutions that are purpose-built to manage the field and the solutions that are purpose-built to be used by the field. Given the increasing burden of risk that flows from owners to subs, we see the importance of software tools that have bottoms-up engagement, garnering momentum from the bottom of the value chain and expanding to the top over time.
The Construction Payment Chain
The construction payment chain refers to the flow of capital from lenders → title company → owner/developer → general contractor → subcontractors and suppliers. There are massive inefficiencies involved in the exchange of both information and capital, beginning with the construction loan draw process and ending with subcontractors receiving earned payments.
Perhaps the most overlooked, but critical aspect of the payment chain is that financial strain impacts all stakeholders because the financial burdens absorbed by subcontractors in turn drive higher costs for developers and lenders. Why?
Subcontractors must pay wages on a weekly or biweekly basis and materials are purchased on 30-day invoice terms. However, the majority of subcontractors are forced to wait more than 30 days to receive payments from the general contractor. As a result, subcontractors turn to a variety of sources of financing, including lines of credit, credit cards, and retirement savings to fund their working capital needs. Thus, delayed payments from general contractors actually increase financing costs for subcontractors, and increased financing costs drive up total project costs for developers and lenders. In fact, a survey conducted by Rabbet found that this extra cost of floating payments adds an average of 4.5% to total project costs, representing $61Bn in excess cost that is passed through to developers.
As it stands today, several tech platforms are creating purpose-built tools for lenders or purpose-built tools for subcontractors. Built Technologies and Rabbet offer cloud-based SaaS for lenders and developers, streamlining the draw and inspection process. At the other end of the payment chain, a number of startups serve subcontractors, suppliers, and GCs — offering supply chain financing or facilitating speedier, digital payments. Both approaches are critical in closing the gaps in the construction payments cycle.
In addition to these purpose-built platforms, there is an opportunity for horizontally integrated platforms that integrate all stakeholders and provide value across the ecosystem. Platforms such as Vertical focus on document collection and compliance management, and ultimately address a core bottleneck in construction payments: compliance issues stemming from incorrect and manually processed construction documentation. Inviting all participants onto the platform to manage documentation enhances transparency and reduces risk, allowing a more efficient flow of both data and capital from lenders → owners/developers → general contractors → subcontractors, and suppliers.
Conclusion
Looking ahead, there is a seismic opportunity to increase productivity growth in the construction industry and meaningfully impact the supply side of real estate. Workforce management, materials supply chain, and the payment value chain are just 3 key areas that are critical to driving growth by 1) breaking down silos in data, 2) providing purpose-built tools for key stakeholders, and 3) eliminating inefficiencies in the fragmented value chain. We all share in the responsibility of staying on top of the most important needs of the market today and in the future. Now is the time to build and invest.
If you are building in the construction technology space or working to solve some of the major pain points in the construction industry, I’d love to chat! I am always reachable at [email protected]. | https://blog.thomvest.com/construction-technology-market-map-3-opportunities-ahead-5aa659c1203c | ['Lauren Weston'] | 2021-03-24 16:34:38.185000+00:00 | ['Construction', 'Venture Capital', 'Construction Technology', 'Real Estate Tech', 'Proptech'] |
Introducing Voltaire CashBack | Coins flying into your Voltaire wallet.
We’re excited to announce the launch of Voltaire CashBack. CashBack is an innovative scheme which rewards trading by enabling users to earn Bitcoin Cash and other cryptocurrencies for each trade made.
CashBack pays an astounding 0.2% of the value of each maker order filled on Voltaire. We’re delighted that this is the first time an exchange has used an explicit fee structure to pass on all trading fees to users for maker orders executed. CashBack is currently live on our BSV/BCH and BTC/BCH trading pairs, and soon will be available for ETH/BCH and LTC/BCH. CashBack is available for a limited time only. You can find out how to start earning coins here.
With the launch of CashBack, we’ve updated Voltaire’s trading fees.
If you’d like to learn more, we’ve answered some of the more obvious questions regarding CashBack below:
How do I earn coins?
You can earn coins by placing an order on any of Voltaire’s markets, provided that the order is a maker order. As soon as your order is traded against, either in full or partially, your Voltaire balance will be credited with coins in the currency which you used to make the trade. An example:
Alice is selling 1 BTC at a price of 10 BCH. Bob creates a buy order to purchase 1 BTC from Alice. In this trade, Alice receives 10 BCH, plus some CashBack coins in BTC. The CashBack currency is BTC, as this was the currency Alice used to create her order.
What is a maker order?
A maker order is one which is resting in the order book before being filled. Maker orders can be completely untouched orders, or the remaining part of a partially filled order. In the latter case, only the remaining part can be considered to be maker, as the filled part did not rest in the order book and filled immediately.
In simple terms, if your order remains in Voltaire’s order book after you have placed it, it’s considered a maker order.
Where can I see my CashBack?
Your total earned CashBack is visible in your preferred fiat currency in the bottom left corner of the trading page, available for all currency pairs. You can see a breakdown of earnings by trading pair and currency by clicking on this element.
For detailed information about the earnings from each trade, see the Fills tab on any trading currency page.
Where do the CashBack coins come from?
It’s not a money printer. CashBack coins are deducted as a fee from the taker of any maker order. As of the time of publication, this fee is used in full to pay for CashBack.
In our example of Alice and Bob:
Alice is selling 1 BTC at a price of 10 BCH. Bob creates a buy order to purchase 1 BTC from Alice. In this trade, Alice receives 10 BCH, plus some CashBack coins in BTC. Bob receives 1 BTC, minus the taker fee charged. This taker fee is used to pay Alice for creating liquidity on Voltaire.
How do I claim and withdraw CashBack?
CashBack is credited automatically to you Voltaire wallet when a maker order is filled. You can withdraw CashBack coins just as you would withdraw regular coins on the wallet page.
How much CashBack can I earn?
You can use Voltaire’s interactive trading calculator available here.
— The Voltaire Team | https://medium.com/hello-voltaire/introducing-voltaire-cashback-de92b08ff63b | ['The Voltaire Team'] | 2019-03-08 12:45:51.599000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Crypto', 'Trading', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin'] |
If You Don’t Know Where to Start as Content Writer in Freelancing | You can find plenty of advice for freelancing platforms by others so I’ll give you another perspective here.
You can work with any business person who wants to promote his online business but can’t write contents for his products/services so you can inject your writing service in his business to solve his problem and save his time so he can work on other area of his business and you can help him save tons of time in exchange of weekly or monthly service fee.
Now it is upto you if you offer your service to one or multiple business people as much as you can handle as a writing service provider.
If you can level up your writing into copy writing then you can charge thousands of dollars for even writing a single page that can bring your client leads that will result in increasing his business revenue (bottom line) and you can then demand your rate if you mastered the art of copy writing and conversion through your writing.
You can find business people in several business related Facebook groups.
Finding a paying client for yourself could be challenging but I’ve given you perspectives and ideas for a different mindset to look into your writing in a different way and connect it into someone else business as a petrol to let his car start running for business ( or even leads and sales later on). | https://medium.com/@zeeshanarshad/if-you-dont-know-where-to-start-as-content-writer-in-freelancing-7d285ecb3208 | ['Zeeshan Arshad'] | 2020-12-18 13:12:26.300000+00:00 | ['Work At Home', 'Online Income', 'Content Writing', 'Freelancers', 'Freelancing'] |
How to write a post-mortem without killing anyone? | Post-mortem, as fancy it sounds now it is really not a piece of cake when it comes to putting it into action. And although it does not involve any corpses it surely can be blamed for having caused heart attacks and broken feelings all throughout its history.
Let’s get one thing right “we all do fail”. The one humanly thing we do that separate us from the incoming invasion of never failing/ always right bots and robots is that we do make mistakes. It actually is the way we learn things.
A very example we all touched a hot object when we were young which we have never done(at least knowingly) again. It is the very meaning of a proverb we have:
Once bitten twice shy
So it taking into consideration we learn by doing mistakes and we will continue making them (Unless you are Chuck Norris, of course, he never does fail!) the best thing we can do is to really learn from our mistakes. One of the partly best ways of doing it is what we call post-mortem analysis.
Let’s have a look at what does it mean literally:
According to wiki: A project post-mortem is a process, usually performed at the conclusion of a project, to determine and analyze elements of the project that was successful or unsuccessful.
According to Google SRE book: The primary goals of writing a post-mortem are to ensure that the incident is documented, that all contributing root cause(s) are well understood, and, especially, that effective preventive actions are put in place to reduce the likelihood and/or impact of recurrence.
As you can see none of these explanations involve any name calling, finger pointing or any pen to head throwing which takes us to another term called “blameless post-mortem”. In blameless post-mortem culture, the main idea is to find out what happened rather than who did it. This kind of culture, although at first will feel awkward or will be impossible in companies where the culture itself is not ready/prepared for it, it is always a great great way of educating your teams as well as taking out lessons from it for your team and for yourself.
Although there are many different versions and templates of post-mortem analysis as in here https://gist.github.com/mlafeldt/6e02ea0caeebef1205b47f31c2647966 or here https://gist.github.com/juliandunn/52b4fbde451628e0fe48 taking into consideration what we do and how is our internal culture (Methodology Kanban, Scrum, Lean), systems are architected (AWS vs datacenter vs in-house servers) and the applications we use (Jira, Trello, Kanban board, Wiki) my strong suggestion would be to sit down and create a postmortem sheet that is suitable for your company.
Be sure to include 3 things:
What happened?
How did you resolve it?
What will you do in the future from repeating again?
It is one of the most powerful tools you have to discover the parts of your architecture hidden in the shadow, as well as a great opportunity to give your team chance to learn from one mistake rather than failing and learning themselves. It is also a great way to leave a great in-depth knowledgebase to the future generations that will take place in your team.
Good luck and happy postmortem sessions without any corpses! | https://faun.pub/how-to-write-a-post-mortem-without-killing-anyone-eb5850ec4109 | ['Özgür Özdemircili'] | 2019-08-25 19:01:26.249000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'DevOps', 'Management', 'Programming', 'PostMortem'] |
Top Career Options in Sociology | “How is a sociology degree helpful for me?” is one of the most common queries students have regarding sociology. The answer is that sociology majors have nearly endless job options. The criminal justice system, research institutes, public health and welfare groups, private corporations, international agencies, law firms, medical centres, educational institutions, survey and polling organisations, advertising firms and other organisations all employ sociologists.
Caseworkers, social researchers, public relations professionals, paralegals, administrators, community organisers, public policy researchers, and data analysts are all common jobs for sociology graduates. Sociology also offers an excellent platform for the preparation for graduate degrees in education, social work, religious ministry, public policy, public health, mass communications, non-profit management, and international affairs, as well as for law school, medical school, and business school.
Sociology offers a variety of professional career options. Individuals in this subject can apply their abilities to various people-focused careers because it is an academic study that focuses on the way of human interaction with one another and the functioning of society.
Succeeding in a sociology paper in a UPSC exam, for instance, is not a difficult job either if you do your practice with the sociology optional test series.
Here are the career options in which a candidate with sociology are likely to succeed.
Sociological expert:
Becoming a sociologist is the most apparent employment option for someone with a sociology degree. These experts look at society and human behaviour through a variety of viewpoints. They may investigate and address issues like race, class, and gender relations, as well as education, health, crime, and population. A master’s degree is usually required for sociologists, while some occupations may demand a PhD. When it comes to who hires them, it’s mainly research groups, educational institutions, and various levels of government.
Professor of Sociology:
Many sociology graduates wish to pursue a career as a professor of sociology. Most academic institutions will require a PhD in sociology, with a master’s degree sufficient for select posts. For a sociologist, teaching is a realistic career option. Working with students and influencing the future generation of people who will develop this subject may be quite fulfilling. Professors also can conduct their own research and publish their research work, which can appeal to many people who desire to contribute to this field of study.
Social workers and counselors:
Social workers and counselors are two other professions that sociologists can pursue. These are the folks on the ground which assists those in need, whether it’s a student seeking academic assistance or someone living in poverty. These jobs can be difficult and emotionally exhausting, yet they are among the most rewarding. Sociologists can understand human behaviour and connections to help their clients get better advice and services. Counsellors and social workers must have a high level of empathy, patience, and the ability to listen.
Analyst for Market Research:
Market research analysts help businesses determine if a product or service will sell and who would be interested in purchasing it. They check the surveys and focus groups of various populations, which are generally segregated by age, gender, ethnicity, and income bracket. These experts can work for a research firm, a specific company, or as an independent consultant. Because of their understanding of human behaviour, sociologists have the unique ability to conduct this task, especially if they have any kind of statistical background. Moreover, it’s pretty easy to link such conduct to purchasing patterns.
Public Policy:
The field of public policy is another excellent employment option for sociologists who want to put their talents and expertise to good use. This can be accomplished in various ways, including serving as an elected person, working as a policy analyst, entering public administration, and so on. A sociologist’s knowledge of how societies and individuals interact qualifies them to discuss, analyse, and formulate public policy. Working in these fields allows you to make a significant difference in the lives of many others.
Work experience:
You can search for volunteer or work experience opportunities with organisations and businesses that you’d like to work for, or that will help you build skills that are related to your professional goals. Volunteering opportunities exist, for example, in schools, community education, social work departments, and groups such as young people, crime victims, and homeless people.
Internships are a great way to get more organised job experience if you’re interested in law or civil service career. However, because there is a lot of competition for positions, do your homework on the company before applying.
Conclusion:
Sociology is an exciting and dynamic field that helps everyone understand the human situation better. For the proper person, it can be an excellent field in which to build a career. These sociological career opportunities are available to those who are interested.
Note: For those preparing for their UPSC prelims and have Sociology as their optional paper, always choose the best sociology test series for practice to come out of flying colours in the exam. | https://medium.com/@eliteiasacademy/top-career-options-in-sociology-480abca3132c | ['Elite Ias Academy'] | 2021-08-05 11:33:39.403000+00:00 | ['Upsc', 'Ias Coaching Classes', 'Upsc Exam Preparation', 'Ias Coaching Institute', 'Sociology'] |
How to Install PostgreSQL 13 server on Windows | How to install PostgreSQL in your local system for learning and practicing PostgreSQL.
PostgreSQL was developed for UNIX-like platforms, however, it was designed to be portable. It means that PostgreSQL can also run on other platforms such as Mac OS X, Solaris, and Windows.
Download PostgreSQL Installer for Windows
You need to download the installer from PostgreSQL Official website.- Go to the PostgreSQL official website, download section for Windows http://www.postgresql.org/download/windows/
Install PostgreSQL step by step
Click on the installer file, an installation wizard will appear
The following each step and its options for installation. Start Installing PostgreSQL
Specify installation folder, choose your own or keep the default folder.
Enter the port for PostgreSQL. Make sure that no other applications are using this port. Leave it as default if you are unsure.
Choose the default locale used by the database.
You completed providing information for the PostgreSQL installer. Click the Next button.
The installation may take few minutes to complete.
Click the Finish button to complete the PostgreSQL installation.
Verify the Installation
First, click on pgAdmin 13 to launch it. The pgAdmin 13 GUI will display.
Congratulation! you’ve successfully installed PostgreSQL database server. | https://medium.com/@magazie/how-to-install-postgresql-13-server-on-windows-e97035a4b705 | ['Maga Zie'] | 2021-04-06 07:02:12.299000+00:00 | ['Postgresql13', 'Windows', 'Database'] |
CoVID-19: Visualizing individual patient data | As the number of worldwide CoVID-19 cases quickly races to 8 Million with already over 430, 000 fatalities, the interest in understanding how it spreads from person to person and from country to country continues to increase.
This interest, has resulted in the unprecedented availability of a wide range of datasets, analyses, commentary and discussion. Last time we analyzed the Jonhs Hopkins University dataset on the number of confirmed cases around the world.
In this blog post we dive into University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation dataset on individual patients to obtain a detailed look at the time interval between the first symptoms occur and the patient gets tested. You can get more details on the dataset the companion Natural Scientific Data paper.
Geographic distribution
The IHME patient dataset contains information on over 2,300,000 individuals patients, almost 30% of the total number of cases.
Geographical distribution of the patients in the IHME dataset
The patients are from 144 countries in all corners of the world, as shown in the map above. The dataset includes date of symptom onset, date of official case confirmation, age, gender, location, symptoms and travel history, among many other features. However, the data availability varies widely from country to country, with countries like Germany providing age information for practically all of their patients while most other countries providing it for only a fraction or even none of them. In total, out of the 2.3 Million patients, we only know the age (or age group) of 311, 085.
Total number of patients by country and number of patients with age information
Delay between symptom onset and case confirmation
In this post, we are interested in analyzing the delay between the date of symptom onset and case confirmation through RT-PCR test. In total, after we clean the dataset, we have valid onset and confirmation information available for 136, 141 patients around the world, roughly 6% of the original total.
Distribution of the number of days between symptom onset and case confirmation
The heatmap above is simple to read. For each symptom onset date (say, March 22), we can locate all the dates in which those patients officially tested positive by simply seeing the spread of values along the y-axis. In this case, we can see that most positive tests occurred within a week (between March 22 and March 29), while some others weren’t confirmed until several months later.
Number of patients with complete information for each country
Out of the 136, 141 patients for which we have complete information, over 80% of them are from Germany and 17% from Mexico. Given this discrepancy in data availability we decide to focus the remainder of this analysis on Germany. This has the added advantage of avoiding to potentially mix different data biased due to varying procedures and policies across countries while still utilizing most of the dataset.
A detailed look at Germany
Germany provides age information aggregated into 6 age groups and for both males and females:
Distribution across age group and gender
Our first step is to analyze the delay distribution across for each age group and check for significant differences between genders:
Delay distribution by age group and gender. For visualization purposes, we truncated the distribution at 28 days despite the fact that a small fraction of patients report significantly larger delays between symptoms and testing
Overall, the delay distribution is the same across all age groups with small differences between the sexes. To improve our statistics, we also calculate the overall delay distribution. This has the added advantage of not requiring age or gender information to be used so it has a wider range of possible applications.
Symptom onset timeline
Now that we have the distribution of the delay between symptom onset and case confirmation, we can use it to calculate the time line of when symptom onsets and compare it with the official timeline of confirmed cases.
To do this, we use the delay distribution to assign a symptom onset date for all the positive tests of a given day. From the distribution above, we know that roughly 11% of the confirmed cases started displaying symptoms 3 days before, while 5% had symptoms 10 days before. We can use this to move 11% (and 5%) of the confirmed cases in a specific day 3 (and 10) days back, respectively. Mathematically, this is known as a convolution. The resulting Symptom Onset time series is show below:
Timelines for the date of symptom onsets and case confirmations in Germany.
One important benefit of this approach is that not only does it bring us one step closer to extracting the real infection time line, it also automatically removes the natural fluctuations due to the differences between weekdays and weekends.
If we also had a reliable distribution of delays between infection time and symptom occurrence we could repeat this approach to obtain an estimate of when infections actually occurred.
This kind of analysis is the first step in estimating the way in which the reproductive number, Rt, is evolving in time. We will dive deeper in to this calculation in future posts, but you can find all the details here.
Resources
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! And if you’re interested in diving more deeply into the technical details underlying epidemic modeling you might be interested in the other blog posts of this series that I’ve been writing over the past few weeks:
You should check them out! The Python code for this and all the other posts can be found on GitHub:
And you can sign up for my weekly newsletter where I share the latest news and developments in Machine Learning and Data Science as well as any future blog posts I write. | https://medium.com/data-for-science/covid-19-visualizing-individual-patient-data-227bae29d57 | ['Bruno Gonçalves'] | 2020-09-09 17:31:28.918000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Patient Experience', 'Epidemiology', 'Sars Cov2', 'Data Science'] |
What Mom & Catan Taught Me About Onboarding | What Mom & Catan Taught Me About Onboarding
Applying UX concepts to help my mom’s first time playing Catan
For the past few days after moving back to Thailand from San Francisco, I have been hanging out with my family that I haven’t seen in over a year. We did everything a normal Thai family would do — cooking at home, eating out at a shopping mall, lying on our couch watching soap operas, and driving around getting stuck in traffic.
We ran out of ideas to do things together, until…
I proposed playing The Settlers of Catan — a game that none of my family has ever encountered. The only board game we had ever played together was Monopoly.
To ensure that my mom would not leave the game half way and return to Candy Crush and Thai soap operas, I had to onboard her the right way — I only had one chance!
So, what does success look like?
For mobile app, it’s making sure that users come back to the app. For me, it’s making sure that my mom wants to play the next game with me. To achieve that, I borrowed a concept from Scott Belsky.
I needed to get my mom to understand three things:
Why she’s here
What she could accomplish
What to do next
Why she’s here (playing Catan)
Before we began the game, I told my mom that the reason why she’s playing this game is so that she could spend quality time with my younger brother and me. It was less about the game, it’s about us!
That got her to put down her iPad mini and ditch Candy Crush for Catan.
What she could accomplish
Beside having a fun time together, playing Catan could be one of our new family activities. We wouldn’t have to leave the house and be stuck in Bangkok traffic. Most importantly, we would be together physically and mentally — she would have the attention of her sons who are usually busy looking at a laptop or phone screen.
Yes, that sounded convincing. Task 2 checked!
What to do next
This is probably one of the hardest tasks to get right. Giving her too much information, she would be overwhelmed and ditch us for Candy Crush.
So, I decided to only tell her what she needs to do right now and what she can do next.
Before the game starts
I asked her roll the dice without giving her too much information. So, what she has to do right now is rolling the dice, and what she has to do next is remembering the number.
Phew… she was able to do both and she’s still with me.
Selecting where to build the first settlements
She went last in building her first settlement. What she has to do right now is placing a settlement building, and what she has to do next is placing the roads next to it. I debated internally whether to explain the probability of her rolling the number.
“The users of your product don’t want to make choices, especially when they are in the first mile” — Scott Belsky
I decided not to give her too much information because then she would have to make some tough choices. I simply told her to just place it on a location next to any number in red (which has the best probability). She did it right.
Playing the game
I explained each step as the situation came up. I didn’t even tell her the goal of the game — being the first to score 10 points. This is because that’s not a reason why she is playing the game.
I am not helping her win the game; I am helping her enjoy the game.
End result
We shared a lot of laughs, my mom stayed focused throughout the game, and she enjoyed getting the help and attention from my brother and me, who were eagerly trying to win the game.
I ended up winning the game, but it didn’t matter to my mom. Her objective wasn’t to win, but to spend quality time with her children.
Right after we counted the score, my mom said… “let’s play another round, I now know how to play this game.”
Boom! I succeeded in onboarding my mom to play The Settler of Catan by focusing on her first time experience and motivation of playing the game in the first place.
The Takeaway
As we continue to build products and features, we often overlook the real objective of the users. I hope that the story of Catan and my mom will remind us think about our users—why they’re here, what they can accomplish, and what to do next.
What about you? Have you applied UX concepts to any family activity? Also, feel free to share your experience playing Catan or helping your mom doing something for the first time! | https://medium.com/startup-grind/what-mom-catan-taught-me-about-onboarding-eb67ede2687a | ['Casper Sermsuksan'] | 2017-09-02 15:32:53.948000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Family', 'Product Design', 'UX', 'Life'] |
CustThe Keto Diet & You: Good Fit? Why not Custom keto diet?? | The ketogenic diet has been described as the biggest diet sensation — ever — in the nutrition industry. So it’s worth looking into for that reason alone.
A ketogenic diet is very high in fat (about 75%), moderate in protein (about 20%), and very low in carbohydrates (about 5%). It’s intended to put the body into a state of ketosis. In ketosis, the body breaks down fat to create ketones for energy, rather than burning glucose.
How to lose weight before the wedding!!
Benefits of Keto?
Ketosis benefits we typically hear about our weight loss, increased HDL (“good”) cholesterol, and improvement in type 2 diabetes, as well as decreased epileptic seizure activity and inhibition of cancerous tumor growth.
Small studies have shown promise for women with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), an insulin-related condition. This may be due to its possible (not conclusive) ability to reset insulin sensitivity.
Everything Old Is New Again?
The current Keto diet is not the first time we’ve targeted carbs as a dietary villain. Medical trials with low-carb eating and/or fasting go back to the 1850s and even earlier.
In 1967, Stillman introduced The Doctor’s Quick Weight Loss Diet, featuring essentially nothing but low-fat protein and water.
Next came the Atkins diet in 1972, high in fat and protein, low in carbs. It helped with weight loss and also with diabetes, hypertension, and other metabolic conditions. It’s still popular today.
In 1996, Eades and Eades introduced Protein Power, a very low-carb diet that seemed to help patients with obesity, hypertension, high cholesterol, and/or diabetes.
So reducing carbs, as the Keto diet does, has a history of helping people lose weight and/or improve metabolic factors. Anecdotal evidence supports that.
Does Keto Have Any Other Benefits?
Probable benefits may be seen with neurodegenerative conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, or Parkinson’s, likely because these brain disorders are related to metabolic disorders. In fact, Alzheimer’s is now called Type 3 diabetes.
Care for these conditions is best done under medical supervision.
Ketones also appear to improve traumatic brain injury, based on research done on rats.
In the Interest of Full Disclosure…
Initial weight loss with the Keto diet is rapid. The body has used its stored glycogen (carb stored in muscle) and dumped the water that’s stored with it. After that, weight loss may continue, but at a slower rate.
Metabolism shows an initial increase that seems to disappear within 4 weeks.
Keto doesn’t appear to offer long-term advantages in either fat loss or lean mass gains.
In some people, Keto seems to increase LDL (“bad”) cholesterol.
What About Negative Effects?
The usually mentioned “cons” of a ketogenic diet are nutrient deficiencies due to missing food groups and an unpleasant transitional state called “Keto flu,” which may last for days. It comprises hunger, dehydration, headaches, nausea, fatigue, irritability, constipation, brain fog, sluggishness, poor focus, and lack of motivation. Because these symptoms are so similar to those of people quitting caffeine, Keto has been posited as a “detox” plan.
Other negatives include problems with gut health on such a low-fiber diet and difficulties with adherence.
Regarding workouts, the Keto diet probably offers no advantage for most people. In fact, the glycogen depletion induces may lead to hitting the wall (bonking). An athletic performance involving speed and power may be lower without glucose and carbohydrates as fuel.
The International Olympic Committee has urged athletes to avoid low-carb diets. They may lead to poor training adaptations and decreases in both power output and endurance. A colleague of mine induced cardiac arrhythmias in rats exercising on a low-carb diet.
Due to the low-carb nature of the Keto plan, my concern is how women may fare with respect to serotonin synthesis and function. Carbs play a significant role in transporting tryptophan (the serotonin precursor) to the brain, so serotonin levels might drop without those carbs. How does that affect women in terms of mood, appetite, impulsivity, and more?
How is a custom Keto diet!!
Custom Keto Diet Grocery List is a unique personalized keto diet plan made by Rachel Robert. These days, it looks like most are talking about the ketogenic (in short, keto) diet — the very low-carbohydrate, moderate protein, a high-fat eating plan that transforms your body into a fat-burning machine.
What’s the Bottom Line?
Keto seems to be viable for short-term weight-loss and the other health issues described above. Whether the approach is suitable long-term is still in debate. Its benefits are still in debate, as well. Critics cite possible kidney damage and the lack of long-term studies and scientific evidence.
Overall, Keto seems to be neither a long-term cure nor the ideal solution for those who just want to “be healthier.” Not least, the diet is difficult for many people to follow consistently.
A preferable long-term food plan might be a more balanced one that’s low in sugar and “junky” carbs and emphasizes healthful, high-fiber foods, including vegetables. | https://medium.com/@iamfat/custthe-keto-diet-you-good-fit-why-not-custom-keto-diet-78b1f5dcf144 | ['Serena Windy', 'Mssc'] | 2020-07-26 18:23:41.101000+00:00 | ['Lose Weight', 'How To Lose Weight Easily', 'Ketogenic Diet', 'Foodies', 'How To Lose Weight Fast'] |
7 Petitions in The Lord’s Prayer Simplified | Jesus said, “When you pray to the Father, pray like this” (The Bible: Book of Mathew Chapter 6 verse 9)¹.
1. Our Father who is in Heaven hallowed is your name
2. Your Kingdom come
3. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven
4. Give us this day our daily bread
5. And forgive us our offenses as we forgive those that have offended us
6. Lead us not into temptation
7. Deliver us from evil
Jesus gave us The Lord’s Prayer — also known as the Our Father. It is composed of seven simple lines — seven petitions directed to God.
The first 3 petitions focus on aligning our lives with God. On trusting, and putting our lives in God’s hands. The next 4 petitions ask for God’s help.
The Lord’s Prayer tells us to speak to God as one would speak to a father — a dad — a perfect dad that completely understands — telling Him about our needs and suffering and asking Him for help to solve them.
I look at the Lord’s Prayer as a conversation with God. It is also an opportunity to align my goals and purpose to God’s order. It is a way to look at the world differently.
Let’s take a look at the 7 petitions of the Lord’s Prayer and how you can apply them to deepen your connection with God in prayer:
1. Our Father who is in heaven Hallow is Your name
~ Our Father ~
Saint Teresa of Avila, who gave us some of the most wonderful descriptions of mental prayer, pauses on the first word of the Lord’s prayer — “Our”: “O Son of God! and my Lord! how is it that you give us so much in the first word?”²
“Our Father”. Jesus did not say to pray to His father. Rather, Jesus said: “Our” — Our Father — Our God the Father — yours and mine — “Our”!
Further, it is not just Father but more like “Papa” or “Dad” from Aramaic: Abba
Our Dad. The Our Father is all-inclusive. The Our Father is for all of us. God’s love is for all of us!
~ Who is in Heaven ~
Saint Augustine said that the Heaven that Jesus refers to in the Lord’s Prayer is a state rather than a physical place. God cannot be controlled. God can not be manipulated yet we can not hide or run away from God.
Saint Teresa of Avila also says that the heavens of which Christ speaks in the Lord’s Prayer are to be thought of as the inner space of our soul and heart.
“However quietly we speak, He [God] is so near that He will hear us; we need no wings to go in search of Him but have only to find a place where we can be alone and look upon Him present within us” (Saint Teresa of Avila)²
~ Hallowed be thy name ~
Thomas Aquinas stands with Saint Augustine by saying “hallowed is your name” we are not asking for God’s name to be holy — God’s name is always holy. Rather, it is asking that God “might work a change in us so that we hallow God above all things”.⁴ | https://byrslf.co/7-petitions-in-the-lords-prayer-simplified-24039cdbf8e4 | ['Rocky Paredes'] | 2021-06-22 05:56:09.496000+00:00 | ['Meaning Of Life', 'Fathers', 'Fathers Day', 'Mindset', 'Beyourself'] |
Customer Care in Journalism? Yes, please. | Customer Care in Journalism? Yes, please.
Epsilon is a messaging product for engagement, feedback and onboarding.
After my previous post explaining how I ended up with a product idea by deconstructing the fundamentals of my initial project, it’s time to introduce you to the MVP I’ve been developing. The working title of the project is EPSILON. I want to build an intelligent agent that connects journalists to their community and engages with their audience. In other words, a messaging product for engagement, feedback and onboarding.
As Nic Newman, an experienced journalist and research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Oxford University, mentions in his paper “Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2018:”
“Personal Assistants for journalists disappeared in a round of cost cutting in the mists of time, but they’re making a comeback in the form of AI bots that can manage diaries, organise meetings, and respond to emails.”
With their conversational interfaces and increasingly larger databases of news stories, chatbots may become a more popular means of connecting newsrooms with new audiences in 2017. In its latest report, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism predicts that this year the media will keep investing in innovation to develop chatbots, or what it’s calling “conversational journalism.”
With a bit of training chatbots can do all sorts of things for you, even tweeting while you are sleeping. I want EPSILON to go in a totally different direction.
I’m able to be part of this years cohort due to the generous support of the Onassis Foundation.
Can publishers meaningfully connect with their audiences with the help of chatbots?
Customer Care Is everywhere in the U.S., even in the subway. So why not in journalism?!
Historically newsrooms have lacked incentive structures and useful systems for journalists to be in efficient touch with their audience members for the benefit of their journalism. According to the Membership Puzzle Project, this is changing.
So far news organizations have used chat bots in order to do what they did for years: publish the news. What if newsrooms used chatbots in an absolutely reverse way? To ask for feedback? What if newsrooms embraced more customer care? What if digital agents asked for feedback and emails and brought them back to you, the journalist, in a spreadsheet?
The problems are still there
Social platforms and email remain the only channels for reaching out to journalists. While the communication channels are multiplying, they are platform-based, so you need to be a member of a network. Or if you want to call the reporter or the editor, it’s up to you to wait for hours on the line.
The comment section is a toxic environment. Toxic conversation online seems like a wicked problem: Online harassment is pervasive, silencing and siloing.
While everyone in journalism is using tools like using Google docs, CRMs, tools for payments and invoicing, very few are using customer care tools! And as community-based journalism grows, “customer care” will be more necessary.
So how will EPSILON look and function?
If you are a reader following a beat or a personal blog, or just reading a publication, you probably get something like this when reading.
This is a hypothetical article. Pay attention to the chatbot ☝️
And here’s how the screen of your device looks like after the interaction with the chatbot.
This is how a dialogue with the bot looks like.
Pretty much like any other messaging product out there right? Well, this is why it’s called “Engagement” and it’s up to the journalist to create it with the help of our software and “Engagement Management System.”
So how can journalists create their own personal assistant for interacting with their community?
The interface: These are the very basic wireframes for our “Engagement Management System.” | https://medium.com/journalism-innovation/customer-care-in-journalism-yes-please-988f4657ca3a | ['Tassos Morfis'] | 2018-05-08 17:36:46.469000+00:00 | ['Chatbots', 'Journalism', 'Cuny J School', 'Social Journalism', 'Customer Service'] |
How Making People Buy Into The Cause Has Helped Bombas Sell 40 Million Socks | Bombas secret towards becoming a 100 million dollar brand
As we look at the Bombas business model and branding strategies used by Bombas. Everything looks simple and easy to analyze. It’s prominent to say that, Bombas as a brand is heavily dependent on mission-based marketing strategy.
It means that their whole brand representation and purpose of sales were dedicated to a mission of donating socks to the homeless shelters.
Let me take you through some of the strategies, tactics, and approach they took to achieve such success.
Building a brand of values
Bombas has been successful in building an one product eCommerce store, but as time progressed they are launching multiple tees and are looking to join other verticals, as well.
But no matter what they sold, Bombas got itself associated with a social mission, and people didn’t stop buying from them.
Why?
Because people felt good when their purchase was being associated with a good cause, and it contributed towards a positive impact on the society.
In short, their buying experience became more gratifying and valuable.
Bombas never leaves a single card on the table to show their social and environmental commitments.
One such example is that Bombas launching its PRIDE collection.
Socks were launched to celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride Month and Bombas said to donate 40% of all the socks to LGBTQ youth homeless shelters.
Bombas PRIDE Collection (Screenshot)
Bombas has built a brand of values showing their love towards multiple communities and people, thus contributing to a good cause for humanity.
Design a product that has an impact
Both the co-founders knew, how much those socks were essential for people living in homeless shelters.
Instead of manufacturing and selling socks which were out there. They focused on enhancing durability and capability of socks while used in harsh environment.
In other words, they wanted to build and design socks which were more sustainable and comfortable when compared to the usual socks.
So instead of launching their socks right away. They spent two years before shipping the idea.
Finally in 2013, they came up with socks which were:-
Manufactured from environmentally sustainable materials like extra-long staple cotton and merino wool.
like extra-long staple cotton and merino wool. Engineered to get both support and comfort . For example, the honeycomb structure on the socks supports the mid feet and helps it hold onto the feet.
. For example, the honeycomb structure on the socks supports the mid feet and helps it hold onto the feet. Smarter socks with multiple designs was perfectly suited for the everyday look and every walk of life. People who were marathon runners, everyday hustlers, and outdoor activists liked wearing these socks.
By 2013 when Bombas firstly showed up in the market. There was no other sock brand which could compete with them. Especially in-terms of research and technology used in designing a pair of socks.
Customers from all walks of life started buying Bombas for its social mission, and the product itself was irresistible.
Soon, Bombas impact was seen in average people and they started to ditch those old grandma socks which ruled the market for decades.
New collabs = Newer styles
Within their short run of 7 years, Bombas has been able to grab multiple collaborations with celebrities and legendary icons.Each of these collaborations to the launch of a new style of socks dedicated to an individual by still keeping their social mission intact.
If you’ve followed Bombas on social media. Then you would know that, in general Bombas releases a new pair of socks every now and then.
Each new collaboration helps them add a new kind of socks in their arsenal.
Apart from the new designs and styles, the brand used to get a lot of hype and traction in the news. To their advantage, Bombas swiftly uses it’s collaborations as a promotion strategy on their social media handles.
Some of the collaborations which are worth mentioning here are:-
Muhammad Ali x Bombas
This collaboration made Bombas showcase their connection with the athletes. Muhammad Ali x Bombas collection drew an inspiration from Ali’s quotes and images.
Muhammad Ali x Bombas collection
The collection celebrated the Muhammad Ali’s legacy and his contributions to the society.
After this collaboration, Bombas as brand became associated with the athletes and people started noticing wearing their socks for outdoor activities.
Zac’s Performance Test
Earlier this year, Zac Efron’s collaboration with Bombas lead to one of the coolest Ad campaigns. The brand had a good relationship with Zac Efron since 2017.
In this particular campaign, Zac Efron was asked to test Bombas socks for his entire day of activities. From running to golfing and even wearing them during his leg day, Zac wore the socks and tested it for it’s sustainability.
Zac’s Performance Test (Screenshot)
In the end, Efron shares that socks passed all of his tests with flying colours. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/how-making-people-buy-into-the-cause-has-helped-bombas-sell-40-million-pair-of-socks-3699fe45c67d | ['Thakur Rahul Singh'] | 2020-12-27 16:05:57.375000+00:00 | ['Branding', 'Marketing', 'Business', 'Business Strategy', 'Startup'] |
3 Things Tai and I Wish We Would Have Started Sooner | Do we really learn from others’ mistakes and life lessons?
Photo by Erik Brolin on Unsplash
You can get most things you want in life. It’s just that most goals will take one or two years longer than expected. Be patient. — Tai Lopez
This morning I received an email from one of my mentors, internet marketing sensation Tai Lopez, and it inspired me to write about a few of my life experiences in an effort to help aspiring writers and budding entrepreneurs on their journey. Then I wondered, do we really learn from other people’s experiences or must we learn the hard way on our own?
In honor of the three remaining days of the year, here are three of the many things I learned the hard way and sometimes wish I could change:
1. Stick with the businesses and projects I start.
Tai said he wishes he would have started a business before age 12. I was much younger when I accompanied my mother door-to-door selling Fuller Brush products. I went on to start many businesses, but the problem was sticking with them.
I get super excited about ideas, finding the perfect name and domain, planning, marketing… it’s all fun, but when it comes to day-to-day operation, fighting fires, accounting, etc. I lose interest.
I learned the hard way to hire or farm out the work that drains my energy and focus on my strengths. I have lost thousands of dollars learning that lesson. I thought in the moment that I couldn’t afford help, that I had to do everything myself, but getting help, especially in areas of weakness, is a good investment that saves a lot of time and money in the long run. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/3-things-tai-and-i-wish-we-would-have-started-sooner-c842ded279ad | ['Kathy Gerstorff'] | 2020-12-30 17:51:58.167000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Travel', 'Writing', 'Life Lessons', 'Music'] |
Interested in Volunteering In Barbados? | We highlight the many meaningful ways that you can give back to the island.
Volunteer with Barbados Sea Turtle Project
Since the launch of the Barbados Welcome Stamp in July 2020, people from around the world have taken advantage of the opportunity to work remotely in Barbados. With the threat of COVID-19 continuously rising in a new wave, plus the onset of winter, many companies have made the call to extend remote work timelines into 2021. Individuals and families are moving to Barbados to enjoy a safe environment for a relatively “normal” lifestyle; which includes enjoying beaches, working in cafes, indulging in restaurants and safely socializing.
This strategic move by the government of Barbados has triggered similar responses by many countries here in the region. It can be seen as a new type of tourism for longer term income generation.
‘Remote Work Tourism’ has the potential to impact multiple areas of the local Barbadian economy, possibly testing ‘a quality over quantity’ approach to our tourism product . The influx of capital through non short term stays has the potential for long term impacts as people use local island facilities. One key potential that is less explored is the human/social capital that has now entered our shores; “Welcome Stampers” have come with a plethora of experience and acumen and represent a myriad of jobs and companies.
As the nomad WhatsApp chat groups and Remote Work Facebook groups buzz with questions about where to shop, eat and socialize, we have also seen an interest in persons wanting to volunteer locally and get involved in the community. This presents a great opportunity to provide extra support for our local NGOs on the ground and to further develop the Third Sector eco system in Barbados and the wider Caribbean region.
For potential volunteers, the biggest questions are the HOW, the WHERE and the WHAT?
Things to consider:
How much time can I give?
much time can I give? Where can I go to ensure my safety but also the community I will engage with?
can I go to ensure my safety but also the community I will engage with? What can I do to add value to the organization in a sustainable way?
For regional organizations, the biggest questions are the WHO, the WHAT and the HOW MUCH?
Things to consider
Who are the volunteers and is it safe to engage with them?
are the volunteers and is it safe to engage with them? What can be they do to support the work we do as an organization
can be they do to support the work we do as an organization How much time and resources will it take our organization to bring on a volunteer?
With all these questions (and the many more they unearth) we wanted to break down some ways in which you can engage in safe, secure and sustainable community engagement and volunteerism during your time in Barbados:
1. Lend your expertise
Despite having a plethora of local talent, many NGOs are resource strapped and are unable to afford the hiring of technical support in key areas to help build their capacity. Consider reaching out to organisations such ASPIRE to offer your expertise, passion and networks to help inspire long-term social impact in Barbados as a volunteer.
ASPIRE is a local organisation that is working on strengthening the NGO sector through 12 month incubator programme. The Charity Incubator Programme guides leaders through a quality improvement process to strengthen stakeholder trust, organisation infrastructure, collaboration and access to financing. Their graduate directory lists organisations that have successfully completed their incubator programme.
You can also sign up as a mentor with The Prince’s Trust International. This organisation has been working with local partners in Barbados since 2016 to deliver education, employment and enterprise programmes that empower young people.
2. Host a fundraising event in person or online
A recent survey of regional NGOs by the Caribbean Policy Development Centre demonstrated that financial assistance is the biggest need for NGOs since being impacted by COVID.
While many NGOs have challenges with core funding, many do still have specific resource needs particularly around the Holiday season.
How can you help? Consider having a fundraising dinner party, or throwing an event at one of the local social spots.
If you can, you can also arrange fundraising online- there are many online fundraising platforms that you can take advantage of and activate friends and supporters overseas.
Many fundraising platforms are not accessible to local NGOs due to a number of reasons, and you can use your access to a US, UK, Canadian or European fundraising platform to assist a local organization.
The wonderful team at the Barbados Blood Collection Centre — Image via Skip to Malou blog.
3. Donate Blood
There is always a need for blood at our local blood bank. The Barbados Blood Collection Centre is an easy, safe and friendly space to donate your blood.
Giving Tuesday Barbados is hosting a month- long blood drive during the month of December to encourage more donations. Donations can be made by calling and making an appointment at the bank.
Local blogger, Malou, shared this detailed outline of the blood donation process in Barbados. If you have any specific questions and concerns, you can reach out to the team at the Blood Bank by calling 429–4307 or 836–7993.
4. Make it a family affair
There are a number of child friendly volunteer opportunities in the island, including dog walking with one of the many animal shelters (such as The Ark, Ocean Acres and Barbados RSPCA), and beach clean ups almost every weekend with organisations such as Dare to Care.
5. Sign up to our local volunteer newsletter
Caribbean Collaborative is a regional volunteer platform connecting people with organisations in need of skilled and passionate volunteers. We do this mainly via a weekly newsletter that outlines various volunteer roles; from more of the “hands-on type” of volunteering (such as soup kitchens) to more strategic partnerships and virtual volunteer roles (such as mentorship). We also manage a Volunteer Barbados Facebook group where we discuss various local initiatives.
6. Reduce - Reuse - Recycle - Refuse
Giving back also means supporting local campaigns to protect our environment. So don’t forget to use your reusable shopping bags. Skip the straws — plastic or paper and sort your recycling. While the local pick up of recycling isn’t as smooth as it could be (yet), you can maybe organize a pick up from friends every few weeks and do a drop off at one of the island’s recycling facilities, such as B’s Recycling Centre.
The Barbados Environmental Conservation Trust is a local trust that supports environmental initiatives on the island. Connect to find out more about local initiatives happening to protect and regenerate the island’s natural resources.
Image of volunteers via Slow Food Barbados
7. Support Local Farmers and Fisherfolk
Many people experience “sticker shock” when they do their first grocery shop on the island; as many people are shocked at the high cost of imported food.
While our supermarkets are a convenient option for most items that we don’t grow on the island, you could consider supporting local farmers for your local fruit, vegetables, dairy, poultry and meat. You can visit local markets or order directly from our local farmers or fisherfolk.
Slow Food Barbados has a list of local (and mainly organic) suppliers via their Local Buyer’s Guide.
There are great online options available for your convenience but also feel free to venture out. Check out FutureFarmersBB.com and FarmFinder Global to connect with local farmers. | https://medium.com/@caribbeancollaborative/interested-in-volunteering-in-barbados-b9a9e4cdab5e | ['Caribbean Collaborative'] | 2020-12-01 21:29:04.354000+00:00 | ['Volunteering', 'Givingtuesday', 'Philanthropy', 'Giving'] |
Best Home Appliance services in Noida | OneDios is a one-stop-shop for all your service, complaints, and repair request. The platform helps customers book reliable home services like Home painting, Pest control, Packers and movers, Home cleaning, Home appliance repair and service, their warranty, and AMC, etc.
The company’s vision is to provide professional service at your doorstep like never seen before. Our aim is to reduce the entanglement faced in gaining access to customer service by providing complete service solutions.
Our application provides a simple, transparent platform for customers. We put our best to make the service experience easy, timely, and efficient for the customer. All our professionals, though skilled and experienced, undergo intensive training modules before being allowed to be picked for our platform. Download the OneDios app and book your service. | https://medium.com/@onedios-india/best-home-appliance-services-in-noida-dad47c842423 | [] | 2020-12-12 07:28:52.797000+00:00 | ['Ac Service', 'Water', 'Home Appliance Repair', 'Ro Service In Delhi', 'Ro Service Gurgaon'] |
The beta Pro-Football Postseason Portfolio Challenge! | Total Gain/Loss
There are two ways to score points in the Postseason game: trading gains and post-game distributions. Both of these avenues contribute (or detract) from your Total Gain/Loss, which determines your ranking on the leaderboard.
Total Gain/Loss = Trading Gains or (Losses) + Post-Game Distributions or (Reductions)
Trading Gains
There are two ways to score points in the Postseason game: trading gains and post-game distributions.
To earn trading gains, buy undervalued teams and let other people drive the price up before kickoff.
Price per share increases from what you paid → +$FBX trading gains Price per share decreases from what you paid → -$FBX trading (losses)
Your trading gains (or losses) appear below each position’s market value in your ‘My Teams’ panel on your ‘HOME’ page (circled above).
Your total trading gains (or losses) are listed in the right panel under ‘Trading Gains’.
As noted in the example above, this Fanvestor has unrealized trading gains in HOU (+12.50) and NE (+25.00) for a total unrealized trading gain of +$FBX 37.50.
Fanvestors can sell out of these positions at anytime prior to kick-off so as to realize, or bank these trading gains towards their ‘Total Gain/Loss’ score.
Post-Game Distributions
More valuable than trading gains, you’ll want to maximize your post-game distributions.
After a team that you’ve invested in finishes a game, you’ll get a post-game distribution or (reduction) based on how many points it won or lost by (what we call its “margin of victory or defeat”).
Post-game distribution/(reduction) = (# of shares owned) *(margin of victory/(defeat) *[**(5)]
**5x ONLY APPLIES if team is an underdog that wins | https://medium.com/the-intelligent-sports-wagerer/the-beta-pro-football-postseason-portfolio-challenge-8db12f2ee940 | ['John Culver'] | 2020-01-03 20:50:58.370000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Fintech', 'Sports', 'Fantasy Football', 'Lean Startup'] |
What is Blockchain Governance? | If you’ve read the whitepaper of Color or other blockchain projects, you’ve probably heard the word ‘governance’ by now. Many people in the blockchain space are interested in discussing TPS, consensus, token economy, etc, but to a lesser extent the governance that makes these decisions possible. Behind the scenes, there is a lot that goes into making these decisions, and they aren’t always easy, as we’ve seen this year with multiple forks of major blockchains.
First of all, let’s look into the origin of the word ‘governance.’ Governance derives from the Greek word ‘kubernaein,’ and it means to steer(a boat or ship). In modern English, it now means the actions and processes by which stable practices and organizations arise and persist.
However, Blockchain Governance is a decision-making process among thousands of people on how to operate the system rather than one person or organization manage the system.
All the individuals involved in the Blockchain Governance might or might not be interested in this decision-making process. Therefore, when designing Blockchain Governance, we need to consider it to encourage members to participate in the decision-making process and prevent dogma and unchecked decision making of half-baked or ill-intended ideas.
There are mainly two things to contemplate regarding designing the Blockchain Governance.
How the rewards are divided and handled. How code changes occur in the “core” code.
Blockchain Governance is an essential element to create a sustainable decentralized system. There is no perfect solution to governance in general, because it is a process centered around the human element for human needs, but in the upcoming governance blogs, we hope to show why we believe cryptocurrency governance participation is not just for the technocrats, and why it is critical that we get everyone involved.
Have any questions? Stay connected with us through our Telegram channel.
Have a Colorful Day :)
Join Our Chatroom to Learn More!▼ | https://medium.com/colorsorg/what-is-blockchain-governance-bcf7f4c51edc | ['Color Platform'] | 2018-11-20 05:44:59.121000+00:00 | ['Governance', 'Col', 'Color Coin', 'Color', 'Blockchain'] |
Intense Chest Workout At Home With 4 Exercises | You are train muscle at the gym for muscle building or fat loss, you lift weights, you use dumbbells, machines, barbells, etc. Many people tired with the same workout split the same exercises but you try a bodyweight workout for a change your answer is no other than to try it.
If you think weights are the only way you can build a powerful muscular chest? Just imagine it again. Without lifting a barbel or a dumbbell, you can gain a chest and your arms together.
Oh, you heard it right, at home, you will do great chest training. You just have to know-how.
Luckily, we realize, which is why we’ve come up with some of the best home chest bodyweight workouts that can be performed everywhere.
Yet there’s more to this chest routine than to look super in a fitted t-shirt.
According to a research report published in the health and fitness journal of the American of Sports Medicine, a high-intensity circuit workout is a successful way to improve body weight, the sensibility of insulin and the VO2 max, and efficiency of the muscles.
The researchers concluded that ‘This training strategy is a good idea for mass because of its practicality and usefulness of HICT with bodyweight as resistance exercise.
Here is a chest exercise you must do at home. For this workout, you don’t need any dumbbells, barbells, etc.
1. Regular Push-Ups
Regular push-ups are the best to exercise to start your chest workout at home or gym but we talking about the home workout.
Push-ups are a compound bodyweight exercise this exercise engaged your pecs, delt, and triceps. Called compound exercise this exercise like a chest press. Push-ups train your pectoral major muscle. The chest has two muscle pectoral major and minor.
The pectoral minor muscle is under the pecs major muscle. This muscle activating during chest fly.
Bodyweight exercise is also best but not for muscle gain because bodyweight is a bodyweight workout you can’t add weight like dumbbells, etc. And for muscle gain, you need to add more weight to build muscles.
Bodyweight exercise is good for endurance called stamina because we hitting 20 repetitions or some times more.
Boldfit Push-Up Bar Stand for Gym & Home Exercise, Dips/Push Up Stand for Men & Women.
2. Diamond Push-Ups
Diamond push-ups are like normal push-ups but with different variations. However, if you bring your hands closer, the leverage changes and the exercise gets harder.
Most people report that when you take your hand away, you feel like recruiting the triceps and the front delts but don’t make any mistake, by moving your chest tight to your reps you will always get a big blast.
READ MORE…. | https://medium.com/@darshanfitness/intense-chest-workout-at-home-with-4-exercises-3804d2fa1ccb | ['Darshan Fitness'] | 2020-12-22 06:44:35.894000+00:00 | ['Exercise At Home', 'Home Workout', 'Fitness', 'Healthy Lifestyle', 'Chest Workout'] |
Do this 30 minutes a day and improve your Mathematics | Mathematics is probably the most hated subject but as a student, I never had a problem with Mathematics. While my friends found the subject hard, I found it easy. I didn’t understand why they were finding it hard as a student.
I am a teacher now. After years of experience in teaching, I have found the reasons why students find Mathematics hard and how they can improve it.
Note down all the formulas in a book and memorize them daily:
In Maths, there are a lot of formulas that one needs to memorize. The problem is majority of the students move from one chapter to another and forget the previous ones completely.
Students should make a separate book for noting down all the formulas. They should read it daily for 15 minutes. 15 minutes of full focus only on memorizing the formulas will help in the long run.
2. Read the question properly:
Most of the students don’t read the questions properly. They use the wrong formula due to that and the whole answer goes wrong. For example, the question is about finding the area of the rectangle and the student ends up finding the perimeter of the rectangle. If the student reads the question properly, the chances of such errors will reduce to a great extent.
3. Avoiding silly mistakes by rechecking the sums:
Students sometimes make silly mistakes in addition, subtraction, multiplication or division and end up losing marks due to that. They can avoid this by rechecking the sums and by not getting distracted.
4. Never hurry while using the multiplication sign rule:
Below is the multiplication sign rule.
Whenever a question like this comes up where multiplication sign rule has to be used, students should do it slowly with full concentration. If they try to hurry, whole answer will get wrong. So never hurry.
5. Memorize Multiplication Tables till 20:
Half the students don’t know the multiplication tables till 20 fully. They know most of them but not all of them. They make mistakes in multiplication due to this. They think that they know but they don’t. Students should give oral test of these tables to their parents once a week. It will help a lot in the long term.
6. Practice daily:
All the above steps are useless if students don’t practice. Practice every day for at least 15 minutes. You will make a lot of mistakes in the beginning but you’ll see a marginal improvement in a month and a lot of improvement in a year. If you can practice more, it is even better.
Hope it helps. | https://medium.com/@naushadteaches/do-this-30-minutes-a-day-and-improve-your-mathematics-ea9969713fca | ['Naushad Avadia'] | 2020-12-22 15:06:07.433000+00:00 | ['Math', 'Tips', 'Education', 'Mathematics', 'Math Tips'] |
The Art and Science of Early Stage Fundraising: A Fundraising Deck by Design | The Art and Science of Early Stage Fundraising: A Fundraising Deck by Design
The role of narrative, valuation multiple and personal struggle
Image from Sprint Stories
In my previous post I talked about the blurb as the essence of your narrative and the fundraising deck as the representation of your business story. I also discussed some strategies to get warm intros to VCs and prepare for meetings. Now I want to focus on several important concepts around the pitch deck design. Obviously, there are stage-related specifics, but some overarching ideas that are generally true:
1. Narrative, information flow and balance. You want readers to enjoy the presentation and feel as though they have gained a basic understanding of what you are building and why. What you don’t want is for your audience to be overwhelmed by five-year revenue projections and perplexed regarding how you might achieve these goals. You should provide approximately equal amounts of information in each section of the deck, mindful that your goal is not to land a term sheet right away but rather to generate excitement about your team and product, and the growth and market opportunities. The objective is to secure the second meeting. You are showcasing yourself, not overselling. Think about the deck as a door opener.
2. Valuation multiples expectations. Assume you are raising at $10M post-money valuation for 18 months. Depending on what we think about the risks associated with your business, we expect you to raise the next round at a minimum valuation multiple of 2x and ideally at 5x due to the nature of VC math. The Power Law in venture capital is important not just in the exit scenario but across the fundraising lifecycle of portfolio companies too. Are the goals you plan to achieve in 18 months in accordance with your business development plan aligned with multiple expectations? Will your MRR, ARR and unit economics at the end of 18-month period, and your future revenue expectations, support such a sharp increase in valuation?
3. The “Flywheel Effect”. This concept was popularized by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great. The flywheel components include positions or features that encourage reinforcement through causal effects, thereby increasing exponential and nonlinear adoption.
Amazon has created a virtuous cycle of broader product selection, better customer experience, more sellers, more traffic, lower cost structure, and lower prices: the way these factors reinforce each other is a great example of the flywheel effect In venture capital, we think that when the flywheel effect is set in motion, it can create sustainable growth and are very bullish on companies that understand these mechanics. Think carefully about the most important features that will drive demand, and the causal linkages between them.
3. Market timing. This is critical but somehow often underrated by entrepreneurs. It’s virtually impossible to build a monopoly with a $1B+ valuation if you are two years too late or five years too early, even if your team and product are great. Throughout your narrative be sure to address the ‘Why now?’ question. Are there underlying market dynamics (i.e. e-commerce adoption on steroids due to the Covid-19 pandemic) or technological forces (i.e. eventual advances in artificial intelligence and communication technologies) that will impact your business? Are there any other trends that could create a sense of urgency around the adoption of your product and could lead to hockey stick revenue and user growth?
4. Why you and your team? Why are you the best people in the world to build what you are building? Got a degree from a good college? That’s awesome, but don’t rely on degrees and certificates too much. Think about your story. Many great entrepreneurs have had to overcome some serious personal struggle. We grow when it rains. Did you battle a potentially terminal disease and decided to start a biotech company as a result? Are you coming from a rural village in Africa where kids typically don’t touch a book after the age of 7 and thus want to address K-12 education in emerging markets through technology? Did you get frustrated with real estate transaction experience in Brazil and decide to transform the industry by building a transparent digital real estate platform? Incorporate your story in the verbal presentation and highlight aspects of it in the pitch. The resilience, adaptability, conviction, and persistence that typically come as a result of some traumatic experience are equally, if not more, important than educational and professional background.
Hope this helps. Next time I will talk about the deck structure and emphasize the sections that I think are critical for early stage businesses. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/the-art-and-science-of-early-stage-fundraising-a-fundraising-deck-by-design-efbbe019454e | ['Olga Maslikhova'] | 2020-11-20 16:38:32.439000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Venture Capital', 'Technology', 'Early Stage', 'Fundraising'] |
The Day I Let Go Of Resentment | I married you eleven years ago today. You, in all of your stubborn, loyal, loving, inflexible, supportive, critical, faithful, angry, honest, defensive, kind, overbearing, committed, affectionate, blaming, impossible ways. I had faith that love trumps all and I had not known you to give up on anything, ever. We promised it was for life and I meant it. Eleven years ago I would have collapsed in disbelief if, after what we had already faced together, I had known you had it in you to give up on us.
I still remember the day I let go of resentment towards you, I was in the supermarket buying peanut butter. I ran into Hayley and she asked how I was, I looked at her and said, “Full of resentment, actually. How about you?” So she asked if I wanted to get rid of it then and there and I could not think of a single reason why I wouldn’t do that. That was the day Hayley and I let go of resentment together, right there on the New World stairs. Zero Fucks Given. It’s basically been that way ever since but I doubt you ever noticed.
I wonder how many times you have thought about the Facey post you published about our marriage a few years back, and if it is anywhere near the number of times that I have thought about it. You know the one I mean - it resulted in numerous phone calls, messages and screen shots from our nearest and dearest, checking in on the one day I had hoped would pass in quiet obscurity. Thanks for that. I left my phone ringing and headed straight for the ocean, right around the time that Google Photos notified me of the wedding day highlights it had kindly montaged together in special commemoration. Fuck you, Google.
Man was I grateful for the ocean that day. Sitting out the back on the new surfboard I had been so proud of finding, then suddenly being robbed of the strength to use it. I just couldn’t get your words out of my head:
“Who knows, maybe if we’re both single in a year or two we might give it another go”.
Classic you. No notion of your betrayal.
None.
I just sat there on my board, watching yet more tears fall into the ocean, pierced by the cold realisation that you knew nothing of what it had cost me to fight for our marriage alone, you refusing to acknowledge your anger. Your resentment. Your blame. Realising -after those words fell so casually out of your mouth- just how much you were yet to face, and that somewhere along the way I had grown stronger than you.
God, if you had any idea of the strength I have found since you turned your back on everything we ever fought for. Of the sheer guts it takes to stay right where you are, living in the house that was full of you, working in the hospital that echoed you, caring for the dogs that needed you, pursuing the dreams that were missing you, facing the family and friends too hesitant to ask about you. I’ve fucking done it though and I could not be more proud of that. Of the courage it took to face our past, and my future and come through the other side wholehearted. Of the resolve it took to not give up on the life we had started, to not lose hope for peace, to not lose faith in a God who had my back.
Yep, this day is carved in memory for me, the day of our wedding. As are the days that preceded our divorce. The coffee that went cold after I read your email. The stillness of a half-renovated house while we talked over Skype. The choking silence that amplified your careless words, while somehow robbing me of mine. Your signatures on the affidavits I had to jump through hoops to arrange, while you swore at me over the phone. The apocalyptic heat flooding our bedroom as I answered the phone on the day of your Facebook post, again. I remember that day because I couldn’t surf, and I couldn’t paddle in. I just sat out the back, wondering if the aftermath of divorce ever actually ends.
I wondered if anyone else could ever find the reserves you had to fuel the next-level resentment you were clinging to, and what your peanut butter moment would be. But then you made me laugh by reporting these posts as an act of domestic violence against you and I realised you haven’t had yours yet, which must be so exhausting. I remembered our last conversation together, your laughter in the driveway as I told you about some dumb shit the neighbour’s kid had done. I remembered the way your face dropped as you got in the car and I realised you had no intention of staying in each other’s lives anymore. I remembered the last time we slept together, the last time we kissed, I remembered the last time we ever apologised to each other, and our countless promises to do better.
As fun as it is to wave the “thanks for makin’ me a fighter” flag around, I just couldn’t take myself seriously if I attempted that with you. Not when we both know that I have always been one, and it was certainly not you who made me that way. I came into this world prepared for battle and thank God for it or I would have been absorbed into your dry, humourless family without a fight. Shit, how many times did you complain about how seriously they take themselves, while simultaneously demanding it of me. On this day eleven years ago, you stood up and announced to all of our people that there was no shortage of fire and passion when I was around. On this day here and now I am proud to announce that, despite your best efforts to suffocate it, that will always be the case. Here’s hoping replacement wifey has some fire in her soul too. | https://medium.com/@Mission_In_Life/the-day-i-let-go-of-resentment-f8c04e2bc44d | ['Coffee Loving Kiwi'] | 2020-02-20 16:02:23.901000+00:00 | ['Resentment', 'Divorce', 'Forgiveness', 'Marriage', 'Grief And Loss'] |
Convert DotNet Core Web App to AWS Lambda App in 5 Minutes | Enable Lambda framework
The following steps will enable Lambda package and DotNet lambda tools:-
Add Lambda package to project
dotnet add package Amazon.Lambda.AspNetCoreServer
Install DotNet Lambda tools
dotnet tool install -g Amazon.Lambda.Tools dotnet lambda help
Add Lambda Entry Point
To allow your project to run in Lambda environment, it requires a different entry point. Follow the steps below to create Lambda Entry Point.
Create file LambdaEntryPoint.cs with the following content:-
Create a Lambda tool setting
DotNet Lambda tool uses a special file for setting configuration.
Create file aws-lambda-tools-defaults.json under root folder with the following content:-
Create a serverless template file
If you look into the lambda tool setting JSON file, it refers to serverless.yaml , which is the file used to create the required AWS components using the SAM specification file. This is a simplified version of Cloudformation template that contains APIGateway, Lambda and appropriate Lambda permission.
Create serverless.yaml in the root folder with the following content:-
Handler method signature must correctly refer to the LambdaEntryPoint we create previously
Deploy your application to AWS
Now we have all the setup ready, it is time to deploy.
Create S3 Bucket for deploying your code
DotNet Lambda tool require s3 to store your code temporary to deploy to AWS
aws s3 mb s3://my-testing-lambda-store
Deploy Serverless Lambda App to AWS
Deploy to AWS with the DotNet Lambda CLI command dotnet lambda deploy-serverless {AppName} -sb {yourbucketname} , and wait for the progress to complete. You will now see your Application URL in the output.
dotnet lambda deploy-serverless MyServerlessApp -sb my-testing-lambda-store
Test Your Application
Navigate to the ApiURL shown in the Output of the previous steps. Your application is already online and up running without any infrastructure to manage. | https://medium.com/swlh/convert-dotnet-coreweb-app-to-aws-lambda-app-in-5-minutes-3bf1c70a646a | ['Jazz Tong'] | 2020-10-27 06:20:25.931000+00:00 | ['AWS', 'Dotnet Core', 'Serverless', 'Serverless Migration'] |
Cats are absolutely brutal. | More from rstevens Follow
I make cartoons and t-shirts at www.dieselsweeties.com & @rstevens. Send me coffee beans. | https://rstevens.medium.com/cats-are-absolutely-brutal-ad4905625f42 | [] | 2019-11-07 04:29:46.154000+00:00 | ['Comics', 'Cats', 'Domination', 'Poop'] |
This wasn’t dangerous, but may be the strangest emotional aggression I’ve ever seen from a driver | So, on Tuesday morning this week I was out on a ride. It was already late morning by then. My calendar was a bit meeting-light, and I decided I’d go ride into Hudson County, NJ to meet up with some people IRL. One was a colleague just back from paternity leave, in Jersey City; the other an old colleague, in Hoboken.
My visits were done and I was headed back north to the George Washington Bridge to cross back to New York. I opted for a direct route, which at that point in the ride was on Port Imperial Boulevard in Weehawken.
Traffic was light at that time of day (well after rush-hour). On one segment of the road, I noticed the right-hand lane of the two northbound lanes was coned off, but I didn’t see any active construction or issue that would prevent me from using the asphalt behind the cones, so I did that. It wouldn’t have been possible for the occasional northbound motorist to pass me otherwise, not without veering over the double-yellow line.
Then I see a southbound driver, driving a boxy maybe-late-80s Mercedes sedan with the windows down, in his right-hand lane. I take no great notice of him, since I’m northbound a full 3 lanes of width away from him. But then I hear him giving short blasts on his horn 2 or 3 times, not full on blares but definitely a “hey, look this way” gesture. It’s then that I notice that car’s windows are fully down and that the driver’s left arm is stretching dramatically out the window, the back of his hand facing forward, middle finger extended. The driver was a white man maybe in his late 50s, early 60s. There were no other road users anywhere near us northbound; a few other southbound drivers, but the closest were 100–200 feet ahead or behind. This must have been meant for me.
I can’t imagine what I had done wrong. Was the driver offended that I… existed? This stretch of road was completely open. I hadn’t run a red light or anything like that within line-of sight. One wouldn’t generally run reds on this stretch of road anyway.
I wasn’t wearing a face mask, but I was nowhere near anybody else. In point of fact, there was no plausible reason I might have needed a face mask until I reached the bridge, but that was still 5–6 miles away. I wasn’t in the man’s way, or any other driver’s way.
It was only later that I realized that with one hand out the window and the other tapping the horn, the driver must have been driving no-handed, for a good 5–10 seconds at least. Fantastic. I’m glad this distinguished gentleman takes road safety so seriously! | https://medium.com/@matthew.hiller/this-wasnt-dangerous-but-maybe-the-strangest-emotional-aggression-i-ve-ever-seen-from-a-driver-1d4e09a84d71 | ['Matthew Hiller'] | 2020-09-17 14:59:57.535000+00:00 | ['Road Safety', 'Cycling', 'Jerks', 'Road Rage', 'New Jersey'] |
TARP: A Love Story | I first heard about TARP by rumors whispered across the trading floor and trading chatrooms, “Something spectacular is coming. You will love it.”
I was, like most bankers then, at a low, jilted by my past relationship with LUFM (Largely Unregulated Free Markets). I was looking for a rebound.
TARP wasn’t known as TARP then. It was still unnamed. But the talk was clear. It was a beautiful thing, an acronym that understood our needs.
It emerged from the rumors in September of ‘08, debuting in D.C. as the Emergency Stabilization Act. Autumn in NYC is a wonderful time to fall in love.
Like any banker, I can tell you when I first saw it, first caught a glimpse of my future love. It was on C-SPAN, late in the trading day. I was smitten immediately.
Why not? It was everything a banker could want. It was simple and rich. It understood OUR needs. $700 billion unconstrained dollars. We all swooned.
Those early days, like the start of any relationship, were rocky. TARP stumbled at first, failures that confused everyone.
It came for a vote on Sept 29th. Trading floors stood silent and watched C-SPAN. Everyone gave it the respect it deserved.
The vote started out badly, but we were confident. It would pass, we were told. It had to pass. It needed to pass. This was our new love after all.
As the vote unfolded, we wilted. It hadn’t passed. The trading floor erupted in disbelief. No, no, no. Not our TARP!
We ran into conference rooms to look for assurance from distant knowing voices in D.C. Our lobbyists were clear: Don’t worry.
(Binghamton, New York)
This is too important not to pass. We are too important for it to not pass. Don’t worry.
That early stumble should have been concerning. Maybe it wasn’t everything? Maybe TARP had a darker side. Or, maybe it was corrupt?
No. We all admired how it picked itself up and moved forward from defeat. It only bonded us tighter. It wasn’t just beautiful. It was also ours.
TARP passed a week later and was signed into law with the plebeian name of Public Law 110–343. We all danced for joy.
It was now a marriage. TARP and Wall Street. And it proved, like any good marriage, to be a union of equals.
Both contributed. Both helped each other. Both supported each other in times of weakness. Both gave each other meaning. | https://medium.com/the-billfold/tarp-a-love-story-in-43-tweets-244e6fb9126c | ['Chris Arnade'] | 2016-06-22 03:14:04.037000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Our Classless Society', 'Love', 'Financial Crisis', 'Banking'] |
Independence Of Two Events | In this post, we introduce and develop the concept of independence between events. The general idea is the following:
If I tell you that a certain event A has occurred, this will generally change the probability of some other event B. Probabilities will have to be replaced by conditional probabilities. But if the conditional probability turns out to be the same as the unconditional probability, then the occurrence of event A does not carry any useful information on whether event B will occur. In such a case, we say that events A and B are independent. We will develop some intuition about the meaning of independence of two events and introduce an extension, the concept of conditional independence.
Let us start with a first attempt at the definition. We have an event, B, that has a certain probability of occurring. We are then told that event A occurred, but suppose that this knowledge does not affect our beliefs about B in the sense that the conditional probability remains the same as the original unconditional probability. Thus, the occurrence of A provides no new information about B. In such a case, we may say that event B is independent from event A.
P(B|A) = P(B)
If this is indeed the case, notice that the probability that both A and B occur, which is always equal by the multiplication rule to the probability of A times the conditional probability of B given A.
P(A∩B) = P(A).P(B|A)
So, this is a relation that’s always true. But if we also have this additional condition “occurrence of A provides no new information about B” then this simplifies to the probability of A times the probability of B.
P(A∩B) = P(A).P(B|A) = P(A).P(B)
So, we can find the probability of both events happening by just multiplying their individual probabilities. It turns out that this relation is a cleaner way of defining formally the notion of independence. So, we will say that two events, A and B, are independent if this relation holds.
P(A∩B) = P(A).P(B)
Why do we use this definition rather than the original one? This formal definition has several advantages. First, it is consistent with the earlier definition. A more important reason is that this formal definition is symmetric with respect to the roles of A and B. So instead of saying that B is independent from A, based on this definition we can now say that events A and B are independent of each other. And in addition, since this definition is symmetric and since it implies this condition, it must also imply the symmetrical relation. Namely, that the conditional probability of A given B is the same as the unconditional probability of A.
P(A|B) = P(A)
Finally, on the technical side, conditional probabilities are only defined when the conditioning event has non-zero probability. So, this original definition P(B|A) = P(B) would only make sense in those cases where the probability of the event A would be non-zero. In contrast, this new definition P(A∩B)=P(A).P(B) makes sense even when we’re dealing with zero probability events. So, this definition is indeed more general, and this also makes it more elegant.
Let us now build some understanding of what independence really is. Suppose that we have two events, A and B, both of which have positive probability. And furthermore, these two events are disjoint. They do not have any common elements. Are these two events independent?
Let us check the definition. The probability that both A and B occur is zero because the two events are disjoint.
P(A∩B) = 0
They cannot happen together. On the other hand, the probability of A times the probability of B is positive, since each one of the two terms is positive.
P(A).P(B) > 0
And therefore, these two expressions are different from each other, therefore this equality P(A∩B) = P(A).P(B) that’s required by the definition of independence does not hold. The conclusion is that these two events are not independent.
In fact, intuitively, these two events are as dependent as Siamese twins. If you know that A occurred, then you are sure that B did not occur. So the occurrence of A tells you a lot about the occurrence or non-occurrence of B. So we see that being independent is something completely different from being disjoint. Independence is a relation about information. It is important to always keep in mind the intuitive meaning of independence. Two events are independent if the occurrence of one event does not change our beliefs about the other. It does not affect the probability that the other event also occurs.
When do we have independence in the real world?
The typical case is when the occurrence or non-occurrence of each of the two events A and B is determined by two physically distinct and non-interacting processes. For example, whether my coin results in heads and whether it will be snowing on New Year’s Day are two events that should be modeled as independent. But I should also say that there are some cases where independence is less obvious and where it happens through a numerical accident. | https://medium.com/@ali-mahzoon-68/independence-of-two-events-df4f35fa28fd | ['Ali Mahzoon'] | 2021-07-06 16:23:28.332000+00:00 | ['Probability', 'Independence', 'Data Science', 'Science'] |
Nullable Columns in a Database | Databases let us store information in an organized structure. Typically in the form of tables with rows and columns. Below is an example table with 3 rows and 5 columns that contains user information.
+---------+------------+-------------+-----------+---------------+
| User Id | First Name | Middle Name | Last Name | Date of Birth |
+---------+------------+-------------+-----------+---------------+
| 1 | Carice | van | Houten | 05-09-1938 |
| 2 | Gulfaraz | | Rahman | 23-03-1990 |
| 3 | Elon | Reeve | Musk | 12-10-1979 |
+---------+------------+-------------+-----------+---------------+
Structure is achieved in the form of a table with rows and columns as the building blocks. Organization is achieved by adhering to a consistent pattern where each row holds one entry from each column and each column holds a value of a specific data type. The most common data types are — string, number and boolean. In the example table, column User Id is of type number; columns First Name, Middle Name and Last Name is of type string and column Date of Birth is of type date.
What are nullable columns?
Databases also let us store a lack of information in an organized structure. Columns accept empty or missing values instead of their assigned data type. The empty value in row 2 of the example table is possible because the Middle Name column accepts null values.
An empty room to illustrate the lack of something.
Need for NULL
When building a database, we try our best to obtain complete information but is not always possible. Regardless of the application, the following instances warrant the use of null values,
To represent missing information that needs to be collected in the future. To represent optional information that does not need to be collected. To represent invalid information that should be stored elsewhere or differently.
The meaning of null can also be designated based on the application. Such usage should be validated and documented as it deviates from the standard.
Consequences of NULL
If used for any reason, the use of null values has repercussions that need to be addressed to avoid undesirable consequences. 3-valued logic is a well-documented consequence which I will summarize as — it’s hard to follow. It’s hard to follow for both the developer and the user.
Consequences for the Developer
Consider the code snippet which reads from the example table,
let x = getMiddleNameByUserId(3) # x is assigned 'Reeve'
let y = getMiddleNameByUserId(2) # y is assigned null console.log(x.toLowerCase()) # prints 'reeve'
console.log(y.toLowerCase()) # throws error if (x) {
console.log(x.toLowerCase()) # prints 'reeve'
}
if (y) {
console.log(y.toLowerCase()) # does not throw error
}
An additional if-condition is needed to avoid the error when the function getMiddleNameByUserId can return a null. This additional check needs to be made anywhere Middle Name is used. Such (over)loads propagate to other layers of the application. When the use of nullable columns goes unchecked, then the code quickly becomes cluttered with easily avoidable conditionals.
Which increases the number of execution paths that need to be maintained while also making the code unreadable.
Consequences for the User
The manner by which null values are presented to the user changes the perceived utility of the application. When presenting the data from the example table,
If the interface chooses to hide properties with null values, the perception is that the application does not support Middle Names. If the interface chooses to show properties with null values, the perception is that the application does not contain all the data it claims to offer.
Find a Balance
At the design phase, identify properties that need to support null as a value. Wherever possible, prefer to use a default value instead of a null. Where null is allowed, define clearly the meaning of null in that context.
The use of null is warranted when the information presented continues to make sense with and without the nullable properties.
In the example table, the Middle Name column appropriately supports null values as not everyone is given a middle name. It does not make sense if any other columns are stored in nullable columns as usually everyone is given a first name, last name and have a date of birth. Unjustifiable use of nullable columns like the Date of Birth column makes features like birthday notification more complex than they need to be.
Make an effort to understand what lack of information means in your application.
I recommend this SO answer as a starting point on the standard practice.
The use of NULL has an impact on SQL performance which can be leveraged. | https://medium.com/just-ai/nullable-columns-in-a-database-789040c80b9 | ['Gulfaraz Rahman'] | 2021-03-09 23:40:14.563000+00:00 | ['Sql', 'Best Practices', 'Programming', 'Code', 'Database'] |
Episode 7 || RWBY ~ Vol 8 EP. 7 TBA On Rooster Teeth’s | Episode 7 || RWBY ~ Vol 8 EP. 7 TBA On Rooster Teeth’s
RWBY
The story takes place in the world of Remnant, which is filled with supernatural forces and shadowy creatures known as the "Creatures of Grimm." Prior to the events of the series, mankind waged a battle of survival against the Grimm before discovering the power of a mysterious element called Dust, which allowed them to fight back against the monsters. In the present day, Dust is used to power magical abilities and weapons. Those who use these abilities to battle the Grimm are known as Huntsmen or Huntresses.The series focuses on four girls, each with her own unique weapon and powers. Together, they form team RWBY at Beacon Academy in the city of Vale, where they are trained to become Huntresses alongside team CRDL (pronounced "cardinal"), team JNPR (pronounced "juniper"), team SSSN (pronounced "sun") and team CFVY (pronounced "coffee").
Title : RWBY
Episode Title : TBA
Number of Seasons : 8
Number of Episodes : 7
Genres : Action , Adventure , Animation , Anime , Fantasy
Networks : Rooster Teeth
Status: Returning Series
Quality: HD
The Great Christmas Light Fight : Season 8 , Episode 1 || FULL EPISODES | On Series The Great Christmas Light Fight Season 8 Ep 1 Episoder : features the hero in action scenes that display and explore exotic locations. The subgenres of adventure films include swashbuckler film, disaster films, and historical dramas-which is similar to the epic film genre. Main plot components include quests for lost continents, a jungle or desert settings, characters going on a treasure hunts and heroic journeys in to the unknown. Adventure films are mostly occur a period background and may include adapted stories of historical or fictional adventure heroes within the historical context. Kings, battles, rebellion or piracy are generally observed in adventure films. Adventure films may also be combined with other movie genres such as for example, science fiction, fantasy and sometimes war films.The Great Christmas Light Fight Season 8 French : The coverage of sports as a television program, on radio and other broadcasting media. It usually involves a number of sports commentators describing the events because they happen, to create “colour commentary.”
❏ TELEVISION ❏
(TV), in some cases abbreviated to tele or television, is a media transmission medium utilized for sending moving pictures in monochrome (high contrast), or in shading, and in a few measurements and sound. The term can allude to a TV, a TV program, or the vehicle of TV transmission. TV is a mass mode for promoting, amusement, news, and sports.
TV opened up in unrefined exploratory structures in the last part of the 88s, however it would at present be quite a while before the new innovation would be promoted to customers. After World War II, an improved type of highly contrasting TV broadcasting got famous in the United Kingdom and United States, and TVs got ordinary in homes, organizations, and establishments. During the 88s, TV was the essential mechanism for affecting public opinion.[8] during the 88s, shading broadcasting was presented in the US and most other created nations. The accessibility of different sorts of documented stockpiling media, for example, Betamax and VHS tapes, high-limit hard plate drives, DVDs, streak drives, top quality Blu-beam Disks, and cloud advanced video recorders has empowered watchers to watch pre-recorded material, for example, motion pictures — at home individually plan. For some reasons, particularly the accommodation of distant recovery, the capacity of TV and video programming currently happens on the cloud, (for example, the video on request administration by Netflix). Toward the finish of the main decade of the 2020s, advanced TV transmissions incredibly expanded in ubiquity. Another improvement was the move from standard-definition TV (SDTV) (81i, with 202081 intertwined lines of goal and 120202020) to top quality TV (HDTV), which gives a goal that is generously higher. HDTV might be communicated in different arrangements: 120208881, 120208881 and 8. Since 2020, with the creation of brilliant TV, Internet TV has expanded the accessibility of TV projects and films by means of the Internet through real time video administrations, for example, Netflix, ABC Video, iPlayer and ABC.
In 881, 81% of the world’s family units possessed a TV set.[8] The substitution of early cumbersome, high-voltage cathode beam tube (CRT) screen shows with smaller, vitality effective, level board elective advancements, for example, LCDs (both fluorescent-illuminated and LED), OLED showcases, and plasma shows was an equipment transformation that started with PC screens in the last part of the 888s. Most TV sets sold during the 2020s were level board, primarily LEDs. Significant makers reported the stopping of CRT, DLP, plasma, and even fluorescent-illuminated LCDs by the mid-2020s.[8][8] sooner rather than later, LEDs are required to be step by step supplanted by OLEDs.[8] Also, significant makers have declared that they will progressively create shrewd TVs during the 2020s.[8][8][8] Smart TVs with incorporated Internet and Web 8.8 capacities turned into the prevailing type of TV by the late 2020s.[1]
TV signals were at first circulated distinctly as eartABC und TV utilizing powerful radio-recurrence transmitters to communicate the sign to singular TV inputs. Then again TV signals are appropriated by coaxial link or optical fiber, satellite frameworks and, since the 2020s by means of the Internet. Until the mid 2020s, these were sent as simple signs, yet a progress to advanced TV is relied upon to be finished worldwide by the last part of the 2020s. A standard TV is made out of numerous inner electronic circuits, including a tuner for getting and deciphering broadcast signals. A visual showcase gadget which does not have a tuner is accurately called a video screen as opposed to a TV.
❏ OVERVIEW ❏
Additionally alluded to as assortment expressions or assortment amusement, this is a diversion comprised of an assortment of acts (thus the name), particularly melodic exhibitions and sketch satire, and typically presented by a compère (emcee) or host. Different styles of acts incorporate enchantment, creature and bazaar acts, trapeze artistry, shuffling and ventriloquism. Theatrical presentations were a staple of anglophone TV from its begin the 88s, and endured into the 88s. In a few components of the world, assortment TV stays famous and broad.
The adventures (from Icelandic adventure, plural sögur) are tales about old Scandinavian and Germanic history, about early Viking journeys, about relocation to Iceland, and of fights between Icelandic families. They were written in the Old Norse language, for the most part in Iceland. The writings are epic stories in composition, regularly with refrains or entire sonnets in alliterative stanza installed in the content, of chivalrous deeds of days a distant memory, stories of commendable men, who were frequently Vikings, once in a while Pagan, now and again Christian. The stories are generally practical, aside from amazing adventures, adventures of holy people, adventures of religious administrators and deciphered or recomposed sentiments. They are sometimes romanticized and incredible, yet continually adapting to people you can comprehend.
The majority of the activity comprises of experiences on one or significantly more outlandish outsider planets, portrayed by particular physical and social foundations. Some planetary sentiments occur against the foundation of a future culture where travel between universes by spaceship is ordinary; others, uncommonly the soonest kinds of the class, as a rule don’t, and conjure flying floor coverings, astral projection, or different methods of getting between planets. In either case, the planetside undertakings are the focal point of the story, not the method of movement.
Identifies with the pre-advanced, social time of 8888–2020, including mid-century Modernism, the “Nuclear Age”, the “Space Age”, Communism and neurosis in america alongside Soviet styling, underground film, Googie engineering, space and the Sputnik, moon landing, hero funnies, craftsmanship and radioactivity, the ascent of the US military/mechanical complex and the drop out of Chernobyl. Socialist simple atompunk can be an extreme lost world. The Fallout arrangement of PC games is a fabulous case of atompunk. | https://medium.com/@eric-ybrown956/episode-7-rwby-vol-8-ep-7-tba-on-rooster-teeths-519634dc8666 | ['Eric Ybrown'] | 2020-12-19 09:29:03.626000+00:00 | ['Anime'] |
The Butterfly That Caught My Eye | The Butterfly That Caught My Eye
A Narrative Poem
My mom's voice slaps my ear
in giggles. Over the phone,
it's not captured as well as it
is in person.
I spot a thing of beauty
circling around my head.
It lands and rests.
It lands and rests.
I take this opportunity to
snap its 3D’d flirtations.
I tell my mom of its importance —
the necessity of butterflied
wings as a still-life.
She shushes herself —
quickly, I lean over
nature’s gift and collect a
small token of art for myself.
We walk in peace.
We walk in peace.
Jernee is nosy but keeps
her distance.
We've accomplished a small feat
and now . . .
I am happy. | https://medium.com/a-cornered-gurl/the-butterfly-that-caught-my-eye-457b87f66ff5 | ['Tre L. Loadholt'] | 2020-09-21 11:28:09.750000+00:00 | ['Nature', 'Poetry', 'Music', 'A Cornered Gurl', 'Photography'] |
Kumpulan Ucapan Peringatan Natal dan Tahun Baru untuk Mereka yang Kamu Sayang | 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/g%C3%B6%C3%B6p-kampus/kumpulan-ucapan-peringatan-natal-dan-tahun-baru-untuk-mereka-yang-kamu-sayang-8fec96ebef00 | ['Gööp Kampus'] | 2020-12-24 08:10:07.732000+00:00 | ['Tahun Baru', 'Indonesia', 'Natal', 'Christmas', 'Ucapan'] |
5 Canine Heroes Who Distinguished Themselves on the Frontlines | 5 Canine Heroes Who Distinguished Themselves on the Frontlines
These pups were more than just mascots
Airedale terriers trained by Lt Col Edwin Hautenville Richardson for service in World War I (Getty Images, fair use)
“Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war.” — Mark Antony in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
As far back as ancient Rome and beyond, man’s best friend has accompanied him onto the battlefield. Here are the stories of five of the most celebrated warrior dogs of the 20th century.
Sergeant Stubby — World War I, United States Army
Sergeant Stubby, a hero of World War I (public domain)
Sergeant Stubby (1916–1926) was a stray dog of uncertain parentage, possibly part Boston Terrier. In July of 1917, members of the 102nd Infantry Regiment (United States) found him wandering the campus of Yale University where they were training. Stubby was friendly with all the soldiers, but one in particular, Corporal James Robert Conroy (1892–1987) took a special liking to him and took responsibility for his care.
Conroy hid Stubby beneath his overcoat when he boarded a troopship bound for France. Luckily, the soldiers had taught Stubby to salute, so when Conroy’s commanding officer discovered the stowaway, Stubby showed him proper respect. This persuaded the officer to let Stubby stay with the men.
General John Pershing presents Stubby with a gold medal from the Humane Education Society in 1921 (public domain)
Stubby served with the 102nd for eighteen months in the battlefield trenches of France. He participated in four offensives and seventeen battles. His first taste of combat was on February 5, 1918, at Chemin des Dames, where his regiment was under constant fire for more than a month. Stubby was wounded in the foreleg by a German hand grenade and convalesced with the rear guard.
When Stubby recovered from his wounds, he returned to the trenches. The army issued him a specially designed gas mask to protect him from mustard gas attacks. But Stubby was more than just a mascot and morale booster. He located wounded soldiers in no man’s land and used his superior canine hearing ability to detect incoming missiles, barking to warn his fellow soldiers.
Sgt. Stubby’s brick at the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri (image via wikipedia.org)
Stubby was once again wounded by an exploding grenade, this time in the chest and leg. He received sole credit for capturing a German spy in the Argonne, earning him a promotion to the rank of Sergeant. For his injuries, Stubby was awarded two wound stripes (a precursor to the Purple Heart). He was the most decorated dog of World War I. At the end of the war, Conroy smuggled Stubby home again.
Promotional graphic for the animated film “Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero.” (fair use)
Sergeant Stubby would go on to meet three U.S. presidents, lead many military parades, appear on the vaudeville stage, and be adopted as the Georgetown Hoyas’ team mascot.
After he died in 1926, the New York Times printed a half-page obituary recounting his life and accomplishments.
Robert Conroy donated Stubby’s preserved remains to the Smithsonian Institution in 1956. In May 2018, Conroy’s descendants donated a life-size bronze statue called “Stubby Salutes” to Veterans Memorial Park in Middletown, Connecticut.
Stubby’s life has been the subject of at least four books and a 2018 animated film.
Rags — World War I, United States Army
Undated photo of Rags (public domain)
Rags (1916–1936) was a mixed breed terrier found on the streets of Paris, France, by Private James Donovan, an A.E.F. signal corps specialist serving with the U.S. 1st Infantry Division. Donovan said he named him Rags because he looked like a pile of rags lying in the gutter when he first saw him.
Donovan had been marching in the Bastille Day parade and was late getting back to his unit. To avoid being considered Absent Without Leave, Donovan told the military police that Rags was the 1st Division’s mascot and that he was part of a search party to retrieve the “missing” dog.
A view of the Montmartre district of Paris where Donovan found Rags, c. 1910 (public domain)
Donovan’s job was to repair telephone lines damaged by shelling. Until the lines were fixed, the army usually assigned men to carry messages, but they were often killed or wounded in the process. Donovan trained Rags to carry written messages attached to his collar, eliminating the need for human runners. The task was safer for Rags because he could more easily get around shell holes and through barbed wire.
In July of 1918, Donovan and Rags were with an infantry unit of forty-two men surrounded by Germans. Rags carried a message that led to the group’s rescue. In another incident on October 2, 1918, Rags carried a message from the 1st Battalion of the 26th Infantry Regiment to the 7th Field Artillery that led to securing the Very-Epinonville road, saving many soldiers’ lives.
Cover of a picture book about Rags by Margot Theis Raven (fair use)
On October 9, 1918, Rags successfully delivered a critical message, despite being partially blinded by shrapnel and inhaling mustard gas when his gas mask slipped off. His friend Donovan was seriously injured in the same attack.
Although Rags quickly recovered, Donovan’s condition worsened and he was sent back to the United States for treatment. Members of the 1st Infantry smuggled Rags out of France so that he could stay with his friend. Donovan was treated at the military hospital at Fort Sheridan in Chicago. Sadly, he never recovered from his wounds and died there early in 1919.
1930s newspaper clipping showing Rags and Maj. Raymond W. Hardenbergh (public domain)
Major Raymond W. Hardenbergh and his family adopted Rags in 1920. He accompanied the Major on his various postings and was reunited with the 1st Division on Governors Island in New York harbour in 1924.
Rags became a celebrity in New York. Numerous newspapers and magazines carried his story and at least two books were written about him. He marched down Broadway with the 1st Infantry in a parade commemorating the 10th anniversary of World War I.
Rags spent the rest of his life with the Hardenberg family at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, NY. He is buried in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Jack — World War I, British Army
Lt. Colonel Richardson at the British War Dog School at Shoeburyness in 1940 (public domain)
When World War I broke out in 1914, the British Army had only one dog in service, an Airdale Terrier trained by Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Hautenville Richardson as a sentry. Richardson does not mention the dog’s name in his book British War Dogs: Their Training and Psychology, but he does say that the Airedale gave its life when a shell exploded along the Aisne River in France.
Richardson convinced the British Army of the value of using dogs to carry messages because of their stamina, agility, speed, and intelligence. He established the British War Dog School in Shoeburyness, Essex, England, and began training dogs for use in combat.
Richardson found that the best dogs under fire were Airedale Terriers and terrier mixes. As the war progressed, Richardson’s program's success led to high demand for military dogs. The British government appealed to the public to donate their family pets and many responded. Soon there were thousands of dogs attached to the British Army. They acted as sentries, messengers, and the Red Cross sometimes used them to transport medical supplies and find wounded soldiers.
“I’ve given my husband and my sons, and now that he too is required, I give my dog.” — letter from an Englishwoman volunteering her dog for active duty in World War I
Among the dogs Richardson trained was a dog named Jack, killed in the line of duty in 1918. In a BBC interview, Alastair Petrie, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Territorial Army told Jack’s story. He said that Jack’s battalion was totally cut off, surrounded by shell-holes and barbed wire. They sent Jack to summon reinforcements. “No man could get through the environment, and their one chance was Jack,” Petrie said.
A dog handler of the Royal Engineers reads the message that has just been brought to him by his messenger dog. The dog has just swum across a canal to deliver the message, near Nieppe Wood, 1918. (Image via nationalgeographic.co.uk)
“A piece of shrapnel smashed his jaw, but he carried on, and another shell tore open his coat right down his back, and he kept on going. Finally, his forepaw was shattered, but he dragged his body for the last three kilometres. There was the glaze of death in his eyes when he reached headquarters, but he’d done his work — he’d saved his battalion.” (NOTE: I was unable to substantiate the details of Petrie’s story, but it was typical of the heroics performed by the war dogs of World War I.)
It is estimated that 20,000 dogs had served in the British Army by the end of World War I. Richardson went on to train dogs for service in World War II.
Chips-World War II, United States Army
German shepherd mix Chips, seen at left getting a treat during WWII, was honoured with a medal in a London ceremony attended by John Wren, right, whose family donated their dog to military service from 1942 to 1945. (Image via insideedition.com)
Chips (1940–1946) was a German Shepherd mix whose owner John Wren donated him for military service during World War II. Chips was sent to the War Dog Training Center in Front Royal, Virginia, in 1942 for training as a sentry dog.
The army assigned Chips to the 3rd Infantry Division in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany.
In 1943, Chips and his handler Pvt. John P. Rowell were pinned down on the beach by an Italian machine-gun team during the invasion of Sicily. Chips jumped into the pillbox and attacked the gunners who then surrendered to US troops. Despite sustaining a scalp wound and powder burns, he helped take ten Italians prisoner later that day.
Chips meets with General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Chips received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart. Unfortunately, Army policy prevented the official commendation of animals, and his awards were later revoked. His unit unofficially awarded him a theatre ribbon with an arrowhead for an assault landing, and battle stars for his eight campaigns.
Chips was discharged in 1945 and was reunited with the Wren family. Sadly, he died seven months later due to complications from his war wounds. Chips was posthumously awarded the PDSA Dickin Medal in 2018 and the Animals in War & Peace Medal of Bravery in 2019.
Sergeant Gander — World War II, Canadian Army
Gander with an unidentified soldier in Canada (Image via cdnhistorybits.wordpress.com)
Perhaps one of the most moving stories of canine heroism is that of Gander, a 130-pound New Foundland who had originally been a family pet named Pal. When Pal accidentally scratched a child’s face, his owners, the Hayden family, were afraid he would have to be put down, so they gave him to soldiers at nearby CFB Gander.
The soldiers renamed him Gander and he became the mascot of The Royal Rifles of Canada who “promoted” him to sergeant. When they shipped out to defend Hong Kong from the Japanese in October of 1941, he accompanied them. According to Gander’s handler Rifleman Fred Kelly, Gander liked to beat the heat with frequent cold showers and was also fond of beer.
Gander en route to Hong Kong with Infantrymen of “C” Company, Royal Rifles of Canada, October 27, 1941 (Image via cdnhistorybits.wordpress.com)
The Battle of Hong Kong began on December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Gander proved to be a ferocious defender of the men in his unit. Whenever a Japanese soldier would get near, he would attack him and nip at his heels. Since most of the battles occurred at night, Gander’s black colouring made him hard for the enemy to see clearly.
The Japanese later questioned Canadian prisoners of war about the “black beast.” Apparently, they were so impressed by Gander’s tactics, they wondered if the Canadians had been breeding ferocious animals for use in warfare.
Gander’s true moment of glory came in the wee hours of the morning of December 19th at the Battle of Lye Mun. An enemy hand grenade landed among a group of seven wounded Canadian soldiers that Gander was guarding. Without hesitation, Gander picked up the grenade in his mouth and raced back toward the Japanese. In saving those men’s lives, he gave up his own when the grenade exploded.
Video via YouTube
The Battle of Hong Kong ended on Christmas Day with the victory going to the Japanese. In addition to Gander, Canada lost 290 men. All 1,685 surviving soldiers were taken as prisoners of war (POWs).
On October 27, 2000, the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animal posthumously awarded Gander the Dicken Medal for Gallantry. His former handler Fred Kelly accepted the honour with a New Foundland dog at his side.
Inspiring stories of war dogs are not just a thing of the past. In 2018 a dog named Kuga and in 2020 a dog named Kuno were awarded Dicken Medals for their service in Afghanistan. | https://medium.com/history-of-yesterday/5-canine-heroes-who-distinguished-themselves-on-the-frontlines-6ead9297fc2c | ['Denise Shelton'] | 2020-10-26 12:02:31.504000+00:00 | ['World War I', 'World War II', 'Dogs', 'History', 'Heroes'] |
11 Lessons from Think Again by Adam Grant | Book Lessons
11 Lessons from Think Again by Adam Grant
What I learnt about rethinking and relearning from Adam Grant’s new book . avnishanand May 30·10 min read
Source : Google and Amazon
I recently read Adam Grant’s new book Think Again and found it to be very powerful. I also discovered that lots of others also shared the same view. Adam’s first book Give and Take has been one of the most influential books in my life. I have a feeling that Think Again will surpass it.
Lots of people are reading this book and will benefit from it. But I know that many people don’t read books and will miss out on all the amazing lessons from this book. So I am writing this post for them. This is not a book summary.
This is just a list of the 11 most important lessons from this book. One from each chapter. So it’s not comprehensive and there’s good stuff which won’t get covered here. That’s how good the book is. I hope you find this post useful and end up reading the book.
The book is about unlearning and relearning. It’s much harder than regular learning. But doing so can have a dramatic impact on our lives. Let’s find out how.
Lesson 1 — The most important lesson. Think like a scientist.
We generally tend to operate with the mindset of a politician, preacher or prosecutor when it comes to our beliefs. Instead, Grant says, we should operate like a scientist.
A scientist never lets her ideas become her ideologies. Her mindset is that — there is a good chance that my ideas and arguments are all wrong and let me seek better information which will prove me wrong. Being proven wrong is a sign of progress for them. It means they now know better. They are always asking questions. They aren’t looking for ways or selective evidence to prove themselves right.
A scientist is always in a rethinking loop which enables discovery of new knowledge. It takes great humility and insatiable curiosity to live a rethinking life. A scientist is motivated to seek the truth eventually. They are happy to be proven wrong multiple times in the short term so that they can be right in the end.
There’s a great line which I loved.
If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom
Lesson 2 — Develop Confident Humility
In this chapter Grant shares an example of his own rethinking. He thought people are always trying to get the right balance of confidence and humility. Then he found out that confidence and humility are not the opposite sides of a see-saw. They can go hand in hand. The sweet spot where we can have both confidence and humility is called Confident Humility.
Humility isn’t about lack of self-confidence. It’s about being grounded. Knowing that we are both flawed and fallible. Never losing sight of this reality. Confidence is about self belief.
When we have Confident Humility, we have the faith and belief that we will overcome everything and achieve our goals while still realizing that our current knowledge and solutions might be insufficient. As a result, we keep re-assessing ourselves and keep striving for new information and tools, without our confidence being shaken in the process.
Another line which I really liked.
The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning Kruger club.
As per the Dunning- Kruger effect, we are more likely to show overconfidence when we are actually lacking in confidence. Or as the ancients used to say — little knowledge is dangerous.
Lesson 3 — Detaching Opinion from Identity
This chapter is about how we become attached to certain ideas and how we deal with finding out that they are wrong.
The key takeaway is that we should avoid becoming too attached to our ideas and our beliefs. We shouldn’t let it become part of our identity. Stay a little detached. That way, when we find out that they are wrong, it’s easy for us to rethink and let go of old ideas.
When we let our ideas become part of our identity, we become hostile to the thought of being wrong. Our ego steps in and tries to counter all the evidence that points to a rethink.
Our identity shouldn’t be based on our ideas and our beliefs. Instead, it should be based on what we value. That calibration ensures we handle being wrong in a positive way.
Lesson 4 — Argue about HOW and not WHY
This chapter is about rethinking in the context of arguments and disagreements. How the principles of rethinking can be applied to ensure more constructive conversations.
Disagreeableness and conflict are not bad , per se. But it’s damaging when emotions get involved.
Adam Grant recommends looking at the conversation from a HOW lens and not a WHY one. WHY conversations often get emotional and ego led, and people become dismissive of the others . Logic and evidence are completely ignored. But getting into HOW changes the frame.
Once you start discussing HOW, people start noticing the gaps in their knowledge and the flaw in their conclusions and become less argumentative. They become more amenable to explore other choices and the disagreement turns into constructive conversation. This holds for all parties involved. Including yourself.
Honorable mention — Building a challenge network of Givers
Lesson 5 — How to win debates and negotiate well
The next set of chapters are about influencing others to rethink. This first one is about debates and negotiations.
Borrowing from the toolkit of a world champion debater and great negotiator, Grant distills the best practises. In case of a debate, they help the audience rethink and judge fairly. In negotiations, they led to better, more collaborative outcomes.
Usually, we try to attack the weakest argument of our opponent. Instead, it’s a better idea to acknowledge their best argument. This helps in 2 ways. One, it shows that you are a scientist who’s willing to look at new information.Which signals that your motives are right and your aren’t biased and closed minded. Secondly, by opening up your mind, you encourage them to do the same.
Focus on fewer but stronger points. Too many arguments, including some not so strong ones, dilute the merit of your strongest points . The opponent can easily refute your weakest point and make your overall argument look bad.
Ask questions. Instead of going on the offensive and attacking the opponent's’ arguments, skilled negotiators operate in a more nuanced manner. They express curiosity by asking questions like “What evidence will change your mind ?. Such questions help in opening up the minds of both teams and they are more likely to seek new information and discover a solution which works for both teams. Questions also allow in considering new scenarios which could open new win-win possibilities.
Lesson 6 — Breaking Stereotypes and Prejudices
Human beings seek belonging and status. Belonging to a group helps them achieve both. But it also means they start identifying with the stereotypes associated with the group. These stereotypes and prejudices are very hard to break down. Even for those people, who deep down, believe that the beliefs are false. They don’t have strong conviction but they will still defend those beliefs rabidly in public as they form part of the group’s identity. This gets reinforced as you spend more time with the group.
Adam Grant tried 3 hypotheses and one of them was somewhat effective. But even for that one, he wasn’t sure it would work outside the experimental lab in the real world.
The meta-analysis of over 500 studies on the subject show that the only thing which works is close face-to-face contact with people of opposing groups.
That’s the only way to see that the stereotypes often have very weak foundations. They have continued for so long because no one questioned them. The close contact shows you that often you might have more similarities with people of other groups and more differences with people of your group. You realise that your prejudice was baseless. This isn’t going to solve racism or religious conflicts or help in making large groups rethink their stereotypes. But can work with a small set of individuals.
Lesson 7 — Changing mindsets through Motivational Interviewing
The example in the book is of a mother who refuses to vaccinate her newborn. Such mindsets are hard to break. Logical arguments are definitely not the solution here, even if they are scientifically right.
The underlying principle here is a human being’s primal need for autonomy. We don’t like to be told what to do, even when what’s being told is clearly the better choice. Based on this understanding, a couple of psychologists developed the practise of Motivational Interviewing. The concept is simple.
We can’t motivate people to change. We have a better chance helping them find their own motivation to change. Motivational Interviewing helps in doing that.
It involves the 3 key techniques.
· Asking open ended questions
· Engage in reflective listening
· Affirming the person’s ability and desire to change
There are some examples in the book and many on the internet to illustrate the techniques. Essentially, instead of giving recommendations , the interviewer says things like — “ Here are a few things that have worked for me. Do you think they might work for you?
There is robust data that shows Motivational Interviewing is highly effective. But you can’t just start practising it after reading a book. It requires proper training.
The best part is that it comes with an in-built mechanism which ensures it can only be used for good. It works only when you are genuinely interested in the person’s well being. Not when you want to manipulate. People can sense that and then it doesn’t work.
Lesson 8 — Dealing with Polarised Mindsets
The next 3 lessons are about collective rethinking in groups. Starting with polarisation.
We live in a divided world. Across a range of complicated issues. Presenting the opinion of the other side makes matters worse. You dig your heels in and become more entrenched in your beliefs. There is no scope of rethinking.
The root of the problem is that people operate with binary mindsets. Everything is black or white. Presenting the two extreme views increases polarisation. The solution lies in breaking this oversimplified extreme view by introducing complexity and nuance.
Polarization experiments have shown that exposing people to a study which presents the debate as a complex matter with a number of viewpoints and multiple shades of grey made them rethink their views on other equally polarizing topics. Essentially, it broke their binary mindset and made them question their own simplified understanding of such complex issues. This humble realization kicks off a rethinking loop in which they started doubting their current knowledge of the matter and became serious scientists who wanted to understand the issues in more detail.
This understanding also provides a good filter to weed out media outlets which are intent on increasing polarization. Any argument which is over simplified and presents a binary view is not to be trusted.
Lesson 9 — Rethinking for Kids
There are lots of stories of great educators who have made education fun by instilling a curious and scientific mindset. I am going with something which I found very simple and yet extremely powerful.
The practise of doing multiple drafts instead of just one. Especially in creative projects. The general view is that making students re-do something is discouraging. It implies a poor effort. But that’s just poor communication.
Great educators like Ron Gardner have instilled a rethinking mindset by getting their students, including those in kindergarten, to do multiple drafts and different versions of the same creative task. Like making the drawing of a house.
They have taught them to celebrate going back to the drawing board. More drafts mean more rethinking, reworking, polishing and fine-tuning. Leading eventually to a higher quality output.
Lesson 10 — Learning Organizations
Combining Psychological Safety and Process Accountability to create a learning zone.
There’s enough written about psychological safety so I am skipping it.
Process Accountability is the evaluation of the process that was followed for a project. How decisions were made and whether all options were considered. Whether people debated and rethought their choices. Strong process accountability (alongwith outcome accountability) leads to consistent long term success. Just focussing on outcome accountability is like a hit or miss. You will have little control on delivering the desired outcome.
Psychological safety without process accountability creates a comfort zone.
Process Accountability with psychological safety creates anxiety.
The overlap of the two creates the ideal learning zone.
Honourable mention — Developing a culture of questioning by encouraging people to always ask — “ how do we know “. It has curiosity and doubt but it is not judgmental and does not make people defensive.
Lesson 11 — Career Planning and Identity Foreclosure
This is especially important for parents in India. I have selected this because I am guilty of doing as a parent myself.
We need to stop asking kids what they want to do when they grow up.
By asking this and forcing kids to choose something, we can cause what is called Identity Foreclosure. The kids settle on something prematurely without exploring enough choices and missing out on some great alternatives.
The choice becomes part of their identity. We need to encourage them that careers are actions to take and not identities to claim.
Many other books ( like Range by David Epstein ) have shown that the more options we try, the more likely we are to discover something that will make us happy, fulfilled and successful at the same time. Usually, this means delaying our decisions on career choice. Identity Foreclosure on the other hand forces us to prepone it.
If you reached this far, then I am guessing you found these concepts interesting. You should definitely read the book. And thank Adam Grant for writing another life changing book.
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Popular posts by Avnish | https://medium.com/@avnishanand-49235/11-lessons-from-think-again-by-adam-grant-c63e10e9f4c1 | [] | 2021-06-15 03:17:14.238000+00:00 | ['Book Recommendations', 'Learning', 'Books', 'Human Behavior', 'Self Improvement'] |
Can a Mushroom Stop Alzheimer’s Disease or Dementia Progression? | 3. Western Research on Lion’s mane
Lion’s mane fungi contain several bioactive metabolites, including polysaccharides, terpenoids, sterols, and more. Several studies suggest that they offer neuroprotection, anti-inflammatory actions, and stimulate nerve growth factor (NGF) synthesis, along with many other beneficial properties.
Preclinical studies (in vitro and animal) show that lion’s mane can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s and Dementia. Those animal studies show that lion’s mane increases nerve growth factor levels and may enhance short term memory, hence contrasting Alzheimer [4].
2 groups of ICR mice were used, both with injected Amyloid β-Protein Fragment 25–35 inducing Alzheimer’s like plaques. A group of mice was on a lions’ mane diet for 23 days and the other group on nomral diet. On day 21 of the experiment, mice were subjected to the Y-Maze experiment for the first time, which reflects spatial memory capacity. On days 21–23, the same mice had memory further assessed using the Novel Object Recognition Test. This test determines how well the animals can remember if an object is familiar or novel based on the time that the animal interacts with the object. Typically, mice spend more time with unfamiliar objects because of the novelty effect, so do mice with memory deficits as they forgot the object. The mice that received the lion’s mane diet had significantly higher discrimination ratio than the mice on normal diet [4].
A similar study used APPswe/PS1dE9 mice models — mice models predisposed to develop plaques like Alzheimer naturally- showing lion’s mane supplements decreasing production of amyloid-beta (AB) protein, which is implicated in the pathophysiology of plaque creation in the brain of Alzheimer patients. The rationale is given by an indirect action of the NGF synthesis [5].
In a clinical trial with humans, more specifically mild cognitive impaired (MCI) subjects, lion’s mane showed to improve cognitive functions. In a small small double-blind, placebo controlled study, old Japanese MCI patients were involved. They took 250 mg lion’s mane three times daily for a month, showing later on improvements in specific tasks related to memory, as spatial short-term and visual recognition memory [6].
In addition to research on impaired mice, it has been investigated whether lion’s mane mushroom affects healthy, normal mice. A study showed, promising results in explorative tasks (like those aforementioned) performed by a group of mice on lion’s mane diet, compared to other wild-type mice on normal diet. Therefore, lion’s mane extract may also help regenerate brain cells and improve the functioning of the CA3 region of the hippocampus, which a relevant region of the brain responsible for processing memories and emotional responses [7–8]. A recent article has reviewed these and other studies involving lion’s mane and other mushrooms in relationship to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease [9].
Describing my personal use, I can share anecdotically that using 2 spoons of lions mane extract and coffee. I had the impression of prolonged alertness given by the caffeine, as if lion’s mane extract prolongs the caffeine effect. I have not seen particular impact taking the mushroom extract without coffee. Instead, they are delicious if slightly fried or sauté, though it seems the nootropic agents could be destroyed by high temperature. | https://medium.com/illumination/can-a-mushroom-stop-alzheimers-disease-or-dementia-progression-7c6d928991e6 | ['Dr. Alessandro Crimi'] | 2020-08-20 01:54:57.901000+00:00 | ['Brain', 'Mushrooms', 'Nature', 'Dementia', 'Alzheimers'] |
Node embeddings: Node2vec with Neo4j | Node embeddings: Node2vec with Neo4j
Learn how to train your custom node2vec algorithm with Neo4j Graph Data Science
My last blog post about combining graphs with NLP techniques was the most successful by far. It motivated me to write more about this topic. During my research, I stumbled upon the node2vec algorithm and noticed how easy it would be to implement it with Neo4j and Graph Data Science library. I guess that left me no other choice than to put on my Neo4j Data Science glasses and demonstrate how easy it is to implement it.
Graph import
Today we will be using the Spoonacular Food Dataset that is available on Kaggle. It contains nutritional information alongside the ingredients used in 1600+ dishes. Unfortunately, it contains no recipe for sourdough bread.
Graph schema
There are three types of nodes in the graph schema. A dish consists of one or more ingredients, which we represent as a connection between a dish and its ingredients. Recipes fall into categories or types such as lunch, breakfast, and so on. We use the apoc.schema.assert procedure to define the graph schema. It allows us to describe multiple indexes and unique constraints in a single query.
CALL apoc.schema.assert(
// define indexes
null,
// define unique constraints
{Ingredient:['name'], Dish:['id'], DishType:['name']})
Before we can execute the import query, we have to download the dataset and copy it to the Neo4j import folder. In the import query, we do a tiny bit of preprocessing as we lowercase the names of ingredients and replace dash characters ( - ) with whitespace.
LOAD CSV WITH HEADERS FROM "file:///newfood.csv" as row
CREATE (d:Dish{id:row.id})
SET d += apoc.map.clean(row, ['id','dishTypes','ingredients'],[])
FOREACH (i in split(row.ingredients,',') |
MERGE (in:Ingredient{name:toLower(replace(i,'-',' '))})
MERGE (in)<-[:HAS_INGREDIENT]-(d))
FOREACH (dt in split(row.dishTypes,',') |
MERGE (dts:DishType{name:dt})
MERGE (dts)<-[:DISH_TYPE]-(d))
Basic graph exploration
To start off, we will do a bit of graph exploration. Let’s look at which ingredients are used the most.
MATCH (n:Ingredient)
RETURN n.name as ingredient,
size((n)<--()) as mentions
ORDER BY mentions DESC
LIMIT 10
Results
Olive oil is by far the most popular as it is used in more than half of the recipes. Slowly following are garlic, salt, and butter. I didn’t know that butter was so popular. I also found it quite surprising that anchovies are so widely used. Or maybe the dataset is just biased towards dishes that contain anchovies.
We could build an application on top of this dataset to search for recipes based on the desired ingredients we want to cook. I borrowed this cypher query from the What’s cooking series written by Mark Needham and Lju Lazarevic. Let’s say, for example, you want to eat zucchini and feta cheese today, but don’t have any idea which recipe to go for. Luckily, our application could help us solve this problem with the following cypher query.
WITH ["feta cheese", "zucchini"] as ingredients
MATCH (d:Dish)
WHERE
all(i in ingredients WHERE exists(
(d)-[:HAS_INGREDIENT]->(:Ingredient {name: i})))
RETURN d.title AS dish
ORDER BY size(ingredients)
LIMIT 10
Results
We could go with a salad or a fish. I think I’ll pass and skip over to node2vec for dessert.
Node2vec algorithm
The node2vec algorithm is relatively new. It was proposed only in the year 2016 by Jure Leskovac and Aditya Grover in an article node2vec: Scalable Feature Learning for Networks. To understand how it works, we must first understand the word2vec algorithm. Word2vec algorithm was proposed in the year 2013 by a team of researchers led by Tomas Mikolov at Google. It is a popular technique using neural networks to learn the word embedding. It takes a list of sentences as input and produces a vector or an embedding for each word that appears in the text corpus. Words with similar meanings should be closer in the embedding space. For example, apple and pear should be more similar than apple and car. There are two training algorithms for word2vec. The first method is called the continuous bag of words (CBOW), which uses the context of the word to predict a target term. The context is defined as words that appear near the target word in the text. The second method is called skip-gram. Instead of trying to predict the target word from the context, it tries to predict the context of a given term. If you want to learn more about the word2vec algorithm, there is plenty of good literature about it on the internet.
You might ask how we get from word2vec to node2vec. It is actually very straightforward. Instead of using a list of sentences as input, we use a list of random walks. This is the only difference.
Neo4j Graph Data Science library
Neo4j Graph Data Science library supports the random walk algorithm, which makes it very easy for us to implement the node2vec algorithm. If you need a quick refresher on how the GDS library works, you can check out my previous blog post. We will start by projecting the in-memory graph. We describe all three node labels and project relationships as undirected.
CALL gds.graph.create('all',
['Dish', 'Ingredient'],
{undirected:{type:'*', orientation:'UNDIRECTED'}})
Now we are ready to train our first node2vec model. The process will consist of three parts:
Execute the random walk algorithm starting from each node in the graph Feed the random walks to word2vec algorithm Inspect results by looking at the most similar neighbors
The random walk algorithm has an optional start parameter, which can be used to define the starting node of the walk. We can also specify how long the walk should be with the steps setting and how many times it should be repeated with the walks parameter. Note that every time random walk is executed, we expect a different result.
We will use the Word2vec algorithm implementation in the gensim library. It also has a couple of hyperparameters we can define. Most notable are:
size : Dimensionality of the embedding vectors
: Dimensionality of the embedding vectors window : Maximum distance between the current and predicted word
: Maximum distance between the current and predicted word min_count : The minimum count of words to consider when training the model; words with occurrence less than this count will be ignored.
: The minimum count of words to consider when training the model; words with occurrence less than this count will be ignored. sg: The training algorithm: 1 for skip-gram; otherwise default CBOW
Check out the official documentation for more information about the word2vec hyperparameters
Results
[('anchovy fillet', 0.6236759424209595),
('pork shoulder roast', 0.6039043068885803),
('penne', 0.5999650955200195),
('cherry', 0.5930663347244263),
('cooked quinoa', 0.5898399353027344),
('turkey', 0.5864514112472534),
('asiago cheese', 0.5858502388000488),
('pasillas', 0.5852196216583252),
('fresh marjoram', 0.5819133520126343),
('prunes', 0.5735701322555542)]
If I knew it was that easy, I would have written about the node2vec algorithm before. On the other hand, the results smell kind of fishy. I have no idea what is it with this dataset and anchovies. It seems like the recipes were mostly written by someone who really likes them. You will probably get quite different results though.
In the original node2vec paper, the authors defined two parameters that control the random walks execution. The first one is the return parameter.
Return parameter, p. Parameter p controls the likelihood of immediately revisiting a node in the walk. Setting it to a high value (> max(q, 1)) ensures that we are less likely to sample an already visited node in the following two steps (unless the next node in the walk had no other neighbor). This strategy encourages moderate exploration and avoids 2-hop redundancy in sampling. On the other hand, if p is low (< min(q, 1)), it would lead the walk to backtrack a step (Figure 2) and this would keep the walk “local” close to the starting node u.
And the second parameter is called the in-out parameter.
In-out parameter, q. Parameter q allows the search to differentiate between “inward” and “outward” nodes. Going back to Figure 2, if q > 1, the random walk is biased towards nodes close to node t. Such walks obtain a local view of the underlying graph with respect to the start node in the walk and approximate BFS behavior in the sense that our samples comprise of nodes within a small locality. In contrast, if q < 1, the walk is more inclined to visit nodes which are further away from the node t. Such behavior is reflective of DFS which encourages outward exploration. However, an essential difference here is that we achieve DFS-like exploration within the random walk framework. Hence, the sampled nodes are not at strictly increasing distances from a given source node u, but in turn, we benefit from tractable preprocessing and superior sampling efficiency of random walks. Note that by setting πv,x to be a function of the preceeding node in the walk t, the random walks are 2nd order Markovian.
In summary, the return parameter directs how often random walk backtracks a step or two. The in-out parameter controls if the random walk is more focused on local exploration, similar to BFS, or inclined more towards outward exploration like the DFS. Even though the random walk algorithm is still in the alpha tier, it supports these two node2vec parameters. Let’s try them out in practice.
Results
[('leg of lamb', 0.7168825268745422),
('anise seeds', 0.6833588480949402),
('basic bruschetta', 0.6759517192840576),
('dried chilli flakes', 0.6719993352890015),
('tuna in olive oil', 0.6697120666503906),
('spaghetti pasta', 0.669307291507721),
('prime rib roast', 0.661544919013977),
('baby artichokes', 0.6588324308395386),
('rice vermicelli', 0.6581511497497559),
('whole wheat fusilli', 0.6571477651596069)]
Looking at results makes me hungry. It is really hard to say if the leg of lamb and olive oil should be regarded as similar ingredients. If we inspect the graph, out of eight recipes that include the leg of lamb, seven of those also use olive oil. By this logic, they are quite similar.
In our next example, we will show how to run the node2vec algorithm and store the result embeddings back to Neo4j. Instead of returning the titles of dishes and ingredients, we will return the internal Neo4j node ids. This will help us to link the results back to Neo4j efficiently.
The embeddings are now available in the vocabulary of the word2vec model. We will store them to Neo4j in a single batch using the UNWIND cypher statement. If possible, try to avoid committing a single transaction per row as this is not very performant.
Word2vec model uses the cosine similarity to find the most similar words. The Graph Data Science library also supports the Cosine similarity algorithm, which can be used to infer a similarity algorithm. As with all similarity algorithms, we have to fine-tune the similarityCutoff and topK parameters to get the best results. They directly influence how sparse the inferred similarity graph will be.
MATCH (node)
WITH id(node) as id, node.embedding as weights
WITH {item:id, weights: weights} as dishData
WITH collect(dishData) as data
CALL gds.alpha.similarity.cosine.write({
nodeProjection: '*',
relationshipProjection: '*',
similarityCutoff:0.5,
topK:5,
data: data,
writeRelationshipType:'COSINE_SIMILARITY'})
YIELD nodes, similarityPairs
RETURN nodes, similarityPairs
Results
To finish this analysis, we will inspect the community structure of the inferred network with the label propagation algorithm. As we are only interested in a rough outline of the community structure, we can use the stats mode of the algorithm to provide us some basic community structure statistics.
CALL gds.labelPropagation.stats({
nodeProjection:'*',
relationshipProjection:'COSINE_SIMILARITY',
maxIterations:20})
YIELD communityCount, communityDistribution
RETURN communityCount,
apoc.math.round(communityDistribution.p50,2) as p50,
apoc.math.round(communityDistribution.p75,2) as p75,
apoc.math.round(communityDistribution.p90,2) as p90,
apoc.math.round(communityDistribution.p90,2) as p95,
apoc.math.round(communityDistribution.mean,2) as mean,
apoc.math.round(communityDistribution.max,2) as max
Results
The label propagation algorithm found 118 groups in the similarity network. Most of them have less than 40 members. There are a handful of massive communities with the largest containing 393 members.
Conclusion
The node2vec algorithm is a useful way of learning low-dimensional representations of the nodes in a graph that can be used downstream in a machine learning pipeline. During this blog post, I realized that changing the random walk algorithm parameters as well as the word2vec hyperparameters can produce very different results. Play around with them and see what works best for you.
As always, the code is available on GitHub. | https://towardsdatascience.com/node-embeddings-node2vec-with-neo4j-5152d3472d8e | ['Tomaz Bratanic'] | 2020-05-31 21:32:38.817000+00:00 | ['Graph', 'Neo4j', 'Node2vec', 'Word2vec', 'Graphs Are Fun'] |
Christmas gift for the girlfriend | I am digital marketer and professional blogger.I have 4 years experience .http://www.bhatbazaar.xyz/ | https://medium.com/@elizabethjwhite512/christmas-gift-for-the-girlfriend-7b5bedbf31e1 | ['Kimberly C. Allen'] | 2020-12-23 01:42:19.036000+00:00 | ['Girlfriend', 'Christmas', 'Christmas Gifts', 'Gifts'] |
Call for Personal Data App Developers | With Prifina, individuals can centralize their personal data to personal data clouds and developers can build new types of personal data applications and experiences on top of rich user-held data. You can apply here.
Apply for the early developer program at Prifina and we will help you “hands-on” to build your first personal data application.
Software is eating the world and now data is eating software. In practice, this means that all the different things that could be done with the software are actually being done.
Evolution of the Desk, LolaMento, imgur.com
Because of this unstoppable development, increasing amounts of data are being generated. IDC predicts that the world’s data will grow to 175 zettabytes in 2025. In 2019, the global data market reached an estimated $26 billion which is more than the whole US programmatic market value in 2016.
When the use of this data is expanded beyond the software where it originated, it becomes possible to develop totally new types of applications, especially when data from different sources (like activity, streaming, and finances, etc.) are mixed and combined. Data is also the enabling factor for making the AI work.
Due to expanding data privacy regulations, this valuable data representing trillions of dollars worth of investment from businesses and individuals around the world are being given to individuals for free. Individuals now can claim their data and do whatever they want with it. At the same time, due to the lack of user-facing tools, individuals have a hard time finding ways to get value from the data they hold.
This is exactly where your opportunity exists!
The combination of those megatrends creates an entirely new landscape for developing totally new personal data applications. Using this new category of data and user control, you can build something that was impossible to imagine before. The richest of data is within reach.
The occasions to develop on a new platform does not come very often. The opportunity to develop on the first iPhones looked very different from the millions of applications created now every single year.
If you share the vision of a new and more user-centric internet and are looking to develop new types of applications for this emerging market, we are looking forward to working with you.
Building great applications in a silo is never easy and any application development can benefit from additional hands-on support, specialized knowledge, different perspectives and from senior expertise from building applications.
The early developer program in a nutshell:
A growing library of dedicated React components
Curated access to best in class component libraries and open source tools
Comprehensive data access, including testing data
Early access to the full Prifina platform prototypes
UX/UI design support
Software development resources and support
Business model strategy support
Senior data science expertise
Applications are open now. Applications will close once 10 app concepts have been selected and development has started.
In addition to developing a personal data application platform to build and run your personal data applications, we encourage you to join “Liberty. Equality. Data.” developer community that can provide additional “hands-on” support in UX, UI design, front-end software development, software architecture as well as in data science (analytics, ML, etc.) on a volunteer basis.
There has never been a better time to develop personal data applications and now there is a growing community willing to lend their hands to see this market emerge.
So, if you are a talented software developer, an exceptional UX designer, or a seed-funded non-technical startup founder, apply here to Prifina’s personal data application early bird developer program to see if your personal data application qualifies for our developer support program.
Click here for more information about this program.
FAQ
Why do I need to apply? Can’t I just build?
Of course! You can build, you can also join Slack and get hacking!
However, if you want our structured support, we need to prioritize who we can include at this stage.
As this is a hands-on support program, it is very important that the application’s leadership is clear, knowledgeable and strong. This will help ascertain that the personal data app, once launched, also has real potential for success. For that reason, we expect there to be clear skills and understanding from one of the three key aspects for successful application (developer, UX design or validated digital business competence, i.e., investors + resources), as an indicator to either directly be able to design/develop the application further, or resources available to be able to acquire those skills going forward.
What do we do, and what do we not do?
Prifina and the “Liberty. Equality. Data.” community can provide key hands-on support. However, we can only provide additional resources and will not take the lead or ownership of the application: these need to come from your side. We will only provide hands-on support for initial MVP or product launch at the most. After that, we will continue supporting via our general developer’s tools, support and product updates. Naturally, the “Liberty. Equality. Data.” community or individual members may choose to continue supporting it for a longer period. There may also be an opportunity to find additional team members for your venture among those community members.
How do you choose the application ideas that you will support?
We will shortlist applications based on their consumer market appeal (wow factor, value for individuals directly, etc), uniqueness and variety (i.e., something entirely new, one per each similar application). Then we will vote on the priority together with the “Liberty. Equality. Data.” community members.
If your app concept is selected, we will let you know and get to work with you immediately.
I have an idea for an application, but I do not have skills, interest or secured resources to lead it myself. What could I do?
You can add your idea in our open ideas resource, vote or contribute to the existing ideas. Naturally, you can also join our ”Liberty. Equality. Data.” community in Slack to help build and support the building of some of these apps. Who knows, maybe someone with the same or similar idea as yourself is looking to take it into the market and seeks support.
Connect With Us and Stay in Touch
Prifina helps individuals get bespoke value from their personal data and provides tools for developers to build applications on top of user-held data.
You can follow Prifina on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and join our Slack: “Liberty. Equality. Data.” | https://medium.com/prifina/call-for-personal-data-app-developers-1138cebafdf1 | ['Valto Loikkanen'] | 2020-06-23 01:17:35.140000+00:00 | ['API', 'Privacy', 'Development', 'Software Development', 'Prifina Developer'] |
Putting our Wildfire Detector to Work in New Mexico | Putting our Wildfire Detector to Work in New Mexico
The State Forestry Department will use our automated detector during the 2020 wildfire season Descartes Labs Follow Mar 30, 2020 · 3 min read
In 2018, approximately 360,500 acres burned across our headquarters’ state of New Mexico. After a winter without snow, the wildfire season brought 1,334 fire starts in the state that year. With the effects of climate change and the present-day consequences of historical forest management policies hitting us so close to home, we set out to build an automated, early-warning wildfire detector using satellite data.
Today, we’re excited to announce that Descartes Labs will utilize our wildfire detector to alert the state’s Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department’s Forestry Division of wildfires in real-time. The wildfire detector will provide alerts to State Forester Laura McCarthy and her two deputies for fires that start in the state and to the district rangers for any fires that start in their district — within minutes of ignition.
Get the details behind our wildfire detector in our previous post, The Satellites Hunting for Megafires.
Rapid Detection, Rapid Response
Megafires — defined by the US Forest Service as wildfires that burn over 100,000 acres — are occurring with increased frequency, not only in New Mexico, but around the world. Traditionally, fires in New Mexico are detected via planes or lookout towers, or reported by civilians, which can be an unreliable and slow process. The earlier a potential megafire is identified, the more options fire managers have to choose the most prudent course of action.
The Ute Park Fire, just north of Santa Fe near the town of Taos, broke out in May 2018. Optical imagery shows the growth of the smoke plume on the left, and infrared imagery shows the fire in bright red on the right.
Laura McCarthy, State Forester explained, “Rapid detection can make all the difference in our ability to respond to wildfire safely and effectively. Descartes Labs’ new tool is an innovation that harnesses technology to alert wildfire responders to new fire starts earlier than ever.”
This use of the Descartes Labs Platform signifies the beginning of a digital transformation in how officials identify wildfires, suppress them, and evacuate people at risk. It allows for continuous and complete monitoring for wildfires, which Descartes Labs is thrilled to provide to augment New Mexico’s current detection systems.
How Does it Work?
The Descartes Labs wildfire detector, created by applied scientist Clyde Wheeler, is based on data from GOES-16 and GOES-17, two recently operational geostationary satellites from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that are primarily used for forecasting weather, but also have special spectral bands and capture thermal information.
These satellites view the earth in near real-time, capturing images of the continental United States every five minutes.
First, data and images from satellites GOES-16 and GOES-17 are ingested into the Descartes Labs Platform. Since the images are captured in the thermal infrared spectrum, we can measure the temperature of the earth at the time an image is taken.
From there, several algorithms are run to determine if a fire is present. Each algorithm looks for different properties of a wildfire. If there’s a consensus among the algorithms, Descartes Labs can determine with high confidence that there’s a fire.
For example, one algorithm looks at the spatial context, checking to see if the fire is hotter than its surroundings. Another algorithm looks back in time to see what the area normally looks like without a fire, to see if there have been changes. A third algorithm looks for areas that are unexpectedly hot, compared to historical temperatures.
If the algorithm determines there’s a wildfire, the information is sent to the New Mexico Forestry Department. The full process takes about nine minutes from the time the data is captured to the time it’s reported.
Find Out More
As we harness the latest advancements in sensor data and AI technologies, our goal is to prevent small natural disasters from becoming big ones. We look forward to working with other agencies and businesses that would benefit from our early wildfire detection technology. Learn more at DescartesLabs.com. | https://medium.com/descarteslabs-team/putting-our-wildfire-detector-to-work-in-new-mexico-799989efdf2c | ['Descartes Labs'] | 2020-03-30 18:36:40.364000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Government', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Geospatial', 'Wildfires'] |
Non Zero Days | A concept I can get behind!
Photo by Hoang Le on Unsplash
I really dig the idea of having non zero days. For those who may not know what that means, it’s producing something everyday. No matter how small or in what capacity. It’s creating just the sake of creating.
I first heard this concept a few years back during my apprenticeship with a company called Praxis. Back then it was foreign and I really didn't know much about the concept. But since my time at the apprenticeship, I hadn’t practiced it much or really given it much taught until recently. I came across some of Seth Godins content and he talks about the importance of “The Practice”. Which is showing up consistently or everyday to the work that you know that needs to be done.
If you’re a writer, it could be writing, if you’re a fighter it could be training, if you’re a musician it could be to create music. So many people like myself have struggled with just showing up and showing up consistently at our craft, that we think we develop some sort of “block”. For writers they call it “writer’s block”.
Seth Godin explains there is no such thing as a “block” and when you show up to do the work you’re called to do you will get better. Yes you may start of as one of the worst writers known in the history of mankind, but when you practice consistently, there’s no way you do not improve. It’s almost impossible not to.
So the concept of non zero days is really relevant for just about anyone who’s looking to show up in their everyday lives. No matter how big or how small create something each day. Never let the days pass by and you don’t add something to the Universe.
This is also a great practice for anyone who’s feeling stuck or stagnant. This practices forces you to get out that loop you might be caught up in, helping you to reset and align your actions with how you feel, so there is no cognitive dissonance
Photo by Lena Kudryavtseva on Unsplash
I’m betting on myself, each day to show up for me. I am practicing having non zero days so I can get out of my own funk, start creating and build better habits and practices that help me to level up the way that I envision.
I’ll be creating something each day in some capacity and sharing with the world. I’ll start off on Medium but i’m sure I’ll be expanding to other platforms the more I progress.
Join me on my campaign to practicing personal liberation by doing you own non zero days! I would love to hear how you guys and gals will approach it.
And remember, make the days count, never count the day! Peace ✌️ | https://medium.com/@romainsinclair/non-zero-days-be1ea8a011c9 | ['Romain Sinclair'] | 2020-12-21 14:20:13.999000+00:00 | ['Liberation', 'Growth Mindset', 'Self Learning', 'Productivity', 'Growth Hacking'] |
K-means Clustering on Ordinal Data | K-means Clustering on Ordinal Data
Image by Reimund Bertrams from Pixabay
K-means clustering. It’s the holy grail of unsupervised learning. And honestly? I understand why… Sure, there’s a bit of an art form to deciding on the number of clusters you should calculate, but by and large it’s borderline magical to sit back and let the algorithm do it’s thing. Even so, there’s one very important caveat: k-means clustering only works on numerical data… Right?!
Well… Maybe
In general, attempting to broaden k-means into categorical applications is precarious at best. The most integral part of k-means clustering deals with finding points with the minimal distance between them. How do we define distance amongst categorical variables? How far is an apple from an orange? Are those closer to blueberries or watermelon? In unordered contexts, it just doesn’t make sense to ask these questions.
But what if my categorical data is ordered?
Wow, I’m so glad you asked. Just as you’ve astutely pointed out, there absolutely are contexts where it seems like there should be a way to answer these questions.
Recently, I was looking at some data from KFF regarding the statewide social distancing mandates that have been implemented in the United States in response to COVID-19. After some wrangling, here’s what the first few rows looked like:
(Note: If you want to see my whole process for wrangling and analyzing this dataset, you can check out my R code on Github.)
Consider for instance, the Stay at Home Order attribute. This attribute describes whether or not a state has a Stay at Home order, and which populations are affected by the order. Obviously having no order is different from having a statewide order, which is different from having an order that only applies to high risk groups. And here’s the important part: a statewide order seems “closer” to an order affecting only high risk groups, than no order at all.
It seems like we should be able to answer the questions required for k-means clustering. The natural ordering of our data lends itself to further analysis. Sure, it’s not actually numeric data, but it behaves in a roughly numeric way, so what’s holding us back from treating it as such? In the ubiquitous words of Hannah Montana, life’s what you make it so let’s make it possible to perform k-means clustering on ordinal data! (No? That wasn’t her quote? Shoot.) | https://towardsdatascience.com/k-means-clustering-on-ordinal-data-7222b5ee1693 | ['Ariel Wentworth'] | 2020-05-18 15:03:57.598000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Unsupervised Learning', 'Clustering', 'Deep Learning', 'Machine Learning'] |
My Weekend At Adolf’s | I.
By the curb outside Avenue U station in Brooklyn, John threw a small, plastic bag into the back of a rented Kia station wagon. The bag was all he was bringing. He was already wearing his brown shirt, black trousers and black boots and he wasn’t planning on changing. “Lot of Jews here,” he said, squinting and looking down the street.
“Yep,” Duke Schneider answered as he checked his phone again. “Passover.”
“That’ll give them something to crow over,” John chortled. “Fucking pieces of shit.”
Schneider put the flip phone back in the holster on his belt and frowned towards the station exit. “There’s just no excuse,” he muttered to himself. “If they were in the SS they’d be right out on their keisters. We’re leaving at exactly 11:05!” The last sentence was aimed at us; John, Schneider’s daughter Kate and me. “If they’re not here they can take the Jersey Transit.”
Six minutes later we were headed for New Jersey. We were on our way to the annual convention for the National Socialist Movement, the largest Neo-Nazi organization in the US. It was to be held somewhere in the Garden State and there would be a march in Trenton on the Saturday. This was all I had been told, and to the best of my knowledge, this was about as much as most people in the NSM knew. The location of the hotel and the venue for tonight’s banquet were closely guarded secrets to which only the members of the leadership were privy.
John and Kate were in the back seat. John had only been a member of the NSM for a short time, and this was his first convention. Kate, who works as a claims adjuster, was telling him about a black woman who had tried to claim children she wasn’t caring for on her insurance. Her round face became distorted and her voice became broad and exaggerated. “What you mean I can’t claim fo’ them children jus’ ’cause they livin’ wi’ they baby-daddy?!”
John laughed. “Baby-daddy!”
In the front, Schneider was telling me about the Holocaust. “None of us were there, so how can we know?” he reasoned as the Kia crossed the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge from Brooklyn to Staten Island. “I’ve heard accounts for and against, and I can’t know. I met a woman who survived the Holocaust, and she never saw any atrocities. She was a cleaner and she once saw Hitler, Goring, Adolf Eichmann and Joseph Mengele board a plane. Eichmann and Mengele both escaped to South America. I think Hitler did, too.” Elton John’s Tiny Dancer came on the radio. Schneider stopped talking and turned the volume up.
“Did you hear there’s a cover of Elton John on Michael Jackson’s new album of unreleased material?” Kate shouted from the back seat. “Don’t Let Your Son Go Down on Me.” John and Kate both laughed. Schneider frowned. He pulled out a CD and slid it into the stereo, handing me the cover. Panzer Marches. From Original Third Reich Recordings. The car filled at once with the crackling of an old gramophone that was quickly replaced by the tinny sound of old marches recorded during the war. Schneider winked and hummed along.
“When before us an enemy
army appears,
we go full-throttle against them,
and rush at the foe!
What difference does it make if we give our lives
For the army of our Reich?
Yes, the army of our Reich?
To die for Germany
is for us the highest honor.”
“Where are we going?” I asked. We had just crossed from Staten Island and into New Jersey. Schneider winked again. He winked a lot.
“Confidential,” he said, repeating what he had told me for the last two months about our destination for the weekend.
I had gotten used to the clandestine disposition of Schneider and the NSM. Every meeting with Duke for the past five months had been cloaked in secrecy. I was always told to meet at Avenue U station in Brooklyn where he would be waiting in his car. From there Schneider’s Hyundai would crisscross around blocks, making U-turns, doubling back before always ending up outside the same diner in Sheepshead Bay, roughly half a mile from where we had started. Schneider said it was because he was under constant surveillance by any number of organizations “CIA, FBI, DHS, JDL, ADL, ARA,” he listed. “I don’t mind. If the CIA is watching us then they must be watching the Jews and the terrorists, too. I’m not doing anything wrong.” He would often and haphazardly change times and locations for meetings, citing various security threats, sometimes based on little more than that there was a car he didn’t recognize parked outside his house.
When I was first invited to the NSM’s annual convention, I was told that there was to be no photography or recording and that I had to relinquish my phone before leaving New York. The rules seemed paranoid in the extreme, especially since Schneider kept insisting that the NSM was a regular political party and should be treated as such. The limitations had been eased since, and my camera, phone and recorder were in a bag in the trunk of the Kia as it made its way into New Jersey.
I still had no idea where we were going.
II.
The NSM claims it has 65 chapters in 35 states, and its leaders say the organization is growing rapidly. No one outside the movement really knows exactly how many members the organization has, because no one inside the movement will say. It has its roots in the American Nazi Party, founded in 1959 by George Lincoln Rockwell, known as the father of American National Socialism. Seven years after Rockwell’s murder in 1967, two of his lieutenants, Robert Brannen and Cliff Herrington formed the National Socialist American Workers Freedom Movement. The group was active mainly near the Twin Cities and largely unknown to the rest of the country. In 1994, Herrington handed over control of the group to the much younger Jeff Schoep, who runs it still. Schoep was 21 at the time and claimed he had been a Nazi since the fourth grade, when he first read Mein Kampf.
Schoep changed the name to the National Socialist Movement and set out to revamp the organization to attract a younger generation of Neo-Nazis. He established the Viking Youth Corps, a group that focused on recruiting angry teens, and launched a special Women’s Division of the NSM. He also established NSM88 Records, a label releasing only White Power music, and bought the Neo-Nazi social networking site New Saxon.
NSM soon gained national notoriety because of the replica Nazi uniforms its members wore during marches, and the provocative nature of their events. In 2005, the members of the NSM insisted on marching through Toledo’s North End, a poor and predominantly black neighborhood. In the riots that followed, several people were hurt and the members of NSM indignantly claimed that they had been attacked while exercising their constitutional rights.
III.
Two hours after we had set off, Schneider turned the Kia into the parking lot of the Comfort Inn in Bordentown, New Jersey. Bordentown is the kind of small town that seems to be made up entirely of diners, bars and burger joints lining a six-lane highway for which it is hard to imagine there is any need. A motley group of people stood in the parking lot outside the squat, yellow building, waving as our car pulled up. Some were tattooed skinheads in combat pants and bomber jackets. Others looked like tourists with sun visors and tee-shirts from the Grand Canyon. Kate jumped out to hug a matronly woman in a trucker hat, whom she hadn’t seen since they marched together in Phoenix during last year’s convention. Schneider clambered out of the car slowly and shook hands with a short, older man with slicked back grey hair and a swastika armband on his brown shirt. John hung back by the car and kicked a rock against the curb until Schneider introduced him jovially as “a new potential storm trooper.” Everyone waved. John, who looked unsure of whether to wave back or give the Nazi salute, settled for grinning sheepishly. The older woman who had hugged Kate introduced herself as Sandy. “Welcome to Jersey, kid,” she said.
A young, smiling skinhead in a bomber jacket and with “SS” tattooed on his neck in bold, red letters came over to me and introduced himself as Juan, quickly adding that his dad was Spanish, not Mexican, a vital distinction. He said welcome and that he was happy to talk to me. He was from Albany and had been a member of the NSM for two years.
“The banquet will be good,” he said. “These are nice people.”
IV.
Everyone met two hours later in the lobby. The Pakistani receptionist looked terrified at the scene unfolding in his hotel. The Nazis had been told to wear their dress uniform and the lobby and bar resembled a scene from a WWII movie. “Who are these people?” he whispered to me pleadingly, hoping against hope that I wasn’t one of them.
In one of the chairs next to the reception, a heavy-set SS soldier with angry red skin and a black cap that seemed to belong on a much smaller head was educating a young girl on race theory while a South Asian cleaning woman stared at him in poorly disguised disbelief.
“What you see in the black communities are that something like 70 percent of mothers are unmarried,” he pontificated, while the thick, blood-filled folds of his skin pressed begrudgingly against the collar of his shirt. “Now their kids are all half sisters and half brothers and they don’t know who their fathers and uncles are. So they start doing it and soon you have a lot of inbreeding and a recessive gene pool. We need to put some chlorine in that gene pool. The kids grow up angry and with learning disabilities. And if they get upset they go straight to the gun. They want to kill you. They’re going down and they’re taking us with them.” When he finished he looked around the room. Everyone around him, with the exception of the cleaning woman and me, were solemnly nodding their heads at this incontrovertible truth.
Schneider came up to me and said, “Ready to go, champ?” Another wink. He was wearing a heavy, black woolen uniform with riding trousers and black boots. Around his left shoulders were thick, silver tassels and a leather strap across his chest. His right arm was wrapped in a bright red band. The band had a white circle with a black, bold swastika sewn on. A long ceremonial dagger dangled menacingly from his belt. His chest was covered with medals and commendations that made the uniform seem almost believable. A giant black hat, complete with the eagle of the Third Reich and the skull and bones of the SS, was perched on his head. Commander Schoep came out of the elevator and Schneider jumped and ran to him. He had told me earlier that one of his main duties at events like this was to serve as the personal bodyguard to the commander. Once, while driving me in his Hyundai, he had told me that it would be his honor to die for the Commander.
Commander Schoep was the only one not wearing a uniform. He wore an ill-fitting, wrinkled pinstriped suit and he looked tired. His wife was on his arm, endlessly fussing over him and dismissing everyone who approached her husband as if he were a tender starlet surrounded by paparazzi. Walking briskly through the sliding doors of the hotel, he completely ignored his bodyguard. Schneider’s large, round body in the heavy uniform followed as fast as he could, struggling to keep up with his charge. It was hard to imagine him diving in front of a bullet.
V.
The carpool convoy pulled up outside an AA-hall in Pemberton. I’d caught a ride with SS Sergeant Wilson from Oklahoma whose son had just been expelled from school for wearing a White Power tee-shirt. “I bet you anything that wouldn’t happen to someone wearing a Brown Power tee-shirt,” he said indignantly. “There are no rights left for whites in this country.”
The interior walls of the hall were covered in large, blood red banners with black swastikas and the flag of the NSM. “It’s a mix of the American flag and a Nazi banner,” an old woman with a swastika armband said helpfully. Tables filled the room in a horseshoe shape and every place setting had a white paper plate and a red plastic cup, both adorned with little swastikas. In a corner someone had set up a couple of tables filled with merchandise for sale. There were badges, medals, books, epaulets, paintings toy tanks, tee-shirts and CDs – all adorned in some form or another with swastikas. An older Nazi was browsing the table, trying to decide whether he should buy a large, painted portrait of Adolf Hitler or a copy of “The Eternal Jew,” or maybe an action figure of a panzer tank operator. Sergeant Wilson came over and said, “You want to get a picture of this.” He gave a straight-armed salute to one of the action figures on the table, giggled and left.
We had meatballs, lasagna and salad for dinner. A girl of around ten and her mother, both in black skirts, white tops and swastika armbands, fussed around the kitchen, making sure everyone had enough to eat and drink while NSM members milled around the room making small talk and laughing. The NSM is spread all over the US and so most members only see each other during conventions. Schneider paraded around the room patting backs and laughing while the Commander sat at the end of the table not talking to anyone, surveying his troops while his wife doted on him. He’d been the Commander of the SS for seven years but if it wasn’t for his suit, he could easily have been mistaken for a young recruit.
At 7 pm, as the Nazis were having coffee, the doors to the hall burst open and Jeff, a young, portly SS soldier crashed inside, falling to the floor. His face was bright red and tears were streaming from his swollen eyes. “Attack!” he shouted. “Reds!” The room erupted in roars and screams as everyone got to their feet and stormed towards the exit. Grabbing my camera I pushed my way through the front door and into the parking lot where I was faced with roughly 20 masked men, dressed in black and carrying bats, bricks and knives. Nazis pushed past me carrying metal folding chairs over their heads while the masked group across the street stormed to meet them, weapons raised. They crashed violently, their mutual disgust and hatred for each other outweighing any concern for personal safety. There was a loud crack as Wilson slammed his metal chair into the face of one of the attackers, who collapsed on the ground. His body was welcomed by kicks from heavy steel tipped boots. Behind me someone screamed “Nazi scum!” and I turned just in time to dive out of the path of a flying brick aimed at my head. I ran for cover and saw Juan, the sweet kid from Albany, landing a blow with a heavy stick to the head of a skinny kid in a mask. Blood poured from an open gash on Juan’s head, soaking his face in thick black and red. The masked kid slumped to the ground and some of his friends grabbed him and pulled him away. Juan’s feet faltered and he stumbled with blood dripping into his eyes. Someone took him by the shoulder and pulled him inside. Commander Schoep was running for cover, yellow spots of pepper spray covering his face and tears streaming from his sore, red eyes. Schneider ran behind him, unscathed but out of breath. A flying brick shattered the windshield of the car behind me, and it seemed like every car alarm within fifty miles had been set off. Neighbors stared in disbelief from their windows as their street was turned into a pandemonium of crashing chairs, swinging bats, stomping boots and falling bodies. There was blood on the ground in puddles, smears and red boot prints. The battle was primal and hateful. There was no grappling or confused wrestling, only fists, boots, weapons and the desire to damage skulls, jaws, teeth and bone. Eventually it became clear that the Nazis were winning. They had hit harder and cared less that they were bleeding. The masked attackers, disarmed and beaten, ran off down the street as wailing sirens drowned out the shouts. Some of the Nazis gave chase, but turned back after only a few short yards. They had won the battle and they knew it.
The police arrived in force. Then the state police came, and finally SWAT, armed with MP-5 submachine guns, running down the street, setting up perimeters and shouting orders. Inside the hall was as chaotic as outside. “They got my husband! Those motherfuckers! Those motherfuckers got my husband!” the Commander’s wife was screaming as she dabbed a wet towel on her husband’s swollen face, ignoring the blood soaked soldiers around her.
Next to her, a giant SS officer called Mark sat calmly, enjoying his meatballs as thick blood poured from a gash in his head that left a part of his skull exposed. He seemed unconcerned and ate with gusto as the blood soaked his collar. “Fucking cowards!” a tall, skinny Nazi named Tony shouted. “We sent them packing! Cowards! Goddamn that was fun!”
“I took a chair and smacked that motherfucker!” A young skinhead shook his head in happy disbelief. “Right in the face. Commie motherfucker!”
Outside in the parking lot the police were taking statements.
“We were just having dinner and they attacked us, officer.”
“I have no idea who they were, officer. Probably Jewish Defense League.”
“All we did was defend ourselves, officer.”
Juan was in the back of an ambulance being examined by paramedics. His blood soaked face broke out in a smile and he gave a thumbs up. A few of his friends had already been driven off to the hospital.
Commander Schoep was inside whispering with his lieutenants in the kitchen. “Someone told them where we were. Someone fucking told them.” They stopped talking as I walked past, eying me suspiciously. Schneider looked at me. He was the guy who had brought a journalist into the room, and he was hoping he hadn’t brought a snitch in, too.
A guy called Greg came over to me. “I just can’t understand why some people just don’t like Nazis,” he said, his voice filled with genuine wonder as he shook his head in confusion.
“Are you kidding?” I said. “You’re Nazis.”
“I know,” he said, shaking his head again. “I just can’t understand it.”
“Who were those guys?” I asked Tony.
“Jewish Defense League,” he said. “Or Anti Racist Association. Perhaps Black Panthers, although I doubt it. They don’t usually wear masks. We just call them Commies.”
The ambulances and most of the police left, leaving a handful of cars and about a dozen officers standing guard outside on the now quiet street. The Nazis were jubilant. Commander Schoep was pumping his fists in the air. “What we experienced today with the Commie scum was just a test of what we’ll see tomorrow. I was honored to stand with each and every one of you today. Today and forever we and our revolutionary forefathers stand against the onslaught of the masses.”
“Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” erupted from the room.
“We fought the Commie scum in the street and we sent them to Hell! We’re fighting for the future of our children!”
VI.
The next morning was wet and grey. I woke to the sound of radio static. The parking lot outside the hotel was crowded with SWAT teams and National Guard. They had been there all night to make sure the Nazis weren’t attacked in their beds. The lobby was crowded again and the Pakistani owner looked exasperated. “I’ve asked them to not hang around the lobby,” he complained. “They’re scaring the hell out of all my customers.”
Sandy, the older woman I had been introduced to the day before, came over. “Come here,” she whispered conspiratorially. “I want you to know something the government doesn’t want you to know.”
She introduced me to Heath and Deborah Campbell, a couple from New Jersey who had lost custody of their children over allegations of abuse. “They can’t talk to you,” Sandy said. “The court says they can’t talk to anyone. But the court didn’t say anything about their godmother talking.” Deborah was a small, demure woman, who seemed disinterested. Heath was a thin, scrappy man with long hair, a bushy Hitler moustache and a large red swastika tattooed on his neck.
Three years earlier the state of New Jersey had take their three children because of the names they had given them: Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Hozlynn Hinler Campbell.
“I named my kids the best names I knew,” Heath said, momentarily forgetting his gag order.
Sandy interrupted him. “It all started with a birthday cake,” she said. “You can start you story like that. Write ‘It all started with a birthday cake.’” She pointed at my note pad, then at Heath. “Tell him,” she too apparently forgetting that the Campbells weren’t allowed to speak.
“I went to the bakery,” Heath continued. “I wanted to get a birthday cake for my son and I wanted it to say ‘Happy Third Birthday, Adolf!’” Apparently the bakery owner, who Heath said was Jewish, had been alarmed by the name and called the authorities.
“They call it abuse,” Sandy spat in disgust. “Abuse! They’re good names.”
“Isn’t it possible it can lead to them being teased?” I offered.
“Nonsense!” Sandy almost shouted, incredulous at the ridiculous question. “I was teased for my name in school all the time. People called me Sandy Koufax. I had a hell of a time. Kids are going to tease no matter what.”
“Besides,” Heath shot in, “who uses a middle name anyway? The schools don’t even know the kids’ middle names. Who cares if it’s Hitler? It’s a good name.” I tried again to suggest that with names like that, teasing, bullying and misery was downright guaranteed, but they didn’t understand me, so I left them in the lobby with a promise to write something.
The Nazis piled into cars and drove with a police escort to a rendezvous spot outside Trenton, from where we would be ferried into town in prison buses. After the battle last night, the authorities were taking no chances, and security was extensive. The plan was to march a few hundred yards to the capitol building where Commander Schoep and others would speak on the steps about what was wrong with America. Before we got on the buses everyone was searched and told to leave brass knuckles, sticks and clubs behind. Sergeant Wilson had to take off his flack jacket because he didn’t have a permit for it. He took off his bracelet in the bus and wrapped it around his hand as a makeshift brass knuckle. “I got five bucks for every fist to the face!” he shouted to the back of the bus. “Last night was nothing!”
The entire route of the march was lined with National Guard and riot police. They had closed off every access point and no one was around to watch the Nazis trudge along the wet streets, while the rain soaked their black uniforms. They arrived at a wide square in front of the capitol. A few modest steps led up the entrance and a small podium stood at the top. Police had cordoned off the entire square. In the distance the protestors had gathered. The police, fearing another showdown, kept them two blocks away from the Nazis, just barely within shouting distance. So the big rally was reduced to Nazis screaming obscenities at protestors down the street, and the protestors screaming them right back. “We kicked your asses last night!” Wilson roared. “We’ll do it again today!”
Juan, who had been released from the hospital the night before, stood in the pouring rain in front of the podium holding a NSM banner. His head was adorned with 12 bloody staples and he had red laces in his boots, meaning he had shed blood or drawn blood for the cause. “Hey,” he said. “Great night last night.”
At one point the NSM tried turning their speakers towards the protestors in the distance. “This is my town,” Lieutenant Hiecke, the leader of the New Jersey chapter shouted into the microphone. “I’m here because I care about Trenton and what’s happening here. I’m here for you.” The protestors shouted and the Nazis shouted back and so it went for about two hours before the Nazis called it quits and marched back to the waiting prison buses.
“We’re going to go shopping for our wives later,” Wilson told me excitedly on the bus. “Shopping” is when the NSM go into a town in their uniforms to stir up trouble and get into fights. “We’re going to go right back here after the police leave and we’re going to find something nice for our wives. I don’t care if we have to go into every shop in Trenton.”
“Fuck yeah!” someone shouted. “White Power!”
They never went.
VII.
Later that night everyone gathered in Lieutenant Hiecke’s back yard for a final night of celebration. The weekend had gone better than expected and the Nazis were jubilant. They had faced off against the Commies and won and it had been a victory won with blood. Lieutenant Hiecke had erected a large gazebo tent and filled it with tables and chairs and draped swastikas along the plastic walls. In one corner was the guy with the merchandise from the night before and in another was a drum kit and amps.
“Have a beer,” an older guy who had once been a Grand Dragon in the KKK told me. “We did something this weekend.” Other than being attacked and shouting abuse for two hours I wondered what they had achieved. “We got out and did something, that’s what,” he went on. “We used to do something in the Klan. Then everything changed and now all the Klan does is sit around in the woods and barbecue. That’s why I joined the NSM. We get out there and give the kids something to look up to.”
A skinny guy with a manic look came over to me. “Check it out,” he giggled and pulled his tee-shirt off. On his chest was a large tattoo of two plungers in a cross with a swastika in the center. “70th. Precinct” was written in bold, gothic letter. It was his homage to the officers of the 70th precinct in Brooklyn who sodomized a Haitian immigrant with a broken plunger in 1997. He grinned and turned around. “Kill Niggers” was emblazoned on his back. On his forehead was a pale, blue shadow of what had once been the word “Racist.” “I have to have it removed because I’m standing trial for trying to blow up a school,” he laughed. “I’ll have it done again when probation is over.”
Some young skinheads were talking at a nearby table. “In ten to fifteen years, not even that,” one of them said seriously, “the Muslims will have enough people here to elect the next President of the United States.”
“Yeah, there’s a state, Oklahoma or Kansas or something, where they’ve actually voted to institute Sharia law! In the Heartland. I mean, come on!”
“You know Muslim men are allowed to marry from when they are one, right? They can get married when they’re only one year old! A woman on the Internet said it. One year old, swear to God.”
One of them was playing with his mobile phone distractedly. “I can’t download any White Power music on my phone,” he said. “Sprint is letting me down.”
The rain was getting worse outside the tent. The rain and heavy boots had turned the lawn into deep mud and every so often forks of lightning illuminated the swastikas on the walls. Commander Schoep sat alone in the corner. He was wearing his combat uniform. Black boots, black cargo pants, black shirt with a red armband.
“How has your weekend been?” he asked when I sat down. I told him that it had been good. Illuminating.
“People don’t get that we’re just regular people and a regular party,” he said. I looked over at Josh with the plunger tattoo. He was talking excitedly to a man dressed completely in white with the words “It’s not illegal to be white…yet” written on his tee-shirt.
“The reds attack us and want to get us, and we’re a peaceful, non-violent group. But we’ll defend ourselves and we always win. But we don’t like violence. We are who we are, and if what we do provokes them, tough. But it’s not about provoking. That’s not why we do this.” Last year, Lieutenant Hall, a large, looming skinhead with a skull on an iron cross tattooed on his head received 30 percent of the vote for city council in a small town in California. The week after my trip to Trenton, he would be shot dead at home by his ten-year-old son.
Schoep believed that his movement would only gain electoral popularity. “We’re a white civil rights organization,” he said. “Like us or hate us, we’re involved in a lot of good things and I think many Americans are starting to agree with us. The Democrats and Republicans are basically the same group. There are no strong differences between them and that’s where we come in. National Socialism is neither left wing nor right wing. It takes the best of both wings and combines them.”
He said he didn’t see his party as racist or hateful. He said he was concerned with establishing a white, secure homeland, and really didn’t care what other races thought about that. Ideally the other races would go when his party came to power.
“They could go back to their own homelands,” he suggested. “It’s not like we’d rip them out and send them off. They’d be repatriated.” He explained that if a black person owned a house here, he would of course be given a house in his new homeland. “We can do it if we stop immigration, bring the troops home and stop giving out all this foreign aid,” he said, repeating the NSM solution to pretty much everything.
I had been told several times that weekend that the US could easily be fixed if we brought the troops home and placed them on the border to Mexico, the origin of most of the problems in the US. A sergeant I’d spoken with earlier had seen a Mexican man in Connecticut, and presented it as undisputable proof of a mass exodus of criminals, degenerates and rapists from Mexico. “It’s an America First policy, and it’ll bring in tons of money,” Schoep said confidently. “Immigration and the economy are the biggest problems facing the nation. And they’re two sides of the same coin.”
He didn’t think his group was a hate group, and if they were then Martin Luther King was a hater too. “There’s a real double standard when it comes to whites,” he said. “If you’re white and proud then you’re called a racist, but if you’re black and proud or any other race then that’s ok. If you look out for white people, then all of a sudden you’re a racist. I’m not a racist. I don’t hate anyone because of his or her color, creed or religion. That’s ignorant. I prefer to be with my own people, but I don’t hate anyone.”
Schoep said that whites would be the minority in the US by 2020, that big business was run by Jews whom he didn’t consider white, and the white politicians in Congress were traitors who didn’t care about their constituents. “Most people don’t want immigrants here. Most people don’t want the war. But the politicians don’t listen. We’re here to change that.”
Lieutenant Hiecke came in from the rain, soaking wet. “We’re about to light her. She needs about ten gallons of fuel, but she’ll light.” Everyone got up and went outside in the rain. It was coming down harder than ever. Hiecke’s backyard was an ocean, lit up by forks of lightning. In the middle of the yard was a giant swastika, six feet across and nailed to a wooden beam that had been driven into the soaking earth. Hiecke was crouched next to it. Tiny flickers of his lighter illuminated his face and hands as he struggled to set fire to the dripping wet structure. Eventually small flames appeared on the bottom right angle of the swastika, slowly making their way to where there four arms intersected.
“White Power!” someone screamed.
The rain seemed to get worse but no one went back inside the tent. Everyone stood around watching as the flames engulfing the swastika and grew stronger and brighter. “Sieg Heil!” people shouted, giving straight-armed salutes while water poured from their outstretched hands and arms.
“Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” The neighbors were in their windows watching the group of Nazis, soaking uniforms clinging to their bodies, illuminated by the flickering light of the burning swastika. Schneider stood next to me. He had his hat in his hand and the heavy rain was pounding his bald, round head. His right arm was outstretched and flames flickered in his eyes. His lips were pursed and his back was straight. Water was dripping from his eyebrows into his eyes but I never saw him blink.
I wondered what he had achieved that weekend. The Nazis had faced off their attackers and marched in their uniforms. They had cuts to boast about and they had given each other medals and commendations for it. There had been much backslapping and agreement about what was wrong with America, but I had a feeling that that was pretty much it. The next day everyone would go back home. They would listen to White Power music, talk on Internet forums and shake their heads at the number of Mexicans in their country. Then they would say that something needed to be done and that they should be in power, safely knowing that it will never happen and that their theories and ideas will never be tested.
I said bye to Schneider who didn’t hear me, and walked to my car. From the parking lot I could still see Hiecke’s house illuminated by the burning swastika, and as I got into the car I could still hear their Sieg Heils.
Postscript
It had been more than a year since I had last seen Duke. We had met a couple of times after New Jersey, but after a while we had lost touch.
I emailed him a couple of times, but never heard back, and the people I spoke to in the NSM didn’t seem to know where he was.
It had been almost six months since my last email when I tried him again, this time getting a reply straight away, only it wasn’t from his NSM email, and he was no longer calling himself Duke, but Keith.
He said that since he last saw me he had been promoted to SS captain within the NSM and was in line to be made major, and, as he put it in the email, “had been put in charge of everything including rebuilding the NSM into a full scale empire.”
Then he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, left the NSM and married a black woman.
A couple of days after I got the email I was once again standing under the overpass at the Avenue U station. He was waiting in the same old Hyundai, but rather than driving us to the El Greco diner, via a series of loops and double-backs, as he had in the past, he drove to a small house on a quiet, tree lined street.
On the surface at least, not much had changed. He was still the same short, muscled man, with the same cargo pants, boots and t-shirt with a wolf’s head. He said I could still call him Duke, but other than that, he was a completely different person.
“When you get cancer, you tend to start reflecting on things,” he said as we drove.
“I had always been prepared to die, but I always though it would happen in some glorious way, like protecting the Commander, for instance. Dying from cancer has no honor.”
It was last fall when the doctors discovered a tumor in Duke’s neck with a diameter of 8 cm. He was pumped full of chemo and blasted with radiation, but the tumor wouldn’t budge, so it would have to come out.
During his treatment, Catherine visited him in the hospital. Catherine Boone and Duke had known each other for almost twenty years, ever since she had hired him as a body guard when she worked as a presenter for a local cable show and received threats. Since then they had spent time together on and off. They had been friendly, but nothing more. Duke had never made a secret of his affiliation with the Nazis, but Catherine had never seemed to care. After Duke had been diagnosed with cancer, he had started going to church, and he and Catherine had reconnected. She had rarely left his side in the hospital.
“The day I was going in for my surgery, she leaned over and told me that she had loved me for twenty years,” Duke said. “Clear out of the blue.”
When he woke up after the successful removal of his tumor, she was there, and he said that as soon as he got out he would marry her. Less than a month later they married, and Duke resigned from the NSM.
Duke and Catherine live in Duke’s old house, a small, two-story brick building in Brooklyn. Catherine is a short, slightly plump woman, in the tail end of her fifties. She has a gentle face, framed by long braids that she sometimes decorates with a flower.
Their living room is sparsely decorated and opens up to a small dining room, which is filled with hundreds of video cassettes and DVDs. Catherine has done some acting, and she and Duke have both had small parts in a few low-budget horrors. In one of them, “The Ghost of Angela Webb,” a straight to video from 2005, a very puzzled looking woman (we’ve been told she’s a medium cum private detective) enters a barn and immediately declares that “the room has an overwhelming feeling of sadness.” Duke’s corpse can be seen in the background, dangling from the rafters.
“I didn’t use a harness for that,” Duke says approvingly of his own performance.
“All neck muscle.”
A narrow staircase leads from the dining room up to the second floor where Duke keeps a special room for his turtles.
Catherine came out carrying cups of coffee and a photo album that contained pictures from the wedding. In one of them, Duke has his arm around his new wife and is smiling. He looks slightly out of place in a tuxedo, but happy.
“It wasn’t a big wedding, but it was a happy one,” he said. Out of all his friends in the NSM, only his daughter attended. “After I left I got some pretty nasty texts from some of the members.”
A former member of the NSM sent him a message on his wedding day calling him “a nigger, not a Nazi.”
“I guess that in their eyes I am a race mixer and a traitor, but when I came out of that surgery, I didn’t see things like I used to. I didn’t see my wife’s color any more than she saw mine.”
During our past meetings I had asked Duke several times if he believed that the NSM was a hate group, and he had always said no, or deflected the question with a diatribe about defending ones race. Now, on the other side of cancer and his wedding, he still seemed uncomfortable with labeling his former comrades as hateful.
“I see them NSM as an exercise in futility,” he said diplomatically. “No matter what we did, we never got a political candidate on the ballot and the press would always write bad things about us. Being in the NSM is like shoveling water against the tide”
“Still, knowing what he believed used to make me sad,” Catherine interjected. “He never hid anything from me, but I still remember the first time a saw him in his uniform. It made me sad that anyone could believe such things about people of other races and the Holocaust. But I never gave up on him.”
“I thought I was professing my love for my race and my country,” Duke said. “But the NSM preaches the separation of the races. It may not be hate, but it certainly is animosity.”
He said that he wasn’t conflicted over the years and work he had put into the NSM, and that in a way he was glad he had gone through it. He tried to look at it logically and pragmatically, and said his only regret was that he hadn’t spent his time doing something more enterprising and worthwhile. He talked about his time in the NSM not as something shameful, but like a business venture that had failed.
“Now I don’t have an ounce of National Socialism left in my body anymore,” he continued. “I can’t serve Jesus Christ and Adolf Hitler at the same time. I served Adolf Hitler for a long time. And for what? Why? Back then, I used to end every email with ‘The SS will take care of everything.’ Throat cancer was one thing the SS couldn’t take care of for me.”
Duke’s daughter Kate is still a member of the NSM, but Duke seemed to think that she was getting out of the movement. At an NSM-rally in Atlanta in April she told me that she was sad that her father had left, but that she was staying with the movement. She had also recently gotten engaged to the head of the NSM’s chapter in England, a man called John.
No one at the rally mentioned Duke. The SS had a new leader and Duke had seemingly disappeared from their consciousness as apostates often do.
Duke had said that he was still friendly with Jeff Schoep, but Jeff just frowned at the mention of him.
“I don’t know what that guy is doing. We don’t talk,” he said.
“Are you talking about Schneider?” another member leaned over and asked.
“Fuck that guy. That guy’s a traitor.” | https://medium.com/thebigroundtable/my-weekend-at-adolfs-f47402f88cce | ['The Big Roundtable'] | 2016-11-16 19:02:45.943000+00:00 | ['Communists', 'Communism', 'Adolf', 'Adolf Hitler', 'Big Reads'] |
The Day I Left My Husband | Home from now on was where I decided it would be, and where I felt safe.
I don’t remember what the weather was like that day. I don’t remember what I was wearing. I don’t even remember how I was feeling.
All I remember about the day I left my husband was the intense, instinctive need within myself to just GO.
I packed everything I could think of into my car while he was screaming obscenities at me, got in, put it in drive, gripped the wheel, and drove away.
I’m lucky to have made such a relatively smooth getaway considering all the years of violence and abuse.
Many women are not so lucky.
And so I drove for over an hour, up a mountain, to the city I had been commuting to every day for work. I drove to a mall parking lot and sat there. It was winter. I had no plan. I walked into the mall and purchased a comforter that was on sale. I took it back to the car and considered whether I was going to just sleep in the backseat that night.
I had never felt so alone in my whole life.
But it was nothing like the fear I had felt in the last few years of my marriage. This was nothing compared to that.
For any woman who has left an abusive marriage or relationship, I think there’s nothing quite like that surreal mix of adrenaline, terror, and absolute relief. The “leaving” really feels more like escaping. You almost can’t believe it’s real once you finally get away from an abuser. There’s always that very real fear that they will follow you, track you down, and do something violent.
That fear never truly goes away.
I never wanted to leave my husband. I had always hoped that things would get better. As I know and others like me know, however, it doesn’t tend to get better — only worse.
I had left him before, maybe for a day or two. But I always went back. I went back because I was afraid. I didn’t think I could really ever leave him for good.
But this time was different.
I had finally reached my breaking point. The life I was living could not be my final destination. I was done with the misery, tears, and darkness. I was ready for the light.
I ended up getting a cheap motel room that night I left. I got takeout and ate in my room. I locked the door and closed all the curtains.
I finally felt safe.
I slept better that night than I had slept in a very long time. I was a tiny speck in the universe and no one knew where I was. Feeling insignificant felt good. It felt like I could do anything.
I ignored the calls and texts, asking when I was coming “home”. I wasn’t going back to a home like that ever again. Home from now on was where I decided it would be, and where I felt safe.
The next day I went to work like normal and told absolutely no one about what had happened in my personal life.
I dyed my hair and cut it that week. I searched for an apartment. I even stayed for a few nights in a freezing cold Brazilian jiu-jitsu studio my co-worker offered me to save money. There was no heat or hot water in the studio but those three icy-cold showers I took there were only the beginning of my awakening into a new way of being.
I found a cozy apartment in a nice community to rent within 2 weeks of leaving my husband. The manager of the apartment was a woman who had been through what I had been through. She was kind. She was an angel. She understood that my husband could never know where I was. She never called the old apartment building I had come from for references. She waved part of my deposit. She took a chance on me and I will never forget her.
And that’s the thing about making decisions that are true to your best path. Once you start making them, all kinds of doors start opening up. Once you finally break free of poisonous relationships and toxic habits you begin to feel a freedom you either forgot about or didn’t even realize existed.
Those of us who are lucky enough to get out know the gratitude of freedom. We know the taste of primal fear. And we know that there is a life out there after abuse that is safe, fulfilling, and so worth the journey.
If you are the victim of domestic abuse or know someone who needs help, please call The National Domestic Hotline at 1–800–799–7233
More from Michelle: This Is Why So Many Women Don’t Like Their Partners Watching Porn | https://medium.com/heart-affairs/the-day-i-left-my-husband-a453391fc1d8 | ['Michelle Brown'] | 2020-06-27 23:04:29.150000+00:00 | ['Divorce', 'Life Lessons', 'Relationships', 'Domestic Violence', 'Marriage'] |
Why We’re Worried About Mental Health Classes in School | For once, the public is really proud of Florida. The state made national news in July when the Board of Education mandated mental health classes for public school students. The state now requires schools to provide 35 hours of mental health education starting in 6th grade.
Florida Education Commissioner, Richard Corcoran, claimed that the required classes would “reinvent school-based mental-health awareness in Florida.” The Florida Counseling Association announced the mandate to positive reactions from members, calling it a “win for Florida.” And the Republican-led government of the battleground state is beaming.
However, the project’s implementation raises serious questions from advocates, students, and concerned parents. Increases in funding for community mental health services and public schools are easy proposals to support. But, we must also be wary when they place power in hands with insufficient resources or accountability.
What Could Go Wrong?
In July of this year, it was reported that the nation is facing a school counselor crisis. A dismal amount of students, especially students of color, attend schools with enough counselors and the ones who do are rarely able to access services. Counselors are drowning in overwhelming caseloads and administrative work while students face the consequences.
[enter 35-hour mandate stage right]
Officials have stated that funding for the classes would come from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ $75 million in increased mental health funds for schools, which the Florida Policy Institute has already asserted would do little to increase access to services. Florida already ranks 43rd in accessibility of care across the nation and an extra $75 million isn’t enough to free counselors from non-clinical, administrative duties or significantly reduce the student/counselor ratio.
Further, it is unclear how these strapped school districts would allocate time from existing curriculum since the state Dept. of Education did not provide further comment. There is no established curriculum to follow, which the Board stated would allow “autonomy” for school districts. However, similar mandates in the U.S. show that this risks reproducing disparities already present among school districts.
For instance, New York implemented similar mental health classes in July 2018 with choice of curriculum written into its mandate. The New York State Regent for Western New York stated that the ambiguity allowed communities to focus on issues that affected them most, like suicide or substance use. But some activists disagree. Peer advocates from Mental Health Advocates of Western New York said that, though the program was a step in the right direction, there was still a wide disparity of quality and support from district to district.
With such little direction for implementation and program evaluation, mandatory classes raise concerns about who will be teaching these courses and how effective they will be.
Beyond Practicality
Underlying the practical issues of funding and resource distribution for mandatory mental health classes are purposes and assumptions that raise concerns about the role of schools in mental health at all.
Florida’s First Lady, Casey DeSantis, who spearheaded the push for mental health classes in schools, said that “prevention is critical in dealing with [mental health] issues” and hoped the mandate would ensure that those in need receive “meaningful help and positive outcomes through effective treatment.” Another school board member, appointed by former Gov. Rick Scott claimed that the classes would “obviously” help people with thoughts of suicide.
And yet, Florida lawmakers continue to publicly fund private schools that discriminate against LGBTQ+ students despite these students being more likely to die by suicide or be diagnosed with a mental illness than their straight and/or cisgender peers. Though the CDC has affirmed that inclusive and safe school environments are key preventative measures for reducing LGBTQ+ youth suicide risk, Casey DeSantis didn’t include these protections in her push for “prevention.”
Florida is also 1 of 14 states that haven’t opted to expand Medicaid as of 2019. The Florida Policy Institute estimates that expanding Medicaid would give coverage to over 730,000 Floridians, making their children far more likely to receive preventative care. The same report shows that expansion would also save the state nearly $500 million and the GOP-led government still hasn’t taken the money. Given these previous decisions by state lawmakers, at what point do these current efforts for “prevention” begin to seem insincere?
Ultimately, it is hard to believe that these required courses are part of a good-faith effort to increase community health resources. When the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Act was signed, which allocated an additional $69 million to mental health services after the Parkland shooting, former Gov. Rick Scott was desperate to appease disgruntled constituents before the midterm election. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, an NRA favorite, also recommended increasing the number of employed school counselors in response to a shooting in 2018. Both states had infamous records regarding mental health legislation with Florida ranking 50th in per-capita funding and Texas not requiring counselors in schools at all.
And this mandate, commissioned by a former Republican Speaker of the House, falls only one week after the President and fellow Republicans blamed mental illness for mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Though billed as efforts to increase mental health awareness, the consistent timing of sudden care about mental health services makes one question the true intentions and purposes of the courses being implemented.
Are these classes genuinely aiming to increase mental health awareness? Or to distract from gun control and shift the responsibility of keeping people safe onto our youth? To form students into our instruments of surveillance on their peers who walk the halls with them?
Regardless of the answers to these questions, teaching and expecting students to spot symptoms of mental illness can risk further stigmatizing disabled and neurodivergent people and disproportionately affect students of color and LGBTQ+ students. Previous versions of the DSM are still being used to dismiss transgender people’s existence and research shows that mental health counseling is particularly vulnerable to bias and harm toward marginalized communities. Sharing these tools and assigning these responsibilities to students, without addressing the underlying bias in modern psychiatry, reproduces these problems in school environments.
To truly impact the physical and emotional wellbeing of students and our youth, we must go beyond insincere mandates and reactionary measures. We call on Florida and other states across the nation to be bold in their efforts to keep children and the rest of our communities safe. Until we can take on the responsibility of combatting white supremacy, misogyny, and systems of power in our schools and outside of them, mental health classes won’t rid us of stigma but entrench it. | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/why-were-worried-about-mental-health-classes-in-school-19f15435f2c6 | ['Counselors For Justice'] | 2019-08-23 06:00:13.859000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Politics', 'Equality', 'Safety', 'Education'] |
The First 60 Days | “What is your vision?”
Since I joined IBM as General Manager, Design almost two months ago, I’ve heard this question over and over. From the dozens of designers I met in Austin my first week. From participants in the all-hands meetings at which I’ve spoken. From a producer with the CBS show we sponsor, “America By Design,” and most recently, the Fortune reporter who interviewed Phil Gilbert and me for a story about the past, present, and future of design at IBM.
Week 1 at IBM — photo from fireside chat in Austin, TX with IBM’s Inhi Cho Suh and Phil Gilbert.
My answer, in one form or another: “I don’t know yet. I’m in listening mode.”
I know…Not a very satisfying answer. But it would be pure arrogance to march in as The New Kid and declare that I know what needs to be done without doing my homework. After all, IBM has a rich, textured, 100+ year history of design and innovation which I’m still learning about. Moreover, I’ve worked with dozens of companies as a consultant and in-house design leader, and I can assure you there’s no single template for how to do this right. IBM is a pioneer in enterprise design with one of the largest design practices in the world, and we will continue to chart our own path.
Having a vision starts with having clear values. So let’s start there:
“What are your values?”
I value authenticity, trust, and humility. These things go together, and lay the groundwork for innovation.
We must be able to come together, from diverse backgrounds, and feel we can be our authentic selves in order to fully engage with each other and build trust. We must have a baseline of trust in order to have hard conversations, share risky ideas, and challenge ourselves and each other. We must have humility to truly listen to each other and to our customers.
I believe good ideas can come from anywhere, at any level of the corporate hierarchy and any discipline, but we won’t hear the ideas if we aren’t willing to listen. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard great ideas that started with “This might be a crazy/dumb/wild idea but…” We only hear those ideas because it feels safe enough to share them.
These values are a compass for me in how I show up as a leader.
Now let’s tweak the question a bit further:
“What are you focused on?”
This I can answer in a little more depth. Here’s how I see the challenge ahead, what I’m doing, and the questions I’m asking.
THE CHALLENGE
The challenge in 2013 was very clear: to build a sustainable culture of design and design thinking throughout IBM. It took eight years, but with Phil and his team leading the way, we did it.
We hired hundreds of designers. We built a beautiful flagship studio in Austin that practically begs people to work more collaboratively. And then we planted the seed for similar studios all over the world. We created the enterprise design thinking framework to scale our human-centered work and trained hundreds of thousands of people inside and outside the company. We helped our senior executives understand that design is not just how things look and feel. It’s how they work. It’s how we create strategic value for the business. We built a thriving practice of approximately 3,000 designers and design leaders who are now embedded in every part of the company. This program was written up in Forrester Research and Harvard Business School as a model for innovation. We put design back on the map at IBM, and put IBM back on the map for the design industry.
2021: Put design to its highest and best use
Now our job is different. We’re not building from scratch. We have an incredible asset, and our job is to make sure we are putting it to its Highest and Best Use.
Highest and Best Use is a concept coined by economists in the 1800s. Today you hear real estate developers use this term to talk about getting the most value from an asset — in real estate, this means a piece of property.
Our “asset” at IBM is our design practice – our talent, our culture, our approach to design. The big challenge for us now is this: How might we position design to solve the right problems for our customers, and solve them well? If we put design to its Highest and Best Use, we will catalyze IBM’s transition to reestablishing itself as a Product Company, and the global leader in Hybrid Cloud and AI.
WHAT I’M DOING
I’m approaching this challenge exactly the way I would approach any new design project. Only in this case, rather than designing a piece of software or a branded event, we’re designing design itself. It starts with the loop.
Image of IBM Enterprise Design Thinking Loop
Observe
The left side of our Enterprise Design Thinking loop is called “Observe.” This is where I’m spending most of my time right now. My job is to learn everything I can about where and how design is happening around the company, what is working, and what can be improved.
I’ve set up one-on-one meetings with more than 50 designers and design leaders, GMs, SVPs, and of course, Arvind, to understand what they need from design and how it’s working today. I’m setting up Round Tables with design leaders (and one focused solely on research) to have a group discussion about the current state of design. I’m participating in product reviews and readouts from all our core design programs — including the Carbon design system, our Accessibility program, Racial Equity in Design, and our work on education and designer careers. My team is doing a review of past surveys of our design community and may put together another one to fill the gaps in our knowledge. And as a big believer in learning by doing, I’m proud to say that I just earned my first IBM Enterprise Design Thinking Badge (Practitioner Level).
Along the way, I’m getting help and guidance from many generous and knowledgeable tour guides including Doug Powell and his entire team who know just about everything there is to know about design at IBM, LaNeise Boyd who has helped me navigate the labyrinth of people and process at IBM, and Arin Bhowmick and his team who have welcomed me to their design reviews and shown patience as I ask lots of newbie questions about what they’re working on.
Reflect
In between the learning and listening, I’m looking for themes.
· How is design working with key partners such as those in product and engineering?
· Do we have the right number of designers and design executives, and how do we know?
· How are we leveraging our vast knowledge of customers, and sharing it with stakeholders within and outside of design?
· How is this knowledge shaping decisions about what deals we pursue, and what gets roadmapped?
· Is design empowered to not only design the thing right (right side of the loop), but also design the right thing (left side of the loop)?
· Where are the bright spots, where we can amplify exceptional work happening in one group to other parts of the company?
· How might we make our business stronger while adhering to our values about fairness, equity, and the social good?
Make
I’ve set myself and my team a deadline for January 2022 to present the first version of our Vision for Design @ IBM. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts here in the comments on what we can do to put design to its Highest and Best Use. IBMers, you can also message me directly on Slack. | https://medium.com/design-ibm/the-first-60-days-d9090bfa214b | ['Katrina Alcorn'] | 2021-09-15 17:13:27.587000+00:00 | ['Design Thinking', 'Design', 'Leadership', 'IBM'] |
What My Atom-Built Body has Forgotten | My atom-built body has since forgotten
all that primal potential of the primordial Genesis
written in star-script of chaos burning the inky-rich night sky
an endless scrawl no human mind can comprehend
Where the first fires crawled up the night sky
ever higher and higher from depths unimaginable
fire feeding fire, burning in quiet contrast against the cold
branding the new flesh of that first night sky
Until all those fires settled, and chaos gave rise to spinning stars
galaxies swirling on a tide of cosmic waves
and the rising and falling of all these mighty forces was the first day
and the infinite day-less nights that followed
How far can the night sky stretch?
a mystery written in the scrawl of night-script
infinity piling on layers of itself
what mysteries my atom-built body has forgotten | https://medium.com/literally-literary/what-my-atom-built-body-has-forgotten-2fcbae5108df | ['Gregory D. Welch'] | 2020-08-06 05:31:01.276000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Cosmos', 'Poem', 'Poetry', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
Choosing Your Style of Life Consciously | There are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened. Louis Borland Hart (1980)
I thought this quote was apropos as we inch towards the end of the year when we tend to take stock of our lives. If you’re like me, you’re looking back and assessing how productively you’ve used your time on Planet Earth.
I don’t know to what degree I’ve been a person that’s “made things happen” this past year. I’ve been consumed with fighting a battle in our community for the past twelve months. For most of those I’ve been feeling like things have been happening to me rather than me having any real impact on the situation.
Despite not having a lot of successes for my massive investment of time and energy so far, I’m proud to say I’ve been fighting valiantly and have kept on fighting even during my lowest moments when all I wanted to do was quit. Does that in some weird, distorted logic make me a member of the one third of people who are making things happen? I don’t know, the jury is still out. Check back with me same time next year. The outcome of this battle should be known by then.
“Those who watch things happen”. I think a lot of people fall into this category. Life overwhelms all of us to the point we are exhausted. So it’s easy to become watchers. Especially watchers of tv. Especially streaming videos. Especially sports. Especially with a worldwide pandemic having taken over our focus. As we are forced to quarantine and social distance it’s natural for all of us to be “watchers”. But hold on, let’s not give ourselves unchecked license to put our lives on cruise control.
Even in our isolation there’s always plenty to work on. Like ourselves for one. I grew up with a father who often said, “If I haven’t learned something new each day then there’s something wrong with me.” This instilled a life long love of learning in me and it’s the greatest gift my father gave me.
Motivating yourself to learn new things all the time is an essential key to life. From my observation you can either do the learning voluntarily or avoid it and one way or the other life will come along and blindside you with something to get your attention. And it can be painful. I’m a master at avoiding pain so I do my learning voluntarily which is constantly evolving me towards higher levels of understanding, patience and acceptance of the people around me and most importantly acceptance of myself.
Life is about change. You can dig in your heels and sit down on your haunches and watch life passing by or you can jump into the mix and see where you end up next.
Finally we come to the people who “wonder what happened.” My thoughts immediately fly to stories of people who have such terrible regrets on their deathbeds.
When I was a child my Aunt Betty had a favorite refrain. She’d said, “If only I had it all to do over again.” She was filled with constant regrets and even as a grade school--er I knew I never wanted to speak those words. I can’t think of anything sadder than to have been afraid to live life on my terms or to be regretful.
My Aunt Betty died young because she’d made herself so unhappy with her multitudes of regrets. They were like a net that held her captive; impotent. She didn’t know how to seize control of her life. She watched and she regretted and I’ve no doubt wondered what happened. She refused to or didn’t know how to take action.
So you must choose for yourself. Will you make things happen in your life, watch things happen or at the end of your life wonder what happened? I’ve made my choice. What’s yours? | https://medium.com/@rachelmchorse/choosing-your-style-of-life-consciously-2fce500c1cc2 | ['Quote Baby'] | 2020-12-23 18:13:48.298000+00:00 | ['In The Flow', 'Living', 'Quotes', 'Quotes About Life', 'Take Action'] |
A Night on The Riverbank | A Night on The Riverbank
The lockdown is over, and Italy has begun a slow, trembling march to another unknown territory. The first real thing that signaled to me the end of the state of mandatory inactivity was a dinner invitation from a friend. Apart from that, not too many attempted to call me. I understood, everyone has piles of matters to tend to, and stepping out to the world means also inviting the world in, with its usual daily problems resurrected: deadlines and commitments, bills and delayed projects, and the horrifying news from around the globe.
I think that it was easier for me to step into the hibernation state than out of it. Unlike the first phase, the second one didn’t come with a detailed instructional booklet but a basic general guideline. It was easier to shut down the world, limit your contact with others and keep a distance — to go out only for necessary supplies, wear masks and gloves, and clean, clean, clean, and more cleaning — but now you don’t know what you are supposed to do precisely.
However, I was more worried about Tripoli’s disturbing news: the shelling attack intensified and got closer to my family. A big part of my day was spent following the news of the war in Libya.
The worst was when I’d only see a video or photo of a street being hit, people running and screaming, and the fire and smoke filling the background. The problem is all the streets of Tripoli are similar when shot from certain angles without a reference point. The longer I examined the footage, the more worried I would get. That alarming sensation of dread would slowly come alive and take over, distorting my proud sense of observation, and although my mind knows it is not my street, my heart says otherwise and insists that I call my friends and family. Due to the long power-cuts in Tripoli, sometimes they’d answer me late, and by the time I receive an answer, I would be reduced to a pile of anxiety.
One day I saw a couple of pictures of shelled areas in Tripoli, and I couldn’t mistake where they were taken. I know that street, I know the site, and I know the people who live there. It was very close to my family. The second footage was of a park in Tripoli. I can’t even count the nights I spend there with my friends. We used to escape to it to breathe a bit, to leave the darkness and hot temperatures in our houses during the long power cuts. Sometimes we played the guitars. You could see families having picnics and their children playing around. In certain hidden spots, lovers secretly met away from the eyes of the unforgiving society. The park was the target for another attack. There was a picture of a ten-year-old boy who had been playing football at the park. He was injured and lost his leg.
I called my family and waited for an answer. Once I knew finally that they were fine, I sighed in relief, but the devastated tone of my sister was the trigger for me to lose it. I took a long walk, but even the sunlight failed to pierce the thick cloud around me. My girlfriend read on my face what my words fall short of expressing, as it was beyond my vocabulary’s capability to articulate in a sentence. She decided to take me out that night, away from the news, away from the tensions, to spend a tranquil night in Rome. She was right; after all, it has been a while since we last did that. I suggested taking the dog with us — I was already tired, and I didn’t want to take him out again once we returned, especially not with the elevator that decided to stop working days after the lockdown was left off, exactly when we were about to use it more.
It was a serene June night, fresh and cool with the right amount of Roman gentle breeze. In the restaurant, there was sheer happiness and a non-breaking panoramic sound sequence: merely sitting there and listening to the ambiance was satisfying: the clink of forks and spoons, a clatter about everywhere; babbling, twaddle, conversations and debates, short giggles here and loud peals of laughter there. All these tiny bits fused in one fabric that wrapped my ear like an invisible blanket, which — surprisingly — created a sense of relief. I realized how much I missed all these human noises. The act of sitting in a bar or restaurant by its very nature was a fundamentally precious social activity whose importance I had underestimated — that I didn’t know how much I had missed until I had it again.
Strolling hand in hand, we decided to go to the Tiber island, of all the places in Rome. We arrived at the bridge and went down the stairs; as soon as we touched the ground, our dog Pepe sprinted toward the edge of the riverbank. He was very excited and determined to make what looked like a suicidal free-dive into the dark, cold water. We ran and dragged him away from the edge just in time. We thought, okay, now that he has looked into the abyss, he won’t try it again. We only took a few other steps before he went back in an even more determined attempt. This time I had to fasten the leash on his harness. While I was still at his eye level, I told the small white ball of excitement: “You need to understand, the freedom to walk free in the street is not a right; it is a privilege, and you lost it tonight.”
My girlfriend ignored my statement. Either she has learned how to distinguish between my serious statements and my dark, twisted sarcastic jokes, or she has finally given up on trying to. But I guess she has come to accept me as the creature that I am, the same way we both accept the small suicidal egoistic creature who hides under the bed and shakes during thunderstorms yet would eagerly jump into the river. After all, who knows what is going on inside the minds of men and dogs; I am one of the two species, and I don’t claim to have an answer.
Other than a strolling couples passing us by every few minutes, there was only us, the sound of the river, and the small creature who relentlessly cornered himself between us like a tiny chaperone determined to remind us all the time that only he is worthy of love and affection. We were sitting and talking about the history of the river. History in general, and Rome’s in particular, is one of her passions. But then, we glimpsed up on the street at the other side of the river flashing lights of a police car, then two, three, and after the fourth, we knew that something abnormal was happening.
We stood and marched to the edge to see what was going on. On the other side of the riverbank, we started to recognize movement and people wearing what looked like reflective jackets. Police officers and civil defense workers were standing in a semi-circle, while others marched up and down the stairs. We heard a girl screaming, but it wasn’t clear what she was saying. The numbers of people kept increasing — I started counting and lost count and the crowd of people who leaned from the street to watch.
We stayed and kept watching until a boat with the same flashing lights arrived and docked in front of the police gathering. More people, more uniforms, and upon the street, there were more flashing lights coming. At that point, it was too much for me to resist — I had to go closer to see what was going on!
In an attempt to mask my curiosity, I said that we ought to investigate the situation as journalists. She laughed at my apparent attempt and remarked that she knows it’s just my nature. I partly blame my Libyan genes. We tend to act the opposite of all other countries: when there is an accident, we go directly to the events center. It's partly because Libyans can’t and won’t rely on the police or the ambulances or the fire department. Libyan police and ambulance arrive late — if they arrived at all — just like the police officers in films, always coming after all the action is over. It has been up to Libyan citizens for ages to rush to accidents to save the people by themselves.
We walked to the steps; a group of teenage boys was coming down as we were climbing up. We asked them, “What is going on over there?“
One of the boys replied in evident excitement, “I don’t know, but it seems as if there is a big fight happening and someone was knocked down, and now the police are there to collect them.”
We took the stone steps up and crossed the bridge to the other side. At the end of the bridge, a garbage truck was parked on the side of the road. The driver door was partly open, and a middle-aged man stood near it, smoking a cigarette and observing the scene. We asked him if he knew what was going on. He replied calmly with a half-smile on his face, “There are a bunch of drunken kids fighting, and someone probably was hurt.”Then he shrugged as if to say nothing new; it is what it is.
We thanked him and proceeded to the hot spot. We took the right turn after the bridge and kept walking. More uniforms, many police cars, two fire trucks, one big ambulance, and a small one. We took our positions right on the top of the event's stage, next to the crowd of people who seemed to enjoy the show, commenting, laughing, and recording with their mobiles. We asked a person in his mid-thirties whose mask failed to hide his wide smile, and he said:
“Well, a girl was standing to watch the river, that guy(he pointed to another bald person, down on the river banks) he thought she was about to kill herself, so he called every police officer and every department in Rome. He called everybody what an effort.”
I looked to the guy down who was moving fast from one officer to another and talking to them. He looked a bit hyped. The girl started to shout — as much as I leaned, I couldn’t see her — and soon, she was in the custody of emergency workers. “I was only standing and watching the river,” she screamed.
She kept repeating it loudly and angrily with many curses for punctuation: “What do you want from me? I was only standing to look to the river.”
Then it seemed she was resisting being injected with a sedative, as she screamed: “No, no, don’t inject me, don’t inject me. I was only here to watch the river.”
At that point, a smartly-dressed young police officer arrived, pointing a flashlight toward the audience — including us — and said something like: There is nothing to see, please move along. I left the stage, but the screaming girl wouldn’t leave my head.
The first thing I did the next day was the same thing I do every day: make coffee, take it to the balcony, light a cigarette, and read the news. Only this time, I was searching for a particular topic: What had happened last night? After a quick round, I found no mention of it on any news websites I read every day. I ran a more in-depth search, and I found two articles — if you can call them that — on two websites that I have never heard of before. The cheesy language they used and the big flashy titles reminded me of the newspapers that film noir male protagonists always read.
One article said that a fight between two lovers almost cost the boy his life. The girl “had reacted immediately to the boyfriend’s screams and pushed him violently, which made him fall into the Tiber.” They went on thanking the police and the firefighters’ divers who launched a search and managed to “find and rescue the young man before he reached the mouth of the river and the current took him too far to be saved.”
What impressed me the most was the level of imagination and dedication to the details: “The boy was taken to dry land, warmed with a blanket and taken to the hospital for examination. The girlfriend, who pushed him into the river, risking killing him, was taken to the police station for interrogation. “
The other article was more or less the same: a violent quarrel between a young couple, the girl pushed the boy, the boy fell into the river and disappeared, the police saved the boy.
We started to discuss that maybe this is what happened. Maybe Pepe wasn’t trying to kill himself after all: instead, perhaps he was trying to save the boy. When he heard his name, he crawled from under the bed to the hands of my girlfriend, shamelessly claiming the credit for his rescue attempt and demanding to be petted.
In the evening, another article said that after the fight between the two lovers, the girl tried to jump into the Tiber, but the police officers' intervention saved her life.
That night on the Tiber River, several people were there when the incident was still happening, yet each had a different story. Still, some news websites came up with yet a whole different one. It was as if everyone wasn’t watching what was happening as much as they were projecting their own biases and theories on it, re-writing it in their minds. But what was sure that night was that dinner succeeded in taking my mind away from Tripoli, even for one night. | https://medium.com/@khalifa-abokhraisse/night-on-the-riverbank-f064a5f73838 | ['Khalifa Abo Khraisse'] | 2020-12-12 13:28:57.178000+00:00 | ['Quarantine', 'War', 'Fake News', 'Libya', 'Italy'] |
New Year..Goals? | I’m not sure about you, but every year I try my absolute best to set a New Years Resolution…but they never happen. When I say this, I mean it in the most sincere way, but I truly am a goal setter and achiever. What was the difference then between a resolution and a goal for me to actually get things done and reset new habits each year.
Courtesy of Startupanz.com
That is when it hit me that maybe we need to get rid of the New Years Resolution stigma, and instead call “resolutions” something that will resonate better for you. For me, I can set goals, make a plan, and achieve them no problem. Going into the new year, I decided to instead refer to my plans as goals. Again, you can call your anything that helps you — goal, plan, intentions, aspiration, theme, purpose..you name it!
Now, to provide a little inspiration, I thought it would be fun to share a few of my New Years Goals, and it would be super motivating and empowering for any viewers of this blog post to share your “resolutions” in the comments!
Increase general health and wellness.
My 2020, was a year where I gained the “covid-15” a play on words of the college freshman 15 where you gain 15 pounds. I really want to make good habits now health wise that will aide in my future wellbeing. Different factors of health and wellness for me are focusing on drinking more water to stay hydrated, not snacking as often or as late at night, exercise and stretch and x amount of time per week, along with practice gratitude in the sense of journaling and words of personal affirmation to boost my mood (“daily I’m thankful for… , This went well today.. , I will improve tomorrow by …”).
Reach financial goals set.
A huge part of my life is focused around personal finance, and just general career goals I have set for myself. I don’t personally feel comfortable sharing my specific financial goal, but for this year it focuses different activities around saving more money, investing, along with increasing income between getting another part-time job, and even learning new skills to apply to my resume for work.
Improve and create more relationships.
After a year of not being nearly as social as I normally am, I am really looking forward to this goal. I’m looking to meet new friends, and join more groups to meet likeminded people (local parish, volunteer, work events, student organizations at my college, and more). To further expand on this, I’m also making an extreme effort to actively start dating — for my age, this is a personal decision and the time is right for me for my personal situation.
Weekly email clean-out for 15 minutes.
I am very organized…except for when it comes to my email inbox! This goal I am very looking forward to, but basically I am going to set a reminder/meeting on my phone calendar for 15 minutes once a week for an entire year. This set o f15 minutes will be to clear out all the emails in my inbox that piled up from the week, unsubscribe from any new email senders that I be on the list for, and even just to have a clean space for the week. By setting the reminder, I feel that this will really aide in accomplishing this goal for sure.
Again, these were just my personal set of New Years Goals in a form of inspiration if you’re still looking to make a plan for yours. Really consider to not use the word “resolution”, but instead think about an actionable word that resonates with you and sparks action or motivation.
I would love to hear about what word you decide on, or even a few of your new years “resolutions” for the new year! | https://medium.com/advice-to-younger-self/new-year-goals-efc7541160bb | ['Sabrina Tatalias'] | 2021-02-13 18:33:56.424000+00:00 | ['Goals', 'Planning', 'Resolutions', 'Strategy', 'Personal Development'] |
ROBOT FRAMEWORK | ROBOT FRAMEWORK
Table of Contents
▪ What is Robot Framework?
▪ Robot Framework Architecture and Test Flow
▪ Libraries
▪ Tools
▪ How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
▪ Robot Framework Usage with an Example
What is Robot Framework?
▪ Robot Framework is a generic test automation framework.
▪ It has easy-to-use tabular test data syntax.
▪ It utilizes the keyword-driven testing approach.
▪ Its testing capabilities can be extended by test libraries.
▪ Users can create new higher-level keywords from existing ones using the same syntax.
▪ It is operating system and application independent. The core framework is implemented using Python.
▪ Robot Framework itself is open source.
Robot Framework Architecture and Test Flow
▪ When test execution is started, the framework
first parses the test data.
▪ It then utilizes keywords provided by the test libraries to interact with the system under test.
▪ Libraries can communicate with the system either directly or using other test drivers. tools as
▪ Test execution is started from the command line and at the end of execution you get report and log HTML format as well as XML output.
Libraries
▪ Test libraries provide the actual testing capabilities to Robot Framework by
providing keywords
Libraries
Tools
Tools
Tools
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
· We will install Robot Framework with pip.
· Pip is the standard Python package manager and is already installed if you’re
using Python 2 >=2.7.9 or Python 3 >=3.4
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
· Step-1: Install Phyton
Go to https://www.python.org/ , download and install Python 2.7.x version
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
· Step-2: Install Robot Framework
Open command prompt and run below command.
pip install robotframework
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
· Step-3: Upgrade pip
Upgrade the pip with below command.
python -m pip install -U pip
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
· Step-4: Verifying Installation
After a successful installation, you should be able to execute below commands
and get both Robot Framework and interpreter versions.
robot — version
rebot –version
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
· Note: If you have any problem please check Path configuration and restart
your PC. Path configuration must be as same as below figure.
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
Step-5: Upgrade Robot Framework
Upgrading to a new version required either using the –upgrade option:
pip install — upgrade robotframework
or specifying the version to use explicitly:
pip install robotframework==2.9.2
Note: You can uninstall Robot Framework anytime with below command.
pip uninstall robotframework
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
▪ Step-6: Installing RIDE (Robot Framework Test Data Editor)
▪ Python 2.6 is the minimum version.
▪ Notice that similarly as Robot Framework, RIDE does not yet support Python 3.
▪ Notice also that on OS X RIDE requires 32-bit Python version.
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
▪ Step-6: Installing RIDE (Robot Framework Test Data Editor)
▪ Step-6.1: Python must be installed. (We installed it)
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
▪ Step-6: Installing RIDE (Robot Framework Test Data Editor)
▪ Step-6.2: wxPyhton must be installed.
We need to install “wxPyhton2.8-win32-unicode-2.8.12.1-py27.exe” 32-bit version.
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
Step-6: Installing RIDE (Robot Framework Test Data Editor)
▪ Step-6.3: Install RIDE with below pip command
pip install robotframework-ride
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
Step-6: Installing RIDE (Robot Framework Test Data Editor)
▪ Step-6.4: After a successful installation, RIDE can be started from the command line by running ride.py.
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
Step-7: Install Selenium 2 (WebDriver) Library
Selenium2Library is a web testing library for Robot Framework that leverages the Selenium 2 (WebDriver) libraries from the Selenium project.
Installation Command:
pip install robotframework-selenium2library
How to install Robot Framework on Windows?
▪ Step-8: Upgrade Selenium 2 (WebDriver) Library
Upgrade Command:
pip install — upgrade robotframework-selenium2library
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ Test Scenario:
▪ Open www.kariyer.net
▪ Check Title
▪ Maximize Browser
▪ Go to User Login Page
▪ Enter User Name
▪ Enter Wrong Password
▪ Click Login
▪ Wait 2 seconds
▪ Assert Warning Message
▪ Close Browser
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ Directory Structure:
▪ setup.robot file holds Settings, Variables, Keywords information
▪ KariyerLoginTest.robot file contains Test Cases which are using our High Level Keywords
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ Setup.robot:
▪ KariyerLoginTest.robot:
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ Run the Test on Command Prompt
robot KariyerLoginTest.robot
▪ Report and log results will be automatically generated after the test execution.
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ Run the Test on RIDE
▪ Open cmd prompt and write “ride.py” and then press Enter. Then, you will see
RIDE editor.
▪ Go to File >> New Project and then give a name to your project as shown below.
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ Add Resource File
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ After adding Resource File
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ Write your robot test
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ Write your robot test
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ Run The Test
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ While Test is Running
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ When Test finished.
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ REPORT
Robot Framework Usage with an Example
▪ LOG
If you need help please get in touch with us +91 -93 92 91 89 89 , [email protected]
www.qaprorammer.com | https://medium.com/@raghavendrar672/robot-framework-6202bce0a606 | [] | 2021-06-17 15:36:08.197000+00:00 | ['QA', 'Qa Testing'] |
預告：聖誕特別篇《黑心公司工作的我去了異世界當魔法師》鯧鯧動森劇場 | 讀心理學，鐘意科技同效率相關題材。A Psychology student is hooked on technologies and productivity. #地鐵迷 #非火車迷 #科幻 #電子化 #硬筆書法#手寫 #metro #digital #handwritten #calligraphy | https://medium.com/@fishsunsun/%E9%A0%90%E5%91%8A-%E8%81%96%E8%AA%95%E7%89%B9%E5%88%A5%E7%AF%87-%E9%BB%91%E5%BF%83%E5%85%AC%E5%8F%B8%E5%B7%A5%E4%BD%9C%E7%9A%84%E6%88%91%E5%8E%BB%E4%BA%86%E7%95%B0%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C%E7%95%B6%E9%AD%94%E6%B3%95%E5%B8%AB-%E9%AF%A7%E9%AF%A7%E5%8B%95%E6%A3%AE%E5%8A%87%E5%A0%B4-cdea281760cc | ['Curtis Chan Fishsunsun'] | 2020-12-18 04:54:21.229000+00:00 | ['Animal Crossing', '微電影', 'Hong Kong', '動物森友會', '香港'] |
COVID-19: How to Understand NYC’s Numbers In Real-Time | Twitter: @donnellymjd
Tl;dr:
If the New York lockdown (called: “NYS on PAUSE”) has been effective at reversing the exponential growth of the novel coronavirus, be on the lookout for net new hospitalizations to shrink down close to zero by the end of the first week of April. But, beware of potential new biases in the hospitalization data.
Did it work?
New York remains the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States. Starting a week ago, Sunday, March 22 at 8pm, Governor Andrew Cuomo took the extraordinary step of putting the state “on PAUSE.” The question we all want to know is: did it work?
The first place to look for a reliable answer to this question is reported hospitalized cases. There are three main reasons that we use this metric:
We test most patients who present with COVID-19-like symptoms. This means that we get capture close to 100% of hospitalized cases. Previous estimates of the detection rate for all cases in New York State have varied from 3% to 9% over the course of just one week. Meaning rapid increases in reported case numbers may be attributable to more tests OR more infections. The percentage of cases who show up is constant over time. While we don’t know the exact proportion of COVID-19 cases that require hospitalization, most reputable estimates range from about 5% to about 15%. More importantly than the level of the estimate, is that this proportion does not change over time within a given population. As a result, unlike with reported case data that can be affected by testing rates, we can infer the true changes in the spread of the virus using hospitalization data. The length of time from infection to hospitalization is relatively predictable. If someone happens to be among the unfortunate minority of cases that develop severe symptoms from the novel coronavirus, the symptoms tend to force them to go to a hospital on average about 8 days after exposure. While everyone is different, on average this delay also stays the same over time. And, it means we know when to start looking for evidence that policies like the “PAUSE” are working.
Where are we today?
The NYC trend in hospitalizations during March has shown that exponential growth pattern that has been so broadly discussed about the coronavirus pandemic. The somewhat good news is that the trend over the last four days has been closer to linear than exponential, averaging at about 1,115 net new hospitalizations per day.
This is far more than we should ever ask of our emergency services, doctors, nurses, hospitals, and healthcare system. Numerous media stories and personal testimonials describe the pain and suffering of patients as we stretch our hospitals past capacity. Indeed, we have long since passed the estimates of available beds I included in my previous post (3,000). The only reason we still have new patients receiving care is because of incredibly hard and sometimes dangerous work by medical professionals and other first responders. Though, this could have been avoided with earlier actions.
Where are we going?
All of these forecasts agree that we can expect this trend to roughly continue in the range of 800–1,100 net new hospitalizations per day through the next 2–3 days. [Note: Net new hospitalizations refers to the change in the total number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients from day to day.]
Our optimistic scenario forecast predicts that net new hospitalizations will drop below 700 per day starting on April 1. Then, quickly dropping to zero over the next week, so by the beginning of the second week of April we will hit a peak caseload of about 13,000 cases hospitalized simultaneously. (This would indicate a broadly successful effort to bring the reproduction factor below 1.0 after the implementation of the NYS on PAUSE policy, thus suggesting a rapid decrease in overall infections in the city.)
For reference, the chart includes a forecast that uses estimates for the reproduction rate from the Wuhan lockdown period. It seems unlikely that the current PAUSE will be as effective as China’s severe policy in Hubei province. This chart helps us understand what the difference might be. We don’t currently have any evidence about the effectiveness of the PAUSE due to the lag discussed above. Since real data can be noisy, we will have to wait for several days of favorable numbers before we can have any confidence in the trend.
If the PAUSE did not work at bringing the reproduction factor below 1.0, we would be looking at something like the “Bad Case” Scenario on the forecast chart. We would expect to see net new hospitalizations averaging around or above 1,000 through most of the week and staying above 500 through next weekend. Average daily returns much higher than this range over several days should be cause for alarm.
This would suggest that the virus is still spreading in NY exponentially. If left unchecked under this scenario, we would not see a peak hospital load until May or later. And the peak load could exceed 40,000 or more. Even if these numbers came to pass over the next week, it’s unlikely that the Governor would allow the state to continue along a path that would result in such a grim outcome. Instead, we should expect greater testing, enforcement, and restrictions to improve the efficacy of the PAUSE.
One Last Word Of Caution: Bias
New biases may be entering into the hospitalization data over the coming days that would result in underestimating hospitalization levels. You could imagine that a variety of sources could cause this problem, including:
Hospitals at capacity turning away severe cases. EMS crews being overwhelmed or losing capacity to transport cases due to infections of crew members. Hospital staff not testing COVID-19 positive patients and thus not reporting them due to triage procedures that prioritizes care over reporting.
We should treat all data coming in over this week as potentially subject to these downward biases. Though, an upward bias is possible if hospitals are freed up to do more complete testing in the coming week due to more support from emergency staffing (FEMA, National Guard, retired medical volunteers). While possible, it would seem the more likely bias is to depress the true number of hospitalizations.
As a result, it will be difficult to conclude decisively over the coming week that the PAUSE did enough to bring down the reproduction factor below 1.0.
On the other hand, if new daily hospitalizations come in well above our expectations, we would be forced to conclude that we need additional steps to suppress further spread of the novel coronavirus.
While these biases will make the next few days difficult to interpret, we can improve our confidence in the data by:
Seeking out qualitative evidence about the remaining capacity of hospitals; Get updates on the on-the-ground practice of testing and reporting of patients with COVID-like symptoms; Look for news about the ability of EMS crews to keep up with the demand for transportation to hospitals.
This will be a difficult and scary week in the city’s history. Medical professionals and first responders will be on the front lines of the crisis, but public cooperation with social distancing measures and good data-driven policy can help turn the tide against this pandemic. | https://medium.com/@donnellymjd/covid-19-how-to-understand-nycs-numbers-in-real-time-ff9faa86cbf3 | ['Michael Donnelly'] | 2020-03-30 13:37:53.089000+00:00 | ['NYC', 'Coronavirus', 'Policy', 'Forecasting', 'Covid-19'] |
Disposing old uniforms responsibly | Whenever any employee resigns, or workwear is tattered, damaged beyond repair, there may be chances it’s no longer complying safety standards; then comes the question of uniform disposal in everyone’s mind. Approx 20 millions tonnes of garbage goes into Australian landfill where 501,000 tonnes is from the textile industry.
How Australia is handling recycling
Few years back China stopped taking Aussie recyclables so there is an increase in stockpiling recycled items in Australia. But how these stockpiling are going to be utilised, it will make sense if you use them in the manufacturing process. In this process, some companies are showing some real leadership.
Many businesses are taking initiatives that will help to reduce C02 emissions, recycling, reducing environmental impacts that occur in the manufacturing process.
Clothing Recycling
Plastics, paper, and glasses are the most popular recyclable goods but what about clothes and other textiles, mostly about workwear. 50% of the Aussie population wear uniforms and on an average uniforms are replaced every 12 months. Workwear are mainly replaced to maintain safety standards.
At Muhan Corporate we are using a number of ways such as
We use recycled textiles in our custom manufactured apparel.
We manufacture customized workwear using more durable fabrics that will increase product lifespan and reduce the number of replacements.
We promote stock products that have high recycled content to our clients
We encourage our clients to commercially launder and recycle large uniform products such as
blazers and jackets so they can be reused.
Recycling benefits
There are long term benefits to implementing a uniform recycling strategy. This strategy will create loyal customers that will love to return, recycle and renew the products and this will increase sales and brand loyalty.
It will be a pleasure for us to connect you to our recycling partners. If you want to participate in this recycling program, please Get in Touch, Today! | https://medium.com/@muhancorporate-com/disposing-old-uniforms-responsibly-c390aa467fcc | ['Muhan Corporate'] | 2021-01-21 06:54:09.991000+00:00 | ['Recycling', 'Clothing', 'Uniform Suppliers', 'Muhan Corporate', 'Uniforms'] |
Learning and Generalization — Understanding Efficient BackProp Part 1 | Although the values aren’t exactly the same it is obvious that the model has now begun to understand the relationship between the two variables and can thus progressively produce more accurate results with a minimized loss.
Now this is a small example demonstrating a simple linear relationship. What happens when the size of the dataset increases and different sets of samples are provided? Or how can we optimize a model that requires a classification algorithm instead of regression? In such cases, merely reducing the cost function is not enough. This is where we introduce a concept called generalization.
Generalization
Generalization is the ability of a model to predict the correct target values for an entirely new set dataset which it has not been trained on. This technique largely tries to optimize learning by minimizing or correcting the errors introduced in the training set. This process is also known as Empirical Risk Minimization. The basic principle behind empirical risk minimization is to convert the problem of training a model into an optimization problem. It generally focuses on two parts, the loss function and a regularizer which is used to penalize certain values of the parameters involved. A hyper parameter is also used to maintain the balance between the two. This is a very brief explanation but you can read more about it here. The article linked to ERM gives a concise explanation about it along with the demonstration of loss functions, regularizers and some special cases as well.
The analysis of most minimization processes are done by decomposing the generalization error into two terms — bias and variance. Bias’s are learnable parameters in the network just like weights. It gives the total measure of difference between the average of all the network outputs across the different samples of datasets and the desired output. Meanwhile, variance refers to deviation from the average of predictions. Minimal error can only be achieved only when both of these values are at their least.
From the graph shown above we can understand that the initial phases of training sees a large bias and a low variance. However, this scenario soon gets reversed as the training progresses because the network now begins to learns better. But does this mean the longer a model is left to train, the more efficient it gets? No. An important point that has to be noted, is that if the network is trained for too long, it will also understand the noise (meaningless information) and adapt to the specific features within the training dataset. This is a problem known as ‘overfitting’. Early stopping and regularization are some of the techniques used to prevent it which will be covered in detail later. This point proves that even if excellent cost minimization strategies are implemented, improper model selection which negatively impacts generalization causes the whole network to become inefficient.
Summary
This article was based on mainly two topics — learning and generalization in machine learning. We were able to go through some fundamental concepts in gradient based learning with a small example to illustrate how it works. The importance of generalization in terms of accuracy and optimization was also discussed. A brief explanation on empirical risk minimization and the factors on which generalization error is analyzed was also explained. I hope this article was able help you understand or give you an idea at the least about the topics I’ve written about. The next article will be focusing on standard backpropagation as well as some practical tricks that include initialing weights, shuffling examples, normalizing input values and so on.
Thank you for reading!
References | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/understanding-efficient-backprop-part-1-learning-and-generalization-1cd76bb4fd69 | ['Vaishnavi Nandakumar'] | 2020-07-20 15:05:00.232000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning', 'Research', 'Neural Networks', 'Pytorch'] |
Metagenomics — Who is there and what are they doing? | Metagenomics — Who is there and what are they doing?
Gaining insights into data from microbial communities
Did you know that your body houses about 100 trillion bacteria? Estimates show that a human has approximately a pound or two of bacteria living in his/her gut (stomach) [1] (Now don’t go and drink all the antibiotics you know, to kill those bacteria. In fact, these bacteria play an important role in our metabolism and immune system). The same goes for the backyard of your house. There can be many species of bacteria living in the soil and they help to enrich the soil (e.g.: nitrifying bacteria produce nitrates which are essential for plants). These microscopic communities have very diverse ecosystems and studying their composition and behaviour can provide us with valuable insights. In this article, I will provide a basic introduction to metagenomics, which is the study of genetic material obtained from microbial communities.
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay
What is Metagenomics?
Metagenomics is the application of modern genomic techniques to the study of communities of microbial organisms directly in their natural environments, bypassing the need for isolation and lab cultivation of individual species [2].
Different communities of microorganisms can be found in soil, sea, mud, forests, space and even in the human body. Microorganisms that can be found in these environments can include bacteria, viruses/phages, microbial eukaryotes (e.g.: yeast) and worms (e.g.: helminths and nematodes).
Why Metagenomics?
Now you must be wondering how can we study these tiny organisms which we cannot even see. The old school way to study them would be to obtain samples, plate them in Petri dishes, see if anything grows, isolate the culture, and sequence. However, the majority of the bacterial species cannot be cultured using this traditional way. So in metagenomics, what we do is we obtain samples from the microbial communities directly and sequence them [3].
Metagenomics helps in the discovery of novel natural products, antibiotics and enzymes with new functions in many areas such as medicine, agriculture, energy, food and nutrition, etc.
Two Main Questions in Metagenomics
Every metagenomics study comes across two main questions [4];
Who is there? What are they doing?
When we consider the question “who is there”, we want to identify what species of micro-organisms are present in the sample. The question “what are they doing” implies that we have to determine their functions and behaviours.
Shotgun vs. Targeted Metagenomics
Once you have obtained samples from the environment, you have to prepare libraries so that it becomes easy to analyse. The two current methods of creating your libraries for analysis are
Targeted metagenomics: targeting a specific region of a genome (e.g.: 16S rRNA and 18S rRNA) that is shared across multiple organisms and samples. It provides more precise data with more depth but it may result in unequal amplification for certain targeted regions. Shotgun metagenomics: can sequence everything in your sample. It is perfect for all organisms. It provides greater resolution to genetic content (especially DNA) but will result in very complex datasets.
Shotgun Metagenomics Analysis
There are three main approaches when dealing with metagenomic datasets [4] as shown in Figure 1. | https://towardsdatascience.com/metagenomics-who-is-there-and-what-are-they-doing-9f204342eed9 | ['Vijini Mallawaarachchi'] | 2020-03-03 00:36:10.186000+00:00 | ['Biology', 'Data Science', 'Science', 'Bioinformatics', 'Genomics'] |
The Color of Me | A poem about the color of Humans
House of Haiku Prompt “Colour”
The Color of my Heart Image by Annelise Lords
The colour of me
Is in my hugs, actions, smiles
Not my skin or eyes
Image by Annelise Lords
Thank you Brett Christensen for more brain exercise.
In my country, we believe that our actions, thoughts, decisions tell a lot about us, who we are, and how we think. Many of us can read minds if we listen to actions. Lol, I could be wrong. But I have proven it many times.
Thank you for reading this piece. I hope you enjoyed it. Please enjoy more from superb writers on this platform.
https://mediumauthor.com/@thisisanneliselords
https://mediumauthor.com/podcast
medium.com/illumination/interview-with-annelise-lords-421238e49b9f
https://twitter.com/ThisisAnneliseL
https://medium.com/authors-peeps/authors-peeps-interview-d43e38e53898 | https://medium.com/house-of-haiku/the-color-of-me-650844149cd8 | ['Annelise Lords'] | 2020-11-17 11:03:11.051000+00:00 | ['Heart', 'Color', 'Eyes', 'House Of Haiku', 'Humanity'] |
Thanks For Your Support! 6 More Months Coming Your Way | Serious Philosophy is 6 months old!
Hey everyone, it sure has been a wild ride. Just six short months ago we were running our first few stories. We technically got our start on March 30, but everything is pretty crazy these days so the 6-month update newsletter you’re reading now is a bit late. That’s okay, we’ll do better next time. I’ve been getting into video content (follow my YouTube Channel here if you like) and would be happy to chat with people from this magazine and spread a bit of awareness of our projects here.
And there is a significant amount of activity there. We’ve got nine stories up at the Existentialist Book Club page, and it doesn’t bother me at all that I’ve written every single one of them! I would love to see some more love for the project, as it’s a great deal of fun, but as I assess my own Medium journey to date I find that this has been one of the most successful ideas to date for me personally. So feel free to enjoy the ride along or get involved if that would make you happier.
We’ve run submissions by three contributors in all, so thanks be to James Holley, Brandon Long and Stephen Ray Brown for stepping in and providing the readers some great essays to read!
I may mess around with the idea of including video content alongside my stories in the future, and I encourage any and all possible writers for Serious Philosophy to look at doing the same type of thing. It will be interesting to see how things go from here!
Cheers,
Thomas Dylan Daniel
Founder and Editor-in-Chief
Serious Philosophy | https://medium.com/serious-philosophy/thanks-for-your-support-6-more-months-coming-your-way-8a68a5a274d3 | ['Thomas Dylan Daniel'] | 2020-11-23 17:31:17.003000+00:00 | ['Ethics', 'Serious Philosophy', 'Philosophy', 'Technology', 'Existentialism'] |
The 5 Benefit of Writing & Tracking our Goals | I want to write this story months ago when I introduce OKR tracking in Notion a few months ago to my team. I also share how I did it in Notion in another article. To give some context, we use SMART goals at the beginning between us the leadership at Kulkul, and track the progress here and there. In various places from documents to some kind of Kanban boards.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Months passed since the first time we set our goals. Our goals initially documented only as a list of things we want to achieve together with its metrics. Later we realized that we already achieve several items, but also deviate a lot from our initial goal. For example, we want to host at least 1 event a month for the rest of the year, which was in August, so it will be 5 events. However, we only realized in October that we already way behind.
From this problem, I have a big appetite (stealing from Basecamp Shape-Up) to solve this problem. Ultimately we decided to use OKR (Objectives — Key Results) to manage our goals and documenting it properly in Notion. And here’s key take away from our process.
Tracking is Easier
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash
The obvious benefit of writing our goals in a structured format is having everything tracked and easy to manage. For me as Chief Kul, I can easily get answer to my frequently asked questions for example
Which goals are finished and which one are aren’t?
If the goals is not finished, is there any percentage or progress we have made?
Which aspect of our goal should I spent most of my time in the coming weeks or month?
Another benefit is since we link our Kanban board task with the OKR, we can easily track how we achieved our goal and we can inspect why some goals are not achieved.
Know our Why
The second most important benefit that I feel for tracking our goals especially in OKR format is knowing our why. Since OKR always contains Objectives and Key Results, I can easily recall why we do things certain way. Why we want to achieve certain goals (Objectives) and How and What to do about it (Key Results). Previously using only list of goals we only know What we want to achieve but not the Why. For a mission-driven organization like ours, knowing the Why is so important.
Photo by Evan Dennis on Unsplash
Cascading Goals to Subordinate is Easy as Cake
Photo by Smart on Unsplash
Since the notes are written digitally in Notion as we share in the previous blogpost, it can be shared globally throughout the organization and everyone can have a sense of purpose here. Moreover, I can link a specific task in our Kanban board to a specific Key Results resulting in more context when solving specific a problem. This is always our value since the beginning, we want our people to not only do the work but know why they do it and then they can improvise and do their work creatively as long as achieving our ultimate goal.
… we want our people to not only do the work but know why they do it and then they can improvise and do their work creatively as long as achieving our ultimate goal.
People Just Love Checking Things
The other thing I like is the Dopamine burst when we as a team achieving things. I can feel like our team is progressing when we move towards our goal. And when I myself achieving specific goal, I really like the feeling when I check a checklist from our goals especially when it is done together.
… when we checked something out it is not only for the sake of dopamine, but we really achieving meaningful progress.
Assuming we set our Objectives and Key Results right, we can safely assume that when we check an item in our goals, it is the right thing and align with our purpose. This is very important because when we check something out it is not only for the sake of dopamine, but we really achieving meaningful progress.
Cultivating Data-Driven Culture
Last but not least, by tracking and writing our goals systematically we really get a sense of how we are progressing as a team. It is also helping us judge ourselves based on data. We can easily get the answer to the following questions easily
Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash
Are we progressing enough?
Which part that we are not investing in enough?
Which goals is at risk, which are on track?
Are we setting the right goals?
For me being data-driven is not necessarily about implementing a complex Machine Learning algorithm, but it starts from a small thing and collecting data about ourselves. Goals too can be an important data point and help us grow ourselves. | https://medium.com/kulkul-technology/the-5-benefit-of-writing-tracking-our-goals-16b3f44ebe84 | ['Abdurrachman'] | 2020-12-16 02:15:17.197000+00:00 | ['Okr', 'Startup', 'Goals', 'Notion', 'Management And Leadership'] |
Why Not Elect a Female President in the U.S.? | The time of the ‘good old men’s club’ is gone. That model is old and outdated. Move on!
Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash
I am a white male 48 years old. Alright, I will be 48 in a few days. But I consider myself there. Enough mansplaining, right?
Back in 2016, I saw Hilary Clinton on the ballot and said to myself, “why not?” Furthermore, “why has it taken this long to elect a woman to lead our country?”
At this point, you may be wondering what is this all about? There is no ulterior motive here. Have you seen the latest Forbes list of 100 most powerful women? The range and caliber of women on the list?
Angela Merkel tops the list along with Christine Lagarde. These two powerful women are often seen in political circles along with Kamala Harris. America’s newly Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Go, Kamala!
Other names that are not household names but worth mentioning are powerful women like Abigail Johnson — CEO of Fidelity Investments — since 2014. Or Carol Tome, who was elected in June of this year to CEO of UPS. Carol Tome brings a wealth of knowledge to the table from running Home Depot as their Chief Finance Officer for decades.
The election just passed caused me great excitement with the results. We are past due to have a female running our country. More women should be elevated to higher positions. Why does our Congress have such few women? That is not reflective of our society.
I was watching a video titled “8 Questions a Narcissist Cannot Answer” by the Psychiatrist Dr. Les Carter. Some men that hold power are real narcissists in many cases, which baffles me. Is giving control to others that difficult? Is the admission of imperfection that difficult?
While serving in the military, I can tell you that men are not so confident and cocky while getting their rear-end handed to them. The military breaks people and builds them up to be respectful citizens with qualities that lead to a productive society. However, the transition toward a greater number of female soldiers in combat has been difficult. We need to continue to increase the numbers in time.
The point I was trying to make about the military was that the following. All of the bragging, big talk, and confidence that women see men portray is a bunch of horse manure. When men talk amongst each other in private, the truth comes out. Many women in this nation know this to be true. But getting men to say this or show this publicly is a huge uphill battle.
Although I would go ahead and surmise that the conversation is getting better, more men need to speak out and promote equity among gender and races along with class too.
Each of us perform better when we operate in a more diverse and inclusive environment. The conversation has more perspectives and is wider to reach. Furthermore, having a diverse set of opinions is more reflective of society as a whole.
Yes, there was divisiveness across the nation. And we have none other than the ‘narcissist-in-chief’ President Trump to thank for that if there is one benefit (and I mean only one — sorry, I did not like the man as President), that is that President Trump did bring the conversation on equity (race, gender, and income inequality) to the forefront.
The conversation has started and will hopefully not be put back into the box. A conversation that will inevitably be painful, awkward, and short in many instances. Although, if the conversation is not brought to the forefront, then the issues will not be dealt with.
My wife reminds me of my ‘white privilege’ quite frequently. I am unable to understand this is a common phrase that I hear in my house. We had a COVID-19 baby boy this year. He is now 9 months old. Kayla said to me the other day: “I did not think that I would have a boy. But now I get to teach this boy how to respect women and others around him.” I support that one hundred percent.
We have been watching a fair amount of Disney movies lately. Some classics. The theme of racism is quite apparent in them. At the beginning of each film, Disney now has a disclaimer that promotes the recognized discriminatory content of their films. A small change that will promote discussion moving forward into the future. How?
Kids ask millions of questions. My baby boy is not yet talking but making sounds. He just started crawling and does not stay still during the day. I highly doubt that once he starts reading that the Disney disclaimer will go unnoticed. That discussion is coming in the future. How Kayla and I handle that discussion will help change the future.
Side Note: women are amazing human beings that are able to produce life. Further, the nurturing ability of a mother is undervalued by society. I am continually amazed at Kayla’s ability to operate while pregnant and post-pregnancy. Mother’s are amazing.
I don’t see myself in that position…
One more diversion worth noting concerning ‘white privilege’ is that both Kayla and I work at a university. The other day I was talking to a colleague about using apps in the lecture. Specifically, Kayla uses an anonymous question and answering app in the virtual classroom to take a poll. She teaches chemistry.
She uses ‘slido app’ to poll students on various themes and concepts to promote discussion while keeping anonymity. The students feel more comfortable giving answers that might be incorrect in front of their peers. The app allows them to do so anonymously.
He responded that the app she used was not desirable for him. I found that fascinating and inquired as to why that was the case? He said that having students ask questions — any questions in front of their colleagues promotes equity. Yes, there is no anonymity. When a student asks a great question, other students realize that the student asking the question ‘looks and talks like them.’
This is a point of difference in opinion. Although, what is not a point of difference of opinion is that a little girl or a female starting her career can look at Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and say: That lady looks like me. I can be a Vice President someday. Awesome!
As I mentioned above, the Forbes list of 100 most powerful women serves as such a place for girls ranging from elementary school age to young female professional workers to aspire to greatness. And I mean greatness. I have major amounts of respect for the battles that each of them has faced climbing the career ladder in their respective fields and countries.
Society’s Issues?
If society deems the issues to be at the forefront, then the issues will be entertained. An example of the current election is climate change. Climate change has always been lingering in the background, threatening our existence. Although, without any solution that is attainable, the conversation has been lost in political rhetoric, among other avenues of importance.
The election of 2020 brought out a host of issues, and climate change was one. With the realization that investment firms on Wall Street are starting to divest from fossil fuel companies, the message is being heard. Consumer spending and commentary on social media are super powerful.
What has been reported on repeatedly but not really carried (or entertained) by the popular news is the reality that large fossil fuel corporations (i.e., Royal Dutch Shell and BP) are investing in renewable energy. The transition is partially being fueled by these large corporations. Their shareholders stand to reap large profits from investments in the transition. Oil is not forever. From the standpoint of an oil corporation shareholder, the question remains: What is profitable to our corporation?
Consumers drive change. It is that simple. If you don’t buy it, the corporation cannot make money. Shareholders don’t profit. That is a troubling thought to any CEO.
If a consumer states that he/she will not purchase a given product from a popular food vendor — say McDonald’s (as occurred in Europe) due to a questionable chemical sourced for their products. The result will be that McDonald’s will find a replacement chemical that is less dangerous to consumers. Consumers have greater power than they believe in swaying large corporations.
These two issues are among the past commonly heard problems with big corporations. Although, the time has come to address these longstanding issues. Let us not wait to entertain the inequity across society that has been brought to the forefront over the last 4 years (plus many). We have started the discussion. Let us as a society give the discussion legs on which to move to action looking into the future.
Human beings have created the ability to observe the gases on far off planets like Europa with scientific instruments. From that data, scientists can decompose the types of molecules that are present. Some of which might suggest that life is possible on that planet (not necessarily Europa). If we have that capability, then why can’t we enact meaningful change — equitable change here on Earth?
My wife’s reaction to the election results was, “Another old white male elected to office…Why not elect a woman to be President?” I have to agree that the time has come. Let us change the course of the future by embracing the new Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. | https://medium.com/a-scientist-made-simple/why-not-elect-a-female-president-in-the-u-s-54557596767 | ['Mike Kaiser'] | 2020-12-11 16:41:30.092000+00:00 | ['Equity', 'Society And Culture', 'Gender', 'Gender Equality', 'Inequality'] |
Science & blockchain – a great match | Science & blockchain – a great match
For years people have been talking about the Bitcoin as an electronic means of payment. The technology on which the Bitcoin is based, the blockchain, offers far more applications than just the “Internet money”. There are already numerous concepts that could decisively influence the life of tomorrow. It is foreseeable that the public administration will also use this trend because the blockchain provides a framework for the simplification of work processes, which are still characterized by high administrative overhead.
Which ideas exist and in which way they have already been implemented or are to be applied soon is shown below. The focus is on projects and ideas regarding blockchain-based applications in science.
What is blockchain?
The blockchain is a decentralized database, which is continuously being extended by the users. In the beginning, there was the first block (creation block). Each new block is checked for validity by a consensus principle, such as “proof-of-work” or “proof-of-stake”, and appended chronologically to the back. The result is a “blockchain”.
The distinctive feature of this database is decentralization. Contrary to our previously known databases, which are usually stored on servers or computers, the database of the blockchain is distributed among its users. It has two advantages: Firstly, the operator’s information monopoly is dissolved in favor of all users. On the other hand, the blockchain is forgery-proof. Within this chain, each block has stored the data of the previous block and the entire chain in the form of their checksums (similar to a checksum).
The chain is firm and unalterable. The information stored in it requires no administration or certification. Such technology, which replaces the middlemen, has the revolutionary potential to simplify processes and procedures for public administration as well.
What are “cryptocurrencies”?
Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies based on blockchain technology. The range of cryptocurrencies is enormous, with the best known today being Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, Ripple, and Dash. These currencies have different characteristics and can be changed and traded like traditional currencies. The unique thing about cryptocurrencies is that, unlike traditional currencies, they are not controlled by financial institutions and governments. As global currencies, cryptocurrencies are less dependent on the economy and policies of a state and are accessible to everyone. Cryptocurrencies have other advantages: they can be traded 24 hours a day in the absence of official stock exchange, and they can generate significant profits by trading with them because of their volatility. Also, due to the use of blockchain technology, all transactions are recorded and stored. The recipient receives only the required information about the sender, not all the details. The flip side of volatility, on the other hand, is that the value of the cryptocurrency may fall sharply overnight due to sharp price fluctuations. Besides, the increasing use of cryptocurrencies may necessitate regulation. Central benefits of cryptocurrencies could be lost. It should also be remembered that while cryptocurrencies are becoming increasingly popular and their value is increasing, whether or not cryptocurrencies are long-established and valuable remains uncertain.
The legal classification of cryptocurrencies also appears problematic. In any event, the legal means of payment is, in accordance with § 14 section 1 of the German Federal Bank Act and Article 128 section 1 sentence 3 of TFEU, only the euro. Another means of payment need not be accepted either privately or by the public. Cryptocurrencies are also no book money. It is such money, which is available on banks´ accounts at the bank customer´s free disposal. A similarity between cryptocurrencies and book money exists in the electronics of both procedures. The difference is that there are no claims against a bank by cryptocurrencies. The same applies to electronic money. It would be in accordance with § 1 section 2 of German Supervision on payment methods Act if there were an electronic claim against an issuer. The typical issuer is the bank. Whether holders of a cryptocurrency are to be rated as issuers, seems questionable. It would be conceivable to value the users of the same cryptocurrency as a civil law partnership (in German: GbR). This partnership with legal capacity could act as an issuer to the outside world. There is, however, no individual legal intention of the users to join partnership as a society by using the cryptocurrency and to set the “central issuing point” of the cryptocurrency (Schlund / Pongratz, DStR 2018, 598, 600). The philosophy of blockchain is just the decentralized application. A regulatory authority should not exist. The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (in German: BaFin) also supports this assessment.
The idea of cryptocurrency as a form of local money excretes also. Regional funds (like the Chiemgauer or the circulation-secured “Freigeld”) are limited in their area of distribution and are issued in the case of “Freigeld”, according to the philosophy of their conceiver, Silvio Gesell, by the state. Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, are “market money”. They are distributed decentrally by all users. A regional restriction does not exist.
As an interim result, it remains to be noted that cryptocurrencies cannot be qualified as money under the current legal situation.
What could cryptocurrencies be then? Due to the financial assets of cryptocurrencies, these could be accepted as “performance in lieu” (analogous to § 364 section 1 of German Civil Code), as an “another” performance than money. Also at this point, the question arises, what is this “another”? Cryptocurrencies are not things within the meaning of § 90 of the German Civil Code, because they lack the embodying. Although computer software and data were already qualified as things when they were stored on data carriers. Such a parallel to cryptocurrencies does not exist, as they exist only virtually and the wallets serve exclusively for the storage of the private and public key (Schlund / Pongratz, DStR 2018, 598, 600). Finally, the protection over the copyright law, since cryptocurrencies are neither computer programs within the meaning of § 69a section 1 of German Copyright Act, – there are no instructions sent to an information processing device (OLG Hamburg CR, 332, 333 f.) – nor they are “personal intellectual creations” according to § 2 section 2 of German Copyright Act, since cryptocurrencies arise over a mathematical procedure.
According to the current legal situation, no legal construct could explain cryptocurrencies. The existing legal uncertainty of entrepreneurs will therefore not lead to any implementation of the technology in the state administration. It remains to be seen how the federal government plans the future of the cryptocurrency in Germany in the summer of 2019.
The exploration of blockchain in Germany
Although Germany is currently considered in international comparison as a latecomer in the field of blockchain economy. On the reason of the published working paper of the Federal Government “Digitalisierung gestalten” from November 15, 2018, there is a fair hope that this could change soon. In the summer of 2019, the German government announced that it would publish a Bitcoin strategy aimed at “creating suitable framework conditions for […] blockchain and crypto assets” and “developing the potential of technology”.
German research institutions and universities have long been concerned with the possible application areas of blockchain technology and have initiated and partially implemented innovative projects. A selection of these projects is presented below:
Support for cross-agency communication and cooperation in the asylum process (Fraunhofer Project Group Business Informatics and Federal Office for Migration and Refugees)
Consortium study: “Blockchain for Industrial Applications” (Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft)
Blockchain for International Trade Finance: Development of a prototype for process optimization by blockchain-based letter of credit (Fraunhofer Blockchain Laboratory and Norddeutsche Landesbank)
Cooperative Music Box – Blockchain to touch: Matching music requests within a group by setting “Music Coins” on multiple titles (Fraunhofer Blockchain Laboratory)
Digital infrastructure for Seamless Mobility as a Service: open decentralized mobility system for a wide range of mobility providers (Fraunhofer Project Group Business Informatics with other cooperation partners)
Blockchain competence network: student IT consulting (Leibniz University Hannover)
Blockchain for science (“bloxberg”): prove the authenticity of data, secure research results, forgery-proof certificates and diplomas, easy access to open access publications (Initiative of the Max Planck Digital Library in cooperation with leading Blockchain institutions, for example, University of Copenhagen, University College London, KIT)
Blockchain technology in the energy industry: Micropayments, as an example for charging e-bikes on long bike rides with an innkeeper or other third parties (University of Applied Sciences Ruhr-West)
Blockchain Competence Center Mittweida (“Mittweida showcase region”): cooperation with various research projects sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, as an example the master program “Block-Chain & Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT)”, data transfer in construction, blockchain-based time recording, mileage of motor vehicles in the blockchain (used car market) (City Mittweida, Volksbank Mittweida and University Mittweida).
Blockchain applications in education and science
The areas of application in public administration are extensive. In the future, the life of a child born in 2025 could be entirely stored and “managed” in the blockchain. What sounds like a strange 1984 vision at first, offers a lot of repercussions, which eliminates many annoying bureaucratic procedures and can dramatically simplify life – if, of course, data protection concerns are clarified. So the child of the future could graduate from school and university within the blockchain.
According to its press release, the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management is the first university in Germany to issue blockchain-based certificates for a degree program. The first recipients are students of the certificate course “Certified Blockchain Expert”. Forgery-proof credentials and credentials can be digitally issued, administered and made permanently available by using blockchain technology. Waiting times and fees for the certification of documents fall away. For this pilot project, the university cooperates with Consensys; this company is a leader in the blockchain field.
According to its press release, the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management is the first university in Germany to issue blockchain-based certificates for a degree program. The first recipients are students of the certificate course “Certified Blockchain Expert”. Forgery-proof credentials and credentials can be digitally issued, administered and made permanently available by using blockchain technology. Waiting times and fees for the certification of documents fall away. For this pilot project, the university cooperates with Consensys; this company is a leader in the blockchain field.
“Blockchain for Education Platform”
The Fraunhofer Institutes FIT (Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology), AISEC (Fraunhofer Institute for Applied and Integrated Security) and the Fraunhofer Academy explore the ways how such a blockchain-based system can work for educational certificates. A prototype of the “Blockchain for Education Platform” has already been developed. In the following, the functionality and advantages of such a platform are shown. The project aims to create a system that allows issuing, administering, verifying and sharing certificates using a blockchain.
First, two “Smart Contracts” are deposited by an accreditation body on the Blockchain “Ethereum”. Smart Contracts are automated contracts that perform a specific activity when a particular event occurs (“if-then-rules”). The first of the contracts allows the accreditation body to add, edit and remove certification bodies (as an example universities). The second contract manages the lifecycle of certificates issued through the blockchain. In the first contract, the accreditation bodies register the certification bodies that are to become legitimate issuers of certificates about the blockchain. Blockchain also stores public and non-personal information about the certification body in a profile outside of Smart Contracts and does not include any certifier or learner information. The information of this storage system is publicly available and serve to check the certification authorities. In turn, the registered certification authority can then register certifiers (its employees) in the first contract on the blockchain and authorize them to issue certificates via the blockchain. The Smart Contract ensures that only approved certification bodies can grant these authorizations. The certifier collects all necessary information for a certificate, signs it and saves it in the document management system. The digital fingerprint is stored in the blockchain (“hash”).
The second Smart Contract allows certifiers to create, revoke, or delete certificates. The contract allows this only if the processor is a certified certifier of a registered certification authority. Every manipulative intervention can be traced back to a certifier via the blockchain or it is entirely impossible from the beginning. The second contract stores a certificate entry on the blockchain, which contains the hash and the validity period. It enables an automated validity check as well as an uncomplicated revocation of certificates, for example in the case of plagiarism or an expiring time limit.
“Ethereum address” identifies the registered entities. The return of such an address on the underlying owner of the address is difficult. Certification authorities must be able to access their stored profile information, as otherwise, certificates would remain completely anonymous and therefore unable to present a recognized performance record. The stored data is only publicly available information about the certification authority, which previously just saved the accreditation body. This system protects the anonymity and personal information of individuals, especially certifiers and learners. Not keeping this information on the blockchain itself has the advantages that, according to the data protection regulations, no personal data is stored on the blockchain and, on the other hand, more expensive storage space is saved.
Students can create, manage and provide application portfolios with the assigned certificates to potential employers by using a document management system service. To do this, the learner must register in the document management system. This system is not on the blockchain but in a centralized system.
Companies that receive blockchain-based certificates can then verify their authenticity and validity by using the digital fingerprint on the blockchain. Companies can use an application to upload certificates or enter their hash. The system checks automatically whether the blockchain includes the digital fingerprint of the certificate.
Such a platform has decisive advantages. The work and costs involved in verifying the authenticity and validity of certificates can be significantly reduced on the part of potential employers. If uncertified copies are submitted, without the blockchain technology, they can only be verified by request from the issuing certifying authority. Even if the certifying authority doesn´t exist, authenticity can still be verified by using blockchain-based certificates because the information is stored forever and remains traceable. It would also minimize the cost of certifying authorities for managing registries and database for certificates, and reduce costs. The blockchain-based issuance of certificates is also forgery-proof, allowing automated verification of time-limited certificates, secure access to the platform, and certificate management. Trainees will be able to quickly assemble application portfolios of certificates, certificates, and all other credentials and share them with self-selected third parties such as potential employers. The sending of certified copies becomes superfluous and thus saves administration, time and money.
In addition to the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, other institutions have already implemented similar projects, as an example the MIT Media Lab Initiative in partnership with a business software vendor with its open source system “Blockcerts”. However, the Fraunhofer Institutes see in their “Blockchain for Education Platform” the advantages compared to “Blockcerts”. For example, unlike “Blockcerts”, revoked certificates cannot be viewed or verified. Besides, the certifier stays anonymous at the “Blockchain for education platform”, while still being assured that he is a member of an accredited certification body. The platform of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft will be further developed in the further phases of the project. Cooperation partners are being searched for further realization.
American universities and cryptocurrencies
While institutional investors have initially kept away from the volatile and risky cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others, they are entering this world more and more. This development is reflected, among other things, in the investment willingness of well-known American universities in the area of cryptocurrencies.
For example, the endowment fund of the elite Yale University – the second largest after Harvard – made its first crypto investments in 2018. The investments, its exact amount is unknown, flowed into two different crypto funds. One share was invested in the $ 300 million crypto fund of the well-known venture capital firm Andreesen Horrowitz, and a second part went to the newly created “Paradigm” fund. The latter is aimed not only at investments in cryptocurrency but also at blockchain technology in general. Investments in crypto funds are part of a new strategy whereby 60% of the Foundation´s assets will be used for alternative investments in 2019. In addition to participating in cryptocurrencies, venture capital, hedge funds, and other investments are also part of the strategy. The investment of the Yale Foundation Fund is considered trend-setting. The fund´s longtime manager, David Swensen, is viewed as a pioneer in institutional investments. Other foundations have often followed his strategy.
The University of Michigan had already invested around € 2.5 million in 2018 in a cryptocurrency fund run by venture capitalist Andreesen Horrowitz, and in February this year decided to make a follow-up investment. The amount of the follow-up investment is – at least currently – not yet known. A document from the University Foundation states that cryptocurrencies have become an important area of innovation and entrepreneurship, with attention paid to technology.
Also, in October 2018, Harvard University – with the most significant asset of all higher education institutions worldwide – reported having invested in “at least one cryptocurrency fund”. Stanford University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of North Carolina are also named as further investors in this report.
Thus, there is a clear trend towards American university foundations entering crypto space and, consequently, an institutionalization of this investment area.
Outloo
Undoubtedly, blockchain offers incredible potential to change our lives on all levels. Many new challenges accompany new opportunities. Data protection, in particular, conflicts with the latest technology. However, with this in mind, we should not rush to abandon a technology that has the potential to change our lives in a (positive) way as the Internet has done recently. Regardless of the possible regulation of blockchain systems, countless programmers work on privacy-oriented solutions. Examples like Monero, ZCash, and Verge are to be mentioned here. They aim to anonymize payment systems within the blockchain. Similar developments are to be expected for the numerous other uses of the blockchain.
What is needed for the development of the new technology, is the willingness of politics and science to delve intensively into this topic. We may be open for the Blockchain strategy of the Federal Government announced for the coming summer — but the comments on blockchain in the coalition agreement are only vague. If the promise made in November 2018 of creating an appropriate legal framework to unlock the potential of technology were to be implemented, it would open the door to inspire the public administration with cryptocurrency and other blockchain-based technologies and make Germany to the next “Crypto-Valley”. | https://dhillemann.medium.com/science-blockchain-a-great-match-2e2b5d256673 | ['Dennis Hillemann'] | 2019-04-06 11:48:06.810000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Bitcoin', 'Science', 'Ethereum'] |
How can Businesses Benefit from the Neon Light Bulbs? | Neon lights are becoming hot promotional tools for businesses that want to make a unique presentation for their brands and products. The uses of these lights are limitless as they can be used as signage for a particular location or can be used for highlighting the signboards of shops or stores. These days, many business owners are opting for the Neon Light Bulbs for advertising their brands as these electrical products are available in multiple colors, sizes, and brightness. You can buy a ready made glowing sign for your business or can get it to customize with the help of a professional to fulfill your business promotional needs.
Provide high visibility to your brand:
As a business owner, you can utilize neon lights to give high-end visibility to your storefront for promotion. Neon bulbs are luminous so by adding them as advertisement tools you can make your brand eye-catching and highlight to the consumers. You can use these products to create a sign, logo, or name of your business to aware people even from the far distance. For example, if you are running a medical pharmacy then you can create a cross sign with the bulbs to reflect your business to the consumers without any newspaper and media advertisement.
It gives you freedom for customization:
One of the biggest benefits of using neon lighting is that you can get freedom for customization work. You can create a design or logo as per your needs and can display your brand. You can use these tools to grab the eyes of consumers and to make an impression on them as these signs can glow even in the dark. You can buy customized Neon Light Bulbs and can install them outdoors or indoors of your business, for example, you can install them for your restaurant to fetch the attention of people roaming on the streets and can use inside to attract them towards the food menu and drinks.
Enable you for nighttime business operation:
Neon bulbs are efficient tools to use at night for business operations. You can use them to illuminate your existing signage with the extra lighting and you can make people aware of your availability during the night. You can use them for a hospital, hotel, or a medicinal service and can get installation under a reasonable budget.
Long life span:
Neon lights are very helpful to use for a longer time to promote business and its operation. These lights are durable and can withstand the adverse weather conditions such as smoke, fog, rain, and dark to keep your business promoted. The average span of these lights is 5 to 10 years so you only need to invest once for your business to make it flourish and successful with unique marketing ideas.
Easy to install:
These lights are also very easy to setup or install for signboards and indoor advertising. You can call a professional to install the lights as per your needs and can attract customers for your company to gain profit. | https://medium.com/@neonpoodle/how-can-businesses-benefit-from-the-neon-light-bulbs-aed981e559cc | ['Neon Poodle'] | 2020-01-24 22:46:41.871000+00:00 | ['Lighting', 'Neon Light Bulbs'] |
You Can’t Turn An Elephant On A Dime — Startup Blogpost | You Can’t Turn An Elephant On A Dime — Startup Blogpost
A Slice on Matthew Likens, President and CEO of GT Medical Technologies Emily Ahrens Follow Jul 22 · 5 min read
Matthew Likens would not consider himself an entrepreneur in his early life. Likens received his degree from Kent State University, and went to work at Johnson & Johnson shortly after. After a few years of work there, he transitioned to the Baxter Healthcare Corporation out of Chicago, where he would stay for 23 years. Though he enjoyed his time there, he always knew in the back of his mind that at some point, he wanted to build something where “there was nothing previously”. Likens loved the concept of intrapreneurship which occurs when large companies foster development from within, in ways like innovation groups, working to build new businesses utilizing existing company talent.
This always appealed to Likens but he understood that “you can’t turn an elephant on a dime”.
With corporations as large as Baxter and Johnson & Johnson, becoming the giants they are, oftentimes Likens noted, they can get “overrun” by processes. “The term is nimble, it’s not part of the vocabulary, it’s not a committee, it’s 16 people around a conference table nodding their heads in unison before any decisions are made. It only took me 23 years at Baxter to get tired of that, which is about the time I got a phone call about a senior position at a well-funded (they had raised $180 million) startup called GMP Companies. It was about the time I felt like I needed something new.”
Likens accepted the position, and went to work spending that $180 million. He shared that in retrospect, they probably raised “too much” money in the beginning which led to some mismanagement. “When you have that much money you tend not to manage it as frugally as required. Compared to if you’re dealing with scarcity, you tend to make trade-offs and decisions, you’re more scrupulous in the way you allocate your money.” Likens stayed with the company for roughly five years and though he was not CEO, he did learn a lot along the way. Mainly, everything not to do in a startup environment. To elaborate, Likens shared a piece of advice for entrepreneurs looking to avoid some of the mistakes he experienced at GMP Companies: portfolio management. With such a great deal of funding it’s important to practice portfolio management, don’t get caught up in pursuing too many things at once, but rather be “extremely selective” as to where you devote your resources and investments.
After his time with GMP, Likens needed a job. His children were in college, one starting and one just finishing. He was made aware of a role in Mesa, Arizona through an ex-Johnson & Johnson colleague. One thing led to another and Likens came on board as President and CEO of Ulthera, Inc. The ultrasound technology was marketed to plastic surgeons and dermatologists for firming, tightening and lifting the skin. Likens and his “tremendous team” guided the company for the next 5 years as it grew (post-FDA clearance) to almost $100 million in revenue and 230 employees. Ulthera’s confidential filing became public in January 2014, right as three larger companies became interested in acquiring them. They eventually sold for $600 million and Likens stayed on for two more years before retiring in July 2016.
Retirement was short-lived for Likens…stating he “never developed a lot of hobbies, apparently.” He purchased a custom set of golf clubs, but unfortunately, they did not help improve his golf game. Likens was only retired for 15 months before he was onto his next company. A friend of his who had been consulting for five brain tumor specialists all employed at Barrow Neurological Institute approached Likens. The team had put together an LLC for their development of a radiation implant.
GammaTile, as it was called, was developed as another option for patients with operable brain tumors. The current standard of care requires a treatment delay and up to 30 visits to a hospital or radiation center. “In standard therapy, the tumor is removed, and then the patient rests in the hospital to recover for a day or two. Then they go home to recover and wait for their surgical incisions to heal another 2–3 weeks. After that, the patient embarks on a course of external radiation therapy to address residual tumor cells, because it’s impossible for a neurosurgeon to get every last tumor cell out. If the surgeon is too aggressive, the surgery can effect eloquent, healthy tissue that remains and cause brain damage. Even after this arduous treatment regimen, over half of aggressive brain tumors recur, or come back, within a year.” The team from Barrow thought ‘well what if we come at it from the inside,’ taking the idea of brachytherapy and engineering the previous drawbacks of this type of therapy by embedding radiation sources in a bioresorbable carrier. By implanting the radiation you can start addressing the residual tumor cells immediately, while the carrier protects healthy tissue.
Likens, still frustrated with his golf game, knew he could bring the relevant experience in, sign a CDA, look at their clinical data and give them some advice regarding a licensing agreement they had received. Likens was “blown away by the quality of their data”, how much better the outcomes were with GammaTile Therapy versus conventional radiational therapy. Likens shared with the team he thought their best course of action would be to turn the LLC into a Delaware-based C Corp, raise funds and go to market. He signed on as CEO and that’s exactly what they did.
GammaTile has had two FDA clearances, the first for recurrent brain tumors in July 2018, and another for newly diagnosed malignant brain tumors in January 2020. The company has 31 employees and is in adopting hospitals. Likens is encouraged by what he sees in patients and says they are “doing absolutely superb.”
Founder Bio
Matthew Likens graduated from Kent State University and began his professional career with the Johnson & Johnson Corporation. He then spent more than twenty years in domestic and international sales, and marketing and general management roles at Baxter Healthcare Corporation. Following that, he was appointed as president and CEO of GT Medical Technologies, a company that develops and markets GammaTile(R) Therapy, with a purpose of improving the lives of patients with brain tumors. Connect with Likens on LinkedIn. | https://medium.com/startup-blogpost/you-cant-turn-an-elephant-on-a-dime-startup-blogpost-a520c2414f4 | ['Emily Ahrens'] | 2021-08-19 21:46:54.305000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Healthcare', 'Medical', 'Healthtech', 'Founder Stories'] |
From Anxiousness to Equanimity | (Found article from 2017)
If you are energetically sensitive like me, you are probably feeling the unbelievably wild energies on the planet right now. There is of course the standard disbelief about the interconnection, but the more people I talk to the more similar the symptoms and reflection become.
My expression has been stifled and suppressed. I’ve felt a combination of just needing to relax and a fear that has led me to hideaway. A lot of emotions are being brought up, to be cleared, activating something on a cellular level. A new power. A heightened power.
What is personal development without the ‘person’? What is self-help without the ‘self’?
This is how I’ve been feeling for the last few weeks. I notice the typical judgment and guilt come up for not ‘working’, but I’m also seeing this from a clear peaceful place. There has been no drive and usually, I would resist and try hard, to push through and really force something to happen but not this time.
With a day full of fun, I observe a day filled with people busy. Of course, that is from my bubble of present awareness.
What does the world look like when you aren’t plugged into the mass media stream. You become unaware of the whole world. Suddenly your present senses are the only thing that acclimates you to the environment. There is nothing informing you of events on the other side of the world. Some would call this ignorance, but this experiment is vital to clear away the mania of the media.
Lucid in a dream awake to a collective construct. Life is a dream.
The dream of passion is the purpose behind work. When I don’t feel connected with my purpose I really don’t know what my mission is supposed to be. The vision is no longer metaphysical, but physical. I see a reality that is working. In my five senses, this reality is pleasant and satisfied. People are content, happy. Some busy in work, some scowled, some distracted by technology. Who am I to say what the world ‘needs’ when it is apparent in this present moment that is there is nothing needed for an abundant moment that is the reflection of the infinite. I derive my mission from the problems of the world. When those are tuned out, no longer frequency channels I pick, they really do not exist. This razor's edge of ignorance and bliss is quite interesting because I know the negativity that is a potential to pick.
I’m not ignorant, and I am not choosing ignorance. There is a wisdom to choosing peace. Where is it that we want to go when simply being is a powerful way to exist?
The voice is distant. The world is an advertisement. Marketing and sales is a contribution of love. What is the biggest game we can play? The game of transformation. What is transformation? Global transformation. Human evolution.
Darkness to Light Fear to Love Scarcity to Abundance
I’m already inhabiting the transformed world. It appears no different than before. All the same choices are available. The one consciousness tweak is the upgrading from self-conscious states to self-awareness states. I have entered into full integration of self-awareness. Where I no longer identify with personal identity. Even desire seems less potent from this powerful state of being. I’m sure it will wave back to return. But as of now, I do not really desire anything but the present moment’s magical perfection…
The flow of no time, quantum timelessness, a stream of constant miracles. | https://medium.com/@jeremyalasman/from-anxiousness-to-equanimity-10a9222bcf3f | ['Jeremy Lasman'] | 2020-12-02 21:56:34.122000+00:00 | ['Imagination', 'Technology', 'Anxiety', 'Mindset Shift'] |
The Complete Guide to Active Meditation Techniques for People Who Can’t Sit Still | Why Active Meditation?
For years, I tried and failed to get into meditation. It didn’t matter how many friends recommended it, how many guided meditation apps I tried, or how many benefits I read about.
I just don’t like sitting still. The most popular form of meditation—sitting and focusing on your breath—never stuck.
There are many people like me. This guide is meant as an alternative. If you don’t like sitting still, there are many active approaches that achieve similar results.
Think of meditation as a practice with three benefits: calm, focus, and awareness. Some of the exercises below train all three — just like a traditional seated breath-based meditation. Some train just one. In each exercise, I’ll call out what benefits you should expect.
By far, the most common benefit of these exercises is calm. That benefit can come in two ways: One is the physical sense of calm. The other is a mental state, where you stop thinking about the past or the future and are simply present in the current moment.
Additionally, I’ll focus on exercises that are simple enough for you to try on your own at home. I left out yoga, martial arts, and tai chi. These are all well-known arts that promote or are informed by meditative-like states, but I believe they are best learned with an instructor.
This guide starts with breathing exercises. These are the simplest and are the foundation of most meditation practices.
Part I: Breathing
Breathing correctly helps you move out pain, sparkles you up, and gives you better thinking power. Sound enticing? You just have to change the most automatic habit in your life — your breathing. — Ana T. Forrest, Fierce Medicine
Breathing techniques are the heart of many mindfulness meditation practices.
Interestingly enough, many tai chi instructors (called sifus) discourage focusing on the breath lest it distract you from focusing on the fundamentals of the movements.
I tend to agree. If we haven’t mastered proper breathing techniques, how can we be expected to learn a complex set of movements at the same time? Start by mastering breathing so you don’t have to think about it when you try other techniques.
These aren’t just any breathing techniques: They involve the use of tools and/or specific physical execution — elements that, in my opinion, make these techniques more active.
Disclaimer: If you have any medical conditions, please consult your doctor before undertaking a program of this sort. These exercises are safe if done properly and with awareness of your own limitations. Only perform the exercises at a level that feels comfortable, and stop if you begin to feel uncomfortable or light-headed. It isn’t a race, so progress at your own pace. And please, don’t do these exercises in water — two people recently drowned practicing some Wim Hof breathing techniques.
Yoga Method to Breathe Deeply
The bedrock teaching of my yoga teacher Ana Forrest—a spirited and accomplished healer, teacher, and yoga innovator—is deep breathing, and rightfully so.
This is how Forrest teaches deep breathing in her inspirational and confronting memoir/yoga manual, Fierce Medicine (paraphrased):
Stand up straight, feet parallel.
Tuck your tailbone down by turning on your buttock muscles.
Pull in the lower belly from the navel down.
Inhale deeply, expanding your ribs sideways.
On the exhale, pull the belly in and reach the tailbone toward the heels.
Expanding the ribs is a helpful concept. The ribs wrap all the way around your torso, and each individual rib is separated from the one above it with expandable intercostal muscles. The ribs expand in every direction each time you breathe.
When taking a deep breath, we intuitively know that our ribs can expand upward and out. (We often puff out our chest when taking a deep breath.) By putting your hand on the sides or back of your ribs and feeling for that expansion in all directions, you will begin to see your true capacity for optimizing oxygen intake.
At minimum, this action should produce a feeling of physical calm. But the most important goal of this exercise is to understand what deep breathing feels like up and down your torso. You’ll use this skill in other exercises.
POWERbreathe and Similar Tools for Deep Breathing
I always had a hard time following Forrest’s yoga breathing techniques as a stand-alone exercise, for the same reason that I have a hard time meditating.
I find it difficult to engage in any activity that doesn’t require dynamic bodily movement or mental exertion, or that doesn’t make use of some functional tool to help me direct my energies.
Enter POWERbreathe Plus:
POWERbreathe Plus, medium-resistance model.
POWERbreathe Plus is a respiratory trainer marketed to athletes, singers, and some asthma patients. But it works just as well for our purposes.
The device has a mouthpiece that slips between the gums and lips, creating a snorkel-like fit within the mouth. At its lowest setting, you can breathe in and out through your mouth with what feels like just slightly more effort than normal breathing. As you train with this device, you gradually adjust the difficulty knob.
POWERBreathe sells light-, medium-, and heavy-resistance versions, each with 10 resistance settings. I have and recommend medium-resistance. With this version, the first difficulty level is very easy, and the max difficulty level is extremely difficult. I can’t imagine needing to upgrade to the heavy version for any reason. If you have breathing problems, you may need the light version (but in this case, please see a doctor first).
The device I have retails for around $70, but you can find similar devices, such as the Expand-A-Lung, for around $30.
Additionally, if you don’t want to spend any money, you can create a fist with your hand and cover your mouth with the thumb side.
Place this side of your fist up to your mouth.
Training with this device is simple. Just place it in your mouth and do the deep-breathing exercise in the above yoga technique, breathing in through your mouth and out from your nose. Start at the lowest resistance level and move up as your lungs get stronger.
The POWERbreathe instructions tell you to breathe in quickly and powerfully, exhale completely, and repeat for 30 breaths. When you can do this 30 times, you can move up to the next level of resistance.
I prefer to breathe slowly instead of quickly and powerfully, and I don’t bother with the 30-breath count. I just breathe in and out slowly and completely and repeat until I feel like quitting. Either approach can work well depending on your goals. The quick-and-powerful 30 breaths are good if you want an athletic, oxygen-increasing, lung-expanding exercise. For a meditative-like practice, I prefer a more deliberate and open-ended session.
That’s the beauty of this device: Even when you aren’t using it for a meditative-like practice, you can still use it to practice better breathing.
Depending on your level of focus, you can use it to get in a full meditative-like session by simply standing and breathing. At the less-focused, level, I’ll sometimes pop it into my mouth while I do housework. That doesn’t help me build awareness or focus, but it does help me achieve a sense of calm.
Sandbag Breathing
If you follow any sort of yoga or meditation literature, you’ve probably heard of belly breathing. Belly breathing means you begin your in-breath by expanding your belly so you can see it pushing outward. As you continue to breathe in, you can slowly move the breath into the chest, but you have to start with the belly.
The diaphragm is a large sheath-like muscle that sits below the lungs. When the lungs expand, they naturally push the diaphragm downward, which in turn pushes the belly out.
Practicing belly breathing can feel unnatural at first. Despite the natural inclination of our breathing apparatus, it is common in our highly stimulating culture for people to breathe more rapidly with the chest puffed out and the belly pulled in.
As with deep breathing, it can be difficult to remember to practice without some sort of visceral reminder.
That’s where sandbag breathing comes in.
In the book Science of Breath, co-author Swami Rama explains the steps involved in sandbag breathing. But first you’ll need a sandbag. You know those weighted bags you can buy at a sporting goods shop that you strap around your wrists or ankles to add weight to your workouts? That’s what you’ll need.
The straps aren’t necessary for our purposes, so if you can sew and have access to sand, you can make your own bag. It’s basically just a small sand pillow. Swami Rama suggests starting out with a five-pound (2.3-kilogram) bag and increasing the weight as you get better at the exercise, and never exceed 15 pounds (6.8 kilograms). Or even more simply, use two large cookbooks.
Here’s how to do this exercise:
Lie on your back and relax.
Place the sandbag (or other weight) on your abdomen.
Perform the belly breathing as described above, lifting the sandbag with your belly as you breathe.
After you have filled up the belly area with breath, continue by filling up the chest area.
Allow the weight to make the exhale effortless.
Remove the weight after three to five minutes and relax.
What I like about this exercise is that the weight on my belly is extremely tactile. I can’t help but focus on the weight and direct it up and down with my breath.
Sometimes I’ll do a few rounds of this practice as described, and then leave the weight on for a while longer while I read a book. It never hurts to practice breathing techniques even if you’re not always doing it as an all-out meditation.
Pranayama Exercise for Energy : Kapalabhati (Breath of Fire)
According to Swami Rama, pranayama is a Sanskrit word that means the expansion or manifestation of the first unit of energy.
In laypeople’s terms, pranayama is composed of a set of breathing exercises that each use different breathing patterns and physical manipulations of the breathing organs to achieve different psychophysiological results.
A 2008 Nepalese study on the effects of two particular forms of pranayama demonstrated that regular practice of these exercises resulted in a significant decrease in pulse rate, respiratory rate, and diastolic blood pressure and an increase in parasympathetic activity.
Many different exercises make up the compendium of pranayama (Wikipedia lists 24), but I will include just three here, starting with Kapalabhati.
Kapalabhati is also known as “Breath of Fire,” because it ignites a “fire in the belly.” In fact, you’ll get a decent ab workout in addition to the breathing aspect. Here’s how to perform Breath of Fire:
Sit straight and tall in a cross-legged position or on your meditation bench.
Take a normal inhale breath.
Exhale a small amount of air forcefully through your nose. Pull your lower abs in with each exhale, as if you were pushing the air out with your abs.
Allow the inhale to occur on its own as a natural rebound from the exhale.
Repeat for 20 rounds. It feels almost like panting, but more controlled. Pay attention to how you feel. You don’t want to get light-headed; if you do, stop and breathe normally.
Build up to 100 rounds if your practice allows. You’ll also want to increase the rapidity of the breath, but you can start out at whatever pace allows you to get the hang of it.
This is my favorite video tutorial for Breath of Fire:
If you like this exercise, I’d recommend heading looking into the techniques of Wim Hof. He has applied similar exercises to feats of strength like overcoming cold (he climbed Mount Everest shirtless) or pushups (try doing a max set of pushups after this exercise — you may set a personal best).
Pranayama Exercise for Calming: Bhramari (Bee Breathing)
I use this simplified exercise, which I originally read about in the book Science of Breath. As the name says, this exercise should produce a feeling of calm.
Sit straight and tall in a cross-legged position or on your meditation bench.
Inhale completely through both nostrils.
As you exhale, produce the humming sound of a bee. (Bonus points if you’re audacious enough to do this in public!)
Repeat for two to three minutes, making sure the inhales and the hummed exhales are deep, even, and regular.
That’s it!
Here is my favorite video tutorial for Bee Breathing:
She plugs her ears with her fingers, but that is optional.
Pranayama Exercise for Centering: Sitali (Hissing Breath)
I find Sitali to be quite calming as well, but in a different sort of way than I experience with Bee Breathing. Sitali adds an element of alertness. I describe it as feeling centered.
This is a simplified adaptation from the book Science of Breath.
Sit straight and tall in a cross-legged position or on your meditation bench.
Stick out your tongue and curl the sides into a taco shape. If you can’t curl your tongue, form your mouth into a small “o” shape.
Inhale, making a hissing sound. Your breath will feel cool.
Exhale completely through both nostrils.
Repeat three times.
Here is my favorite video tutorial on Sitali:
A Final Word on Breathing
I hope you gained some benefit from these breathing techniques. Control over the breath truly is one of the major factors in achieving a healthy lifestyle and cultivating more presence in your life.
If you are someone who is active by nature, you will find that these exercises give you just enough stimulation to enticed you to continue. And if you practice these techniques regularly, you’ll find yourself feeling much more centered.
Part II: Stream of Consciousness
Consciousness…is nothing jointed; it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. — William James, The Principles of Psychology
I can see where William James is going with his idea about a “stream” of consciousness, but sometimes my thoughts behave more like a raging whirlpool, attacking from all directions, or a flash flood, spilling its banks and creating a trail of destruction.
A key tenet of many meditation practices is to allow your thoughts to course like a stream. As a thought floats by, your job is to recognize that you had a thought, and then to let that thought continue to flow past you without giving it permission to consume you.
You’re not stopping your thoughts, nor are you allowing them to rampage through your mind. You’re letting them flow.
Stream-of-consciousness writing may be the perfect tool to train your mind to behave more like the meandering stream and less like a whirlpool or dried-up creek bed.
Wikipedia describes the stream-of-consciousness narrative style as “a narrative device that attempts to give the written equivalent of the character’s thought processes, either in a loose interior monologue…or in connection to his or her actions.”
Because writing allows for only one word to go onto the page at a time, it is almost impossible for your thoughts to take any other fluid form besides a stream.
In the following exercises, I recommend starting by reading the stream of consciousness prose of others. It’s an exercise few people have considered, but it’s good prep for entering a stream of consciousness.
Stream-of-Consciousness Reading
Stream of consciousness as an accepted narrative structure has been around since the late 19th century. There are dozens of well-known stream-of-consciousness writers, including Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, James Joyce, and Jack Kerouac. Each takes a slightly different approach.
Some works contain an actual plot, others can be quite complex and include obscure references, and still others are less structured and simply provide a snapshot of a moment in time.
The purpose of this exercise is not to burden yourself with a massive novel or complex plot, so I recommend you start with Jack Kerouac. His novel Dharma Bums is a perfect example: It follows the narrator and his friends as they explore nature, Buddhism, solitude, and consciousness (similar to what we’re doing here).
When you read a book like this, you don’t have the opportunity to think about what you just read or anticipate what you’re about to read next. There really is no other way to read the book other than to focus on the present moment of the sentence that’s directly in front of you.
The flow of thoughts are so unexpected and the sentence structures so tangled (a single sentence can span a whole page or more) that you sometimes can’t take any meaning from it unless you maintain personal presence the entire time.
Here are some tips:
Before you start, take a deep breath to clear your head.
Read deliberately. You want to focus on what you are reading, but you also want to remain relaxed and open to the writer’s tangents and unconventional trains of thought.
Don’t reread anything that you missed or didn’t understand. Just notice when your mind has wandered off, then regain your focus and keep reading. With Jack Kerouac in particular, you don’t really need to know what came before in the narrative, because his books tends to be just a series of events happening one after the other.
Do go back and reread passages that you liked or those where you were really able to sense the flow of the writer’s thoughts. Record what it feels like to be in that flow.
Once you get the hang of it, try to get a feel for the pacing of the writer’s thoughts. Because these are thoughts (and related actions), they can speed up, slow down, remain steady, build toward a crescendo, and everything in between. It can be fun to experience the roller coaster of someone else’s thought patterns, especially if you can capture the flow.
Here is a passage from Dharma Bums to get you started:
The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify by their own lonesome familiarities to this feeling. Ecstasy, even, I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass.
Morning Pages Stream-of-Consciousness Writing
The most common version of stream-of-consciousness journaling comes from Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way.
The instructions are to write three pages freehand. Write in a stream of consciousness, capturing whatever thoughts come into your head. For most people, this takes about 30 minutes.
Many of the additional instructions focus on trying to help you avoid censoring or critiquing your writing. For example, Cameron recommends not going back to reread your journals, because that prompts many people to try to write things that would be worth rereading later.
My experience with the Morning Pages exercise has been unbelievable. It basically amounts to a morning brain dump that allows me to expel everything out of my head before the day even starts: the day’s obligations, my anxieties, nonsensical thoughts that seem to always be bouncing around up there, my dreams from the night before.
The chief benefit I’ve experienced through this exercise has been gaining clarity around life challenges I’ve been anxious about. By writing down anything and everything that my mind invents about a specific challenge (in real time and without censorship), I miraculously gain clarity.
I suspect that the power of Morning Pages lies in the fact that writing down these thoughts makes them solid and tangible. There’s no need to rethink them, because they’re right there in my notebook.
Must you write by hand? Cameron says yes:
When we write by hand, we connect to ourselves. We may get speed and distance when we type, but we get a truer connection — to ourselves and our deepest thoughts — when we actually put pen to page.
However, there is an entire community of online stream-of-consciousness journalers who use the tool 750 Words. The tool’s creator, Buster Benson, sums up the experience in his post “Better Than Meditation”:
The act of typing serves as a hand rail on our thoughts, and occupies a certain part of the brain that generally gets restless and looks for something to do, because it’s already doing something: typing. Disabling that restless squirrel in your brain is the reason why activities like walking, showering, doing the dishes, gardening, etc are all such great activities for stirring up creative thoughts. Free writing has the added benefit of providing a tangible trail of thoughts as they rise up. You’re essentially hitching your subconscious directly to your typing fingers.
The emphasis comes from me. The entire thing that drove me to active meditation was that I got too restless in traditional meditation. So if you get restless doing by-hand journaling, don’t feel bad about trying a tool like 750 Words. The most important thing is that you do something.
“I Am Aware” Partner Exercise
This exercise came from Tony Stubblebine, who edits the publication that published this article in Better Humans. He got it from Will Kabat-Zinn, who teaches mindfulness and meditation at Spirit Rock. And on many occasions, Will has stopped into the Medium offices to teach meditation to the team. So, it’s a very insider technique that I couldn’t find an external reference for.
But it’s powerful, so I’m including it.
The gist is to sit with a partner. One of you talks, stream-of-consciousness style, while the other listens. The listener doesn’t say anything and tries not to react. It’s not a huge problem if the listener does react — the listener should just know that reacting isn’t the point.
The speaker catalogs the thoughts that come into their head, speaking each thought out loud.
Here’s the key part: The speaker has to frame each thought as a complete sentence that begins “I am aware….”
The speaker might notice thoughts like the color of the listener’s hair or the temperature, that the speaker is having thoughts about how to respond to a particular email, that they are plotting what to have for lunch, that they have an itch.
If you read the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, which catalogs your decision-making process into two systems—a fast but emotional system and a rational but slow system—you’ll understand the value of this exercise. Framing each thought in a grammatically correct sentence basically guarantees that your rational mind has become fully aware of the thought.
Some of the other articles in Better Humans point to this type of awareness practice as a potential cure for things like procrastination.
Theoretically, you could practice this exercise by yourself. But the paired nature is what makes it active enough that someone like me doesn’t get bored. Once you’re done speaking, trade places and be the listener.
Part III: Other Exercises
Stargazing
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. —Walt Whitman, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”
This poem by Walt Whitman deftly dispels the notion that we can only appreciate something if we study it. While the astronomer was busy identifying stars and mapping their trajectories, Whitman was content to bask in the stars’ beauty as he experienced them in that moment.
In this exercise, you will be playing the role of Walt Whitman and using the night sky to cultivate a sense of presence.
This does mean you will need to be somewhere outside of a city, away from man-made light, and ideally when the moon is low.
This might be difficult for some people, but if you put a little effort into it, I’m sure you can find somewhere within driving distance that could work. Just Google “stargazing [your city]” and something will come up.
Otherwise, many cities have planetariums that reproduce the night sky in a large dome-shaped room. See if there is one near you.
If neither of those options work, you can recreate the night sky at home with one of these home planetariums.
Here’s how to do the stargazing exercise:
Lie on your back and look up at the sky.
Take a few deep breaths to calm your mind. Use the belly breathing exercise we discussed earlier (without the weights, of course).
Gaze up at the night sky, and let your eyes move where they will. Depending how many stars are visible, you may be quite overwhelmed. Just relax and let the light enter your eyes.
You may be tempted to pick out constellations and let your thinking and “labeling” mind take over. It’s okay if that happens, but try to let your eyes do all the work; let them be drawn to whatever catches their attention. Spend a few minutes letting the eyes move where they will.
As you continue to gaze, you will start to notice patterns. You will inevitably notice constellations and star clusters. If you find a section of the sky that catches your attention, bring your focus to that part of the sky. Focus narrowly on your constellation or star cluster, seeing it both as a uniform whole and as individual stars making up the whole.
Staying fixated on your section of the sky, start to slowly expand your focus to include a wider area around your pattern. How does it fit in with the sky around it?
Look around at the entire sky again. Notice how some stars are brighter than others. Notice how some seem to twinkle rapidly, while others seem to be more solid.
Have you seen any comets? If there are enough stars in the sky, you will almost always see a comet. The trick is not to search for them. Look up again and try to widen your focus as much as possible, but stay relaxed. I see comets more often when I am observing the sky as a whole, rather than when I dart my eyes around trying to “catch” one.
With the right sky, this practice almost takes care of itself. The sheer natural beauty and awe-inspiring wonder of an infinite universe will capture your attention whether you want it to or not.
The key is to relax and enjoy the moment. Don’t worry about how you plan to store the experience in your memory banks or how you plan to write it down, draw it out, or capture it on camera.
Coloring
You’ve probably all seen those coloring books for adults. You know, the ones with intricate patterns in black and white that are meant to be filled in with colored pencils? They’ve really taken off in the past few years, and with good reason. Studies show that exercises like coloring help cultivate relaxation and reduce stress.
In the following exercise, we aren’t going to buy a coloring book, but we are going to choose our own images to fill in with color. I got this idea when I was in a New Age shop talking to the clerk about tarot cards. While I don’t consider myself superstitious, I do enjoy reading about different esoteric frameworks people have used to describe human behavior.
The clerk suggested I photocopy the cards in black and white, and then mindfully color them in myself, letting the cards speak to me in their own way.
I thought this was a cool way to practice presence while also learning about the stories, myths, and other sociological representations a particular image might convey.
Before we start coloring, it’s important to find artwork that resonates with you. You can just do a Google image search and filter for black-and-white images.
Examples include:
Children’s books: Do a Google image search for your favorite children’s book: Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh, Where the Wild Things Are, and anything by Shel Silverstein are all great options.
Do a Google image search for your favorite children’s book: Alice in Wonderland, Winnie the Pooh, Where the Wild Things Are, and anything by Shel Silverstein are all great options. Human anatomy: If you have any aches or pains, this can be a wonderful way to learn about the area of the body that is causing you discomfort. Do a black-and-white image search for “muscles of the jaw” or “joints of the knee.” If you really want to learn about the whole body, here is a comprehensive coloring book that will only cost you about $15.
If you have any aches or pains, this can be a wonderful way to learn about the area of the body that is causing you discomfort. Do a black-and-white image search for “muscles of the jaw” or “joints of the knee.” If you really want to learn about the whole body, here is a comprehensive coloring book that will only cost you about $15. Tarot cards: These aren’t all necessarily stuffy depictions of medieval kings, queens, chariots, and the like. Lots of people out there are creating their own decks out of anything and everything that inspires them. I like this nature-inspired deck. Salvador Dali created a deck of his own, if you want that surrealist flavor.
These aren’t all necessarily stuffy depictions of medieval kings, queens, chariots, and the like. Lots of people out there are creating their own decks out of anything and everything that inspires them. I like this nature-inspired deck. Salvador Dali created a deck of his own, if you want that surrealist flavor. Paintings: Anything that resonates with you is perfect, but some ideas include impressionists like Van Gogh or Monet or surrealists like Dali. Another great option is Aboriginal art from Australia—the simple yet rich natural patterns make it easy to stay within the lines, and you get to put yourself into the psyche of perhaps the world’s oldest-living distinct culture.
Once you have artwork you like:
Print the art.
Sit down with a collection of sharpened colored pencils.
Take a few deep breaths to calm your mind.
Remind yourself why you chose the art you chose and what you hope to learn from it.
Start coloring. Don’t judge yourself or try to be perfect. The coloring doesn’t have to be realistic or follow the exact color scheme as the original. Let the art speak to you, and just color.
Here are some questions you may want to keep in the back of your mind while you color. Presence is key, but it doesn’t hurt to dig a little deeper into your mind and learn something about yourself in the process.
As you color, continue to breathe and ask yourself what the artwork is trying to teach you. What message do you think the artist was trying to convey? Do you agree with the artist’s assessment, or do you have alternate interpretations?
If you’re coloring from a children’s book, is it one that you read as a child? Does it have a special place in your heart? What is it about the art that spoke to you then? Can you recall those feelings? If it had a major impact on you as a child, did you heed its advice? Why or why not? Can you place yourself into the mind of the child you were when you first read this book or viewed this artwork? What is the artwork telling you now?
If it’s human anatomy, are you coloring in an area of the body where you are currently experiencing discomfort? Direct your breath into that area of your body. Feel for the bodily sensations of each muscle as you color it in. Have you identified the exact muscle, ligament, or tendon that is causing you problems? Continue to breathe.
When you are done, take a few minutes to look at your picture. Take it all in as a whole. What do the colors you chose tell you about your feelings toward the artwork? Are they strong, fiery colors? Neutral, muted colors? Cooling colors? Does your color scheme represent how you see things currently, or do they represent your ideal version of how things should be? Maybe there’s not much more to it than the fact that you are proud of yourself for coloring a pretty picture. There are no right or wrong answers.
Osho Dynamic Meditation
When you heard the phrase “active meditation,” maybe you thought most of the exercises would have more movement. If so, this is the exercise for you.
The Osho version of dynamic meditation originated in meditation camps in the 1970s. However, there is a tradition of similar methods that go back centuries—for example, the Whirling Dervish of the Middle East.
The Osho practice is done as a five-stage active meditation to music. The major focus is presence — dropping all planning and future thinking to just be present in your present movements.
The five stages according to ActiveMeditation.com.
In the official version of this meditation, you spend 10 minutes in each of the first three stages and 15 minutes in each of the final two stages. A music playlist, like this one, helps you know when to move to the next stage.
I’ve found that you can do a simplified version of this practice on your own in as little as five minutes. These stages help me get over self-consciousness and help put me in the present moment.
Breathing: Focus on deep and chaotic breathing. In a lot of meditations, your breathing becomes consistent and rhythmic. Don’t let that happen in this stage. Play: Move playfully and without repetition. Try to avoid forming patterns, and just let your body move however it wants to. This is a physical manifestation of stream of consciousness. Jumping: Put your arms above your head and jump up and down while shouting “Hoo!” Freeze: Whatever position you are in, stay there. Celebrate: Start dancing again in your most celebratory way.
The official Osho site offers extremely thorough resources and tutorials, but I found this short video to be a quick and helpful resource for getting started:
Conclusions and Next Steps
Well, there you have it: a list of exercises that will put you on a path toward presence, calm, and awareness and will hopefully be more effective than simply sitting still.
It is true that I regularly mention the importance of “taking a deep breath” or “continuing to breathe through the exercise,” even during exercises that aren’t explicitly related to the breath.
Breathing truly is one of the most important functions of the body, and it is our most accessible tool to calm ourselves naturally.
That is why I would suggest starting first with the breathing exercises, and then incorporating the other exercises when you are ready. | https://betterhumans.pub/the-complete-guide-to-active-meditation-techniques-for-people-who-cant-sit-still-27ad3e380e4 | ['Brad Buzzard'] | 2017-08-22 21:54:22.593000+00:00 | ['Meditation', 'Personal Development', 'Wellness', 'Yoga'] |
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